Mark Romero 2

ProRes is factually a derivative of MPEG-2, that's why it's so light on CPUs. It compensates its old codec technology through high bitrates, thus the generally good quality.

h264 and h265 will always be better than ProRes at the same bitrates, provided that a decent codec implementation (with high profile and 10bit color depth) is being used.
So the question is whether 400 Mbit/s h265 (in the case of the Fuji XT-4) for 4K/25p video is visually as good as ProRes HQ at 737 Mbit/s for the same resolution and frame rate... 
 
EDIT: The real issue with h264 and h265 are not the codecs themselves, but that manufacturers - treating them as consumer codecs - bake all kinds of overdone image processing (aggressive denoising, artificial sharpening, pushed contrasts) into material recorded with them. ProRes, being conversely treated as a "pro" codec, doesn't get those over-processed images. This is why we think that ProRes is better...

What I meant to say is that significantly underexposed shots (regardless of camera) are harder to grade, and I seem to get more saturation and the colors tend to shift a bit.
 

Second-hand Rode NTG2 ???
I see one listed on Reverb for $198, but they have a "make offer" option so you might be able to get it for a few dollars less (assuming you live in the USA, my apologies if I assumed wrong).
I would hope that @IronFilm could weigh in if he has experience with this mic and would also see if Curtis Judd has a review on youtube about it. 
As an aside, if I am reading Amazon reviews of a product (any product, not just cameras and such). then I try to pay special attention to the reviews that are three stars and two stars, and pay less attention to the five-star and one-star reviews. The three star reviews seem to point out the "realistic" flaws of an item.
Also, you mentioned a7 III. I remember a couple months back that the website who we are not supposed to mention did a review of camera preamps and they seemed to get mixed results with the a7 III. 

Sure. It’s all part of the whole career process.
Still, would rather my work be able to pay bills instead of generating more of them. 

I'm more of the Bowfinger school of film economics  
 

I haven't, but this guy did
 
 

nicer image in this second post, and you don't look like a deer caught in the headlights either, like those first photos

A simple talking head setup - check!
Only 1 bulb (out of 4) used and - okay, I admit it - it was a bit too bright to my liking in this scenario.
Don't ignore inverse square law, lads and guys!
The key light was ~ 50 cm away from me.
f/1.4 , 1/160 s, ISO 1000, WB - 4000K

 
BTS:

 

I never thought of CA as "magical," although I could imagine that SPHERICAL aberrations could give a "magical" look. Maybe she misspoke???
Yeah, I am not super familiar with mainland Chinese cinema. But what I do remember from some 80's mainland moviews was that the lighting was a bit harsher. Just looking at the Mulan trailer makes me think the lighting is too soft to replicate the vintage look. But again, I might be ignorant of lots of Chinese movies with soft lighting.

Yeah, looking forward to the improvements that AI can make to both stills and video. I've been pretty impressed with how Resolve Studio handles retiming and  scaling (even though Speed Warp eats up my 8GB of VRAM very quickly).

Yeah, looking forward to the improvements that AI can make to both stills and video. I've been pretty impressed with how Resolve Studio handles retiming and  scaling (even though Speed Warp eats up my 8GB of VRAM very quickly).

Nah even David Fincher added CA in post for mindhunters. You can see it also on "Ozark" and "Big little lies". 

@tupp
Thanks for the info! Ubuntu studio looks cool. Never used Xfce before (always Mate, Cinnamon or Enlightenment when I fooled around with Bodhi Linux a while back). 

This all seems like the standard modern business plan. Pull people in at one level, trap them, then raise the price/lower the pay. Pretty sad.

Many people report battery problems, on the dedicated s1 Facebook groups, and, for example, on dpreview where someone tried to investigate the issue : https://***URL removed***/forums/thread/4461103?page=5
I encountered problems too, like the conflincting infos between camera and charger... One day, I had my charger indicating 100% for 2 batteries, and when I put them in camera, it showed around 70 or 80%. I also had shutdowns with many % remaining.
I have 5 original batteries, not very used so no time wearing at work here.
I will pay attention to this when I will be back to Shoot.

I am sure.
 
Kdenlive, Cinelerra (GG) or Blender is what I would recommend.  I have heard good things about Shotcut and Olive.  Openshot would also work for someone who doesn't need anything fancy.
 
One of the the great things about Cinelerra is the Blue Banana plugin -- a very unique and powerful color grading interface.  I wish that somebody would port it to MLV-app.
 
If one is okay with proprietary software, then there is Resolve, Lightworks or Piranha.
 
 
All of the open source NLEs work on most distros.  On the other hand, there are special media distros that are worth considering, such as AV Linux and Ubuntu Studio.
 
I tried Resolve once, and I as I recall it was distributed as a tarball, and I had no problem installing it on my Debian-based distro.
 
 
Not sure where you are from, but, as I recall, my current Ebay machine cost US $145.  It has an i7-3770, 3.4GHz cpu, and it came with 16 gigs of ram, two mediocre graphics cards and a 500GB drive.  I put an SSD in it and loaded a non-systemd distro.  It's fairly snappy.

I like Linux (particularly fond of Linux Mint which I have on a few machines). And I LOVE saving money. But I am not sure that the OP could edit on a US $200 linux box. What would you propose as an NLE???
And would one need a particular Distro in order to run that NLE? (For instance, Resolve is coded to work on Cent OS and isn't really guaranteed to work on other Distros, although i have heard of people using it on Ubuntu).
Of course, my vision might be warped because around here, people sell their used PC's for WAY MORE than the rest of the USA. 

Please keep us updated on developments. Would love to know how diversifying goes, and the whole stock footage landscape evolves in general. And best wishes to you and others who are affected by the changes.

Actually i saw a lot of unexpected movements on a FB contributor page with over 18.000 members. Many of them have already disabled their portfolios on Shutterstock and are gathering online signs against Shutterstock’s decision.
Of course i am not that naive to believe that actions like these will make any difference but these are healthy reactions of people who are loosing a big chunk of their income. I didn’t created this thread to start a rally against SS here (although i strongly disagree with their decision) but just to let you know that almost 500.000 active contributors took a big hit today.
I am personally building my portfolio on 3 agencies: SS, Pond5 and Adobe Stock, so I will stop uploading new stuff to SS from today but as i said, stock footage is more of a hobby for me.
Anyway, this is not about SS only. There are some dangerous corporate consolidation trends crawling around these days and after the pandemic. Of course these are justified to a certain degree but it’s always painful to see the most fragile social groups (and especially artists) absorbing all the shocks of an industry which they obviously can’t control on their own.

It is unlikely that simply rallying against them is going to change anything. Companies are in it to make as much money as they can.
Certainly, if ENOUGH stock shooters start to pull their content from Shutterstock, then it MIGHT make them re-consider, but I don't know how likely that is. As you said, moving a lot of stock footage is quite an endeavor.
So the question is, what are YOU going to do about it?
Is it possible you can start moving your best selling footage to other platforms first, and then migrate the rest of the footage over as time allows?

I agree that you'll probably be just fine recording in full HD. You will save time and space when you're editing. 👍

Definitely second @tupp suggestion that shooting in 1080p might be more than sufficient for your needs. I would kindly suggest you reexamine whether you truly need to shoot in 4K.
If you do shoot in 4K, here is a brief explanation on how to create 720p proxies, which will be much easier to edit with. Then when you render (or export or deliver or whatever your editor calls it), you exchange the proxies with the 4K versions.
 

Have YOU ever had corner shadows??  I don't think so!!  IF you ever did then you'd understand the IMMEDIATE REQUIREMENT to get AS MUCH advice AS POSSIBLE!!!  This is a COMPLETELY NATURAL RESPONSE!!!  THE HUMANITY!!!!!1!!!1!!

If you go back and read my original comment, you can see I wasn't hating upon the Fostex, in fact I even started out by giving it a complement that it was good value piece of kit for its time. 

But my point I was making was for the OP in particular, specifically that it wasn't worth them going through the effort to swap out their DR60Dmk2 for a FR2LE:
"today in 2020, I don't think you can make a solid argument it is worthwhile swapping a DR60Dmk2 for a Fostex FR2LE instead"

That doesn't even mean I don't think someone should buy a FR2LE themselves, if they're looking for a cheap sub $100 recorder. (just like I also think the R44 / DR680 / etc still have their place too, although they need to be very well priced to beat out a DR60Dmk2/DR70D, as otherwise it just makes more sense to go for the next step up to a F4/MixPre3)

Remember the question is not "should @josdr buy a Fostex FR2LE?" but the question is "should he swap his DR60Dmk2 for a FR2LE?" (and my answer was "I don't think it is worth the hassle", and even answer the same about others such as a DR680/R44/etc which I do respect even more, why sell and rebuy for a marginal gain if that? And especially not if a much better choice is not that much further way: MixPre3 / Zoom F4)

People tend to often get narrowly focused on just a single spec measurement, and lose track of the bigger picture. Such as "which has the best limiters" or "which has the quietest preamps", when a few dB here or here won't be a deal breaker for the context of what the OP needs to do. We see the same when discussing cameras too, with sometimes people being obsessed with only just the resolution, or the best AF, or which has the best lowlight etc...  to the exclusion of everything else, forgetting the bigger picture. 
This is like those discussion where people go on and on arguing for why the Sony a7S is so so so much better than a Panasonic GH5 purely on the basis of it being not as noisy, and being better at lowlight. Completely missing the point of why there are all the many reasons why a person would want a Panasonic GH5 in the first place. 

I didn't want to go into a detailed discussion of the FR2LE, as I didn't think it was worth the time, but here we go. Negatives vs a Tascam DR60Dmk2:

1) can't be camera mounted underneath the camera body, not purpose built for that
2) half the number of audio channels that can be recorded
3) can't be easily powered via any USB powerbank you happen to have at hand
4) uses CF cards (and with the Fostek's very old age, you're limited to smaller sized cards too)
5) you'll run a greater risk of failure by choosing the FR2LE due to its very old age vs a new (or at least "young") DR60Dmk2 (I do admit, perhaps my opinion of the FR2LE is slightly colored due to the only time I came across a FR2LE was a few years ago when it died on set!!! Luckily there was a Zoom H6 available someone had happened to bring along. Side note: this wasn't me! I wouldn't have brought a FR2LE to set, I was instead the AC on this short film, the last time I was ever a 1st AC! As I'm too focused on sound now)
6) no dual recording feature for safety with the FR2LE (quite a major negative in my eyes, as this is a very handy feature on the DR60Dmk2 for any newbie recordist)

Can you see why for the OP's specific situation I don't think the FR2LE is worth the hassle to change over from a DR60Dmk2? From where I'm sitting it looks like one step forward, two steps back, if I'm being generous. Perhaps from another vantage point you could very generously say it is instead two steps forward, one step back??? Still, not exactly a highly compelling argument to go through the hassle of swapping out from his existing DR60Dmk2???