Mmmbeats

Great stuff. I will likely switch over from CineForm for my intermediate workflow. Just upgraded to GH5 so will have to figure a good 10-bit workflow also. BTW - how's stability these days? I'm still on a ver 9.2 build!!! ?

With respect, I really wouldn't recommend that approach. With your brain trying to simultaneously balance two objects, and monitor both picture and sound, and meaningfully engage with another human being - trust me - something's gonna give! P.s - I retract 1 or 2 mins. Lav mics often take a little longer than that to get set up right.

There really isn't a solution for this. Camera mounted mic won't work for interviews. It just won't. Boom Buddy won't work if you are hopping around a location hoping to interview people on the fly. You're ruling out lavaliers, but I think they're the only real option in this case. Radio-mic to a recorder setup alongside or underneath the camera. Will take a minute or two to set up the mic, with a bit of practise. This type of work really requires two people.

No. Forget about it. It was a mistake of mine to mention it.

There's a kind of compression called interlace (as an alternative to the more common progressive scan). It's highly likely that you are not using it, and it would have probably been better if I hadn't mentioned it - just passed through my head briefly. Probably best to forget about (or research it at another time if you're curious). I added a vid link to my comment btw.

You're likely to get stuttering with your 30fps footage on a 24fps timeline. In future you should shoot 24p for this. If you are stuck with 30p and 60p footage (I'm assuming progressive scan?) then you should probably export for 30p I would have thought. Here's a basic vid on the topic:

That's an unusual workflow, and one which I can't see any advantage to. It's customary to edit on a timeline that matches your output file, so in your case you would use a 24p timeline. Shooting at higher frame rates for sports action will give you either slow mo (which you seem to be achieving fine with your 60p footage) or smoother playback. But this last option only works if your output remains high frame rate. You basically have a choice - shooting at 24p for a 24p timeline, which will give you that nice filmic quality, or shooting 30p for a 30p timeline (and output render) which will give you a smooth video-like quality that might help to portray the sports movement more accurately. The choice is an aesthetic one. Shooting 30p then rendering 24p doesn't seem to make any sense to me. You don't get any significant slow mo, and you throw away all the frame that would have made the motion feel smoother. Unless I'm missing some technique here.

Are you mastering to 30fps on the timeline because you prefer a smoother playback, rather than a film-look 24p? Or are you shooting 30fps to put on a 24p timeline (which seems pointless as far as I can figure)? 60fps --> 24p timeline should work fine (for slow-mo). Perhaps you are having playback issues on your edit machine. Try rendering the timeline.

It really doesn't matter. You could even crop the UHD if you prefer the 1.9:1 aspect ratio, for a small drop in resolution.

Too vague. Nobody's going to be able to give you meaningful advice because all of the cameras you have listed are brilliant cameras. Give us some more clues about what you value most in a system (useability? absolute pic quality? collect-ability? value for money? etc.). I'll pick up one one thing - you use the word 'fun' no less than 5 times in your post. I'd suggest the BMPC4K is likely to have the best fun-per-buck ratio out of any of those systems. You can buy a reasonable stills camera with the price difference to some of those other systems (possibly - total cost of ownership might inhibit this).

I'm going to do some tests on this at some point. I'll post them up here.

So, since the advice on this thread I've been using the Sigma 18-35 with a Metabones smart adaptor on my Gh4 with decent results. I've recently upgraded to the Gh5S, and had yet another idea for this challenge! As a reminder - I'm after a general range zoom (somewhere within 20 - 100 equivalent range) that allows for some degree of shallow DoF options for medium shots. The kind of thing that full frame users can enjoy with a f/2.8 or f/4 lens. So I already own a Metabones S adaptor (basically the same as the Ultra), and now also the non-speedboosting smart adaptor. My thought is whether the Ultra might help me realise my general zoom aim? I'm working on the understanding that it is not actually sensor size that increases DoF for a given composition, but the change in either camera distance to subject, or focal length required. So I'm wondering whether having the XL paired with something like a full frame 24 - 70 would make enough of a difference to be worthwhile? It would make me feel a bit queasy splashing out for yet another Metabones adaptor. But, bearing in mind that I'm seriously considering buying a new camera body just to deal with this issue, it might actually work out more cost effective!

Here's a worthwhile look at the physical aspects of the camera (unfinalised), in comparison to the existing line-up: https://www.lumixgexperience.panasonic.co.uk/learn/expert-advice/panasonic-lumix-s1r-size-and-layout-comparison-gallery

Latest whispering is of a miniature L-mount cinema camera: https://www.l-rumors.com/l2-first-rumors-about-l-mount-cinema-camera-from-panasonic/

The key phrase is 'worked with' ?. I'm often a one man band, so wireless takes a welcome bit of hassle off my hands if I'm rigging lights, operating camera, and talent wrangling at the same time. Of course it can potentially introduce hassles of its own, but I've been very lucky with that so far. No drop outs or interference, save for one instance where me and another crew discovered we were running the same frequencies.

What have you specifically enjoyed as a result of the change? Better audio? reliability? features?

Wired is ultimately better, but the convenience of wireless trumps it if you are shooting and recording yourself. Mic up the talent, stick the transmitter in his/her pocket, and get on with the million and one other things you have to take care of. Just do everybody a favour and take off the headphones if they pop to the loo!!! Can see the merits of wired too though. It's a close call.

That's not been my experience at all (and I am very much an amateur when it comes to sound!). There's not much in it, but the directional nature of the mic vs the omnidirectional nature of the lav creates better separation of the subject from any background noise. True the lav gets closer to the source, but I still hear the shotgun mic delivering better precision. Also, clothing adds an unpredictable element to the recording with lavs if you want to hide them. I can usually get good sound in the end but have to EQ back in the higher frequencies. I boom over the top (slightly forward) of my interviewee, using a Rycote suspension mount. No basket. I'm aware of the phase cancellation problem with using shotgun mics indoors, but honestly, I've gotten perfectly fine results with it so far, and never noticed any degradation of the audio. It's true that something I'm not noticing might be going on, but the point is - I'm happy with the results. That said I have it in mind to upgrade my audio equipment, which lags far, far behind my camera and lighting (and editing) equipment, which shouldn't be the case at all really.

This, basically. You haven't yet got the budget for a decent wireless system. It's not worth getting a cheapo one. I use the Rodelink, which has worked very well for me. If you are using a camera mounted recorder for interviews, just about any kind of alternative is going to make a noticeable improvement. Getting the mic closer to the subject (as detailed above) is the winning strategy. I now use a boom buddy and an NTG2 (which I kind of want to upgrade, but is certainly reasonable - and close to your price range, btw), with the Rodelink relegated to backup most of the time.

Is there a RAW out to external workflow that gives you reasonable files? Can the Atomos recorders covert RAW to 10 bit video on the fly?

Everyone says that, but this is clearly a RAW camera for people who want top notch cinema images at low cost (by the crazy standards of this industry!). If they had also included mid-level codecs, who would then buy a C300? They would have destroyed their own highly-successful line of cameras.

Atmosphere (fog or haze) is very often used to give torch lights those volumetric beams, btw. One more point - the most important aspect of these kinds of lighting setups is the modifiers. Particularly you will need quite a range of flags to control where your highlights end up, and to protect the rest of the set from stray light. If you can't get hold of professional ones, you can improvise these with bits of thick cloth or cardboard. But *IMPORTANT* be aware of fire safety using these materials alongside hot lights.

Wait. Shooting a dark scene does not necessarily mean crazy high ISO. You really need to think about what you are exposing for. Do you want to see beams of light, with body shapes looming out of the shadows? Or is it important to see the actors faces, even when they are in the dark parts of the set? Darkness is suggested by high contrast, not just by making everything dark. So the trick is to get some specks of bright light hitting just the things you want the audience to see. Also, it's common for dark scenes to be lit slightly higher than intended and then 'crushed' somewhat in post (the shadow values taken down). This allows you to preserve a bit of detail in the shadows without the crazy ISOs you are correctly trying to avoid. The problem you will have with this last method is that, as I mentioned before, the real trick is to preserve high contrast, and if you raise the shadows, you also have to raise everything else - in other words, your flashlight and accent lights will then have to be pretty powerful. Spot metering is your friend. Do some tests. Grade the tests. A monitoring LUT might help on set if you are doing a kind of 'day for night' job.

Paul Leeming (DP and LUT creator) has been enjoying his first outings (well, tests) with the camera. This from Facebook:

He's a good thinker. He's inspired me to want to try shifting the battery from the rig to a hip (belt bag) mount, which was something else I noticed him do in the past.