kye

Obviously. No-one was saying that though.

Another test, this time from our good friend Matti..

I am trying to design a compact but professional live streaming setup for an education / training / coaching business. It has to be: suitable for international travel so needs to fit into suitcases, including the lights etc be computer-based, beyond the limited functionality of a stand-alone smartphone setup to include (picture-in-picture, slides, etc) What is the cheapest "proper" camera for streaming / recording online content? Also, what interface device would you use to get that feed into a computer? Obviously the cheapest setup is your laptop camera, but once you want to upgrade the image quality a bit, what is the best option out there? Second hand is fine. My thinking is that: Smartphones don't allow for the functionality in streaming that something computer based will (picture-in-picture, slides, etc) The external USB webcams don't seem to offer much better image quality than the internal laptop ones Getting a good image from a real camera will require a lot less lighting than with a laptop camera so it's worth the investment (plus it makes the lights much easier to fit into a suitcase) I can put a fast lens on it for a bit of background defocus (and even smaller lighting requirements) It can also be used to pre-record videos I still don't know what the rest of the setup will be (stream management software etc) but I figure if I can get the image into the computer then that's a separate topic to what happens to it from there.

If you had to buy a camera either way then it might be a good idea. What cameras do you have now? Why do you need a new one? TBH if you're willing to develop a small amount of skill in colour grading, it means you can spend thousands less on a camera and get the same results. Literally. I can get better images from my GX85 than many can get with a C70 / R5 / S1H / etc. That's very kind of you to say, but it just makes me worried for the so-called professionals you're referring to! I am pretty deep down the post-production rabbit hole though. I've started reading patents to learn colour grading techniques... This one is next on my list: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/41/0a/e5/0a78ae57552549/EP1158779A2.pdf

Enthusiast.

Learn how to grade it in post to look like a normal camera. I recommend a small radius blur. .....and if you've kept reading after "blur" then congratulations, the camera nerds are gone and it's just us creative people left. Here's the best advice that I saved for a select audience - tell a good story. That is all.

Once again, I'm reminded of Noam Kroll and how, with the right attitude, you can get out there and make things happen.

It has been for over a decade. No-one who tries and fails to make a film did so because of equipment limitations, unless they're trying to shoot a film about deep diving in acid or some other extreme environment. Film-making is hard, but saying you couldn't make the film you wanted because of the camera is the same as saying you can't make it because you couldn't find the right shoes!

I am perhaps the closest here to saying yes to this comment, being that I value size, simplicity, speed of working, stabilisation, and am actively opposed to creatively-inappropriate shallow DoF, etc. I do, and will continue to, use my phone as my second camera. I use it when I don't have a dedicated camera with me, I use it for a wide-angle (to complement the normal-tele lens on my proper camera), and I use it to shoot the in-between shots like getting in and out of vehicles and while travelling between locations. However, it is along way from becoming my only camera, because: They're crap in low-light, especially the wide-angle camera I tested my iPhone 12 Mini vs my GX85 and GH5 and I found that the normal iPhone camera had similar noise performance to the MFT cameras when they were at F2.8, and the wide camera was equivalent to F8! It's always your phone and your camera You always want to use the latest phone as your camera because they're getting better and better, but you always want to use the latest phone as a phone because the battery life etc is newer and better and they're faster. Therefore, you are always in danger of getting messages and pop-ups etc on your camera while shooting, or if you put it into aeroplane mode then you might miss important notifications. They're too expensive to buy two of. They're a pain to shoot with No handle, no wrist strap, etc, and if you rig it up then it's a pain to use it as a phone, and a pain to put in your pocket. Also, if you want to have any external accessories like lenses or NDs, they always require a case, but the cases are completely shit at being a protective case, so you're perpetually changing cases, which screws them up. Even if you don't use lenses etc you're going to want to use an SSD with it now because Prores. They lack flexibility of lenses Even a Panasonic GM5 that shoots low-bitrate 1080p will look better fitted with an F1.2 (or F0.95) lens than a phone for low-light situations. The GM5 will also look better fitted with a 100mm (or 200mm, or 400mm!) lens than a phone using heavy digital cropping on its longest lens. The GM5 will look nicer when fitted with a fast aperture lens than the Cinematic Mode which has about the same subtlety in blurring the image as a toddler does when smearing food on themselves at dinner time.

Great post and well made points. I'd suggest that MFT is more suitable for any form of film-making that is focused on story/plot/emotion/meaning because it protects you from moronic ideas like shooting with a 50mm lens at maximum TONEH, which beyond shooting a scene where someone is on serious drugs, is creatively inappropriate.

I'm reminded of the comments from @John Brawley talking about how he used a super-minimal setup based on the BMMCC when shooting The Resident. Obviously these are all completely controlled sets with lighting etc all dialled in, so external shots out in the world would need a bit more rig perhaps. John spoke about how the size of the rig allowed him to get much closer to the actors like you see with him holding it out in front literally between the actors, which would have been a different equation had it been bigger / heavier.

Yes, but it's been the most popular camera for quite some years! Just look back at the Flickr camera stats from previous years...

You and me both! They say the first step is admitting you have a problem, which we've both done, so that means we're probably ahead of half the pack already 🙂

This isn't how the technology industry works. In order to cater for the long development cycle and also try and respond to market conditions you want to use something like set based design. This is a reasonable introduction to the topic. https://scaledagileframework.com/set-based-design/#:~:text=Set-Based Design (SBD),eliminating poorer choices over time.

There is no good way to judge colour online - lets review all the possibilities: log images are shown this is the purest experience of the camera, but you can't judge anything with this log images + manufacturers LUT is shown this is the best way to judge images, but its random chance how good this will look and doesn't really show the potential of the footage graded images are shown, but they look crap this tells you nothing as you can't tell if the camera is bad, the LUT is bad, the colourist is bad, or all of them graded images are shown, and they look good this tells you what is possible but not what is possible for you. great images could be because the camera is great and colourist is ok, camera is good but colourist is very good, camera is mediocre but colourist is world class BTW, if camera forums and camera YT had the same level of knowledge about cameras as they do about colour grading then every video would be trying to work out the exposure triangle and failing. Even rudimentary colour grading and colour science knowledge online is rare outside professional colourist circles - I know more about these things that most and I am at the very very very shallow end of the pool so if I know more than you do then you're basically no-where...