TheRenaissanceMan

17-40 is totally okay on a budget, especially at the current used prices. Very useful set of focal lengths in a car! Versatile for run and gun/handheld work, too. It's just slow and optically middling.

Color-wise, I like to shoot in SLOG2 and SGamut3.cine, then use the color space transform tool on my second node in Resolve to translate that into r.709. Grade normally from there. Using the second node is key, because you can do all your white balance and highlight/shadow recovery on the first node, pre-transform, without clipping any data or creating tricky color balance issues.

For a 2K/1080 deliver, I like to shoot 4K. For a 4k delivery, 5-6k is ideal. Yes, in an ideal world all your shots are rock solid, noise-free, and perfectly framed, but in the real world, having room to crop (or safety area around your frame), stabilize, and downscale to kill noise really helps. Besides, having more options in post is good. I'm experienced, but that's not gonna stop me from covering my ass.

3 rules: 1. Must be adaptable to EF mount and shorter. Gotta be able to use it on at least a C200/F3/UMP. 2. Must focus the "correct" (non-Nikon) direction with hard stops. Anything else messes with my muscle memory (or my AC's) and creates problems with remote follow focuses. 3. Must have appeal beyond just my taste: ie, should be desirable to clients who hire me, directors I work with, and other shooters who might rent them. Otherwise I'm just spinning my wheels. Personally I prefer a ~1.4x ratio between focal lengths, but I can make do with 2x in a pinch. In tight spaces it matters a great deal.

Consumer

This wasn't the last BMD camera to use a Fairchild sensor...the 4.6K is made by them too

Not in a way that holds me back. I don't do a lot of gimbal work, and if I really needed it I'd get my buddy to come out with his Movi and BMPCC4k.

Looks like a damn fine camera. Nice image, nice body, flexible mount, plenty of features. Shame about the blue clipping and rolling shutter. Problem for me is that this is knocking on used Ursa Mini prices, and that camera is objectively a better money maker for low end production work. ProRes workflow, real cinema body, and a name producers know and feel comfortable with. If this weren't my livelihood, or I had more money to toss around, I'd probably give it a go...but $4K is gonna relegate it to a "wait and see" for me personally.

@mercer I really loved my SLR Magic 12mm. Much nicer render than the Olympus or Rokinon, and truly lovely bokeh. Awesome close focus, too.

The Red Gemini, Alexa Mini, Varicam LT, and Ursa Mini Pro have pretty bad tracking AF, too. Maybe I should disqualify them from my future projects in favor of an A7III.

@mercer very, very nice work. Your compositions and awareness of natural light are really improving!

Any LOG comparisons to the A7III yet?

I think people are confusing f-stops and t-stops. The f-stops--the physical size of the lens opening--are the same. They have not changed them. The t-stops--the objective amount of light being transmitted through that opening--are less, due to the lack of coatings.

Who puts test charts in their movie? It's designed to show the malleability of information at low IRE values, which is useful data.

They were rentals, and very reasonable ones considering our producer worked at the rental house. Besides, the Canons are actually very affordable in comparison to other cinema glass. Also, it was anything but a big shoot. 2 days in a friend's cabin with 9 crew and 4 actors. $2500 budget that largely paid for food, actors, and rentals. Our goal on the technical side was to get maximum production value for minimum money and give ourselves as much post-production flexibility as possible, because at the end of the day, no one watching the film cares what the gear costs; they just want to like what they see.