foliovision

I have used both VND and fixed ND. VNDs are OK when shooting RAW as it is relatively easy to correct the color shift.
For fixed NDs always use 180 degree shutter when shooting at 24fps and depending on the available light choose an ND which is a little bit stronger and adjust (usually raise) ISO for correct exposure. Or vary with aperture if possible. For examaple if I shoot at f8  may raise it to f11 or lower it to f5.6. If aperture is open and can't close it for esthetic reasons (blurred background) then ISO is the only option.   You don't have to worry about base ISO because all modern cameras have huge latitude. Several stops (3-5) above and under the base ISO. Even if you overexpose 1-2-3 stops or under expose 1-2 stops you don't lose information or dynamic range. See for example Panasonic S1/S5 tests in 10bit 4:2:2 V-Log internal on slashcam.de or this test
 
Normally use no more than 3 NDs and sometimes even 2. 3, 6, 8/9 stops, or only 3, 6 stops and then by stacking both 3 and 6 stops ND get 9 stops. This works with most lenses but not all. Vignetting at the corners is not a problem with most lenses because shoot at 2:1 ratio for video and corners are usually cut out of the picture.

What's a little sus to me is all the "impressive" videos shared in this thread seem to be from LUT vendors. These videos are more ads for grades than the iPhone 15. I mean who knows the time/effort/power grades used to achieve these results. Not to mention the rigs, gimbals, reflectors and what not that are used. Its all fair game but I guess what I'm trying to say is it isn't a realistic look at what you're going to get out of the iPhone 15 SOOC or even using your average grading skills. 
Its like the giant "Shot on iPhone" billboard campaigns you see in major cities with amazing pics:

..yet you know your average iPhone pic never looks as good, they've all been crazy boosted in Photoshop.
In the end it is just another iPhone with similar specs, IQ and caveats as last years model. They added log which is great for grading your footage but nothing really that revolutionary especially if you're not that heavy into grading.

Emanuel, I don't agree at all. People keep flooding us with mediocore videos, like a mine digging machina keeps flooding us with the wealth of our earth, so we can film rich folks' camping sites with the newest  and latest. Hey, even travel super close to snow covered mountain top! Cannot be the 5x times zoom can it?
This phone has fucked up processing again, fucking up Prores again with noise reduction mushing textures. The second time that Big ole Apple is fucking up their own supposely benefits of prores. Shows again that processing before encoding is a butcher. Still, people flooding the apple temples like maniacs.
A relativism of morality in general might suggest a relativism of preference of gear and taste and curatism as well.
One liners and random videos don't cut it when it comes to evaluating strenghts and weaknesses of cameras and they don't cut it for me personally regarding reading pleasure and interest.

Speaking of the devil:
 

Wonky skintones. Shot on an Iphone 1500 USD. Camera movement and anything about this video is so bad that i think rich vacationers should not buy this device but save the planet from spoiling resources and buy a Used LG V60 instead. I mean their vacation spot looks nice. Would be nice if the rest of the world doesn't have to look like a factory to satisfy their consumerism so they can film themselves grilling and eating sausages on snowy Mount Rushmore on Abraham Licolns nose.
Seriously I am getting sick by the ads and consumerism this forum has been flooded lately. This phone has a good camera. But then it deserves a good observation instead of one liners hyping it up. The video pages before with the kids camping and jumping was well shot with some good indicators of the potential of the imager, lens and potential video quality. This video was a waste of time for me. Reflecting on that was an ok compensation for that.
Iphone 16 is already in the planning. More hype, more waste, more 8k videos for a better (filmed) world. I know the iphone 1500 USD does 4K only, so I wait til Iphone 1600 USD and will wonder if it is better than my any invention in this world.

Well you can buy and try iPhone 15 as your main camera. There is no better way but to try it personally. My limited experience with iPhone 14 Pro and more extensive with Android RAW showed me that smartphones as cameras have many limitations. The list is long. At the end it is a simple choice: Can you live with and/or work around all those limitations or not. For me answer is clear: I can't and don't want to. I prefer the inconvenience to lug 1 to 2 kg of equipment more for several kilometers, but have great experience shooting rather than the other way around. Here are some examples: When testing iPhone 14 Pro as a camera I used it as GPS navigation too. Mounted on the front dashboard of my car in sunny spring day with temperature around 25-27 degree Celsius it overheated and shut down. Had to stop my car and swap it with my Android phone. It took more than 30 min for IPhone to cool down and be usable again. If you want to have some decent footage you still need ND filters, this means a special case or cage for iPhone as minimum plus probably a handle. How long will the battery last? So maybe an external battery too ? Or external SSD ? But both can't be used at the same time. 🙂  You see, if you want a semi decent footage and shooting experience, you still have to prepare and take several other items, spend time planning, etc. With time and experience for me the weight of my camera bag up to a certain limit is at the bottom of my inconveniences and concerns.
As a camera that is always with me, in my pocket though latest generation of Android phones or iPhone 15 Pro are something that I can't resist. 🙂 Another case to use them would be when I go out for a day or more and am not sure do I want to shoot something or not, will I have the time or not. Having a smartphone as a camera + maybe a case with ND filters for those casual shoots is great.

Controlled and properly shot/graded side-by-side Alexa 35 vs iPhone comparison..  
It looks great but (spoiler alert!!) it's not as good as the $110K camera package, especially when pointing into the sun..
 

This was my initial gut instinct when watching. I’m a naive user of NLE software and would be happy with that color grade. When I get the 15 I’ll be sure to check some tutorial videos and give it a go.  The simplest process and workflow will probably be what I go with, whether it’s LUT and Dehancer etc. 
to me, the point is you can now create 80-90% of the quality a mirrorless does in most lighting conditions without the cost of equipment and burden of the size of equipment.  Low light and DOF yes that will need some workarounds or acceptance of “good enough” and since I’m personally not being paid and the quality bump of a mirrorless with the cost of size and price - I’ll take the good enough phone at this point. 
 
someone in this forum made that point about 3-6 years ago and I, in my head, rolled my eyes at their words.   Now I’m eating those words but won’t tell you if those words are carnivore or vegan 😉 

This looks partially like Grading 1.0, some of the shots look like videos of the first magic bullet grading craze gone wrong. Now i begin to understand the screw up was so much less due to the slim 8bit 420 codec of the GH1 back then, but much more because of the decisions gone wrong by some overly "creative" color grading. This is the case with the video above. A few seconds look great though. Not the best example to demonstrate a cameras image quality all in all. Footage itself is shot pretty well. Stabilsation looks great and lenses seem well resolving and in some recognisable regards with good rendering. But colors, shadows, which are even partially inverted, and highlights look pretty awful.
One wish, i have for posted videos, is to let the reader know the findings of the one posting a video in this forum, please. Otherwise to me it just feels a bit unmotivated and for me personally also a bit less joyful to participate in an evaluation or discussion. Thank you, cheers and best 😊

I found a good test video of h265/LOG vs ProRes/LOG with the Blackmagic App.... for most cases you probably can get away with h265/LOG saving the clumsy SSD that defats a bit the concept of using a phone. Files are much smaller and you can do 4k 60p LOG internally.... good to have options

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpO06mdN7mk

The disappointing but absolutely not surprising part is, that this feature doesn't come to the older iPhone Pro (Max) models. It would probably be technically possible to implement the log profile via an update on e.g., iPhone 14 Pro as it already has a 48mp sensor with HDR, but that's not helping the sales cycle from Apple's perspective. I don't think it's impossible from the hardware side to skip some of the (over)processing of the image.

🙂 @Emanuel My personal gamechanger would still be as stated a GH5II-ish LX15 with a clutch mechanism for manual focus and full HDMI. 10bit S16 pocket cinecam heaven.
The comment section under Gerald Undones test gives away quiet a few details about not so pleasant processing even in log, such as noise reduction and color clipping in the highlights. Apple fans will buy it anyway. Action mode, overall impressive image quality in log and tele lens are pretty cool, of course.
I don´t dig the videos of people sneaking into awesome locations and filming girls for lookin pretty and doing endless and brainless gimble like pushins- and outs, selling luts and pushing their affiliate links as well. Commenting youtube fan herds scream their amazement. I don´t like that noise and buzz and hysteria. A GH4 with its 9 year old sensor would look just as good if it had internal 10bit or via mini hdmi out. That phone is an achievement of technological developement. The fancrowd seems to develop back into infantile states of hysteric consumerism.
Slashcam results and test is looking very good. One of the coolest test sites. They are the only site which hinted me to the creamy high resolving image of the GH5II and its cinematic textures without oversharpening. Thanks for posting their findings and test of the iphone 15! @kye

Finally, a proper test... Let's try this again @gt3rs 🙂
 
To be honest, the differences between the SDR (processed) and Apple Log modes is quite staggering.

Hi Kye,
Your work on analogising iPhone footage looks like just what the doctor ordered (I have a 14 Pro, which doesn't offer the Prores log option, which in turn suffers from crazy space requirements).
How did you do that powergrade? It looks great (albeit very strong as you point out – all the better for showing the effect as before/after and in combination with the Hawk V-Lite real world examples).

I've developed a more sophisticated "false sharpness" powergrade, but it was super tricky to get it to be sensitive enough to tell the difference between soft and sharp lenses (when no sharpening has been applied).
Here are some test shots of a resolution test pattern through two lenses - the Master Anamorphics which are gloriously sharp, and the Hawk Vintage '74 lenses which are modern versions of a vintage anamorphic.
ARRI ungraded with the false colour power-grade:

Note that I've added a sine-wave along the very bottom that gets smaller towards the right, and acts as a scale to show what the false sharpness grade does.
Here's the Hawk:

and the Zeiss one with a couple of blur nodes to try and match the Hawk:
 
Here's the same three again but without the false sharpness powergrade.
Zeiss ungraded:

Hawk ungraded:

Zeiss graded to match the Hawk (I also added some lens distortion too):

Interestingly, I had to add two different sized blurs at different opacities - a single one was either wrong with the fine detail or wrong on the larger details.  The combination of two blurs was better, but still not great.  I was wondering if a single blur would replicate the right shape for how various optical systems attenuate detail, and it seems that it doesn't.  This is why I was sort of wanting a more sophisticated analysis tool, but I haven't found one yet, and TBH this is probably a whole world unto itself, and also, it's probably too detailed to matter if I'm just trying to cure the chronic digitalis of the iPhone and other digital cameras.
....and just for fun, here's the same iPhone shot from previously with the power-grade:

If I apply the same blurs that I used to match the Zeiss to the Hawk, I get these:


It's far too "dreamy" a look for my own work, but the Hawk lenses are pretty soft and diffused:
 

If I was Blackmagic, I’d skip the L mount and be beating a path to Nikon’s door to use the Z mount.
Natively, you can get fast Z primes up to 800mm so there is a much broader range there whereas L mount tops out at 135mm but it’s the adaptability where it scores.
Adapters for EF with autofocus, E mount with autofocus, even any manual focus lens with M mount and deeper mount can have autofocus too and even PL mount with integral variable ND filter.
Last but by no means least F mount with full autofocus, something which no other mount can offer.
Between these adapters a customer for this speculated BM camera could use pretty much any lens they’ve acquired over the years with full autofocus. Minus X mount and of course L mount itself but weirdly with the MFT to E mount you can even use those lenses too.
Z mount is hands down the most versatile mount around* with the added bonus of BM not having to deal with Leica who, let’s not forget, wouldn’t do firmware to make their cameras compatible with an adapter from one of the actual members of the alliance. My MC-21 still isn’t and won’t ever be compatible with my Leica T or SL.
Nikon are unlikely to get into the true cinema camera market so there is less perceived challenge versus Panasonic who are very likely to want to do so with an L mount cinema offering in the near future.
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
*This amazing and comprehensive compatibility didn’t of course stop me somewhat hypocritically not buying into Z mount and spending all my money that I’d intended to use on increasing my L mount collection of lenses instead 🙂

I think one very important bonus of this alliance would be the fact that it gives Panasonic a very important missing piece in their ecosystem: a truly professional cinema/ENG camera with 12-bit, XLRs, docu-style body etc. If you're buying into an ecosystem for the first time Sony offers such a great upgrade path for starting one-man bands with the A7-IV, FX3, 6, 9, Venice. No matter what level you start at you can always upgrade while keeping your lenses. Same goes for Canon. Panasonic really misses that at the moment.
Panasonic currently offers some of the best hybrid camera's on the market and then after that there's nothing.

From John Brawley:
"No. Canon, like Sony won't license their mount. It's an open secret that Red did an IP swap for the ability to use RF mount on some of their cameras and in exchange, Canon can make their own internal raw codec that can be used in-camera.

It's easy to test the theory. Name a single camera (not lens) with E mount that isn't made by Sony? Same for Canon with RF (excluding Red)?"
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=173840&start=450#p956719 

According to same John Brawley there is no licensing cost for any camera manufacturer to implement BRAW recording internally, it is not just for post processing. There is a cost however in development, to put all those algorithms in the processor chip. To my knowledge  processor chip development is quite costly. Companies are using one chip for all of their models and for several years in order to be able to pay for this development.

Reading this thread about the opportunity to have native BRAW recording on Z-Cam, confirm that is OS on post production only:
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=171209
Anyway, They could make a deal like the one rumored between Canon and Red: you don't f**k with your Raw and I let you use my mount....

That place has to be the most shit rumor site to have ever existed. It’s utter trash 😬
Because it might be the only viable full-frame mount available to them?
I’m quite intrigued by BRaw and as an existing L Mount user… 

Exactly ! If you are at Blackmagic and have to make a decision, which mount would you choose ?
Market pushes toward FF, this is clear. Company has to make a move in this direction if it wants to stay relevant.  L Mount seemed to me like a logical move,  Kye gave much more detailed argumentation that I had in my head 🙂 
Yes Blackmagic is competitor for Panasonic but so are Sony and Canon. Blackmagic carved a niche for themself. BMPCC 4K was selling well alongside GH5, GH6, GH5S and again as Kye rightfully noted:  " Panasonic make hybrid MILCs and BM make cinema cameras."  So they have slightly different niches.
I don't know, it just makes sense to me and wanted to share those rumors with all of you. Would be happy to see Blackmagic go in this direction.

I guess if I look at it from the perspective of BM then perhaps it makes slightly more sense.  BM has made cameras with S16 and MFT sensors and they used the MFT mount, and they made cameras with S35 sensors and used the EF mount.  Assuming they then wanted to make a FF camera, what mount would they choose?
EF mount
They have used it before, and their users already have lenses that use it, but the crop factor would change between the S35 and FF sensors, and the EF mount has pretty much been abandoned by Canon, so maybe BM want something that's still in active support RF mount
Canon have been quite restrictive with third-party use of the mount, so maybe Canon is blocking BM from licensing it, or maybe it's prohibitively expensive, or maybe the flange distance is too little for things like internal NDs PL mount
Seems like a logical choice with lots of existing lenses and support from other manufacturers, but maybe it's a step too far for their existing customer base, or maybe they want AF support (does PL support AF?) Nikon mounts
Not a lot of cine lenses for Nikon I wouldn't have thought, focus direction is the other way to EF lenses, which might be troublesome to their existing customers Fujifilm X-mount
No AF lenses available that cover FF and only 5 third-party lenses that do (on B&H) MFT mount
Wouldn't cover FF sensor Sony
A logical choice, but like Canon RF, Sony might not want to help BM compete with their cine-cameras so might be charging a lot for the license or might be refusing outright From this perspective I think L-mount makes more sense, and sort-of aligns with their previous use of MFT and EF mounts, which were both "semi-open" systems with lots of existing glass from original and third-parties.

Out of all the mirrorless mounts it makes the most sense that they'd go with the L-mount due to its open nature. There aren't really many alternatives. 

When I mean viable, I mean in a real-world professional use setting. I just couldn't phantom a wedding videographer, preformatting their chips in FAT32 using Linux or some 3rd party software, then record x-amount of footage, then making sure they record enough extra footage so that what they want to keep makes it to a recorded block of data before pulling the battery. That's not viable IMHO.
And for myself personally, I do mostly wildlife shooting and use 4k120P quite often. I also leave cameras running to catch a particular moment when the subject does something of interest. But, that is just my personal use.