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How wonderful! Great stuff.. My wife said "Aww, that was really cute, and touching".

I use proxies all the time. I create 720p Prores proxies from the 4K h264 or 6K h265 source footage, which allows me to fit the source media onto the SSD of my laptop and edit on my daily commute to work. The 720 Prores cuts like butter and doesn't kill the CPU and battery. I just wish Resolve had a nicer way to render them.

The first few generations of tech always look hideous - just wait, it will get better, then it will get great. This is me going on record.

It's probably worth mentioning that there are three magic ingredients here.. "wide aperture", "MFT", and "sharpness". Our problem is that if we're testing the adapter for how sharp it is, then we're in trouble with most/all of the fast MFT lenses, because they are absolutely not sharp when wide open! I have the 17.5mm f0.95 Voigtlander and the last two stops are quite soft, and compared to the difference that the adapter is likely to be making they are probably useless. What we need is for someone to test it with a lens that actually is razor sharp when wide open, and for that I think we have to adapt something else. Just look at the lens test that @BTM_Pix posted in the Lenses thread - how much sharper the master prime was than the Rokinon or Dog Schidt lenses when wide open, and then look at the size / cost comparison! I'd be surprised if any of us with our mere mortal lens collections would be able to tell any difference at all.

This is potentially the best IQ of the bunch IMHO. Great work!!

The Z6 has a lot of fans on here - many believe that it has the best colours (or close to) of any of the modern bunch of cameras. My impression is that shadow detail and colour are partly matters of taste and the project (think about how green the skin tones in The Matrix were!) but obviously an ARRI does better than the first iPhone so there are some objective measures. In terms of highlight rolloff I think this is purely taste. If you capture a scene without clipping, with minimal noise, and in 10-bit (or more) then you should be able to create whatever highlight rolloff you like. The work that @Sage has done with the GHAlex LUTs is a good example of how closely you can emulate an Alexa with a GH5, and the highlight rolloff is a significant component of that look. I would suggest that many cameras can get the shots in the video I posted - or at least 99% of the way there. Many great looking videos have been shot with very modest equipment when put in the hands of someone with the requisite skill, and given the right lighting, production design, etc. Anyone can pick up an S1, Z6, or Alexa for that matter, and record awful looking footage. The difference between what the best and worst GH5 footage looks like is night and day, and the difference between what the S1, Z6 can do in comparison to an Alexa is much smaller than the aforementioned gap. Thanks! I suspect they're all walking on flat ground and the subject in the foreground is a little taller and the camera height combined with the wide angle lens is what makes the height difference more apparent.

Considering it's not your video I will not analyse too deeply or be too critical, but this is what I see: There is quite a bit of variation between shots, some are really good and some aren't as good Overall the colours are pretty good It wasn't shot with an ND (the fan shows no motion blur) so that gives it a slightly video look, but this is a minor point I think what lets down some of the shots in this film are lighting and composition - this is where the top end of cinematography really shines and in this video some shots are very nice and others have odd framing, distracting backgrounds, unflattering lighting angles, etc. Having said all that (much of which is nit-picking) it needs to be acknowledged that this video was obviously shot on the street, the models were shared amongst many photographers, there appeared to be no artificial lighting and I didn't see any lighting modifiers in there, and it's likely that the time available wasn't huge. In those circumstances it's a completely different challenge, and comparing a high-end cinematographers showreel to something shot run-n-gun in probably only an hour or two doesn't make sense. If you're interested in good examples of cinematography then I'd encourage you to stop looking at YouTubers and start looking at the pros. Make a list of the most gorgeous movies, TV shows, and advertisements you've ever seen, research who shot them, who graded them, and then go find their showreels and use those as a reference point for great images. Here's a good one: Then read as much BTS stuff as you can find. Using IMDB and shotonwhat.com will unearth huge amounts of information about how these images were created. Also, there is no substitute for hard work. Find a shot you like, take a whole day and try and replicate it. Work out what lighting was used, what lens, what angles, then pull it into post and try and replicate the grade. Find the sites that sell very expensive LUTs (not youtubers - people that actually work in the industry on movies/tv/advertising) and find their before/after images. These are useful because they often have a colour chart in them, so if you have a colour chart of your own then you can try and replicate that look and be able to apply some science to it. It's great to connect with other people, and this site has many skilled people that will answer questions etc, but there's no substitute for hard work. If reading about things or talking to people on the internet made us great at film-making we'd all be multi-award-winning geniuses! [Edit: also, videos comparing high-end lenses, like the ones that BTM_Pix posted just recently are great too, because they will be well lit and perfectly exposed/WB etc, and probably aren't graded either, so can serve as a great reference point]

It looks pretty good, but not great. I can offer more feedback than that if you're interested, but a lot of this stuff is quite subjective too, and with art there isn't a right or wrong way to do it. What were your goals with the piece? Are you happy with it? What kind of feedback are you interested in?

How's the latency @webrunner5 ?

Recompression will make an image worse in all kinds of ways, depending on what settings were in there and what was in the source. I'm not saying that the image in question was perfect to begin with, but just clarifying that the artefacts are a mixture of what the camera saw, what the artefacts the codec in-camera created, and what artefacts the still image compression put on top of all that I all my travels with equipment I learned that: I prefer Manual Focus over AF, because AF isn't there yet and with MF I have full creative control I don't mind the aesthetic of human focus pulling and don't need everything in focus at all times (I shoot only travel and home videos so I have full creative control) I really like being able to get subject-to-background separation via background blur, which if you're at a distance from subject requires a large aperture I also shoot exclusively in available light, and shoot a lot at night, and I have pretty good night vision so I also want a camera/lens combo that 'sees' in the dark as well or better than I do, which means a combination of high ISO and large apertures I really really like 10-bit files as grading them is just as good as 14-bit (IMHO, but I did comparisons between compressed 10-bit, and 10, 12, and 14 bit RAW) I'm not very good at mixing the focus direction (I've shot with the "wrong" MF direction lenses before and afterwards it screwed me up for a week or more each time) I'm not super-picky about consistency between shots and I can always compensate between lenses etc in post (at least to my personal standards, probably not to others) When I shoot sports I want very very very long lenses (I shoot a lot at 840mm FF equiv) I hate hate hate clipping and I like ~12+ stops of DR (as opposed to less) as I like creating a lower contrast output image that shows off the full range (reminiscent of how high DR cinema is graded) I'm pretty good at spotting the most expensive / highest quality cameras and codecs in blind tests, so my tastes run towards RAW and ARRI colour science I like 16mm, 35mm, 70-80mm, FF equivalent focal lengths (and a very long zoom for sports) To this end, I ended up with: GH5, as it has 6K 10-bit low-sharpening H265 mode, 4k60, and 1080p180, EVF, loads of buttons, MFT crop factor for the long focal lengths, I don't care about AF, and the colour science and 10-bit make it nice to work with for nice colours (although I still have huge amounts to learn about grading) 8mm F4 SLR Magic (to be upgraded to 7.5mm F2 Laowa lens when I sell my Sigma 18-35) 17.5mm F0.95 Voigtlander (the default lens on the camera) 40mm F1.8 Konica Hexanon (on a dumb non-SB adapter) 58mm F2 Helios (on a dumb non-SB adapter) 70-210mm F4 Canon FD zoom on a 2x Canon teleconverter on a dumb non-SB adapter Rode VMP+ (with the attenuator set for a safety track) I am missing a prime in the ~80-85mm range but haven't managed to find a budget friendly option yet, considering how little I would use it the budget isn't that much. For trips I would either take a three-lens set of 8mm, 17.5mm, and 58mm, or a four-lens set with more extension of 8mm, 17.5mm, 40mm, and 85mm. I have bought a bunch of other lenses and literally have a box of stuff to sell, and there's a 135mm f2.8 Minolta in there that I'd also consider taking on a trip for extra coverage, so I'm not sure about keeping that one or not. It's always a compromise between travelling light and being flexible... Had a look over this and it's interesting to look at the Dog Schidt, which (I believe) is a Helios 58mm F2 modified to flare a lot (depending on the options chosen in the customisation). It really shows how soft it is at F2 and how sharp it is at F4. The bokeh on that is quite pleasing and quite reminiscent of the higher cost options. @mercer was right about the bokeh on the Rokinon being really busy and distracting, I didn't expect that from it. It'd suggest that's because it's dirty (which IIRC is what the texture in the bokeh normally reveals) but it looks like internal reflections or something and not just random dust or fingerprints or whatever. Any ideas? It's quite off-putting to me. I looked at a bunch of the cheap vintage brands like Rikenon / Mamiya-Sekor / Chinon / Revuenon etc but eliminated them because of the hard-edged distracting / bubble bokeh and the fact I want my bokeh to shift attention to what is in focus rather than be a special effect that pulls attention from what is in focus to the background!

The last step in writing software is optimising it, so depending on which version you downloaded it might not have been optimised yet. Still, whatever works for you We're in the business of making art, not keeping up with the Jones' or learning the latest software.

I didn't detect the class system on there, but probably didn't read for long enough (plus I was interested in learning about lenses not the users) but that dynamic makes total sense and is probably an inevitable consequence of mixing expensive cameras with human nature. Pity though, elitism is a lose-lose situation. We may very well all get camcorders again. lol about the rabbit hole I fell down, but it's been a fun adventure and totally worth it as I have learned a bunch about myself. Had I known then what I know now I wouldn't have gone the XC10 route as its technical priorities don't align with my aesthetic priorities, and I'm not sure that a camcorder could really hit all the buttons for me, at least with current technology. Remember that frames you see here are re-compressed to JPG or whatever, so depending on the software used to extract the frame it might be super crunched

I am torn between the minimalist attraction of having one camera, one lens, one mic and getting to know it inside and out and just shooting it to death, and the alternative which is to have more flexibility and the complexity that comes with it. For me the difference is if you are in control of the situation or not. If you are then you pick the lens you want and say "stand here" and it all happens, but the less control you have the more flexibility you need in your kit. Otherwise wildlife photographers would just use their favourite 50mm lens and tell the birds / leopards / elephants where to sit, where to land, etc That's very interesting. I read a bunch of stuff in there and came up with the idea there were the accurate / neutral lenses that were called "modern" because lenses have gradually been getting more neutral over time, and those that were inaccurate / coloured / flavoured / etc but that the imperfections were aesthetically pleasing and were called "vintage" because older lenses were more likely to be like that. To me it seemed to be kind of useful shorthand and seemed to be relatively consistent, but maybe I missed some of the nuances of how the phrases were used. They spoke about having two sets, one modern and one vintage, but because the modern ones are expensive (CP.2, Zeiss, etc) either they normally owned the vintage ones for personal projects or low budget doc work and hired the modern ones when the project required it, or they were the ones owning and hiring out the modern ones, and were contemplating if there was enough of a market to buy a vintage set for a different aesthetic and maybe justify the price by also hiring it out. Regardless, I've bought lenses all over the spectrum and just deal with it in post lol In all the tests I did I found that all lenses got to be quite sharp when stopped down a couple of stops, and interestingly the affordable lenses that were sharp wide open were the same as their competitors but just didn't open that far. For example an f1.4 lens would sharpen up by f2.8, and similar lenses that were sharp wide open only opened to f2.8, so unless you spent squillions of dollars you just buy the f1.4 one and use it at f2.8 and keep the extra two stops in case of emergency Thanks - that is truly spectacular! It will spoil me for life of course, but you know, no pain no gain. What is especially good about it is that it compares mythically expensive lenses with a common lens that links it to many other lesser lens tests, so you can compare a cine lens to a budget one by seeing how each compares to the Rokinon. Very useful! And yeah, like @mercer was implying - screw carrying around one of those behemoths!!!

Yeah, that's why I said "modern looking" and "vintage looking" They sure knew how to make a great lens, even back in the day.. It's interesting reading the lens threads on reduser and the language they use when talking about CP.2 or CZ or Takumar or Russian lenses. In a sense they're even more sensitive than we are here and I imagine it might be because they're shooting in RAW (and possibly in a higher average resolution and with higher average DR than us too) so the character of a lens in terms of sharpness and micro-contrast would be more apparent. If we take @mercer shooting RAW but only in 1080, or we take many others here shooting 4K h264 with cameras that don't allow disabling of sharpening then we require a lens with more softness in order to get the same aesthetic because the lens either has to be softer across larger pixels (1080) or first has to overcome the sharpening (h264). Lenses are part of an image pipeline and need to be matched to the other elements at play to get the desired final image. I still haven't worked out if I like the 4k h264 or 5k h265 mode in my GH5 yet, and I'm also yet to use some of the lenses I've settled on in the field on a real project (for example, the Konica Hexanon 40mm/1.8 which is rumoured to be one of the sharpest lenses ever made, although who knows if that's true) so footage of that is still basically theoretical. I am still learning to grade, and also still trying to figure out what I like in a final image (although I seem to pick the highest bitrate / most expensive cameras in blind tests so there is that) so in a sense my entire image pipeline is still in flux. I go back and forth around wanting a lens that is neutral and gets out of the way because it's sharp and has excellent performance in the corners and wide open vs a lens that lends focus by being softer and duller in the corners and has flattering of micro-contrast by being softer overall, especially when wide-open. In this perspective I'm kind of lucky because I bought what I bought and don't really have the budget to justify going in a different direction with my choices! I've ended up with a variety of lenses and so in a sense I've just given myself problems in post to match them, but in a way that's also a good thing because playing on a harder level of difficulty is what sharpens the mind and the senses

Thanks for sharing - it's always interesting to be able to hear about how something was made and also be able to see the finished product. In the US/UK I think that happens a lot but here in Australia it's less common, but thankfully Last Change U is available here so that's really cool

I'm not over there... I'm over here! The reveal will be epic. I'm looking forward to it But only after I win lol.

Although it's too late to reply without knowing the lenses, I did look at them blind and my observations were: B and D were obviously more modern looking glass (the contrast on the whiskey screen left was telling) A and E were obviously more vintage looking with sharpness falling off towards the edges of the frame C was interesting because it wasn't modern, but still had quite strong contrast on the colour chart with bright whites I'm not surprised that @mercer liked the softer rendering of A and E, and TBH I'm not sure what I would prefer. If I had to choose (blind) then I'd have picked B or D because I can always soften them in post if I wanted to. I have two samples of the Helios and even on MFT where the corners are cropped, they're both still Jekyll/Hyde performers being sharp in the centre and soft on edges, and then sharp as hell when stopped down sufficiently. Cool test - thanks I was going to say that in reflecting about all the vintage lenses I bought, I think the Takumars are the best IQ for the money if you're into a softer rendering lens. I shot my "this is not an official entry" film I posted in the $200 film challenge with the 55/1.8 on a SB on my GF3 and I really liked the rendering and the flares. The problem for me is they focus the wrong way for my muscle memory. If I was on FF I think I'd be tossing up between a set of Samyangs and a set of Takumars. The Samyangs suit my "get a neutral image in camera then process it heavily in post" philosophy and the Takumars suit my observation that "you can't simulate everything in post" !! If you want to buy a job-lot from some sucker who bought a bunch of vintage lenses and is too lazy to sell the ones he doesn't want then just let me know. Asking for a friend.

Not a Sony.... and I think that makes the second question redundant

What is the mini video mode?

No-one has tried to guess what my cameras are, except to ask if either one was a Z-Cam E1. It would be funny to see people try..... ???

Just spent the last hour or two downloading the hack and playing with it, and learned three things: The hack doesn't allow time lapses I can't get the hack to load on the camera, despite about a dozen attempts, reading things across the ptool forums The forums are dead, without any activity in quite some years, so no real support either I also googled and found that there's no hack for time lapses, but did find a few examples of them from people, and had the thought about taping down the shutter button.... which actually isn't a bad idea lol. My other option is to buy a m43 camera with time-lapse built-in, but that's money and money spent on photography that isn't spent on lenses is pretty hard to justify when I really want a Laowa 7.5mm f2 and a Samyang 85mm 1.4. ??? Holding down the shutter button takes one frame about every 3s which is actually a pretty good time-lapse interval, so I think that works for me TBH. I tried RAW and just JPEG and both were about the same speed, so that's a bit odd but depending on if you want more DR or more files on the card, there are options

Has anyone used this hack with GF3? Normally I travel with a GH5 and action camera but recently I have been thinking that having a second body (that has the same lens mount) might be useful, both as a backup and also as a second angle for things like time lapses. If it improves the video quality that would be nice too, but not likely to be used much. I already own a GF3 and was thinking that it might be a good option and wondered if there was a hack to give it an intervalometer and found the hack. http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2712/ptool-v3.65d-topic#Item_1

If v15 is working for you then I'd say wait. Newer versions are great and all, but if you're interested in productivity and actually making films then absolutely prioritise that over new shiny things. I actually skipped version 15 because I was using v14, didn't need anything new in v15, and by the time I got around to upgrading v16 betas were out and so I just skipped straight to 16b1

@mercer I think I've posted these before, but here are some 50mm lens comparisons I've found previously: https://mbphotox.wordpress.com/2015/12/29/sharpness1/ https://mbphotox.wordpress.com/2016/01/10/sharpness2/ (part 2) http://hispan.hu/50mm-lens-test/ (translated link: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fhispan.hu%2F50mm-lens-test%2F ) Lots of cool info there and lots of lenses compared.. You're lucky with the 50mm focal length as lots of people are interested in these

I'm referring to the cameras I shot my entries with, but as this is a blind competition, I cannot yet confirm or deny if I have a Z-Cam E1.