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Today we had an early xmas lunch (to avoid the conflicting invitations on the 25th) and I shot it with the GX85 and 12-35mm F2.8. Shooting was really fast and not under ideal conditions (massive window which is often backlighting people) but it did a great job. Here are a few random stills, SOOC - zero editing. Standard colour profile, with -5 Contrast / Sharpening / NR and 0 Saturation. People often lower saturation in-camera but I push my grades to have lots of saturation so I prefer to have the camera do the 8-bit conversion and compression on stronger saturated colours so that I'm not boosting up a weak colour signal in-post. When I grade it I'll be softening it up, fine-tuning the colours and adding some colour grading secret-sauce but for a someone shooting a family gathering with an 8-bit camera while also being part of the festivities, the images really speak for themselves.

Sure. Perhaps the important part that I didn't mention is that I often miss moments because I was a second or three late to get the camera pointed in the right direction and rolling, so to say I don't have time to do a manual WB before hitting record would be an understatement because often I have a negative amount of time I can devote to such things! Doing what you can to get it right in-camera is definitely preferable, but in how I shoot, getting it into the camera at all is something that is by no means guaranteed. Of course, I am in a very tiny minority of all the people who shoot and know how to change the WB in post, but while my process doesn't apply to the majority of shooters, I still think there can be things learned by sharing 🙂

Absolutely. My situation is that I don't record long clips much, and in the edit I almost never have a shot more than 4s long. Also, I have a lot of time to edit compared to the footage I capture, so having time to fiddle with the footage isn't the problem, having the skill to do it well is!

There's a school of thought that says you just set a fixed WB of (IIRC) 5500K, which will make day seem on the bluer side golden hour / sunset warmer, blue hour cooler, and incandescent lights warmer. The idea is that this is sort of intuitively how we experience the world on some subconscious level, so the final result will seem right intuitively. Personally, I set auto-WB because it's more likely to get closest to correct than I will, because I don't shoot at a lightning pace rather than a snails pace, and gives me the least amount of adjustment required to do. In terms of getting it right in-camera, you should absolutely do it if you have time to. I don't, so adjust in post, but the better you can get it in-camera, the more potential your footage has in post.

Shoot 60p, edit on a 24p timeline, colour grade on a 24p timeline, do sound design on a 24p timeline, do VFX / titles on a 24p timeline, then when you're finished, copy all the objects on the timeline to a 60p timeline and hit export! Despite most education professionals being genuine and having the best of intentions, much of the learning happens despite the educational system rather than because of it. Follow your own path by default, submit to their nonsense where needed, save your energy for the work, and then when you graduate go off and have the best life 🙂

I've seen enough corporate shenanigans up close to know that (unfortunately) it's often the case that the political interests and motivations of the people in charge are completely divorced from the purpose of the business, and sometimes, reality itself. For example, I've seen decisions between two options which each had pros and cons get taken to a committee of senior leaders and emerge with the decision of a magical new third option that is clearly worse than either option originally proposed. I've seen this happen more than once across more than one organisation. Let's hope that some semblance of common sense prevails. You'd imagine that the demand for products in a marketplace would help drive things in the right direction just by sheer economics, but you'd be amazed at how isolated and deluded organisational decision-making can be, especially in committee.

Speaking of lenses, the size of the camera body is only part of the equation. The smallest lenses I have include... Olympus 15mm F8 Body Cap Tiny lens, tack-sharp, has all the advantages of a fixed-focus manual prime. Only downsides are the focusing lever can easily get bumped, and F8 is sloooooow Panasonic 14mm F2.5 Fast, sharp, small. A favourite for a reason! Laowa 7.5mm F2.0 Thin but potentially getting too long for convenience / pocketability. Fast and sharp, wide with zero distortion, but it's expensive. SLR Magic 8mm F4.0 Only one stop slower than the Laowa and not really much smaller, but hugely cheaper. Ergonomics are crap though - it's designed for drones and the focus mechanism isn't damped, but instead has a locking screw that you have to loosen/tighten every time you want to adjust it. But, it's so deep DoF that you could easily use it as a fixed-focus lens. Other interesting small lenses I don't have include: 7artisans Photoelectric 18mm f/6.3 UFO 7artisans Photoelectric 18mm f/6.3 Mark II Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 17mm F2.8 Pancake Panasonic Lumix G 20mm F1.7 Lumix G Vario 12-32mm F3.5-5.6 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 EZ A batch of lenses from AstrHori have shown up on B&H, a manufacturer I've never heard of, which also look small.. AstrHori 27mm f/2.8 II AstrHori 10mm f/8 II AstrHori 14mm f/4.5 What are everyone's go-to lenses for these tiny cameras? Or are you giving the middle finger to the lens size and just being a rockstar?

I've looked at the E1 before as well, it really is absolutely tiny - almost action camera sized! What lenses do you use it with? I must admin that by the time you add a lens then the size advantage is potentially diluted somewhat. Does it have AF? I have a vague sense that there was some 'gotcha' that steered me away from it. The 4K really is great though. I definitely agree with @John Matthews about the advantage of 4K on these little cameras, even if the 4K isn't that great in absolute terms the mode tends to have more bitrate and when you put it on a 1080p timeline the compression artefacts on edges etc are often smoothed over in the downsampling. I also looked at the GM1, it's also very small... I think the tilt-screen of the GX85 won me over - my GF3 has a fixed screen and doing high and low angle shots with my GF3 was almost impossible with manual focus lenses. I've since moved away from MF to AF lenses, but even framing is a challenge and no screen can compete with reflections of the sky if you're holding it above your head and tilting it down so you're looking at the screen at almost 90 degrees!

Thanks 🙂 That's an interesting film. The repeated shots are a bit distracting but I forgive them, those who haven't published works don't have the authority to criticise those who have, and those who have published works will likely understand that sometimes compromises must be made, and that compromises might have been more necessary in 1948 shooting a road movie on film than now! It's much harder than people think to keep an audience engaged without dialogue.

DPreview said "The GF5 is a fairly subtle refresh of the GF3" and side-by-side they're almost identical, as well as the specs, so I don't think your revelation really changes things all that much 🙂

Actually, because it's full-auto, I did nothing to protect the highlights - it does what it wants and that's that! I think it exposes to protect some highlights, but I'm not entirely sure. I didn't really look at the SOOC clips with any detail, I just edited them and applied the film treatment. Incidentally, all that was done in Resolve with the built-in plugins - no Dehancer / FilmConvert / Filmbox etc - using the Film Damage / Film Grain OFX plugins and the Kodak 2383 LUT. All the camera shake was in-camera (I'm so talented!) but when I tried to add some shake to the end title it had some sort of bug and I couldn't work out how to get around it, which is why they're disappointingly stable. I should also work out how to add flicker, I don't know if there's a plugin for that or not. As nice as the beach and sunset look, I'm really bored of filming the same locations over and over again, but the GF3 / body cap lens combo and the different style of video made it quite fun and encouraged me to add camera movement and break out of my normal style, so that was really good. I essentially only film at home for practice so that when I go on trips I am familiar with the equipment and can shoot fast, but it's hard to maintain motivation for months or years on end between trips. I can see myself using that setup again, I feel like the small size helps the shooting experience around people, although one person did look at the camera in the footage (in a shot I cut). So it's not invisible.

This was tonights project. Just for fun...

Yes, when I was buying the GF3 I read some raving reviews of the GF1 - I don't remember the details now but there was some sort of button layout that was magic to use apparently, but it changed on the GF2 and subsequent models. I was torn about which to buy, but the GF1 had such a following that GF1s were more expensive to buy than the GF3, even though the kit I got included the GF3, 14-42 kit lens, 14mm f2.5, spare batteries, charger, memory card, screen protector, and a plethora of other bits and pieces. Thanks, I'll have a closer look over the holidays 🙂 Thanks 🙂 I guess I asked because there are very few people using cameras this small, and I have generally had the idea that smaller is better because it attracts less attention, but there's a point where smaller isn't better and I'm not really sure where that point is, so my thinking in this area isn't that clear. I definitely think of the GX85 as being superior to the GF3, but that is for so many reasons that I'm really not sure of which of them matter and which are just part of the package. I'd be stunned if anything being discussed here wouldn't blow the GF3 away in video terms, its a real weakness, which is a pity because I took the GF3 around the world back when I was taking photos and it captures stills that are about 50 levels higher than the video!

Ah, I think I found it. Changing from Light Mode to Dark Mode seems to fix it, even keeping Ambient Mode enabled (which seems to be the thing that gets some other people). Odd. Seems like a bug in YT.

It was on automatic, but setting it manually didn't seem to make any differences. I wish it was that simple 🙂

Has YouTube CGU/GPU usage gone up in the last week or so? Before that my MBP did 4K 24-30p videos fine, fullscreen on my UHD panel, in any browser. Now, in Firefox, the same videos max out the fans and it sounds like it's trying to take off vertically, and even more odd, switching to something easy like 480p would have the same effect. Safari is better, but still has noticeably more fan speed than a fortnight ago. ....or maybe my computer is getting a hernia or something? I did the usual troubleshooting, restarting etc, and haven't had any hardware changes either.

+1 for some of these older cameras really having a great look to them. There are lots of threads here about the older cameras, like F3, that have continued on because the image really holds up and has a certain magic to it that is difficult to replicate with modern ultra-resolution cameras. Sadly, most people know very little about how to manipulate the image in post so have to "buy" the image they want from the camera. Older cameras are a way to get a more cinematic look without knowing how to push and pull the image significantly in post.

In practical terms, how much difference do you think that the size / weight differences between the GX850 and GX85 makes? Genuine question. For example, is there something you find you're able to do with the smaller form-factor that can't be done with the larger one? I ask because I have the GF3, which is of a similar size to the GX850, but in many ways I see that it's too small. Panasonic has made a good attempt at the ergonomics with little grip formations, but I find it too small for my hands, and also by the time that you add any non-tiny lens then the size of the camera body no longer really contributes much to the overall size of the rig. In some ways I really wanted the GF3 to be passable in 1080p, but whenever I shoot with it the softness of the 1080p is too soft for me, and the micro-jitters also too much, so by the time you add a lens with OIS, you're better off with the GX85 IBIS and a smaller lens. I must admit that this thread has made me pick up the GF3 again. It's currently sitting with the 15mm F8 body-cap lens on it, and me in a bit of a mental loop. I want the GF3 to work - the small size seems like fun, but if I use a small aperture lens then I'm better off using my phone, and if I want shallow DoF or a vintage lens vibe then the size advantage disappears and I might as well use the GX85. But then I want to use the GF3, so I lament the fact that the sensor can shoot 12MP RAW stills, but the video is so soft, and I remember the hack that I couldn't get working for it. Then I just get disappointed about how old tech was needlessly bottlenecked. Then a day or so later, I see it and it looks like fun, and the cycle starts again! I shot some test videos on it using a number of different lenses, but I just couldn't get anything on it that wouldn't have been better using something else. Maybe the GX850 is different in some way?

Yes. 30p and 60p completely ruin the viewing experience for me - like if someone peed in my drink. It doesn't matter what else the drink had in it, I'm not drinking it with pee in it. You're not convincing anyone to like what you like, we're not convincing you to like what we like. Time to stop posting.

Is this another specifications-only thread? Or is there some point to it? Are you looking to buy one? If so, please provide information about what you want and what your requirements are. If not, why are you asking? Otherwise there's no point and it'll be yet another thread where the participants don't even agree what the fundamental goal is that is trying to be achieved, and it'll be like asking my wife about something and the only answer you get is that she wants the red one because it goes with the interior decorating.

Even better!

My GF3 is like this - full auto in video mode. A "cheat" workflow I developed is this: Put camera into full-manual mode, base ISO and 180 shutter Using a fully manual lens, set desired aperture / focus / ND to get correct exposure Hit dedicated video record button The camera will then automatically adjust ISO and SS, preferring longer SS until at 360 shutter before raising ISO above base ISO, so it will stay around the right settings. It will still be doing auto-WB too, but you can't have everything 🙂

This is the same for me, the good stuff is all personal. I make lots of little edits as camera tests, and put a reasonable amount of time into the edit, adding music etc, to keep as a momento. So by the time I've done that the last thing I want to do is another public edit and re-do the frame-level editing and music and sound design etc. One thing I did do, which is a little besides the point but might be useful, is I found that I wanted to repeatedly reference clips from various cameras and projects, typically to try new colour grading techniques, but sometimes for other stuff too. What I did was I got organised and found the best clips from each trip / shoot and copied them onto a folder on my SSD as reference clips. Under that I had two folders for each camera, one for clips I can share in public and the other for personal stuff. Then I made a timeline with all the personal clips from each camera first, then a gap, then all the publicly sharable clips from each camera after that. Then if I have an idea for trying out some technique I can quickly pull that up, maybe take a copy of the timeline, and experiment on footage from across all the cameras I've shot on over the years. I've found it really handy since I did it actually, and I refer to it quite a bit.

Yep, that sure is small.... If Panasonic do announce an updated small-form-factor MILC it'll be interesting what they choose. They sure have made some progress with sensor design since the GX85 / GF9 came out, so hopefully it'll be a good bump in spec 🙂 Do you have any footage to share @John Matthews?

It's a subtle thing - shooting 24p won't make something instantly cinematic or larger than life. The 'recipe' for making something look cinematic or larger than life (or any of the other dozens of ways to describe it) is that you need to do everything in a way to emphasise that experience. Everything from the writing to the acting to the lighting to the framing to the production design to the editing to the colour grading to the sound design to the mastering to the way that the finished product is viewed. They all matter, otherwise the studios would simply not pay for them. The cinematic look is a feeling you create inside the viewer by making 1000 small decisions about every aspect of the whole process.