TrueIndigo

Went hot-air ballooning and if there was ever a challenge for shooting, this was it.  Extreme low-light and extreme DR from hugely bright light-sources.
They say you can't take bags in the balloon, and it had been really wet weather, so I decided to go small.  I took the GX85, TTartisans 17mm F1.4 for the low-light, Laowa 7.5mm F2 for an ultra-wide, and the 12-35mm F2.8.  I was a bit cheeky and took a sling bag and kept it under my jacket.  The requirement is that nothing is loose in the basket and that you can hold on with both hands for landing, so I figured my bag under my jacket was basically the same as having a big pocket.
It's a crazy early start.  We arrived in the field before first-light and they started setting up in pitch darkness guided only by torches.  I started shooting at F1.7 and needed ISO6400 at first to get any kind of level on anything except their torches.  I shot on the 17mm at F1.7 and gradually reduce the ISO until the balloon was mostly inflated, then swapped to the 7.5mm for a few wide shots, and then swapped to the 12-35mm F2.8 and it was time to get in the balloon and off we went.  
I also shot with my iPhone 12 mini for some quick shots using the ultra-wide when I didn't want to change lenses, and also as we were approaching landing, as I had put the camera away in anticipation.  It was super-foggy and the pilot ended up having to land early and for a while we were going pretty close to the treetops so I'd put my camera away when he told us that he'd be landing at the next opportunity.
Frame grabs..  mix of GX85 and iPhone, put through a quite moderate FLC pipeline.










In retrospect I took the complete wrong equipment and used it in the wrong way (so, it's business as usual!) but the FLC pipeline really took the footage to the next level, and I used just enough strength on the film emulation to get rid of the digital look to the images.
Here's a comparison.
Grade (same as above):

SOOC:

The GX85 has super-whites so despite being SOOC that image is actually slightly clipped in-post and some highlights can be recovered, which the FLC grade has done, but you get the idea.  The SOOC is with the GX85 default profile and has much more of a video look to it, despite being pretty good compared to other similar cameras.
If I was to take the same equipment again, I'd lean into the darkness and just use the 17mm at F2.0 where it cleans up and use the GX85 at something sensible like ISO1600.  This would have the early shots as perhaps being unusable, but it would mean that the torches the crew used wouldn't have been clipped (I clipped them in favour of exposing what they were shining on).
We're going to go again later this year, and for that I plan to take the GH7, 9mm F1.7 and 14-140mm F3.5-5.6.
This will be a much larger setup but if I use a neck strap then I only have to have one lens in a pocket and so I won't need a bag at all.  I just bought the 9mm F1.7 and it's sharp wide-open, so apart from having AF, it is both an ultra-wide as well as a low-light lens.  I can crop in-camera and/or in-post to get a tighter FOV, but you don't normally need long focal-lengths when it's that dark.
The more I use this FLC pipeline the more I like it.  If I'd have shown these images to my 2018 self, I wouldn't have believed me when I said that it was me that made them.  

Thanks for the kind words, John. I remember an old friend of mine, who is a very experienced DP, once said - with regard to "unmotivated camera movement" - that you "shouldn't move without a reason". For the purpose of the camera test I just enjoyed finding the CinemaScope compositions and letting the action (a very busy location) move within the frame instead. I now have a GH5 and a S5, but my use of IBIS is still very modest - it's more useful to me to simply iron out the micro jitters in my hands than to try to emulate a gimble.

I still have my G7 -- I got rid of my GH1, nice though it was back in the day, but kept this little camera; the simplicity of using it remains an attraction. This was my first camera test with it:
 

I still have my G7 -- I got rid of my GH1, nice though it was back in the day, but kept this little camera; the simplicity of using it remains an attraction. This was my first camera test with it:
 

I still have my G7 -- I got rid of my GH1, nice though it was back in the day, but kept this little camera; the simplicity of using it remains an attraction. This was my first camera test with it:
 

I still have my G7 -- I got rid of my GH1, nice though it was back in the day, but kept this little camera; the simplicity of using it remains an attraction. This was my first camera test with it:
 

People might laugh at me, but I don't care. I've been doing some walk-around filming with my G7 and 9mm Leica versus my S5ii and the kit lens. I'm absolutely dumbfounded how little the differences are.
Here are my settings:
Panasonic Lumix G7 - 4k 25fps (EOSHD ProColor Settings, with minor tweaks), super-fast stabilization in Final Cut (InertiaCam- smoothing (.1), continuous video AF on with it's small box in the center (yes, that's right and it didn't really hunt), A Mode, Auto ISO, handheld only,  AWB
Panasonic Lumix S5II - 4k 25fps (Stadard profile), no stabilization in post (but had IBIS on), continuous AF  (mode 2), small box in the center, A Mode, Auto ISO, handheld only, AWB
I kid you not, the images were very similar, minus the color which seemed better on the G7 to my eye. After stabilization, there was little difference.
Here are some stills:

It would appear the 2015 G7 is still the little engine that could. It weighs a whopping 540g less than the S5II and kit lens. I could add the 14-140, the 25 f/1.4 and perhaps a recorder or mini tripod for that difference.  This is where M43 needs to go in the future: small, excellent value, with great features like 4k, PDAF, IBIS, 10 bit h.265, with a proper shutter and hot shoe. Even the previous generation(s) from 2015-2018 have so much to offer.

First day out shooting in Seoul.  Here are some images.
These are all frame-grabs, were ETTR, had a look put over them with Resolve FLC plugin, and I adjusted exposure on each (and contrast on the odd one or two) and that's it.  I'm sure I will finesse them once I start editing for real, but this is essentially just looking at my dailies.










Setup is incredibly easy to use thanks to the huge DR, AF is super-snappy, the 14-140mm zoom gives so much flexibility and I'm finding I'm using the long end a lot more than I thought I would.
I'll post some video footage of it later, but I'm also finding that I can hand-hold at 140mm (280mm FF equivalent) and with the OIS + IBIS working together get almost no movement in the frame at all, and with a slight crop in post I'd get locked-off images.  At anything below 80mm or 100mm the frame is locked and won't need any stabilisation in post.  Incredible results.

tl/dr:  Made a small and simple doc film years and years ago with my first 'hybrid' camera. The process was inspiring and changed my outlook about working with motion pictures:
A bit of online chatter here about cameras that are older and it got me thinking because I recently posted a doc my wife and I are currently working on.  It was made with recent camera gear and fancy new computers and software. 
Something old.  Something new.
Well, as a retrospect, here's a look at the very first film we attempted.  This was in 2011.  My entire career at that time had been broadcasting and corporate.  Didactic stuff.  That was my reality and vocational training.  
If making a film was compared being an architect designing a building, my education was basically akin to being an electrician.  Installing wires and cables I could do -- and that was kind of it, y'know? 
So when we set out to shoot this 'Camino' flick, our assumption was that we were going to do what was typical for us:  Subject-matter-experts-interviews, b-roll, maybe even having a presenter doing stand ups and narration.  That type of thing.
Interestingly, this upcoming shoot was immediately preceded by a corporate assignment in southern Spain.  The experience of filming some pretty incredible scenery footage only to know that it was going to be handed off to my client who would hammer it into a dry travelogue video was disheartening.  Also, a year before we had also made a standard travelogue video ourselves in Japan.  We were underwhelmed by the results we created there too.
My wife saw my frustration with all this and started asking "why".  Why were we doing things a certain way.  What exactly would we be offering the world with another video that was a parade of talking heads telling the viewer what to think/feel?  No acceptable answers were readily available. 
So, the day before this journey we decided to ditch all the audio gear, the Sachtler tripod, and the HD video camera with multiple lenses.  Into the backback went a used 5DII and a nikkor 50mm prime.  That was it.  Felt a bit naked, tbh.  But that was the first day we set off into the world as filmmakers rather than as a cameraman or a broadcast ENG person.
We wanted to make something completely impressionistic and opposite of what was typical for us.  We'd only use 1 small cam, 1 small lens, a walking staff as a makeshift monopod.
This epiphany came about not only from the conversation with my wife, but also the realization that a really simple camera rig was not only going to give me an opportunity to run and gun cinematically; but to do it better than with the extensive gak I normally carried around.  Cinematic shooting was something that I never really felt the freedom to explore --until that moment.  And so we went to make a humble unassuming little film.  
The simplicity became it's value.  Less was more we reasoned.  Create a vibe rather than an info dump.
Our modest film might not seem like much, and there's so many mistakes I made first time out of the gate I still cringe at, but it changed our view about our careers.  From there we started to be interested in what it took to be better storytellers. Could we actually do that?  Really?
All of this to say that perspective really matters.  And that the gear we talk about here can actually offer new perspectives.  But it was the attitude first and foremost that needed a shift.  Cheers.

In recent years I have tended to go see films mid day, and that usually means it's just me and about seven other people, politely watching silently in the dark (even when it's a comedy, there's usually no laughing -- we're British). But many years ago I remember a full house group connection I have never experienced before, when the audience was at one with itself along with the emotional world building of the film. I had seen Aliens when it was first going around London, and took the opportunity to watch it again; they were showing a 70mm print in the historic Marble Arch theatre. And in that place, the escalating tensions of the drama was somehow felt more intensely. And when it got to the part where they decide to nuke the place, but the company guy says: "Wait a minute, we're talking about a billion dollar plant here." The collective audience release (from the humour in adversity) when Ripley answers "Well...bill me" was just incredible. And later when she says to the alien queen: "Stay away from her, you bitch!" the audience just erupted. That experience always stayed with me. An example of what cinema was capable of.

Interesting fact for you... Sony RX100 VII is now 6 years old.
https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/cameras/compact-cameras/the-sony-rx100-vii-is-now-more-than-five-years-old-but-is-sony-even-planning-to-upgrade-the-beloved-compact
I remember when Sony updated this popular model every year.
They were throwing everything at it... pop-up EVFs, stacked sensors, 960fps slow-motion.
Fuji had a high-end compact, the X10, X20 and X30... Very ripe for an update, we may see one this year in fact.
And the Canon G7X has seen a revival in popularity like the Fuji X100.
In fact the G7X Mark II now commands close to $1000 on eBay.
However something is strange...
Smartphone cameras have never been better... Especially in terms of sensor size and zoom capabilities. Although a lot of the options outside of the duopoly (Apple and Samsung) reserve their Ultra models with best cameras only for the Chinese market.
And the retro-CCD cameras are also doing well (check the Canon Powershot G10 prices!), so it can't really all be about the appeal of a larger 1" sensor, or fancy features like 960fps and RAW.
So right now the camera product planners at Canon, Fuji and Sony must be quite confused. Do they come out with a high-spec or affordable compact line, or not bother at all?
I think what is happening, is that:
A) Social media has reminded a very large audience that compact cameras are FUN
B) What you can get up to with one, the shoots - the simplicity - it all looks cool on social media which further draws people in
C) There's a lot of affordable compacts
D) The top premium compacts with exception of X100 series have not had updates for AGES so the previous models are still in demand
So if I were a Canon or Fuji manager...
I'd be tempted to make a right mess of things and do a 'FUN' camera.
When what actually people want is a very capable small camera with serious photography pedigree, that produces pure art with cutting edge specs.
It is time for Sony to revive the RX1 series with 60mp A7R V sensor, and do the best RX100 ever with retro style body like a smaller X100 VI.
It is time for Canon to bring the G7X up to date with latest stacked sensor tech.
And Fuji should make a smaller X100, plus one with a zoom lens but similar form factor.
And they will fly off the shelves.
But I bet they won't get it, or understand this new "accidental" market 🙂

Last set of stills from Seoul. We took a walk through backstreets and alleyways down to the river, stumbling across a tiny neighbourhood railway crossing...

Shot with the BMMCC in Myeongdong for 2.5 hours in the (light) rain today.  It's a trooper.  Images barely graded as usual.










and a POV pic of the setup.

I might have gone a touch dark on the grade, but these were just taken from checking dailies to catch any tech or usage issues.  
I think I'm getting the hang of this.

So...
 
I was diagnosed with kidney cancer on September 5. I had my right kidney removed on October 13 and am now cancer free (and if my scans show nothing in April I'll be considered cured!). During that entire period though, I didn't do any jobs and just focused on recovering, but had decided to dip my toe back into the water and had a small job planned for a friend this week.
 
As I was just going through my equipment in preparation of getting back into the swing of things my pup Teri knocked over my main S5 and IT BROKE. Now, it doesn't impact my job because I have two extras of the same cameras, but obviously it left me needing to get a new camera. Sooo...
I bought the Lumix S5IIX instead of getting another used S5. I swore I'd never buy a camera brand new again, but the used price isn't that much less, and I was able to get a decent deal on it with a lens. With all I've been through (having my kidney removed was, without a doubt, the most painful thing I've ever experienced, just FYI) I figured I'd treat myself. 
This is a long way to ask a couple questions while I wait for it to arrive tomorrow:
1. how easy is it to match the original S5 straight out of camera or with a little tweaking using the standard or natural color profile? I will use log, but for certain jobs it's just easier to skip that part.
2. why is there no third party battery grip? has anyone heard why? 
3. I have a couple third party batteries. Wasabi and Newmowa brands. Has anyone encouraged any problems with third party batteries? I have like six OEM batteries but I've heard the S5II and S5IIX's battery life isn't as good as the S5.
4. what are the best settings? I've seen tons of YouTubers but I'd prefer to hear it from people that do more than film themselves in their spare bedroom/garage and actually are out there getting the most out of their camera.
5. This one is most important: I just want you all to know I love you all. My ordeal has given me a greater appreciation for life, the interactions I have with other human beings, and just everything, really. Thank you @Andrew Reid and everyone else that makes this place special.

Didn't think this would work at first.

Turns out it does, and then some!
The 9.5K sensor in this thing has enough left over for 4.8K in 2x crop mode
The Ultra HD is oversampled from this 4.8K and we have our nice looking Cinema DNG internal to SD card. Something the Micro Four Thirds cameras can't do.
So it is basically a Digital Bolex at this point.
Frame grab:

The form factor is also perfect for these lenses being so small.
It feels balanced as a Super 16mm handheld candid camera.
It has one over on the Sony a1 for c-mount as well... The 2x crop is sticky, between Cine and Stills, and is remembered every time you turn it on. Whereas the Sony clear image zoom keeps getting reset when you power down or switch modes.
So yeah, I think my Digital Bolex D16 itch has finally been scratched!!
It's also perfect for bunny pics

Just to confirm for the eagle-eyed amongst you, yes, I have commenced shooting on a super-secret project to be shot on the P2K and M2K cameras.
These are the current rigs, but are likely to evolve over the course of production, which is scheduled to last all winter...

 

I liked the feel in the hand of some of those old Canon's too, Panny, which I bought purely for Magic Lantern RAW. The 5DII was thoroughly solid like cast metal. But strangely, I did prefer the industrial feel of the lowly 50D (so different from the hollow plastic of it's successor the 60D, that I also owned), which had a stiff metal plate structure beneath the grip fabric that I liked more than almost any other camera.

It is time for a good old fashioned EOSHD article. Everything you’ve seen so far on YouTube is meaningless - yes it is.
Check out a new novelty on the web... with my WRITTEN BLOG POST!
https://www.eoshd.com/news/is-n-raw-real-raw-nikon-z9-under-the-spotlight-at-eoshd
 

Skintones are looking good to me using a LUT I made for the GH6:
 



Over the weekend if I have time I'll try to shoot some charts with the GH6 and S5II to check how close or not the colour is.

As I was watching the S5II reviews I realised that people are taking the same V-Log files and ending up with very different colour results. I guess there are four main approaches - use the colour in the file untouched, use Panny's LUT, use Resolve's Rec709 conversion, or use a third party LUT. This post compares the accuracy of each and discusses the trade-offs that might be made. This applies to the GH6 and any other Panasonic cameras that share a similar color palette.
I'll be using extracted colour patches from a colour target. This is how the chart looks in reality:

Below, I match the gamma of a GH6 V-Log shot of this chart and then look at the results. Open in paired tabs on a monitor and flick back and forth to compare.
 
1. Don't transform the colour, just add contrast:

You can see here by comparing with the original that overall saturation is way down, cyan magenta and yellow are too bright, reds are too orange, greens are too yellow and blues are too bright. Skintones are too green. I guess some people grade like this. However the colours are still in V-gamut and ideally should be transformed to Rec709. Even when I manually colour grade in Resolve so that some patches are accurate, then others are still totally off. Not recommended.
 
2. Use Panasonic's VLog to V709 LUT

This official LUT comes with a half-assed curve as part of it. But you can separate the components using LutCalc and just get a LUT that is the colour transform only. The colour LUT must come first, before the curve, or things will go wonky.
Cyans are too bright, magentas too pale, yellows too dark and orangey, reds a smidgen too bright and orangey, greens too pale and light, and blues are absolutely far too light and cyan. Skintones are slightly too pink.
Despite these colour inaccuracies this is actually a good colour transform in the sense that as far as I have looked I have never spotted any colour weirdness in the image like banding or colour clipping. It's a slightly muted look though, and not good for landscapes - foliage, sea and sky will suffer a washed out fate here.
 
3. Use Resolve's Color Space Transform to convert to Rec709 colour

Note that Panasonic's official LUT is available in Resolve under the LUT menu. However, you will get different colour results using the Color Space Transform effect to convert V-gamut to Rec709. I was a little bit excited when I saw these results at first. It looked off-hand to be a bit better than Panny's conversion, especially in terms of the lightness of the blues. However closer inspection reveals that although cyans are just about right, magentas are too bright and saturated, yellows too orange, reds too bright and saturated, greens are close but deep blues are oversaturated.
This colour conversion differs from the Panny insofar as it has to be applied after the curve conversion, not before. When you do this I noticed some weird colour artifacts in footage I'd shot at an aquarium. So yes, the blues are more accurate but the inaccurate Panny conversion gave an image with integrity whereas blues began to clip and go weird (even with saturation mapping).
Overall, this gives more accurate and I think nicer colour than Panny. However, if I was a wedding or nightclub shooter I'd be wary of colour artifacting in strong coloured lighting scenarios.
 
4. Third party LUT

I was interested to see if I could make a colour accurate LUT for the GH6. I gave it a go and you can check out the LUT here. The LUT must go after the contrast curve, not before!
Yes, it's very accurate compared to the other approaches. When contrast is relatively moderate and the range of colours is not so saturated it looks a bit similar to the Resolve transform. However, there is much better hue accuracy and saturation control in all tonal areas, which you really notice if you crank up the contrast or have very saturated. However, I did still notice some of that colour weirdness in the aquarium shots. So it looks like Panasonic know what they're doing in terms of sacrificing colour accuracy to preserve image integrity. And I guess if total colour accuracy is what you're after you need to shoot RAW!
Finally, here's a comparison on a real world image:
Vgamut

 
Panasonic Vgamut to V709

 
Resolve Vgamut to Rec709 (skintones are nice but note the oversaturated reds on the skirt)

 
Custom LUT

Recently purchased the X-H2s, and you know me, the first thing I look at is chroma resolution. Just dropping this in, on the left side you see the Cr channel of an EOS R 4K C-Log 8bit 4:2:0 recording (about 420 Mbps), on the right side it's X-H2s 4K F-Log 10bit 4:2:2 (about 615Mbps):

Don't get me wrong it's better than the X-T3, but this smoothing can still lead to loss of color. I really wish we could turn it off and deal with color noise in post.
ProRes RAW helps but it's a mystery to me. RAW on the X-H2s has the X-Trans pattern, obviously. However, it gets magically converted into Bayer in the ProRes RAW file. I had discussions with people who are involved in ProRes RAW->DNG conversion, also did my own test with Raw convertor (resulting DNG has Bayer pattern) and it seems that the data that arrives to a Ninja V recorder is already Bayer, even though the sensor is X-Trans. I'm still trying to confirm all this but if the body demosaics the X-Trans pattern and remosaics it into Bayer, then it's kind of a hack which in some cases can lead to artifacts.

Well, it's certainly true that the GH6 has not made the same kind of splash that the GH5 did. Personally, I don't find M43 to be too much of a burden when shooting with a 0.64x Speedbooster. It's kind of a sweet spot of boosted light for exposure and manageable DOF. For me full frame has too little when shooting wide open with fast glass and I think that approximately APS-C or Super35 sensor size is pretty good. M43 is too small, but with a 0.64x speedbooster it's actually "bigger" than APS-C at 1.28x crop relative to full frame.
Here are a few clips shot wide open with an Iscorama 36 on an Olympus OM 50 1.8 manual lens. Talk about making life difficult for myself with an Iscorama shooting wide open - swapping diopters between almost every single shot! A lesson in patience! Oh well, it's worth it for the bokeh and the flares I guess 😂
 

As if it weren't bad enough, when the world seems to be going mad each week with yet another WTF moment, at a personal level half the universe is suddenly in question and we wonder what's going on? In all inadequacy I know, but I send my healing thoughts to Zara and you Andrew at this difficult time. I've been very moved reading these posts, and hope they also help you to know something of the reality of the regard and honest feelings community people here have in support to you and the family. All the best.

I thought I'd resurrect this topic since I am still shooting on my trusty 5D3. Here's a frame from a web promo I shot last week...
 

Take this with a pinch of salt but the GH6 won Best Photo/Video Camera at the 40th anniversary EISA-who-I've-never-heard-of-awards
https://eisa.eu/awards/panasonic-lumix-dc-gh6/
I've used it on a few jobs now and I do like the camera. I still miss the 1080 2x crop but find the battery life OK. I have a power bank on the way and plan to charge batteries in my bag as they die.
I do love the red box when recording, punch in while recording and generally tidier onscreen graphics. It's a good video camera.