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I'm once again reminded of Noam Kroll, who has gone a long way into this rabbit hole. My recollection of his method was a balanced approach, where you make a plan and then improvise and adapt within a limited range. My impression was that he would storyboard things as a way of mentally rehearsing the shoot, and would end up with a clear idea of the logistics of the shoot, the equipment required, etc. Location scouting and anticipating the light etc as you normally would. I believe he also gained a clear idea of which shots were required, and which had some flexibility. Then when he was shooting he could make sure that he got enough for a functional edit, but was also clear enough in his thinking that he could adapt the plan to compensate for any challenges that arose and also to take advantage of any serendipity or inspiration that occurred. I suspect that this is a very deep skill, to plan and then improvise a shoot with an understanding of how the choices being made will go together in the edit. I know enough about editing to know that it's a jigsaw puzzle where you can have two small sequences that work well but don't cut together directly, so unless you can find a way to get from one sequence to the other then you have to change one of them so they're compatible. To do this for a whole scene, or whole film, in your head while you're still shooting it is beyond what I could even imagine, but I'm sure that the talented cinematographers are easily up to the challenge. Noam actually went further, describing a process where he worked with two actors and where he 'designed' what would be shot ahead of time, with the major plot points and story beats, but didn't fully script it. On each day of shooting the three would have breakfast and discuss the motives of the characters and how the scenes should go. Then they'd shoot while improvise the scenes, filming as they went and exploring ideas. It was freedom within a planned structure. I believe he was shooting one or two days a week, and so after shooting he'd review the footage and do rough edits, seeing what worked and what didn't. Then he'd 'design' the next shoot day accordingly, sometimes keeping on with his overall plan for the story but other times seeing something in the footage that made him adapt the narrative. I suspect that the skill is in knowing how much you can stray from the plan and knowing in which ways to adapt to make the end result better than if you just shot it as planned without any adapting to the situation. Certainly if you make a plan and then prioritise which shots are the most to least important then you'll have a good chance of coming back with a functional edit. My impression of great travel content is that most shots are good-but-not-great, and the art is in the edit and how they're combined. EOS-M and primes and a Fujinon-TV 14-70 f/2 will do a lot of the heavy lifting in making it look like cinema instead of video. In my mind you'll need to pay attention to how to keep the camera stable and then look at your references and study their coverage so you can design yours. By shooting on less than pristine equipment, you'll have to get things right in-camera as you won't be able to mess with it in post as much. Specifically, being able to zoom in a little in post can be useful if a random passer-by is staring. If you were shooting this with a modern mirrorless and sharp/neutral lens then I'd suggest using the highest resolution possible just so you have that flexibility. Your concern for getting stared at is legitimate, but the focus is to not get people staring while they're in the frame. As such I'd suggest getting more coverage using tighter framing and shallower DOFs, and for shots that are wider, simply getting more footage so you can edit around people staring. AI can potentially help if there are random people staring in shots you really want to use, but if you can edit around these moments (or prevent them from being in shot in the first place) then all the better. It's also worth considering that there are a number of things you can do that will lessen the changes of people noticing you and the camera, or lessen the people who are currently in frame noticing it. Another strategy is to investigate how much b-roll can be used in the edit without it taking away from the story. You may be able to get away with putting b-roll on top of a good audio edit, essentially having an L-cut followed by a J-cut where the audio goes from one character to the another but the visuals go via a b-roll shot from the location. I'm sure there's a deep art to doing this, but it's worth grabbing as much b-roll as you can while on location (especially if shooting has to wait for any reason but you're able to shoot). You can even return at a later time to get more footage, or better yet, take your kit and go shoot the location ahead of time so you can do a dry-run with the actual rig and also get a sense of what the location is like to shoot by actually shooting in it.

Further to the above, and further to what Mercer wrote.. The smaller the camera package the more amateur and less pro you look, which impacts how the authorities treat you Often locations care if you have a tripod or not, especially in crowded situations where a tripod takes up a lot of space and is a tripping hazard. Alternatives to a tripod are obviously hand-held and also shoulder-rig, but the often overlooked options are a monopod, and Mercers trick of having a monopod where the foot is resting in a pocket of a belt, so the camera effectively gains the stability of the operators waist Depending on the focal length and type of shot (medium, close-up, etc) the primary consideration in crowded places is if people will walk in between the camera and subject. My travel shooting with my family was done mostly on a 35mm F1.9 equivalent and this enabled medium-close-ups and closer in very crowded places without anyone getting in-between and wider than that with people or obstacles in-between. If you want to get more distance than that and not get wider then you'd need to go to a 50 or tighter depending on the distances involved. I personally find this hugely situationally dependent as it depends on how crowded things are, how noticeable the operator is, how willing to walk in front of a camera people are (or how much/little they care about you) etc. Combined with the distance / density / shot-size / focal length interactions are the DOF considerations, specifically how much do you want to separate your subject and at what distances. Normally this also blends into low-light requirements but I think these days if you use a dual-ISO camera then that consideration drops away and you can get by with F2.8 or even F4 at night in well-lit areas. The main reason that aperture isn't an obvious choice (just go F1.4!) is that if you can choose a slower lens then you can consider a zoom, which changes the shooting equation drastically. Depending on how you're planning and scheduling the shoot, the ability to move fast without changing lenses might be considerable. The French New Wave approach of getting minimal coverage and preferring longer takes is something to consider. There's a huge difference in logistics between storyboarding the whole thing within an inch of its life (and having many setups and doing hair/makeup/wardrobe touchups between takes etc) and running the whole scene a couple of times with a wider master then going a bit tighter and grabbing the more interesting shots as colour for the edit. Noam Kroll has shot short films on film and only had ratios of 2:1 or similar, and for certain sections only shot one take because he wanted to spend more film on making the important parts more interesting. For aesthetics it's also worth considering what you'll do in prod vs post. The traditional prod approach is to use filtration and select a lens / aperture combination that gives the rendering you want, and then you'd shape the light and control your lighting amount and ratios etc to suit your ISO/aperture/filtration. This makes prod very cumbersome and if you don't control the location perhaps impossible. The alternative approach is that you choose much more neutral equipment and push a bit of a look in post. There are obviously limits to this, but for example by picking a lens that's sharper across its range you can vary the aperture to control DOF and exposure in prod and then degrade it in post (soften it globally and in the corners, add distortion, add diffusion, add vignetting, etc) and you'll have a consistent look despite using the lens at different apertures, etc. Think about DR. The more DR the camera has the less of the scene you will clip and the more flexibility you'll have to adjust exposure and ratios etc in post without making the clipped areas visible. The less DR you have the more carefully you'll have to expose, and the less flexibility you'll have with moving shots that go between dark/light areas. The more DR you have the less you need to vary the aperture on the lens to compensate, or the less you'll need any lighting etc to compensate. Think about the contrast of the final film. The more contrast you apply, the more leeway you will have with the cameras DR, so the previous point gets easier. Film was great in this sense as the negative was so wide and flexible and gave a lot of leeway in post. Monitor as well as you can. Use a large monitor and a viewing LUT. The more you can visualise the end result while shooting the better. I find that shooting in uncontrolled situations means there are always things in the frame that I'm reacting to. This is in alignment with the situation and performance too - shooting in crowded public places will have the cast reacting to their surroundings, so you should be reacting to their performance and to your surroundings too, so the more clearly you can see the shot the more coherently you can react to it. Embrace the chaos. Separate the ideas of controlled coverage and creative experimentation as much as you can. The idea of getting a master in the can and then experimenting is great because you can ensure you've got an edit that can work and then you can grab risky but potentially great shots after that. Much better to have the final edit cut between neutral shots and really great shots that embrace spontaneity and add to the film than struggling in the edit by having to cut between shots that are neither safe nor creative nor sensitive to the surroundings. Some example 35mm F1.9 shots I've taken (please ignore the grading - these were from a long time ago!!!): More recent shots with 68mm F1.5 equivalent: and more recent with 70mm F2.0 equivalent: If you really wanted a minimal set of focal lengths, I'd suggest a 28mm for wides and ultra-packed situations, a 'normal' lens in the 35-50mm range, and a longer one in the 70-100mm range for shots where you are at some distance and don't want a wide. Your aesthetic should really begin with the emotional arc of the characters in the film, filtered into scenes, then the equipment chosen to express the intended aesthetic while shooting in the specific circumstances of the location and logistical assets and challenges.

Lost in Translation was famously shot in Tokyo without official permission. They shot in public with a very minimal crew and moved fast to try and keep ahead of the authorities. They chose this approach primarily because it was almost impossible to get permission to film there at the time. I saw a great doco about the making of it but it's been removed from YT now so can't share it. I don't know what sort of info you want to know to prep for your film, but there are snippets of BTS online if you dig. This video shows a bit of BTS from on location (linked to timestamp): From what I can remember / piece together: shotonwhat says it was shot on Kodak 320T and 500T using Aaton 35-III Camera and a Moviecam Compact Camera with Angenieux and Zeiss Super Speed Lenses they moved fast to stay ahead of the authorities the cast and crew when out shooting in public was only a few people (camera, sound, director, and talent and I think that's it?) and were all non-Japanese people, and if anyone official came to tell them off the they would just be apologetic but use the language gap to effectively prevent any communication. They had a Japanese fixer who stayed a distance apart from the group (so they wouldn't be noticed by the authorities) but that was helping with logistics etc and could step in if the situation required it they had challenges with locations (link to timestamp) another snippet of them on location - tripod but not clear if they're using any lights What information are you looking for specifically?

Further lens contemplation reminded me of my Tokina RMC 28-70mm F3.5-4.5 for m42 mount, which is deliciously imperfect, and when combined with an ultra-cheap wide-angle adapter gets even tastier.. I've struggled with this lens because the main issue with it is that it's a dumb lens and so there's no way for the cameras IBIS to know what focal length it's at. This is fine for tripod work, but that's not really how I shoot, and if it was tripod work is slow enough that I could just use primes. Then I realised that as I now own an EF speed booster I can get an EF zoom lens and it should report the current focal length to the camera and the IBIS challenge goes away. As such, I started looking for the absolute worst, most imperfect, least sharp, EF zoom lens I could find. Luckily, if you search ebay in ascending price it makes these gems obvious and you can peruse at your leisure. So I have now snapped up a lovely Tokina zoom that according to the Pentax forums has decidedly poor optical performance. Hooray!! Pics when it arrives, but I'm excited. I was also made aware of the existence of the Tokina AT-X PRO F2.8 zooms, which are interesting, but a long way from the top of the (price ascending) ebay search results. I also found a couple of the F2.6 Angie designs too, those were $3-4K.. wow!! Being famous on the internet sure makes things more expensive!

The head tracker seems like it'll be an absolute game-changer for a small number of niche uses and a curio to everyone else. I'm wondering if it'll be a way to get natural looking gimbal footage, rather than the not-robotic-but-not-organic-either panning / tilting that we seem to get at the moment. Maybe akin to the difference between a shoulder-rig and a tripod? The next evolution of it might be to use it to control the camera on a drone - the current state of that art is very robotic. Still, neither of these is of much use to me, so I'll just be reminded of that Renault model that pointed the headlights left and right along with the steering so you could see where you were going while cornering as well as when going straight.

Agreed.. You've likely heard of the term "anemoia" which is from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows which aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack words, and it means "Nostalgia for a time or a place one has never known". It's gaining popularity too, with that blip being April 2024...

All good points and it's like everything in that when two people make the same choice it's probably a mixture of everything but in different proportions for each person. Nowadays I think the "poor" image quality of these older cameras is just viewed as "a look" that you would make from a position of having creative options rather than being something you didn't want to choose but had no better options. Speaking of pulling a camera out of your pocket with one hand, does the camera button on the new iPhones help? IIRC you can double-click it to open the photo app of your choice (default or otherwise) and also use that button to take a photo or start/stop recording. I have a grippy case for mine and holding it with one hand is a very secure experience, with the only wrinkle being that it's so grippy it can be difficult to get it in and out of a pocket unless you've gotten the angle right and the fabric isn't in tension etc.

Indeed, algorithms do tend to isolate us from the huge diversity out there, that's for sure. One thing I like to keep in mind is that even if something is so rare that it's only one in a million people, that means there are 8 million of them! I have a Korean friend who is incredibly into film-making and film itself. He is currently studying film and TV in the US, and owns his own complete RED Dragon 6K setup (one of the older DSMC2 models). He has been shooting film for many years and still regularly shoots projects on it, mostly 16mm and is a massive film nerd who frequently dives into the detail and can name specific models of film scanners etc off the top of his head. He is a huge fan of K-pop and loves retro camcorders and early digital stuff. I'm in a private Discord server with him and bunch of other film-maker types and there are a lot of them that are into a wide range of looks, including ultra-high-quality digital, film, cinema, TV, music videos, advertising, sports and live action coverage, and aesthetics of all imagination. They don't just talk about cameras, or film, or lenses (but they do talk about all of those), they talk about bags and equipment trolleys and lights and all things grip, they talk about sound and editing and colour grading, they talk about directing and scheduling and pre-production, they talk about YouTube and sponsorships, they talk about clients and client management and business, as well as cars and other non-video stuff. The YouTube bubble seems to only talk about cameras, lenses, and colour grading, and that image quality has to be the highest possible unless you're emulating film. My experience is that there a ton of people who are interested in much more than these things, but they're made to feel unwelcome because there's no place for these things in the camera-industrial complex that camera bro YouTube is a part of. The world is much bigger and stranger than any of us know 😄

I had ruled out the GX9 for some reason, thinking it didn't have IBIS, and then I randomly heard that it did have IBIS and so I got confused about why I had written it off, so hearing about the crop made me wonder if that was potentially the reason. 200Mbps is a great bitrate, especially for HD! I don't recall hearing about this. Yes - there's even a thread about it that just started! I haven't looked at it myself yet, but if it's a one-stop solution for film emulation then it seems promising. I've heard it's pretty slow still, but it's still early days and perhaps optimisations will change that at some point. For me, and this GX85 Super-16mm film camera project, it was more about the GX85 and me finding a place for it. I have equipment I like, shooting situations / scenarios I prefer to shoot, and images I like, and the goal is to find combinations that work well. This project has resulted in me successfully discovering and developing the combination of: GX85 plus 14mm F2.5 pancake lens at 1x / 2x / 4x digital zoom Shooting street scenes in uncontrolled / available light, hand-held, from waist height Passable S16mm film camera emulation for gritty images with a strong vibe I'm actually really heartened by the GX85 and will be testing how far I can push it in other ways. Emulating a S16 camera is a lot easier than a S35mm camera, for example, so I'll see how I go with that. I'm effectively done with the S16 film camera emulation but not done at all with pushing to get the most from the GX85.

Keen to see footage from it, especially compared to other cameras if possible.. 😄 In the event that Panny don't create an MFT version this might be tempting for me at some later point.

So the GX85 has a 1.1x (2.2x compared to FF) and the GX9 has a significantly larger crop despite being newer and the replacement model? That's disappointing!

The below video titled "Retro camcorders are EASY to use in 2026 (full guide)" was posted two years ago and has 241K views. It opens with these shots: and his first line is "retro camcorders are freaking awesome". Maybe you're right that getting worse image quality isn't the primary motivator, but if it wasn't then I don't really know how to explain why anyone would be attracted to these camcorders when new/modern ones have all the same advantages of being a single-use device, have great ergonomics, novelty value, etc, but are also far easier to find, far easier to use (and don't require legacy computer interfaces!), are far more reliable, and have much better image quality. Maybe the draw is that they're old, and therefore that's the novelty, but I've heard people gush over how they love the JPEG look from cameras that have 2MP cameras and the JPGs are hugely compressed and full of artefacts etc. Here's another one comparing Hi8 vs MiniDV on the basis of the image alone.. 24K views! It might also be a nostalgia thing, where the image quality is desirable because it's poor, but in exactly the right way.

For example, here's a K-pop video that clearly has enough budget for half-decent cameras, but was shot on cheap looking cameras and definitely looks like it: ...and don't think it's a student film or anything, it was posted 6 weeks ago and has 9M views and lists the A&R person amongst the dozen or more people involved in making it!

I think compact cameras are also enjoying a resurgence because some of them are far worse than smartphones! Just look at how retro SD video cameras have taken off, and how people are applying 00s digicam filters in post to their (comparatively pristine) smartphone footage too. In a way the high quality and ubiquity of smartphones creates a desire for something different... which includes things like poor image quality (low resolution / DR / bitrates / etc), long zooms, ghosting and other image distortions, etc. Beyond even that I think the fact that the phone is in people's hands for many hours a day means that having a change means putting something else in your hand, so a dedicated camera allows for that change of pace. It also means that taking a photo at a social event or festival or solo walk etc doesn't mean involuntarily seeing all the notifications on your Lock Screen either. People are always looking for a change from what they have, and when what they have is high quality that means they will pursue low-quality.

Good points from @eatstoomuchjam. That's why I went for the sharpest frame grabs I could find - considering the range of variables involved a soft looking grab might have been a scanning issue or provenance issue or there might have just been movement in the frame. Now that I've done that analysis I'm wondering where to from here. One thing I can do is to take my S16mm emulation and scale it 50% of the size and then adjust my power grade to match the grain and halation etc, and see if that looks like a 35mm scan (it should - that's how film works!!). If so then I can proceed on that basis, but if not then I might have to get feedback and iterate again to get something appropriate. Once I've got that sorted out then I should be able to interpolate / extrapolate the parameters that needed changing and get a range of looks that vary from 8mm up towards 16 and 35mm and then beyond. At that point it'll be interesting to explore different combinations of: Film sharpness and grain Lens emulations Filtration (diffusion etc) From these I should be able to get a range of common looks, inspired by different combinations like: 8mm shot on-the-go Bolex 16mm camera shot at night The look: Faster 16mm film with mediocre prime lenses shot wide open Krasnogorsk-3 16mm camera during the day The look: Slower / clearer 16mm film with standard zoom lens (17-69mm F1.9 Zenit) shot stopped down 35mm film camera with master primes, or Cookes, or Panavision C-Series & T-Series, etc (I have a few lens tests with many of these lenses so should be able to recreate something that smells vaguely right by changing the vignetting, edge softness, CA, bloom, etc) I'd imagine that certain combinations will be more convincing than others, as we've likely come to associate certain image attributes together. Obviously I won't be recreating them faithfully, but simply by taking inspiration from these a range of looks can certainly be developed. One thing I have noticed is that lens designers often get custom requests from film-makers to tune a set of lenses to have a customised response. For example maybe they want the speed and bokeh from a set of lenses to remain as-is but want more/less horizontal streaks and much more diffusion, etc. This is noteworthy because if film-makers are are interested in different combinations of lens attributes then I don't feel like I need to try to get a perfect emulation of one lens or another either - it doesn't matter so much when you view it from a creative perspective rather than engineering perspective. This is why my goal in my S16 emulation project wasn't to emulate this or that film stock, but rather to get something that looked like it was shot on some unknown stock with unknown provenance (e.g. maybe it's expired or wasn't stored well etc).