Alt Shoo

This take is a bit much. Plenty of bad films were shot on film, and plenty of great ones were shot digitally. It’s not the format that makes a movie good or bad it’s how you use it. Preferring film is fine, but saying digital ruined cinema is extreme. 
That said, I’m interested in Fuji’s upcoming Eterna film camera. If it delivers high quality in camera color, it could push DPs to lock in the final look while shooting, which is an interesting approach.

Got it, I see what you’re saying about the DP shooting for the edit rather than fixing things in post. That’s a solid approach when you know exactly what you need, and I respect that.
As for pros not talking about gear, I’m not saying they never do. Of course, people in the industry test and discuss new tech, but the difference is that those conversations usually focus on how the gear serves the work, not endless debates over minor details that don’t make or break a project.
I don’t have an issue with people being passionate about cameras, I just think the discussion gets lost when it’s more about obsessing over specs than actually applying them to real world filmmaking.

Got it, I see what you’re saying about the DP shooting for the edit rather than fixing things in post. That’s a solid approach when you know exactly what you need, and I respect that.
As for pros not talking about gear, I’m not saying they never do. Of course, people in the industry test and discuss new tech, but the difference is that those conversations usually focus on how the gear serves the work, not endless debates over minor details that don’t make or break a project.
I don’t have an issue with people being passionate about cameras, I just think the discussion gets lost when it’s more about obsessing over specs than actually applying them to real world filmmaking.

I get that people love to dissect every little thing, but as someone working with some of the biggest media companies, I can tell you that a lot of these so called issues don’t even come up in real world professional work. The S1R II delivers solid image quality, stabilization, and dynamic range. More than enough to create high level content. I’m not saying don’t analyze your tools, but at some point, you have to ask, is this actually making you a better filmmaker, or just keeping you stuck in analysis paralysis? If your priority is making great content, you’ll be just fine.

I’m going to check this out. Thanks for sharing this. 

Regarding technique and creativity, has anyone seen Adolescence on Netflix?
Among the most viewed TV series on Netflix is Adolescence, a four-episode British miniseries that is receiving rave reviews from audiences and critics just about everywhere. The praise is partly about the story it tells, and partly about the way the series was written, performed, and, above all, directed: each episode is in fact shot in a single, very long take, that is, all at once, with no cuts between shots and therefore no breaks for the actors and crew, and no editing required.
Adolescence was written by Englishmen Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham. In addition to contributing to the screenplay, the latter also plays Eddie Miller, the protagonist's father and one of the main characters. The director, on the other hand, is compatriot Philip Barantini, who four years ago had directed Graham himself in the film Boiling Point - Disaster is Served, a thriller that was a good success in the United Kingdom and which, just like Adolescence, was shot with a single long take.
Adolescence centers on the story of Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old student who is arrested on charges of committing murder. However, the detective plot is set aside fairly early on because the point of the series is not so much to get to the resolution of a case, but to analyze the motives behind the actions of a teenager in our times, and to place them in the social and cultural context in which he lives.
For me, who has a 13-year-old son, the first two episodes were a punch in the gut. Perhaps the absence of editing also helps to give you no respite and lower you even more into the story. Truly a peculiar product.
Two scenes in particular struck me. For the first, at the beginning of the first episode, I had thought of a crane being moved on a trolley or truck. The second one is even more peculiar because the camera goes through the window and flies high above the houses. Netflix has released a BTS showing both scenes. (Spoiler: they used a drone)
Sorry, I couldn't find a YT link:
https://x.com/NetflixUK/status/1901617851192033326
It was entirely shot on the Ronin 4D:
Spoiler alert:
https://variety.com/2025/artisans/news/adolescence-one-take-episodes-netflix-1236339292/
 

There are moments here I enjoy but this forum feels more like a place to vent about gear than to actually discuss the craft of filmmaking. Where are the conversations on creative problem solving? How are people pulling off run and gun shooting in restricted areas without permits? What are some cost-effective practical effects techniques for horror films? Are certain shot compositions or camera movements more effective at evoking specific emotions in an audience?
I know I can find some of this on YouTube, but part of the appeal of a forum like this is the ability to connect directly with professionals, exchange real world experiences, and even spark collaborations. Is anyone still having these kinds of discussions here?

I get that people love to dissect every little thing, but as someone working with some of the biggest media companies, I can tell you that a lot of these so called issues don’t even come up in real world professional work. The S1R II delivers solid image quality, stabilization, and dynamic range. More than enough to create high level content. I’m not saying don’t analyze your tools, but at some point, you have to ask, is this actually making you a better filmmaker, or just keeping you stuck in analysis paralysis? If your priority is making great content, you’ll be just fine.

FWIW, I recently did a post about the doc the wife and I are working on.  Some of our production insights there.  Examples are posted too, so you can judge if what we're talking about measures up to your standards.  Not the first time we've done that either.  Yeah, it's a gear site first and foremost, but other info floats around too.

I get where you’re coming from, and I understand that different workflows exist for different reasons. But at some point, you have to ask, are we pushing our tools to be better storytellers, or just finding ways to avoid tightening up our craft? There’s a difference between efficiency and just being lazy. If someone is taking multiple takes to get it right, that’s not always inexperience. It’s making sure the shot actually works without needing to “fix it in post.” On the other hand, the mindset of shooting carelessly and relying on post production isn’t efficiency, it’s a crutch.
Regarding not using older gear, some people don’t use those older cameras simply because they want to make their job easier. Newer cameras offer better usability, faster workflows, etc. but still, as everyone allegedly already knows, you can still achieve a high quality look with older gear. It just comes down to experience and knowing how to work with what you have.
At the end of the day, I don’t see top level professionals getting caught up in these debates. They pick their tools, use the features that matter, and get the job done. Ninpo33 mentioned a DP who didn’t realize a camera had a particular function…because that DP focused on what helped him execute, not on obsessing over every technical option. That’s the difference between using your gear and getting lost in it.

This take is a bit much. Plenty of bad films were shot on film, and plenty of great ones were shot digitally. It’s not the format that makes a movie good or bad it’s how you use it. Preferring film is fine, but saying digital ruined cinema is extreme. 
That said, I’m interested in Fuji’s upcoming Eterna film camera. If it delivers high quality in camera color, it could push DPs to lock in the final look while shooting, which is an interesting approach.

I get that people love to dissect every little thing, but as someone working with some of the biggest media companies, I can tell you that a lot of these so called issues don’t even come up in real world professional work. The S1R II delivers solid image quality, stabilization, and dynamic range. More than enough to create high level content. I’m not saying don’t analyze your tools, but at some point, you have to ask, is this actually making you a better filmmaker, or just keeping you stuck in analysis paralysis? If your priority is making great content, you’ll be just fine.

I get that people love to dissect every little thing, but as someone working with some of the biggest media companies, I can tell you that a lot of these so called issues don’t even come up in real world professional work. The S1R II delivers solid image quality, stabilization, and dynamic range. More than enough to create high level content. I’m not saying don’t analyze your tools, but at some point, you have to ask, is this actually making you a better filmmaker, or just keeping you stuck in analysis paralysis? If your priority is making great content, you’ll be just fine.

I get that people love to dissect every little thing, but as someone working with some of the biggest media companies, I can tell you that a lot of these so called issues don’t even come up in real world professional work. The S1R II delivers solid image quality, stabilization, and dynamic range. More than enough to create high level content. I’m not saying don’t analyze your tools, but at some point, you have to ask, is this actually making you a better filmmaker, or just keeping you stuck in analysis paralysis? If your priority is making great content, you’ll be just fine.

I don't understand whether this is a provocative post or a serious one.
Now, I am also somewhat ignorant of the topic but some of the statements seem 'exaggerated' to me to be good.
In general, digital has greatly democratised cinema and its art. But every art has its era and its crafts and this constant 'it was better before' is largely pissing me off. It describes good old times that never existed. There were horse carriages and the farrier lobby, then came the railway and goodbye farriers. 
The truth is that today any artist can produce a film with cinematic quality at home and at a negligible cost. Unless you regret the old Super 8 home movies.
Anyway, back to the data. It's hard to talk about resolution as we understand it today in the digital world, but I have my doubts that a good film will not solve 8K, quite the contrary.
Here a document for nerds: http://www.tmax100.com/photo/pdf/film.pdf
But here there's a video that explains it more simply.
 
 
Regarding the immediacy of film.... are we talking cinema or home-made Super 8s? Because if you mention Clint Eastwood and Kodak Vision (Vision is cited also in the YT video above) then it's much more complex with intermediate and print stocks:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_stock
Ah and color grading existed on film stock too. It was called color timing:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading
Finally, am I saying that digital is better than film stock? NO, they are two different medium.

The notion of "color grading" is largely a commercial-construct designed to create the job of "colorist" and to sell computer hardware and software. Movies made after the 1980s look consistently worse and worse, because the popular concept of "fixing it in post" has led a generation of film-makers to disregard the importance of proper lighting, story, acting, and set design.
Something went very wrong in cinema after the mid-90s. Both socially and artistically. This degradation of quality in film-making coincided with three shifts in film-aesthetics:
1. The move from celluloid to digital.
2. The move from capturing a look based in 'reality', to color-graded footage.
3. An odd obsession with increased resolution.
With increased-resolutions, the decay of cinema became even more profound: When an actor's face is shot in close-up at 8k, we are seeing a level of surface-detail to the human-face that we would NEVER see in reality. So, what is the 8k+ film-maker actually capturing?
Cinema is predicated on our 'suspension of disbelief'. To intentionally shoot a film that cannot be believed, because it does not represent 'reality' in a way that we could possibly see, is anti-cinema.
The Rise of Anti Cinema
Through both malice, and incompetence, cinema has decayed. Before it can be saved, we must acknowledge the extent of this sickness, and then take steps to remedy it. We need to rely less on software, and more on our eyes, on set. We need to embrace imperfection, and return to capturing a plausible reality. We were better off when analog color-timing was the only post-production option for "grading" footage.
Cinema can be fantastical, magical, or extraordinary, but it should never be unbelievable. Let's return to honest, practical effects; proper lighting; and artistry in set-design. It's time to stop color-grading.
25 Years of Madness
Since the launch of the Sony F900, over 25 years ago, camera companies have been promising a digital replacement for analog 35mm film. For 25 years, they have been completely unable to deliver the 35mm analog look. Instead, film-makers have been expected to mess-around in computer software chasing an aesthetic that can rarely be achieved, and that the camera companies should have been providing as a default output.
Why (given the equivalent lighting, set and actors) can no commercially-available digital video camera shoot footage straight-out-of-camera that properly emulates the Kodak 5247 and Kodak 5254 color-negative stocks? These stocks practically defined cinema as we knew it, but they do not exist as digital equivalents.
We got scammed
Why must young film-makers wade about in a swamp of technical-nonsense, graphics cards, manuals, color-grading, and hardware chasing the look that an off-the-shelf roll of 35mm stills-camera film would have delivered instantly, for five-dollars, in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s? Why can't these stocks be delivered straight off-camera?
The camera industry has pushed responsibility for great video-capture onto the "colorist". The colorist is a symptom of decay in the camera and film industry; necessary only because of the technical failings of camera manufacturers, and their inability to simply deliver the replacement for Kodak stocks they promised over 25 years ago. The colorist is also a symptom of the decay in the excellence of artists on set.
The Broken Promise of the Camera Industry
We were promised film in a digital format. But, instead, the camera-industry redefined "film" as a sub-par version of itself. Then all the failings of this new medium were commercialized in a host of hardware and software to "repair" the damage done.
Why is it so difficult for the digital-camera industry to care about creating an accurate version of the very medium that it claimed to be replacing? The digital "Cinema" cameras of today have almost nothing to do with cinema as we knew it. This is nothing short of fraud.
 

None of the  ^above^ just no harm/enjoyment in considering alternative options.
Same as if I owned a Porsche, - wouldn't stop me looking at the latest Aston on-line, at a car show or simply parked up in the street and then wishing I had a bigger garage. And bank balance.
I sometimes look at multi-million currency yachts and houses I will never own, plus more affordable ones I could if I wished.
Call it an 'enthusiasm for the industry as a whole'.

I don't get "there aren't any lenses" talk. There are less lenses available than to a Sony shooter but there are plenty of lenses and more are appearing all the time. What lenses do most people really have? A 24-70 f2.8, maybe a wide or tele zoom depending on their work and 2 or 3 primes. You can easily have a decent L mount kit that covers most needs.

That was a very brief timeline indeed! No mention at all of GH1/GH2/GH3/GH4/GH5/GH6/BGH1/E1/E2/E2-M4/BMCC-MFT/BMPCC/Kinefinity/BOSMA/Chronos/etc?
I couldn't imagine ever discussing the history of MFT and not mentioning any of them at all!

The price drop for the BMPCC 4K could definitely hint at Blackmagic clearing out stock, but it might also be part of a strategic push to reignite interest in the MFT ecosystem. If they’re planning a newer version with Pyxis inspired specs while retaining the MFT mount, which I doubt, it would not only keep current users invested but also attract new filmmakers looking for affordability without sacrificing quality.
Interestingly, a lower price tag on the BMPCC 4K could spur a resurgence in MFT lens purchases, which would help keep the standard alive and thriving. MFT has been quietly losing ground to larger sensor formats, so moves like this could strengthen the system overall by drawing attention back to its flexibility and affordability.
I recently wrote a blog post briefly mentioning this very topic, how price cuts like this can reshape the market and reinvigorate interest in lens standards like MFT.

The problem with LOG is first of all that the gamma assists are a bit rubbish.
(Aside from the Panasonic S9 and cameras where you can load on a LUT and monitor with it, without resorting to some shitty external monitor)
But on the more common and better specced cameras you can't do that...
Nikon Z9, Z8, Sony a1, a7 IV, GFX 100, Z6 III, EOS R6 II and so on.
Secondly you should never really shoot it WITHOUT a gamma assist.
Contrast, tonality and light are a really important judgement in cinematography and you can't really see any of that with a very flat display.
Sure you can toggle LOG profile on/off quick in the menu and judge... but doing so is a PITA every time you want to see the real contrast and lighting.
The gamma assists are all quite bland looking and flat with not very much pop, I find.
Then we come to the LOG profiles themselves...
EOS R6 Mark II / R5 / R3 all have C-LOG3, which a lot of people complain about but I don't mind. One of the better ones and easier to grade. C-LOG2 is reserved for the Cinema EOS line. C-LOG3 is closer to the original C-LOG on the 1D C, I seem to remember.
Sony a7 IV has S-LOG2 and S-LOG3, they offer the widest dynamic range of the bunch but you still have to get exposure perfect for optimal image quality. Gets noisy really fast if you under expose.
N-LOG on the Nikon cameras needs the most colour correction, otherwise you have very green-olive skin.
By the way, there is a very small difference in image quality between 50Mbit/s 10bit 420 H265 on the Sony a7 IV and the higher bitrate LOG formats in range of 200-500Mbit... yes even in S-LOG3!
So you can save a lot of money and card space there.
With standard gamma picture profiles you don't need to shoot 10bit... 8bit will look the same.
People tend to overestimate higher numbers on the specs sheet.
So those tips in summary:
Don't shoot from a flat image off the back screen Nail exposure to get the maximum dynamic range benefit from LOG With modern codecs like H.265 in 4K/24p - don't bother with the higher bitrates in most cases, the laws of diminishing returns apply big time (Although if you're shooting 8K or high frame rates then 200-500Mbit/s is recommended) C-LOG3 is easiest to handle, with N-LOG last Hope that in-camera LUTs/monitoring becomes a common thing, it's really bad that it isn't even 12 years since LOG first came on the mirrorless camera scene.

I think EVFs are great in controlled environments or bright conditions, but they can be impractical when you need peripheral vision or quick adjustments.
As for the articulating screen idea, it’s clever. A larger screen that tilts, slides, and hides buttons underneath could be ideal if designed well and built to last. It’d keep things compact while improving usability.
The rotating grip is another cool idea.  Canon nailed it on the XC10 and their cinema cameras. Adding that to mirrorless bodies could make handheld shooting so much more comfortable. Camera companies should really explore these kinds of features. 

Something is bugging me with camera manufacturers. We live in a world where our smartphones have these amazing high resolution screens. Super bright, super sharp, and packed with detail. Even affordable camera monitors that you can attach to your rig offer incredible image quality. So why don’t hybrid and cinema cameras come with built in screens that match this level of quality? And why are the screens they do have so small?
 
I get it, manufacturers want to keep the cameras “compact.” But let’s be real. Once you start adding external monitors, cages, batteries, and other gear, that compact idea goes out the window. Your camera isn’t small anymore. It’s a rigged up machine  
 
A bigger, high quality built in screen could save so much time and effort. No extra gear, fewer cables to manage, and one less thing to power. It just makes sense, right?
 
Cameras are getting better and better in every way higher resolutions, faster processing, incredible dynamic range, 32bit audio.  So why not the screens? It feels like a missed opportunity.
 
I’d love to see cameras that embrace bigger, brighter, and better built-in screens. It’s not just about convenience, it’s about making the shooting experience smoother and more efficient. What do you think? Would you prefer a cinema camera with a killer built in screen, or are you fine sticking with external monitors? 

I also despise it, the form factor is terrible. Poor balance, top heavy, overcomplicated, poor battery life, unreliable, wobbly cable, you name it... And the advantage is minimal, the main use case for a rig is to make it look more fancy... in front of clueless clients.

Just because the majority of voting Americas voted for Trump, does not make them conservatives or right wingers. Many of them simply voted against Harris, just as people voted against Trump in 2020.
Picking the lesser of two evils is what it comes down to in American politics today and not some type of ideological victory as the media would have you believe.
So when I encounter liberals - I happen to rent a room from one. When we actually talk about the issues, it turns out we have more in common as Americans than the media would have us believe.  All these labels do is divide people...
I'm pretty sure the hierarchy of needs is something like shelter, food, and sex rather than "believe what I believe or we can't work together to help each other get our common needs meet"...
Ironically every day has now become "be kind to a liberal day" because the media completely lied to their base about the election forecast - no wonder people for Harris are upset about the election results - same thing happened on 2016. 
The situation is not people vs people - it is divide and profit by the media - it makes sick the brain washing the has taken over society.
People are people and may the best film maker win regards of how they voted in an election, or what race or gender or creed they are.
The facts is, it is the people against the media rather liberals against conservatives - what a deception - I happen to like pulp fiction and tropic thunder... great cinema is great cinema and great comedy is great comedy no matter who makes it and who is offends...
The price of freedom is me allowing other's to express ideas that I don't agree with and other's allowing me to express ideas they don't agree with... hopefully the first amendment is practiced on this forum. ; )