TheRenaissanceMan

Exactly. 
This is mostly why cameras like the A7S get over-criticised for color. A lot of people are boosting color that isn't accurate color with ISO. Swap that ISO for lighting and you will notice a massive difference. It sounds so kinda obvious. 
Low light is a very useful tool with trade-offs in image quality. But you are not going to get anywhere with any type of log if you are relying on the ISO as your main light source. There is a reason why cinema cameras aren't low light cameras, because the camera produces it's best image with added light, not digitally enhanced light. 

Did you download the clips from Davide? http://we.tl/xNEDXe3WId
There is a FF Slog2 4K clip in there.

Thanks.
Actually, my whole point with this paragraph was that even uncompressed 8-bit 4:4:4 log has its limits and they aren't particularly high.  : )

Someone on another forum (I forget which) says they managed to find the 20mm pancake, 30mm pancake, and 45mm for less than $400 combined. Even as a second system, $750 total for that kit is amazing value for what you get.

If it's not your only camera, and it was such a good deal, 45mm equivalent could be really nice as your only lens on certain shoots if you like. Considering now I mostly use my 80mm equivalent, that lack of wide wide doesn't sound so bad anymore. Glad this camera is having a bit of a resurrection from when everyone was so mad about the crop at first

The more powerful the tool, the more chance people will screw it up.  What it does is makes us have to sift through a lot of crap to find the gems.     I doubt Steve Jobs would want a LOG profile on an Apple Camera.    He'd come up with a half dozen "Insanely Brilliant" color profiles and want you to stick to them.  and 99% would be happy to follow.    

Jordan Drake tweeted,
"Just got word from Panasonic, they will officially announce the GH4 V-Log L delivery date on Sept. 1! Stay tuned... #TCSTV "

I think you got a bunch of kids that want to act like they know a lot --so the contrarian opinion mixed with criticism makes them feel like they're offering insight. It's a curse and blessing of being young...and, yes, stupid.

"Ok ,you sir, yes you the male Lion.. could you move closer to the Arri light and Esteban can you walk up and put a reflector on that crocodile. Sweet, everyone ready?
Ok, "On the African River Banks at Night", Scene 5, Roll Sound, Camera, Action!... Cut!,
Ok someone explain why they are all running away? and Esteban stop putting your head in the crocodiles mouth...."

Full frame vs APS-C mode.
High ISO.
Rolling shutter.
Color rendering in all available color matrices.
Resolution.
Over/under exposure test. See how the sensor/codec responds to bringing up underexposed footage and bringing down overexposed footage. 

Highlight/shadow rolloff. See how the camera renders a normally exposed scene with one or two very dark shadows and another with one or two bright highlights.
 

It's fun to be black and white about these things, but there's a reason high-end cinematographers require Prores HQ at an absolute minimum. 

Also, why's everyone bashing the BMPC? It's not great in low light, but the highlight rolloff is actually really nice. 

Andrew: There's a slope of diminishing returns going on. 14 bit to 16 bit is a pretty small difference, 14 bit to 12 bit is noticeable but not huge, 12 bit to 10 bit is a drop in quality but acceptable if you want efficiency, and 10-bit to 8-bit is absolutely huge. 
If these distinctions didn't matter at all, why would professional cameras offer 12-16 bit recording? If they could get the same results with less back end, don't you think they would? How can you argue against the importance of color depth when you just spent an entire article railing against a 4:2:0 camera for not matching up against the colors of your 8-bit 4:2:2 camera? How can you argue against the importance of bit depth when you spend so much time talking about LOG profiles, which are designed for the sole purpose of imitating the same tonal precision as larger-bit footage in a smaller container? 

I'm not denying you your point of view. If you think 8-bit is awesome, okay. But it's important for a reviewer with your level of clout to be clear about their priorities and thought process, as that informs all your conclusions. Sometimes it feels like you've changed your mind about fundamental things without telling anyone, which makes your thought process as a critic a little inconsistent and tough to follow. 

Sorry if this comes across as rude or over-critical, because I don't mean to be. I've written as a film critic for a few years and I know it can be a struggle to get people on board with your train of thought. But there's an important difference between "10-bit doesn't matter" and "10-bit is nice, but I don't think we need it. Here's why."

Just a matter of clarity.

Cheers.

lots of different issues in this thread. 1) does log in 8bit ruin colors? 2) does much power come with log and is it magic? 3) are wide gamuts the real problem? 4) does Kodak choosing 10bit for Cineon  mean that 10bit is the least you can get away with before you see artifacts? 5) is it really all about the camera as a package and the sensor, codec, even the lens for example? 6) should we be more concerned with chroma sub-sampling? 7) is this debate incredibly boring and useless?
4) trick question, Cineon was designed to re-print a film negative, not based on digital to digital tests, it was also R',G',B'. so unfortunately i don't think it can be used as a fair comparison, even though it was how this workflow started. 
7) not at all, i just wasted several minutes. 
i think log has the same advantages with 8bit that it does with 10bit or any other depth, even though i disagree that 8bit is not distinguishable from 10bit unless doing keys. when you combine 4:2:0 compression with 8bit you get a negative re-enforcing effect (the blocks get much larger in dark areas because they have fewer codes to use), which shows up when doing lifts in particular. but all that is slightly separate from the initial log color question, of which log is the easy part to untangle; figuring out all the other stuff is really the challenge. so in that sense i think the "other" things that affect color, such as everything in question 3 and 5, are really the problem.
the thread started with 8bit log and color, but sub-sampling and bit depth came up so i thought i'd re-post this old video i did, it's exaggerated but hopefully useful. hit spacebar (pause) when the description changes.
 
 

agolex, TheRenaissanceMan,
Thank you. I didn't realize the camera would automatically pick an iso when I chose PP7. I just manually set the camera to iso 800.
3200 did seem a bit high for such a small sensor but I thought I'd ask to be sure. Now the learning curve with Davinci resolve and maybe I'll be able to make some nice videos.
Thank you again.

Reviewed my stills again and you're right. Quite a few nice shots around 3200. The ones I complained about before, I've just noticed, just had fast shutter. I like the grain very much, too, looks nicely organic.

Custom sensor design is very finnicky. The image is affected even by how each element is wired to each other. There's a lot that goes into it, and that's why the Alexa costs the price it does.
Sony are pretty responsive in regards to their camera divison - the big difference being that their professional camera division adds features into the already existing cameras, the consumer division simply brings out a new body. Sony will fix the issues you have with your consumer camera - but you'll need to buy a new body to get them. That's been the way even as far back as the NEX series.
In my opinion, if you've worked at all with the F5/55, FS7 or F3, you won't be 'shocked' by the colours in the A7s. They're not wildly different (to any camera for that matter), so if you think the F5 has great colour, and the A7s has terrible colour, I can only gather that it's purely operator error... The A7s is slightly different looking, but it's pretty similar - and definitely has that 'Sony' colour. The F5 and the C300 look very different - if you want to compare Sony vs Canon colour, try the difference between those (both can, and do, look great though)
The only time I've had issues on my A7s with colours is if the white balance is wrong (which is going to give you funky colours on any non-raw camera anyway, and is pretty easy to fix), or if skin is under-exposed it can struggle to hold up to extreme grading because of the 8-bit codec.

Full frame vs APS-C mode.
High ISO.
Rolling shutter.
Color rendering in all available color matrices.
Resolution.
Over/under exposure test. See how the sensor/codec responds to bringing up underexposed footage and bringing down overexposed footage. 

Highlight/shadow rolloff. See how the camera renders a normally exposed scene with one or two very dark shadows and another with one or two bright highlights.
 

Okay, I received my NX500 today. It was not made of chocolate, or anything. I don't have a lens for it, so I will not be able to test it out until my adapters arrive, but it looks new and although the box was opened to remove the lens, it was resealed with a professional looking sticker. I will have time to charge it and mess with the menu tomorrow morning. 

As an a7s owner, with all due respect, I can say that you are wrong. There is huge difference between s-log2 and raw. Both color and image density are significantly worse with s-log2 compared to the raw stills. Also, a7s externally recorded 4k downscaled to 1080p is easily more gradable than the in-camera 1080p.
good examples here: http://blog.inventome.com/Blog/2015/2/a7s4Ktests/Sony-a7s-Exposure-and-Noise-Workflow-with-UHD-and-Odyssey-7Q-Plus
 
Sensor, noise, processing, etc surely matter a lot but downplaying the importance of the available tonal precision is pointless. Yes, you can have badly quantized and processed data encoded in 10 bits, and it will still be crap. And you can have well sampled, quantized and processed data encoded in 8 bits. And it will STILL be bad if the curve is too flat for the available space. Ideally, one needs well processed data in at least 9-10 bits for log encodings with extensive DR.
It is no coincidence that the father of all log curves Cineon log is 10-bit. Back then nothing was taken for granted, nor there was any prejudice about 8 bits, so this was extensively researched by Kodak. They concluded that 9 bits are likely enough but went for 10, since 10 fits better with computers; plus, a little bit of redundancy doesn't hurt.
And lets not forget chroma subsampling. After all 4:2:2 is twice the chroma info contained in 4:2:0, and 4:4:4 is four times the chroma info contained in 4:2:0. So not all 8-bit is created equal.
In general, wider color gamuts do help grading by having better color separation, but there is no point having a wide camera gamut if there isn't the color precision to encode it properly as is the case with S-Gamut and s-log2 in the a7s. Note that many digital cameras have native color gamuts wider than film leading to color precision smaller than scanned film when encoded with the same bitdepth.

Not to mention that most people are not only unwilling to learn grading, but downright offended when you suggest that maybe their grade is the problem. A problem that affects 80% of us--not being colorists--is impossible to acknowledge without pissing people off. Isn't that insane? 

Some flat/log profiles, like C-Log (faux-log designed for 8-bit), Nikon's FLAT profile (not true log), and V-LOG L (I don't really know why) respond perfectly to nothing but an S-curve in post, but they're by far the minority cases and you're still thinning out your skin tones.

People realized a while back that 10-bit ProRes (Blackmagic) and 12/14 bit RAW (Blackmagic and ML) held the key to great image quality, then 75% of us promptly forgot the second 4K hit the affordable market. The other 25% are blessed with an amazing gift: the power to remember things! 

​-No overheating
-No record limit
-A larger library of smaller, lighter lenses
-Longer battery life
-10-bit recording
-Faster AF
-Faster burst rate
-Larger buffer
-Fully articulating screen
I may be missing something. Still, that's a compelling enough list for some to stay with Panasonic. I'd stick with them for the next product iteration if the GH5 has internal 10-bit and V-Log L.

gamma and matrix are two seperate things.
Log and CINE gammas control the dynamic range and contrast
matrix is the color - this I prefer PRO for more natural skin tones and use Kholi hick's settings for the best skintones.  Just experiment around.  See what combination works best.  I think generalizations like it's too green and yellow isn't give the camera a fair chance.  But then again, I'm a hypocrit because I make fun of the nx1 being too magenta.  SO who am I to judge?

They just updated the firmware for "Pro" bitrates in video mode too, which is a nice bump.

Also, you can buy one grey market off Ebay for $350. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-NX500-Mirrorless-Digital-Camera-Black-/191641873596?hash=item2c9ebeecbc

Vs the NX1, no mic socket, no headphone jack, crop in 4K, no 1080/120fps (only at 720p), time limit 15min in 4K, no gamma DR, no luma range setting or black level, but yes it is cheap though for such an amazing image and crop you can get used to.
Stills quality also unbeatable for the price.
I've shot a shootout between the two and it is coming soon in final part of my NX500 review which I decided to resurrect because I rather like the cam for the price. Decided to keep it even though I had the NX1 as it goes in a jacket pocket with a pancake 30mm F2.

The main problem with people shooting S-LOG specifically is that they're using S-Gamut in 8-bit, which if you know anything about color spaces is a HORRIBLE idea. You shot your 50mbps 8-bit codec in an enormous twisted-axis color space and tried to color correct it yourself? Without LUTs? Are you INSANE?

I suppose I'm ahead of the curve because I know I'm shit with color correction. Besides the cheap and dirty DrewNetwork workflow for quick jobs, I use Speedlooks on all my footage. It gives me a great range of base looks that I can tweak a little to my personal taste.