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Gerald just put out an incredible video talking about YT camera reviews, reviewers, manufacturers, and how the whole thing works. He talked about brands specifically and how they have treated him, including Panasonic punishing him for a YT title, Canon, Fuji, Sony, etc. The good, the bad, and absolutely the ugly. He also gave a pretty comprehensive and level-headed-sounding overview of how it works. If all you want to do is complain about everything (which is most people online sadly) then you can skip the nuanced parts of his video and just get to the gossip about each brand (that's what it is after all...) but the whole thing seems well thought-out.

Yeah, unfortunately it's the collective "we" and those of us who think there might be an optimum resolution and sharpness are hopelessly outnumbered by the MOAR! MOAR!! MOARRR!!!! people who are completely divorced from reality and can never get enough.

SHHHHH... I think Cam is listening....

Actually.....

Optics are different than the specs. One thing that isn't widely discussed is the optical formulas of lenses and what impacts they have on size and image quality. In general, the higher the optical performance the higher the quality..... For example, here's the Zeiss Otus 1.4/55 vs. Zeiss Planar 1.4/50mm The more everyone online keeps talking about megapixels and sharpness the larger all our lenses get. It's pretty simple really - we're getting what we asked for.

Or maybe they want to place another order with the factory but there is too much stock out there to make it an easy decision, so it could be part inventory management, part PR, and part market testing. I'm just guessing of course, but I have noticed that retail tends to prioritise moving units over profit. I've heard people before say that they'd prefer to be moving units even if it was without any profit margin at all rather than make profit but have very low throughput. I don't pretend to understand why..

Ah, right... I'd forgotten about the frame interpolation. Doing it your way bakes in the 3:2 pattern, but at least it won't look like someone accidentally slipped the audience something in their drinks!

I've used it on my 700D and yeah, it's not winning any UI awards that's for sure. Then again, I hear that the Sony menus give people nightmares so who knows. But when it comes to the image, it's like I said, different people wanting different things. All the professional colourists are taking the high-end Alexa footage and doing NR, softening / blurring, adding grain, and sometimes adding halation and diffusion - even on top of the vintage primes many movies were shot on. Then on the forums everyone is like "Dune looked AMAZING, I wish my films looked like that... anyway, who wants a 16K camera with no noise at ISO 100,000 and sharper Sigma Art lenses?" Yeah. People are even converting 24p movie clips to 4K 60p using AI and uploading those to YT. I suppose that's in-keeping with our current phase of revisionist history 😂😂😂

I suspect it differs by what you're trying to achieve. To me, the images have an effortless organic and analog quality to them, very much like the early Alexa models, without doing much grading - it's how the image is to begin with. You can get into that ballpark with the modern mirrorless cameras, but it takes a lot of work in post, and I'm not sure you'd get there completely. When I look at the test images from CineD and Slashcam all these modern cameras all look pretty similar, and even the ones that don't match the rest seem to be different in ways that are relatively easy to overcome in post. However, I've graded images from quite a few of these modern cameras and they all start out looking modern but regardless of what I tried (and I'm a better colourist than most folks around here) I couldn't get them to have any of that early organic magic that the OG BMPCC, Digital Bolex, 5D+ML, and the high-end 2K-3K cinema cameras all had. Maybe if you have FilmConvert or Dehancer and you really know what you're doing you can get them there, but I don't think people want that anymore. The look of high-end 2K workflows and of S35mm just isn't desirable to people anymore. I've said this before, but whenever I go to the cinema I get a massive confirmation that almost all the online camera discussions are about video and not cinema. Certainly almost all the images I see from 'camera people' look like they were shot with the worlds best interchangeable lens high-bitrate video camera, and look almost nothing like cinema. Even when people don't want something that looks super-digital, they apply a heavy film-look that makes things vintage. There was a high-end look that existed between 1985 and 2019, but I seem to be one of the last few outside the industry who want this look.

The image from the 5D3 and ML is simply incredible. @mercer swears by it and the images speak for themselves, there is an organic magic to them that is seldom seen regardless of price or form-factor. Apparently it's pretty stable too, no crashes etc. The 5D camera body is excellent but is ageing, and the sensor isn't the best in terms of modern specs, but prices are also very reasonable due to these things. EF glass is also plentiful, cheap, and optically excellent. The lack of stabilisation and the lower DR really suggest that it's a good camera for controlled conditions where DR and lighting ratios are within a manageable range. If you shoot controlled scenes then the 5D with ML certainly would be a good choice for having one camera.

Looks pretty good.... The poor-shooters Alexa 65?

Do you think that any cinematographer in their right-mind would use a 5D with a hacked firmware on a shoot that's $100,000 a day? Hollywood gets nervous if the camera is anything except an Alexa. If they get nervous about using RED, then you're dreaming that they'd even contemplate using a hacked firmware for anything. You talk as if you're familiar with the industry, but.....

Sure, but I recommend trying to be correct where you can. Early in my journey I read a lot on forums and I "learned" all sorts of things that simply weren't true, and it cost me a lot of money. Sure, casual readers of this forum aren't likely to be in the market for an Alexa, but if you're wrong about this then it makes me wonder what else you're saying that isn't correct either. Forums are not a group of people having a discussion amongst ourselves, they are more like a panel discussion where there are many more people that read the threads than who actually post in them. The technicalities of cameras and video are overwhelming enough without sprinkling in random statements that are factually incorrect.

It's also a strange comment to make if you've seen the PR videos of larger format cinema cameras where cinematographer after cinematographer gush about how the larger sensor will make all their dreams come true, and using all the words that forum fanboys use, and making all the mistakes that forum fanboys make around crop factor and DOF and FOV. I used to think that the pros automatically knew more about this stuff, but then I saw behind the curtain and realised that everyone is susceptible to sensor size envy. Since the Alexa LF and mini LF were released, the price of FF vintage primes has gone through the roof, to the point that a decade ago people were practically giving away sets of F1.4 primes and now the average cinematographer struggles to even put together a functional set of the F2.8 versions.

Interesting idea. How would you do it? I would have thought that every device would do it the same way, but maybe not..?

What a tragedy that would be.... Speaking of Iron Maiden, a recent discovery is watching reaction videos where people react to awesome music, and it's quite heartening to see that talent is still recognised and appreciated: Of course, it's also hilarious to see people implode when you give them some rather more full-on stuff too: and of course.. I first heard Slayer when I was 16 and by 17 it was basically easy listening, so I can't imagine what it would be like to hear it for the first time. For once the shocked-face in the thumbnails are appropriate!

Well, I do hate it when maidens aren't authentic!

Alexa LF and 65 are both FF or larger, you know, just in case you care about if what you're saying is actually true...

As I have written about before, the best film-making advice I ever got was to try to the most contrast and saturation into my images. Once you can push really far then it's easy to not push as far, so it's like doing altitude training, and you don't know the limits until you hit them. As such, here's a very heavy grade of some night footage from the GX85 and 12-35mm F2.8 zoom. This shows just how far 8-bit 709 footage can be taken. It's not free from artefacts, but then again, I see grading issues semi-regularly on Netflix, so... SOOC: Grade: In terms of how far this is pushed, lots of films get into this territory.. I concentrated a lot on matching tones across shots and it was pretty fiddly at times, but I was pushing things. Realistically I think there's a bit more in the footage and the limitation is my grading. It's worth pointing out that this was done in Resolve 18, so no Film Look Creator, and no third-party plugins so no FilmConvert, no Dehancer, etc, so some of the things I did might not be the best tools. When Resolve 19 goes out of beta I'll be rocking the Film Look Creator and Colour Slicer etc, which I think will make this stuff so much easier.

Awesome stuff! The fact that the profile is fully supported in colour management pipelines really unlocks the potential of the camera, and if you are interested in stills and video then being able to pull the right frame from the video means you can capture The Decisive Moment without having to be HCB.

Depending on what you typically shoot, it might be a significant difference just because the DR for each is quite low by modern standards. I've run into DR limitations frequently because I tend to shoot a lot at sunset and also in uncontrolled conditions in full daylight where you have to choose between what is in sun and what is in shade.

Also, to add onto the very good points of @eatstoomuchjam, you likely have a display problem too. Most modern computer devices (and potentially lots of smart TVs too??) run a 60Hz display. This will display 30p and 60p image streams perfectly with equal spacing between each new frame, but put a 24p video on there and you get jitter because the display isn't updating at a whole multiple of 24Hz. Displays at 120p or 240p will not have this problem, or if you drive the display with a 24Hz input and have the display in the 24Hz mode. This is the primary reason that I own a BM Ultrastudio Monitor 3G - it drives your reference monitor with the exact frame rate and resolution of the timeline, without any jitter. I've compared 24p vs 30p vs 60p videos on a 60p display as well as through the Ultrastudio and there's a big difference - I prefer the 24p in both scenarios because it doesn't look so artificially smooth as 30p and 60p, but depending on what you value in an image and how you perceive motion, the jitter might tip the balance for you. Unless you've got a dedicated output driving the monitor in the timeline frame rate, you really can't say anything at all about each frame rate because you're not seeing them properly.

I'm up for it... GX85 the whole way. Probably with a heavy film emulation. Although it seems that grading images to look like anything other than a camera test generates zero interest.

I'd imagine that the ML folks would be pretty good at getting the RAW sensor readout, so the DR of each implementation should be the same as the RAW still images, so perhaps just look those up to compare?