kye

Good points. A note about the above charts - my impression is that they're tested by lensrentals with a specialised piece of testing equipment, not just by connecting a camera and looking at the files on the SD card. Here's an article showing their setup and talking about it, but I'm not entirely sure how it works as they don't appear to explicitly state that: https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2018/06/developing-a-rapid-mtf-test-for-photo-and-video-lenses/ This is a later article on the subject: https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2018/11/using-rapid-mtf-testing-how-we-test-monitor-our-lenses/ However, regardless of how they perform the tests, you're not going to get better results than the charts indicate, unless a manufacturer has worked out how to up-res an image, in which case, woohoo! I'll be filming in SD, saving heaps of storage space and battery life, and I'll deliver in 8K to get the best YT quality

I think that there are three levels of AF involved in film-making: Can the AF focus quickly and reliably? Can the AF choose the right thing to focus on reliably? Can the AF transition between focal points in the most aesthetically pleasing way? Most of the AF conversation seems to be focused on the first one, but in reality it's split between the first two (and sometimes the third with older CDAF systems). PDAF / DPAF are great at the first one, and CDAF isn't too bad now (with the latest Panasonic cameras for example). Face detect and eye detect (and animal face/eye detect) are great advancements in the second one. The third one is also somewhat supported with the firmware offering some control of focus speed. So for example, Canon seems to be pretty good on their DPAF cameras - they normally detect a face and focus on it and not the background. With multiple actors in a narrative scene this may not work so well, but broadly it's not too bad. They also seem to offer a more organic focus transition too. Panasonics like the GH5 are actually relatively good at the first one, but seem to have issues with the second one - the out-of-focus shots you see in vlogs and lower-quality-more-disposable content aren't actually out-of-focus, typically the background is very well presented and looking lovely, it's just a pity that the presenter was a big blur! I also see some very mechanical transitions to acquire focus occasionally, like the focus mechanism is directly taken from a stills camera where it seeks at full speed, hunts for a bit, then locks on. Very unpleasant. My MF performance isn't that great at the first one, and I'm somewhat let down by the low-resolution of the focus peaking available, or by screen brightness if I'm using the LCD outdoors. On the other hand I have zero problems with either the second or the third. At no point do I ever find myself not listening to myself in terms of what I want to focus on! I'm pretty good at doing the third one, and certainly if I'm not rushed and it's not a difficult focus pull then I'm fine, and I have no limitations in doing a slow focus pull during a shot and then immediately after that doing a fast-as-possible focus pull to catch something else that might happen unexpectedly. With one of those menu-based settings things you're limited by the current settings and it takes a long time to change them. I also find that the aesthetic suits my style of film-making, but that's a creative choice and wouldn't be shared for many productions.

Yes, but so are most lenses. You have to be very careful with these things - there is a fundamental flaw with lens tests. We tend to test lenses at 5.6, 2.8, and wide-open. This is a trap because there are many lenses that are wide-open at f1.7 (for example) and that lens is sharper wide-open than the Voigtlander is wide-open, but here's the thing, that's comparing one lens at f1.7 and the other at f0.95 so it's not a fair test. The Voigtlander is sharper when it's at f1.7 than the other lens is, but no half-baked lens test will tell you that. You have to be sure that you're not comparing apples with oranges. Here are some charts to show you what I mean.. Voigtlander 42.5mm So, you can see that by f2.8 it sharpens right up. For comparison, here's a Zeiss CP.2 at T2.1 - the Voigtlander is sharper across most of the frame when it's at F1.4 than the Zeiss at T2.1, and these lenses are radically more expensive. Here's the Samyang Xeen cine lens, with it's absolutely terrible performance wide-open at T1.5....... and here is a Zeiss Super Speed, one of the classic cine lenses (a set of them sells for over $100K) with it's very poor, but hugely desirable, softness wide open... These comparisons aren't exactly fair considering that these other lenses are full-frame, but to dismiss a lens based on softness wide open is just stupid when you understand that most lenses are soft wide open, and also take into account how much faster the Voigtlander is. So let's compare the MFT competition too... Here's the Voigtlander at F1.4 and F2.8 for comparison: This is the Panaleica getting crushed wide-open: This Olympus is about on par with the Voigt at f1.8 This is the Panasonic not really beating the Voigt: This Olympus PRO lens not really looking quite so PRO in comparison to the Voigt: And the Panaleica f1.2 also failing to beat the Voigt: So basically: The Voigt is sharper wide-open than many of the classic / industry standard FF cine lenses The Voigt is of similar or better sharpness as the competing MFT lenses when they're wide open, and it opens up further, so you can use it stopped down or you can open it up further to get more light in Many of the people that like things like the Zeiss Super Speeds actually like the softness of the lens wide-open because it's like having two different lenses - vintage when open and more modern when stopped down, so the softness of the Voigtlander is actually a desirable thing for some. Now, is the Voigt perfect? No. They're expensive, they have a colour cast when wide open, I've heard they're not built to be repaired and they're only MFT so who knows if they're a good long-term investment. Are they the sharpest lenses available? No - the Veydras are much better performers at equivalent apertures. But should we cast them aside because they're soft wide open? No.

Make up your mind...

I solved all these issues by buying a GH5 and bought the Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95, Voigtlander 42.5mm F0.95, and Laowa 7.5mm F2. Spending ~2.5K on lenses seems to freak everyone out, but think about how many bodies you've gone through.... So, I have 4K60, 1080p180, 4/5K 10-bit internal, no recording limits, incredible IBIS, and the FF equivalent of a 15mm F4 / 35mm F2 / 85mm F2 in cine packages with long focal throws and de-clicked apertures. The only "price" I had to pay for all this is to move to manual focus, which I discovered I prefer the aesthetic of, and I spend 0.00000% of my life silently screaming at the camera to focus on the right thing while the moment goes by and is lost. Welcome to the club. I think you're not a fully fledged member of these forums if you haven't made a list like this. By the way, you forgot to add: Gimbal-like IBIS 16 stops of DR dedicated buttons for all functions internal NDs mirrorless to adapt all sorts of vintage lenses 10-hour battery life pocketable / under 200g $100 or less retail price ????????????? Not a chance. Not even after Sony say in a press release that the entire line is cancelled. Not even after Sony stop making cameras. Not even after the entire company goes bankrupt and closes shop. Look at the following the NX1 still has. This will be a generational thing - like when people fight in a war and the level of fantasy / trauma means they never completely recover....

P4K, P6K, and now the P8K... collect the whole set! At this rate the P8K would come with a PL mount for that BM camera complaint trifecta: battery life, that it's still called "pocket", and the lens mount!

I agree with the desire for simplicity and also having one set of lenses, but there are some significant challenges to this approach: Having a single set of lenses that will work across multiple sensor sizes is difficult as the crop factor difference makes the lenses different focal lengths. If you're planning to mix footage from the different cameras then you'll get different 'looks' from the same lenses (the smaller crop factor will reveal the resolution limitations on the glass and the larger sensor will reveal the problems on the edges of the image circle from that lens). Even if you aren't planning on matching footage from multiple cameras, it still makes it difficult to get an ideal set as there aren't many rectilinear FF lenses that are wide enough to be a wide on a crop sensor (a 16mm is a 20mm lens on the GH5 and that's with the 0.64x SB so will be longer with any other configuration) You seem to be attached to face detection (you listed it in your post) but the GH5 has poor AF and BM have no AF-C etc.. Reading between the lines a bit, I suspect you're like the rest of us in that you want a camera that does everything, but unfortunately it just doesn't exist. Almost every discussion on these forums is about this issue - either us getting annoyed at the manufacturers for not making it, refusing to acknowledge that it doesn't exist, refusing to compromise, buying more equipment out of a hope that it will somehow magically side-step the issue, or talking about what the various compromises are that we have made. I'm no different. I started out wanting great AF and lamenting Canon for not having real 1080, and I shortlisted many cameras and did all sorts of testing and evaluation before realising what compromises I was willing to make and what priority each factor was for me and how I shoot. I ended up with a GH5 and native fully-manual lenses because that was the combo that suited my preferences best, but the A7iii + 24-105mm F4 lens was the runner up option and I was only able to come up with a better option by dropping AF completely. My advice is to accept that no perfect camera exists, prioritise what you want then work out what equipment fits that the best. Or, if I put it a little differently, work out your priorities BEFORE buying the gear, because I can guarantee you that if you buy the gear without doing it then you will still do it afterwards. and here's an observation for consideration - you're rejecting video from the GH5 and the A7iii as a hybrid camera. Both of these are in the top 3 options available for the situations you're using them for, and many would argue that they're the best in their categories, so I'd suggest that rejecting them is more about your expectations than it is about what is available in the marketplace.

I’m confused - you said you like the image you get from the A7iii and don’t really like the image you get from the GH5. I’m also not clear on what you’re trying to achieve?

There’s a thread on here about Resolve and colour grading and i’ve shared all the really useful videos and resources I could find about it: Resolve is perhaps the best overall solution in terms of having all the bases covered so you can ingest, transcode, log, edit, sound-design, VFX, colour grade, and export all from the same software. Resolve is weakest in the editing and management of media, and strongest in colour grading compared to the other packages. It’s also improving and adding features at about 10X the speed of the other packages. The idea that you avoid Resolve because its colour grading is too complicated and instead use one NLE for editing and Resolve for colour grading makes no sense as both involve having to learn Resolve and colour grading. The reason that Resolve is complicated to learn is that it is powerful. In much the same way that Lightroom is more complicated to use for colouring images than Instagram is, it is also more powerful and can do things that Instagram cannot. Photoshop is more powerful (thus more complicated) again over Lightroom. Packages like iMovie are the colour grading equivalents of Instagram, PP and FCPX are the equivalents of Lightroom, and Resolve is the equivalent of Photoshop. Learning Photoshop is daunting if you’re only familiar with Lightroom, but if you want to progress in the industry then you can’t expect to get away without learning it, and the same is true of Resolve. FCPX and PP offer the basic colour grading tools and are sufficient for the majority of work done on normal productions, but Resolve can do almost anything, and is actually more flexible than Photoshop due to the difference between nodes vs layers. The reason that people talk about FCPX/PP/Resolve are all kind of spoken about as equivalent options is that you don’t have to use Resolve to colour grade, and perfectly good grades are done all the time in FCPX/PP. The other reason they’re spoken of in equivalent terms is that TBH most people online don’t actually know enough about colour grading to appreciate the extra things that Resolve can do. That’s not a criticism, I speak with professional colourists and they say that most of the time they are just doing basic corrections and don’t need to use the exotic tools or techniques that often at all (and most productions don’t have the budget to get that fancy). The only times when there is time / budget to get really sophisticated with colour are big budget productions where there’s money available and hobbyist productions where someone has lots of time because they’re essentially working for free on a passion project. I’d suggest you get clear on what you’re trying to achieve and work backwards. In reality, the extra functionality that Resolve offers isn’t understood, required, or even used most of the time, colour grading itself is over-hyped in comparison to things like good editing. Good editing is over-rated in terms of how important it is to get good lighting, sound, and composition while actually shooting, and everything I have listed is all basically pointless if the writing is bad or you have nothing to say. After reading this thread, my advice would be to: Pick the software package you like, or just pick one, and move on Realise that building your editing, sound production, and basic colour skills is what you should be focusing on and accept that your overall success will be determined by the relationships you develop within the industry, not on anything else I’m happy to help out if you have more questions, and good luck

Interesting that you don’t like the GH5 and prefer the A7iii - for most it is the other way around. Are you shooting log and grading in post or are you shooting a rec709 preset? I know that the rec709 from the A7iii looks lovely, whereas the GH5 log files are very easy to grade and people struggle with Slog. In terms of the P4K vs P6K, I agree with @IronFilm about the P4K being the much more flexible option in terms of adapting lenses, but it depends on what lenses you use and like. For example if you’re going to just use the Sigma 18-35 and 50-100 f1.8 lenses and nothing else then maybe the 6K is a better fit. Like I say to everyone, get clear on what work you’re trying to do and how you like to work, make a list of your priorities and rank them in order (by asking yourself questions that force you to choose between two priorities) and only then consider what equipment you should buy. That way you will spend money on things you will use, rather than things that seem cool or that will solve problems you would like to have..

Ah, yes. I guess as an owner of the original Veydras the Meike releases aren’t quite the good news that they are for other people! Doh! There is the possibility that they aren’t the same level of quality though, as we know that the Veydras are superlative because of the rigorous lensrentals tests, but no-one has done equivalent testing of the Meike releases, so although they look the same the glass or materials may not be equivalent.

I agree with the above, and while I recommend Resolve to people and firmly believe it will gradually take on a huge market share, if you want to get work the most important thing will probably be using the same tools / workflows / etc as the people you will be working with. Even if that means Adobe, which seems to be buggy as hell and going down the toilet if YT and these forums here are to be believed. I would make one suggestion though, and that's to try and think longer-term because if there's an industry you want to get into later on but don't have immediate access to then it might be worth aiming high and being a bit of a misfit for the interim. I should also suggest that I've watched enough videos where people compare NLEs or swap from one to another to know that software isn't just which buttons to push and where the windows are, the structure of the software (including the features, hotkeys, control surfaces, and strengths and weaknesses) all shape the way that people think about editing, and while it's tempting to think that now we've left tape / film splicing behind that in the age of NLEs they'd all be the same, they're not.

You forgot whatever Veydra reissues Meike will be releasing for next to nothing!! I look forward to your ironglass lens impressions and footage...

No experience with the Olympus cameras, but I’d suggest that the best approach is just to google the various settings, do lots of tests and generally play with things. Sports and fast-moving things is difficult for AF, so you’ll need to dive in deep to get the best results. Good luck - i’ve heard that the Oly cameras have some real advantages over Panasonic but for some reason they don’t get the PR that the others get. I was considering an Olympus before I bought my GH5, but the 10-bit internal was more valuable to me than the superior AF or IBIS, but PDAF would sure be a huge advantage to have!

Best approach is to work out what you’re missing and then either fix that or give yourself a reality check.. For example, if you’re chasing good autofocus then you should consider why you need AF in the first place, and if using a deeper DoF would fix it, for example. The reality check is to assume you just bought an A7iii, so just donate $4K to charity to simulate the financial hit of being locked into the Sony lens rort, then take all your 10-bit footage and batch convert it to 8-bit and apply a sickly green WB to simulate the experience in post. There’s currently no FF camera that can do everything the GH5 does without giving up something. Even the S1H (which won’t fix your AF envy) will still hit the CC pretty hard and IIRC is bigger and heavier than the GH5. The grass always looks greener, but often it tastes just as bad, but in a different way.....

Cool looking lens.. Super wide and a lot smaller than the 40mm, so cool for less conspicuous run and gun.

If YT detects that you've used someone elses music then it applies the relevant rule from its database. Most songs get your video demonetised (which means the ad royalties go to the copyright holder of the music instead of you) but some songs are blacklisted and so your video is just blocked and no-one can view it. YT has a search engine here to inspect what the rules are: https://www.youtube.com/music_policies?ar=2&nv=1 TBH it's actually pretty draconian considering that you might plan, write, cast, shoot, edit, grade and publish a 90-minute video but if you include something like 10s of someone elses music then they get the entire ad revenue and you get nothing, but then again on the other hand YT gives you about 0.3c per view, so you're basically not making much money anyway, which is why every video is now sponsored.

Anyone know what the DR of the sensor is? The Canon film-making YouTubers have really struggled with the comparatively poor DR of late and one posted a series of videos from a trip that were clipped to hell and obviously had a bunch of interactions with other manufacturers because camera tests from other manufacturers followed quite closely.

Thanks to a nice sunset, I took a few RAW photos that are interesting. Here's the first one - sunlight and shade on the fence (which is made of small sticks). The image looks fairly neutral, if perhaps a little warm. In realty the sticks are pretty neutral, doing the silvering that weathered wood tends towards. If we apply some OTT saturation for diagnostic purposes, we get this: That looks fine, not counting the over-saturation, but is well within the colour palette of cinema. If I shift the WB a little towards "neutral" and put some colour in the shadows then this is what we get. You'll note from the vectorscope that this has had a slightly non-linear effect (I did this adjustment with the Offset control in the first node, so not sure why it would do that) but I don't think it takes us too far from reality: So, this is the natural colours created when the suns light is scattered by the atmosphere, which is why sunsets are orange/red/purple and the sky is blue. The sun is a pretty good approximation of a source of full-spectrum black-body radiation: https://lco.global/spacebook/light/black-body-radiation/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation There appears to be a spectrum from Blue to Red that objects follow, depending on their colour temperature. Here's a chart showing the colour temperature of various stars for example: As all of these are sources of broad spectrum radiation they all kind of act the same in terms of rendering colour, also including incandescent light globes and fire. Here's the spectrum of an incandescent light globe: and I suspect that fire is broadly the same. We didn't really get different coloured light sources until we started messing with chemistry and making things like fluoresce, like this fluorescent light: So, the Orange / Teal look occurs in nature, and I presume we attach some kind of psychological sense of well-being from times we spent with other folks around a fire, being both warm and (relatively) safe.

Just did a couple of tests (8mm SLR Magic vs 7.5mm Laowa) and both wobbled a lot, although the 7.5mm wobbled a lot more. 7.5mm is only 6% wider than 8mm but it felt like there was more than 6% more wobble, although my test was very unscientific. Thinking about it more, Bill is right that it must be a comparison between a lens designed for a larger vs smaller sensor, however I think it might just be that wider lenses are more problematic due to the 3D projection onto 2D plane. I don't have any APSC or FF lenses wide enough for a real comparison as all my wider lenses are all MFT. It would be interesting if someone else could do the test though.

Interesting question, and worthy of some testing. It will be to do with the level of distortion within the frame, but with all lenses there is a fundamental issue because the image projection is spherical and the sensor is flat, and it's worse on wider lenses, which I think is why wide lenses are either fisheyed or are very stretched in the corners. Let me do some tests....

Australia...

Great stuff! Well done I also shoot family travel videos so it's always interesting to see the choices that others make - not too many people upload this type of content so thanks for sharing!

This is interesting to me, more from a nerd perspective rather than a desire to deliver in 8K, but interesting nonetheless. I think it would be really interesting to see real tests where an 8K sequence is downscaled to 4K or 2K, ran through the upscaler, then compared mathematically to the original resolution. Obviously we don't see exactly the same as a straight mathematical comparison, so subjective comparisons would also be useful, but comparisons can be made. I watched a comparison of some stills image upscalers and the person reviewing them consistently chose the worst quality ones because they smoothed the skin and did other things that no-skill retouchers love to do, so it would be nice to get more objective results.

Awesome! I can't watch it (title not available in my location) but great to see some distribution happening