DevonChris

Jase, I've watched your Splash 2014 video five or six times and I love the way that you convey the atmosphere of the festival. If the GM1 and Voigt gave you the flexibilty and simplicity to tell the story so well, then I reckon that you've done the right thing in buying the Voigt again

Contax 50mm 1.7 MMJ on a GX8 using a standard CY to MFT adaptor. Shot at F1.7

Thank you. I was just using a Chrome extension before which was too limited, or the one where you do a screenshot then paste it in Paint. This is much better and I have now set it to open with CTRL + ALT + 4 so that it is as easy as with OS X. I think I can live without seeing the pixel size.
Awesome thanks. This is so easy to use. Think I am going to be able to fully disconnect from my Mac now, which I will be delighted to do.
Thanks but I want to get away from Apple, I really despise them despite loving the experience of using a Macbook or iMac. It has given me the idea to look for something similar for Windows though. Adobe wouldn't let me add Photoshop onto my CC subscription as I signed up abroad, I think my current subscription may double in cost as I am back in the UK now, which would make Photoshop twice the price. Something like this would be more cost effective as I rarely use Photoshop type tools anyway- just for creating occasional graphics once every 2-3 months or so.

Check out the snipping tool in Windows 10. Pretty neat as it works better than the Mac screenshot functionality

I've always wondered about that one... Do you have the Nikon mount? If I hadn't had so many issues buying lenses from Russia, I would have probably bought one. 
Have been there... I sold my Minolta 35mm 1.8. It's probably my favorite lens I have ever owned, but it just didn't resolve well with the NX500, so I picked up an MD 28mm f2. Great lens, I should have kept both...
Now I have two copies of the 28mm... The MD and a Rokkor-X. I had listed the MD but it didn't sell right away, so now I am retesting and thinking of keeping the MD and selling the Rokkor-X because it's bigger and heavier. 

It's easy selling great lenses, but you have to watch out that you don't regret it later on. 
I had 35mm and 90mm Leica R Summicrons from my film photog days that I sold for way more than I paid for them.  Boy do I regret selling those lenses now!

It's easy selling great lenses, but you have to watch out that you don't regret it later on. 
I had 35mm and 90mm Leica R Summicrons from my film photog days that I sold for way more than I paid for them.  Boy do I regret selling those lenses now!

That Voigtlander does look very tasty, damn!
I inherited loads of lenses from my Grandad - kept them in a box for years until I started photography. Unfortunately, I became like you & in the end it becomes an addiction - I had too many & was spoilt for choice. Ended up selling stuff like crazy once I knew what sort of silly money things were going for: 3 Iscoramas (who would have known that they'd be worth stupid money years later!), full set of Contax Zeiss, full set of Nikon ai-s, both Angenieux zooms etc... The list was stupid in the end.
I kinda regret selling some things (Angenieux zooms!) & am now in a pickle about whether to continue with my Super-Takumar set or to go back to Nikon ai-s?
Got a lovely set of Russain glass, which I will not part with for love nor money.
Really loving the Tokina AT-X Pro 28-70mm more than I thought I would - so close to the Angenieux at a snip of the price. 

Probably he's mentioning the lack of vari-angle. It's an error in my opinion; in that price bracket and with the 5axis it would have been great to shoot selfie vlogging style or not to kill yourself shooting somebody while walking backwards.
The GH5 can't arrive soon enough!!!! I hope it carries all of this!

I think the IS on GX80/GX85/GX7-M2 is mechanically implemented thanks to the new compact sensor tech. GX8 itself is in difficult situation when the lower end model is in some (actually very important) ways more advanced model. Shame that the GX80 battery is so weak, but that problem will be liquidated in GH5. 

Panasonic GX8. The stabilisation is good with Panny lenses, particularly in 1080.  The audio is very good and the continuous autofocus and face detection is excellent. This camera continues to surprise me with its versatilty and excellent image quality.

Panasonic GX8. The stabilisation is good with Panny lenses, particularly in 1080.  The audio is very good and the continuous autofocus and face detection is excellent. This camera continues to surprise me with its versatilty and excellent image quality.

Yep. I bought ours from the Dell outlet during their recent Valentines sale when they offered 10% off their outlet prices. Our XPS15 cost £917 including three years next day warranty and I think thats a bargain for its quality.
It was amazing to watch how fast the refurbs were selling during that sale. You had to be really quick to snap one up.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is an Easter sale at the outlet too.

That's great!
In fact I nearly pulled the trigger on the XPS15 when it came out, the Thunderbolt 3 connector is a killer, and the Razor external video card module is about to come out.
But still I think Mac is more comfortable to work with.

I thought I'd give an update on the conundrum.
I coaxed my Macbook Air back into life and will keep it for a while. Apple must be close to releasing updated Macbooks soon so it is worth waiting a few months to see what they release.
They are falling badly behind in the specs race so their new specs must be good to be competitive.
I did buy my wife a Dell XPS i5/8GB with1080 screen though and wow it is good. As gsenroc said, the screen is really good and very sharp. We're not using it for editing videos, but photos look really great on it.
It is very fast and the improved wifi makes a real difference. Dell support has been great too, so it has been an excellent purchase so far.
I think the version with a UHD monitor will be fantastic so I am very tempted.....

I’ll admit it, I use camera forums a lot.  Too much, probably. I use them to check out the latest cameras and lenses and lights and accessories. I waste about two hours a day on them.  Time I could spend watching “the View.”
When I started out shooting part-time in 2005, I got a DVX100 because a juggler who was a featured extra on a tv show called “Sons of Saddam” told me to.  “Cause it does 24p.”  I didn’t know what that meant, but I plunked down $3,000 - all the money I had in savings on this camera.  
The camera could have been a bust.  But I did it because a juggler who played one of Saddam’s sons goons said so.  That’s how easily influenced I am.
Then I bought a HVX200, not even testing it first.  “Cause it can do HD.”   I bought the Redrock micro adapter because I watched the work of MacGreggor and some other DPs back then do stuff on a Gorilla 35 lens adapter that hadn’t even come out.  I hadn’t even tried it first.  Just sent in my credit card info.  
Rinse and repeat.
All these periods of time I bought things just based on videos I saw shot on them. No tests - I didn’t understand tests.  Just videos shot with them and the opinions of people I respected.  I could look at screen grabs but just scroll down to their opinions.
Well finally 11 years later, I am seeing what I was doing - buying based on people’s emotions.  Based on the emotions of people whose work I liked.
This is fine to do, but it’s not always the smartest thing to do.  
There are several, maybe twenty influential figures online in the cinematography world.  David Mullen, Shane Hurlbut, John Brawley, Art Adams, Geoff Boyle, and of course Andrew Reid, come to mind as leaders who people follow and listen to.
Even the opinions of the above people and the other influencers are, in the end, just their opinions.
When someone says, “this to me screams filmic” or “this looks digital” - again, that’s all an opinion.  If they say, “that grade is terrible” or “man you nailed the skin tones” - again, that’s all opinion.  Even looking at test charts and camera tests, the results are subjective.  Aesthetic is subjective.  There are scientific tests, but they lead to opinions.  This isn’t pure math - this is an art form.
There is no such thing as filmic.
Everything is digital.  Film emulsions see the world differently, but they go through a digital intermediate.  They become digital .  And I think that’s probably about 99.9% of all films shot on celluloid.  Maybe a few hipsters shoot film and use a steinbeck, but they still upload their results to vimeo, which converts this to a h.264 file.
I have very strong opinions, and a lot of people have very strong opinions.  That’s why we work in film.  It’s an art form that is full of passionate people.  But I also have low self-esteem.  My whole nature of existence is based on others approval.  I’m getting better at trusting my own self, but this is my basis.  
I think maybe most artists have low self-esteem or why would they want to share their art?  Is it ego?  Or the attempt for others to connect?  Yes that’s part of it.  But whether you want to admit it or not, we love when people love our work.  We live off the feedback, or why would we check vimeo 5 times a day to see if someone commented?  Why else would we have awards?  Especially in an art field where awards are just based on opinions of a community who may or may not get your work?
Something is beautiful if you think it is.  You don’t need an oscar in cinematography to be happy with your lighting or camera movement or angle, or have your opinion mean anything less if you aren’t in the ASC.  Everyone brings something unique to the art form.  Everyone brings a new perspective that is needed, especially now, when everything feels pretty much the same.  

This is a bunch of basic information about affordable camera support gear.
A lot of people who are new to all this Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera stuff (or DSLR sized cameras), and folks who don't have much money to spend have been asking me about all this lately. I don't have a lot of time to do gear reviews, so I decided to try to cram as much information as I could into this one video hoping to answer as many questions as I can all in one place.
Items covered in this video:
BMPCC Cages
Rail Systems
Shoulder Rigs
External Batteries
Follow Focus Devices
Matte Boxes
Cats and Dogs Living Together
Tripods
Jibs
Gimbal
Carry Case
*Note: The "one size fits all" cage I show here costs $149. I forgot to mention that.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqzJlgPjL_c
 
Some of the links I've been able to locate:
"One size fits all" Cage - $149
Movcam BMPCC Cage  - $323
Fotga Follow Focus - $170
Follow Focus Speed Crank - $13
Giottos Quick Release Adapter - $38
Offset Riser Clamp - $18
Cavision Matte Box - $99
 

Dell monitors are very nice, including those in their XPS laptops indeed. In fact I know most of my friends are/were using Dell for photography editing and they do recommend them. For the price it's really nice.

Don't listen to the average person over the internet. You have to calibrate the monitor or at least download the profile that was developed at notebookcheck. 
I have been using the previous generation XPS and it has a great monitor. Peple were just using the wrong settings! See a report at anandtech.  

I guess the choice you have to make is wether you'd prefer to focus more on FCPX? When it first came out, it broke my heart, I loved 7. I've since moved to Premiere and they've made a lot of moves to make it similar to FCP 7, including keyboard shortcuts and the like. Though I hear these days that FCPX is a powerhouse and not to be overlooked, so I guess it depends wether you want a machine that could do premiere and FCPX?

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this, but the MBP is supposed to be moving to Skylake (new cpus) in the next few months, so there will be a refresh. If you are going for an integrated GPU, the new models will have a better one. Though in saying that, its a lot to spend on a work laptop without getting one with a GPU. Apple moved back to AMD graphics with their last MBP refresh and I think theres mixed feelings about this as theres no longer CUDA support. Personally, I know a lot of people say you have to get on the bus eventually and cant keep waiting for the next computer to come out, but I'd seriously wait for the next machines this time and maybe save the extra to get a dedicated graphics card if you are set on a RMBP.

I know it's hard to spend the money a Macbook Retina costs, even more if you compare it with a similar PC. But if you use FCP X all the money is well spent!!! 
If you are a Premiere guy, get a PC!

Yea the Macbook Pro is now spec wise falling behind, but they are not far away from a new release cycle. We probably will see Thunderbolt 3 there.
I have a custom built PC as well. It's really hard to beat the price and performance, and most softwares I use are cross-platform or even cloud-based so I'm quite happy with it
But just don't consider surface pro/book at the moment, not before they fix the battery issue. It's still horrible, making my SP4 a bit hard to work with.
 

I think the new technology is coming, those Thunderbolt 3 external video cards to make laptops more powerful when it's not being mobile. If you only occasionally need to edit on the run, maybe using proxy would be a good idea to save computing power?
Windows 10 is working flawlessly on my desktop though, but I would still suggest a Mac.

After  having read article again I still do not see any reason why Panasonic would complicate a successful product with such a proposal ...it would be folly to make such a change for what is a very niche sector (essentially a small group of people who can not afford to buy the camera that does everything they want) the capabilities that are stated are available now in much higher end cameras  and I put it to you that 90% of users of gh4 would'nt need these features ...those that would ...are likely to be in a group who would bolt on  thousands £'s worth of Cooke panchro's instead of these new lens products proposed anyway ...the gh4 is available for £900 it was not (in my humble opinion ) intended to compete in the high-end tv or cinema ,the fact that it can and does is a testament to its capability as it stands you can take almost any legacy lens or high end cinema lens and go make a film, a documentary, a wollace and grommit style animation ,anamorphic epic, 4K internal ,4K photo,journalism and the list goes on what Sony does  or does not is bollocks because it's twice the price,it's full frame glass costs more ,it does'nt have the feature set ,menus are hap hazard ,the discussion about the 6300 is irrelevant ,how is it viable to compare a brand new product with a two year old one, Panasonic 4K at that price point, changed the market...everyone reacted ,that means Panasonic are and have been leading ,only now does Sony do 4K internally( at twice the price)....even today you want to beat it you have to buy another pansonic product g7,lx100,
the people making these proposals think nothing of then spending £1200 on a shogun,or an odyssey ,thousands on glass,gimbal's etc ,when at the heart is a£900 camera ,the fact that it's there at the heart seems to carry no credit,go buy a red dragon or an arri alexa ...build that up see what that costs (house money). All it has to do is minor improvements, the question is will they be big enough for existing users to warrant the upgrade, and there are a lot of us ...their sole motivation should be that