kye

I've heard that BM just released a camera with a pro body and decent resolution, maybe that would do it for you? It probably has semi-decent 1080p capture... But seriously folks. I guess the other options would involve swapping ecosystems, to Sony, etc...

Nope. Here in Australia we call SA a 'flyover' state. (actually we don't, the east coast forgets all the land to the west). I'll also get my coat.

A GoPro can be made to look similar enough to the XT3 (or any other camera for that matter) to be used in the same edit, but you cannot improve the quality of its image, so it will always be inferior in things such as dynamic range and colour resolution, etc. To do this kind of matching you will have to put in a lot of effort in post and have good colour grading skills. Alternatively, the GoPro is waterproof, can fit in small locations, and has a fixed-focus wide-angle lens, which means that it never has focusing issues and can be placed to get shots you couldn't easily get from the XT3. In this sense, the GoPro is a different type of camera than the XT3, and has different strengths and weaknesses. My suggestion is to think about the work you do on the XT3 and consider what would give you the best improvement - a gimbal or a waterproof action camera. Everyone works differently and only you can really understand how these options would impact your films.

Great review - thanks for sharing. I have the 17.5mm and 42.5mm from the series and watching that review did not make me feel badly about the ones I have, because his comments remind me of how I feel about mine. My only criticisms of the Voigt MFT range is that (according to lens rentals) they're not made to be disassembled / serviced, so in that sense they're kind of 'disposable' if something happens to them. Having said that they're built like tanks and you'd really have to try to damage them to the point when you'd be facing that situation. My other criticism of the range is that it lacks a ~16mm equivalent, with the widest one being the 10.5mm which is equivalent to a 21mm, and it's not wide enough for my purposes (mainly architecture). Beyond that, they're just glorious. I'll also mention that in combination with the GH5 (and it's lacklustre low-light performance) these lenses are really a game changer. I've been on location and with the camera in auto-SS auto-ISO modes I've pulled up the camera to my face to be greeted with a composition in grey dull tones with gritty ISO noise. Remembering to open up the aperture I've then spun the aperture ring and watched as before my eyes the noise disappears and then in the last 2-3 stops as I went from 2.8 down to 0.95, the image colours appear and the image gets that smooth polished look with pure clean colours. The above is a true story and happened while I was shooting in available light at night in Japan, where this was one of the shots I took in the same location (taken on the 17.5mm 0.95): It's ungraded, I think I only added some contrast/sat. The GH5 really really benefits from those extra 3 stops compared to much slower lenses like the "professional" 12-35mm f2.8. With all the new cameras and discussion of prores and shooting raw I've been looking at lenses for S35 and FF and I actually find that there aren't so many great options available. I would imagine there are and it's just my lack of familiarity, but with my experience of owning and using the Voigt and with my comparative lack of knowledge of S35 and FF lenses, MFT actually seems like the mount with the best options. You missed out by watching it without sound - he really hit the swells and peaks with the soundtrack! Great stuff.

Until the announcement, all rumour threads are just people hanging out killing time. Is there anything that the GH6 could do to adapt quirky lenses that the GH5 couldn't do? I've got a bunch of quirky lenses and after having shot with a bunch of them for by big blind test, have no desire to find anything quirkier...

Assuming people watch the video in 4K, yes. Let's see what the numbers say. Here are the file sizes of the above 4K clip: And here for a 1080 upload: The above 4K upload has 1080p at 2Mbps MKV and 3.53Mbps for MP4, and the 1080 upload has 2.06Mbps MKV and 3.92Mbps for MP4, so looks the same to me. Due to internet limitations I once watched everything on YT in 360p, over a period of days IIRC. It was actually really very nice once I got used to it. I think it was on a laptop, so not on a huge screen where the artefacts would be dancing about all the time, but I think it was a real leveller in the sense that it didn't matter what camera people shot things with or how much sharpening they'd applied, etc. Of course, you could still see all the good stuff, like composition, DoF, colour, and of course, content. It's worth trying if anyone is curious - I recommend it. Be warned though, for people who hang out on a camera forum, the adjustment is a bit rough. See above - watching in 1080 seems to get you the same quality regardless of upload resolution. I have heard others say that though, so I suspect it might have been something they used to do. I keep wanting to talk about the bitrate of Prores and how it compares to h264 and modern cameras. I think it's time for a comparison.... Can you use an external monitor with it for something like Prores HQ? These days we've kind of skipped over Prores 4444 and gone straight to RAW. If I didn't care about IBIS then I'd be very tempted by something that shoots downscaled RAW/Prores like the P4K, P6K, or Z-Cam offerings, and just shoot 2K or 2.5K Prores downscaled from the full sensor. In a sense that gives the best of both worlds. What I found interesting, at least in YT compression, is the difference between 2K and 1080. See the above. Maybe 2K means "Pro" and so they up the bitrate for it. I should upload something in C4K and see if that bitrate kills the UHD one. True. IBIS is a pretty killer offering though, considering that if you take all of the lenses made throughout history, the percentage of those with OIS is almost zero, but IBIS gives stabilisation to every lens ever made.

As long as it's not a pie floater, then you'll be fine... For our American friends:

Which, in recent decades, and corresponding to the decline in software reliability, is broadly referred to as "alpha testing"...

Interesting script.....

I've been working on a project to match the GH5 to the BMMCC for some time now, and I've decided the next step is for a blind test. In this blind test I will show a series of clips shot with either the GH5 or BMMCC, using one of the many lenses I have in my collection, where the BMMCC will have a basic colour grade applied and the GH5 will be graded to have similar colour to the BMMCC. There will be an anonymous poll where people can guess if they think that it was the GH5 or the BMMCC. Due to various technicalities, I have 20 camera/lens combinations, and I have been trying to shoot each combination at a range of apertures as lenses are often softer or sharper based on aperture, and sharpness is one of the things I'm matching between the GH5 and BMMCC, so lenses play a role in this. If I was to shoot each camera/lens combination with aperture wide-open, with aperture stop down, have a shot with some clipping and likely flare, and a shot with some skin-tones in it, that would mean I may have as many as many as 80 shots, which is a lot. It wouldn't be practical to ask 80 questions in a poll, so I'm thinking I'll group multiple shots together into batches. Also, I'm not shooting identical scenes side-by-side, because that's not what matters. If we make a film and someone watches it and can't tell if you used an Alexa or not then it's job well done. The fact they might be able to tell between your camera and an Alexa in a side-by-side test is irrelevant when they're watching your film. Therefore, I've been shooting test shots over a period of days in varying lighting situations. So the test would be a "batches" of shots, where a batch would be shot with one camera, but would include a mixture of lenses, apertures, subjects and lighting situations. I would then have the quiz question.... What camera do you think Batch X was shot on: Definitely the BMMCC Maybe the BMMCC but I'm not sure No clue! Maybe the GH5 but I'm not sure Definitely the GH5 If I had 80 shots grouped into batches of 8 shots, then that would be 10 batches, which is far more manageable. So, here's my question and the purpose of this post. While I'm doing this, what other questions should I be asking? It's a blind test between two cameras, but it's also a blind test with many lenses that probably aren't directly compared. Obviously I'll create a thread and we can talk about it for a couple of weeks before I reveal the results, but the comments in the thread aren't anonymous and I think people will hold back in fear of saying they like the cheapest lens vs the most expensive or trendiest lens, so some anonymous quiz questions might also be useful. Should I ask things like: Which shots are your favourites? (text entry so people can list as many as they like) What shots are noteworthy and what do you think about them? (text entry so people can say whatever they like) Or maybe I should number the lenses in the test footage (eg, lens #4) so that I can ask people which lens was their favourite? For every shot I'm making a note of which camera, what lens, and what aperture it was set at, and what focal length was set (if it's a zoom). We can also tell from the shot if it's close focus or more distant. It won't be a complete dataset as doing every combination would be thousands of shots, but it might be interesting anyway. What do you think?

I knew you were up to something!! I nominate a Panasonic @BTM_Pix alliance - the F-Accessory Alliance. It can either stand for Focus Accessory Alliance, time-of-Flight Accessory Alliance, or F@#$-focus-pixels Accessory Alliance.

I think Jerry is calling us all beginners.....

I have literally hundreds of email addresses, so it kind of doesn't work like that for me, but it's a good idea for other people. I put a few of the ones that I noticed getting spam in there and IIRC it had most of them. Lots of breaches. Lots and lots.....

I have my own domain name and so anything-whatsoever-I-can-think-of@mydomain all goes into my inbox. An upside of this is that I give every site it's own unique email address. ie, eoshd-com@ as an example. It is a regular occurrence that an email address suddenly starts getting spam. The site in question won't have sold my email address to anyone and the email address may never have been used after the registration process, so it wasn't intercepted by someone. It's because that site got hacked. Sites get hacked all the time. and worse, they don't tell people about it. They just sit silent because they don't want people to get upset or get the bad PR and mostly people won't notice because they give the same email address to everyone, so who can tell how your email address got onto a spam list. The answer is that I can tell. I wish this was a joke, but it's not.

Just closing the loop. Threads on a forum aren't a discussion between people in a room, they're a public panel discussion where the people posting are on stage and countless people are silent in the audience unseen. When it got personal that would have been noticed. Yes, Global Shutter does not produce a jittery image. It doesn't stabilise camera movement from the operator, but it doesn't create jitter either. We got our wires crossed on that one. I think it's about different types of shooting. Some people choose to shoot hand-held and other people have no option. For example, if you want to get a shot of this famous historical building in Japan: You must first walk through the inspection station and past this sign: and then get the shot in this situation: If it was up to me, I'd just have a shoulder-rig and a tripod and elbow everyone else out of the way. But that's not reality, so I play the hand I was dealt. Plus, look at how everyone is dressed. Photos don't tell the story, but my hands were shaking because it was freeeeeeeeeeezing! and it's about what you prefer aesthetically as well. I've noticed that lots of cinematographers don't mind hand-shake, but it's objectionable to me. When I'm watching footage I'm guided by the camera movement. So much of film-making is intentioned. What I hear when the camera is moving around a lot is the cinematographer saying to me "look over here, oh wait hang on look here instead, no, over here again, oops someone bumped me, gee it's cold here, can we end this take now please?". The saying is that camera movement should be motivated, but I think the saying should be interpreted to be "camera movement is controlling the perception of the viewer" and I don't particularly like having my perception moving around like that, as if I'm drunk or on drugs or have ADHD etc. I guess it's art, and art is in the eye of the beholder. I suspect that cinematographers who like hand-held movement don't see what I see. If I could get away from shooting hand-held then I would, but it's not always an option. IBIS is a counter-measure, not a solution. I'd prefer to not need it too. What do you mean by "last gen lens"? Do you mean OIS? If so, yes, some OIS can be excellent. I agree that rolling shutter jello can be hard to fix, stabilisation seems to be common in NLEs but RS compensation (either as part of stabilisation or just RS of movement in the frame) isn't, and even then, it's putting a band-aid on a wound you're better off not having in your footage in the first place.

Replied. Hopefully we can get a better understanding, both about GS vs IBIS and also about why people react to your posts the way they do. So, are you buying a Komodo then?

I understand what rolling shutter is. Let me explain even more clearly. If I pick up a camera and shake it while recording, I get motion in the footage because the camera is pointing in a different direction when each frame was exposed. This is called camera motion. If that motion is caused by something like a smooth pan or tilt or is very gradual and smooth, then the motion will have a certain aesthetic, but if that motion is not smooth, but is very jerky with lots of small motion, then it will have a different aesthetic. Engaging a Global Shutter so that the whole frame begins and ends it's exposure at the same time (hey look - I did know what a global shutter is!) does not negate the fact that the camera is facing a slightly different direction each time a frame was exposed. IBIS, on the other hand, actually does negate the fact that the camera is facing a slightly different direction each time a frame was exposed, and under the right situation, will remove that motion from the footage. I get that you dislike the aesthetic of RS, and so switching to GS "fixes" it for you, but I dislike jittery camera motion, which GS does not fix. I'd link to a video explaining the differences between IBIS and GS in order to reflect back your level of condescension when you fail to understand what someone is saying and automatically respond by thinking you're smarter than them, but I don't think that anyone would have made a video on the topic because the differences are obvious. Or so I thought.

Nice pic! I think I know why I'm attracted to longer lenses than most. I shoot my family, and one of them happens to participate in a sport, so I shoot them doing that. I'm not really that interested in shooting the game itself, it's more a character in situation kind of thing. So in that sense it's a different purpose. Also, if you're shooting at night then I can understand why you'd be trading focal length for aperture, gotta let that light in! Yep. Welcome to Australia! I drove in the US once. I was doing really well until I got distracted in a carpark looking for a place to park. It took a second to work out why the other person was honking, and why they were coming right towards me 🙂 It's the darnedest thing. If I open that image in photoshop and hit Command-Z repeatedly, the image gets progressively clearer, but if I take footage straight out of the camera and into Resolve and hit Command-Z then nothing happens. Any ideas? Crap, I forgot to do my homework investigating my TC. I actually shot a bunch of stuff, working on a secret project, so insert mystery sound effects here. Will investigate. I was thinking all I need is to shoot a resolution chart 1km away, then realised how ridiculous that is. I'll see if I can find something that far away that can substitute 🙂 "Only" is right! I don't know what it is, but the play always seems to be occurring in a large arc around wherever I end up sitting. Play seems to spend a ridiculous amount of time going up and down the other side of the field, or in the middle, but I can almost not recall even half-a-dozen times when I felt insecure sitting in a chair about 1-2m back from the boundary line because play was nearby, and I'm talking over the period of the last few years. I made that comment to my wife and she was also quite perplexed about it, and considering that she often takes great delight in proving me incorrect about things, I take her lack of ridicule in the occasion to verify my observations!

I guess my point was that they're not the same. For example, I've seen enough 8mm hand-held footage to know I don't like the hand-held motion, it just looks amateur to me. I shoot hand-held due to the limitations of how and where I shoot, but I don't want that amateur look. The only ways to counter that are to put it on some kind of support (which I can't do), to make the rig heavier so micro-jitters don't happen (which I can't do for where I shoot, or can't hold all day, or both), or to have some kind of optical stabilisation, like IBIS. IBIS has its limitations and I'll be the first to admit it's not a miracle by any means, but it allows me to get non-shaky looking footage with a compact and light-weight setup, which GS does not do.

I've taken a similar approach to my travels in having multiple setups as backups. Considering that although my trips are holidays, they're similar in that we're away from major cities with electronics stores, we have tight schedules that aren't flexible, and I won't want to repeat the same one for lost footage so it's a now-or-never kind of thing. I went through my whole setup looking for single points of failure and eliminating them. I have multiples of every item and can, at a pinch, have anything fail and still continue shooting. The only weakness of the setup was that my backup body wasn't that great. Also, because I had backups of everything I essentially have duplicate setups, and so can film things from multiple angles if I choose to. I disagree. IBIS can reduce and even eliminate hand-shake to create smoother and even locked-off shots, whereas global shutter means that whatever movement is there isn't removed, it's just far less objectionable. Also, IBIS on wide lenses can combine with lens distortion and RS to create wobbling that global shutter does not introduce. So IBIS and GS both have strengths and weaknesses, but aren't equivalent. They're different tools for different jobs.

Don't Nikons have the focus ring going the wrong way? That would screw me up big time - who cares about the lens performance if I'm going the wrong way when focusing! It seems you're right though, that they're super sharp.. My budget is when I look at a lens and don't wince and then don't worry about how to justify it to my wife! Seriously though, I'm seeing: Canon FD 100-300mm f5.6 L from about USD200 / AUD300 that are clean and haze/fungus free Canon FD 80-200 f4 L from about USD350 / AUD450 that are clean and haze/fungus free The reviews I read of the 100-300 said that the non-L version was soft above 200, but the (few) mentions I found of the L version said it was much better, although I didn't find anyone saying the L was specifically better than the non-L above 200mm. Regardless, I'm currently shooting at 200 at the moment and even if the 100-300 L wasn't sharp above 200, it would be a step up as mine isn't sharp above ~135mm currently. Also, I read that at that time (early FD) they were super selective about which lenses got the L status, and there are a number of non-L lenses that are considered "honorary L lenses" as they're sharp enough to have gotten L status by more recent standards. In a sense, my budget is about the cost of the cheapest lens that will do the trick for me, in this case I think it's the 100-300L. I'm not seeing any native MFT lenses below $1K and there's almost none on ebay. Also, I already have the FD TC so that would be another expense if I moved away from FD glass. I'll give it a go and see what effect the TC is having, but I can tell the lens is soft at the longer end. It's easy to see in the viewfinder - when you go from 70-210 the contrast lowers, the colours wash out, the focus peaking almost stops working and only highlights the odd high-contrast edge - it's really very obvious. I'll do some tests and see what levels of sharpness I'm getting with which elements of the system, but in a sense it's rather academic because I need all the reach I can get. For context, this is a screen grab from full-everything at around ~2250mm or so with subjects about 100m away: This is with me sitting on the side roughly in the middle, ie, not at either end, and a lot of the ground is that far away so it's the distance I'm working with for the majority of the game: As you can see from the framing a drop in maximum focal length limits my options in a meaningful way. Also note the softness and halation of the image - that's what I'd like to get an improvement on if I can. I'm optimistic that the 100-300 L would give me a bump in performance due to it going to 300mm not 200mm and that it's an L lens. I guess it's worth acknowledging that shooting at over 2000mm is not a simple technical challenge, and that working with the budget I am working with it's amazing to just get the level of IQ that I am getting, or to even be able to get anything for that matter, let alone 120p, so I know I'm wringing blood from a stone. I'd just like a little more 🙂

I love that people don't remember the rear-facing camera any more.... What people think a street photographer looks like: What modern street photographers actually look like: Just remember to strike a pose when you hit the shutter button!

I find all of these conversations to be somewhat bizarre, as often the sentiment is that if that a given manufacturer doesn't deliver a dream-list of features, often completely contrary to their past offerings and / or license agreements and patents, and do it for some ridiculously small sum of money then the whole company is doomed. However, mentioning that the Z-Cam E2 M4 is at that price point with those features really sets the context of it not being pie in the sky, and brings it down to reality somewhat. Of course, the GH5 and E2 M4 are completely different form-factors for different purposes, but it is a realistic point of comparison specs-wise.

Back in 2018 (remember that there were times you were allowed to travel??) we took the kids to Japan, and I shot it with my GH5 and the wife shot it with her iPhone 8 Plus, and as a lot of the landmarks have pretty obvious places for a good composition we took many shots from the same location, often only moments apart. One thing that I was stunned about was how good the iPhone colour science was. Later on I struggled to replicate it from the GH5 HLG files I had, as the iPhone managed to get a clean, high contrast / high saturation look, while also not pushing things over the edge in terms of contrast or sat. So finely tuned was the colour science I pulled some of them into Resolve and if you even nudged them slightly the magic disappeared and they looked like images from a poor quality consumer camera. I'm very skeptical of higher resolution sensors in phones - you're very unlikely to print the images and decent size and if you're consuming them electronically it's not that common to have a high resolution display device for that purpose. Better to get the DR and colour science right and let the rest be as it may.

Thanks Chris - the CZ looks great but it's a little pricey if I can find a cheaper alternative that has sufficient performance. I'm kind of in that grey-area where I want the best images I can get but considering they're only for the family it's tough to work out where the budget limits sit! I don't mind the one-touch-zoom (or "pump action zoom" as I like to call them) as I typically don't change focal length during a shot. The 70-210 is a bit of a PITA in that it's not parfocal so when you do zoom you have to remember which way the focus went so you can quickly re-acquire it. On the occasions I do change zoom and focus simultaneously they sure come in handy though. Conversely, the focus controls are paramount as I am almost always adjusting focus during shots. The best shots are where the subject is broadly facing the camera (within perhaps a 90-degree range, so 45 to one side or 45 to the other) and you also want some action, so that means they will be moving, and hopefully moving quickly. All that adds up to them moving towards you, requiring the operator to engage MF-C 🙂 Wow that lens is long.... Whatever attention I am not attracting now, I sure as hell would with that thing! I have been experimenting with setting it to 420mm or slightly shorter as a compromise and just letting it run. I don't zoom out that much, but even if I do, I'm filming at 120p, and a 3s shot in the edit (or even a 4 or 5s shot) is less than 1s in real-time, so any movement over that period will just look like normal camera movement rather than the IBIS wobbling about, considering it doesn't wobble that fast when it does. I typically shoot for gesture rather than to follow the game or even the individual play, so I'm not against slowing the footage down by 2x in post either, so that would make it a 10x slow motion, where camera movement looks like a graceful ballet even though it's jerky as hell when watched real-time. I only shoot in daylight, and do need to zoom out on the odd occasion, so am willing to sacrifice a little bit of performance for that ability. Plus manually focusing at F4 is just making my life difficult for no reason, as at F8 or even F11 there is a very similar amount of background separation. If I'm on the long end, which I typically am most of the time, then the subjects are far far away, so I'm not getting much separation anyway, but that's fine for what I do. I do get that individual copies will be quite varied by this point. I've previously bought straight from Japan on ebay and gotten lenses in excellent condition or where there were flaws they were always stated explicitly in the lens listing. I also figure with an L lens it might have been looked after even better than a non-L, so I think I'm leaning towards the 100-300 L or the 80-200 L. I hadn't seen the 80-200 L as it's not listed in http://allphotolenses.com database but other mentions of it online are also highly favourable. I'll have to do more reading on it. In terms of dumb adapters, there's no way that I'm trusting my GH5 auto-focus on rapidly moving subjects with an old EF lens through an adapter lol. Seriously though, often the action has a bunch of kids all going for the ball and I want to keep focus on my son, which no AF is going to be able to do, especially when people are going everywhere and blocking line of sight much of the time. It's quite common for me to lose track of where my son is and to have to make blind decisions about where I keep the framing and for the play to stop and for everyone to gradually disperse and for my son to be last to stand up and to have been at the bottom of the pile-on that whole time. AF can be as dual-pixel as it likes, but unless it knows the rules of the sport and the psychology of my son, I'm better off doing it myself. Hahaha.. It's only fair - I've spent enough of other people's money over the years!