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@webrunner5 - I agree, there is something special about 16mm. I think that you can make a great argument that there is something special about every focal length, because in the hands of the masters all are capable of beauty and wonder. I've chosen 16mm, 35mm, and 80mm lengths, but @mercer makes a very strong case for 28mm, and if @BTM_Pix wasn't trying to make every app and gadget not yet on the market I suspect he could make a strong case for basically every other length! You've inspired me to have another look through some footage from our trip through Asia last year and post some stills. Not that I'm anything even in the same universe as a master, but I've managed to luck my way into some nice shots, proving that it's more about what you put in front of the lens than the operator. These are ungraded, apart from some quick WB and contrast, and GH5 10-bit HLG. 16mm equivalent (SLR Magic 8mm f4): I love it because it's wide, but also because it distorts things so things look grander (like the first shot), but you have to be careful not to over-do it: 35mm equivalent (Voigtlander 17.5mm f0.95): I especially like the 35mm for environmental portraits, and having a fast aperture allows great low light performance as well as subject isolation. I also took a 116mm equivalent lens on that trip (58mm Helios) but have since changed my longest length to an 80mm equivalent (Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8) because 116mm was a bit too far from the 35mm equivalent of the Voigt. 116mm equivalent (Helios 58mm f2): I find the large aperture is useful for low-light, but also for getting shots through glass and defocusing the marks on the window sufficiently (the scooter shot was through a bus window). I'd only contemplate going back if I could only have one lens... fortunately that isn't the case! ???

Free beats not-free most of the time. Of course, there's no such thing as free, considering that our time has value, as does the opportunity cost of only getting to shoot something once, but we all trade these things off when we make judgements about what will suit us best. @Emanuel great stuff - keep shooting @webrunner5 nice car!

Absolutely. I think it depends on if you tend to work more in-camera or in post. I've been working on the idea of cropping / reframing / stabilising in post for some time now and I must admit that I'm pretty useless at actually shooting wider than what I want so that's a skill I need to work on. I spent so long doing stills photography that I have an unconscious sense of composition - not that I'm great at it, but more that it's something that happens without me really thinking about it, which means I find myself composing in the viewfinder and not shooting wider like I had planned!

I agree. I think 8K is more likely to be used as over-capture, in much the same way that 360 video will be, and 48kHz DAT tapes were and DSD bitstream now is for recording music.

IBIS / OIS and software stabilisation are completely different things. If you're shooting with a slow-shutter (anything approaching the 180 degree rule) then you will get motion-blur during the exposure that software stabilisation cannot eliminate. You have to basically choose between: 180 degree (or 90, 45, 20, 10) and one or more of IBIS, OIS, gimbal, tripod, shoulder rig, slider, etc Stupidly fast shutter speeds and software stabilisation There's a reason that software-only stabilisation has really only been applied to cameras that are used for outdoor daylight filming and expose with shutter.

OUCH! Who knows what damage control really means, unfortunately for some large companies it just means marketing rather than actually fixing the problems. Depending on how difficult it would be to fix various bugs, the Return On Investment (ROI) of just advertising more might be better than the ROI of working out what problems people have, diagnosing the problems, fixing the issues, then having to do the PR to make people aware that things are better. I remember reading somewhere that those companies that used to advertise products on TV in the 80s (like those silver spray-on paint stuff that would stop leaks) basically didn't work and they made money because people couldn't be bothered to return the product. Unfortunately economics sometimes works out in rather disheartening ways. I'm waiting for 16 to come out of beta and then start using the new page to get some edits done. Creating an assembly is the bottleneck of my whole workflow and is the part I dread and stops me from being productive.

So, this thread has been on my mind, but being that I'm an introvert who mostly doesn't leave the house, and also that my family aren't interested in being on-camera and neither am I, I've struggled to think of cool ideas for this challenge. The reason that I've been trying to push myself to do more stuff like this is that if you practice when it doesn't matter, you will be better for when you're on a real shoot and it does matter. When I was doing stills photography I joined some photography Meetup groups, and that was really cool, but there aren't equivalent groups for film-making. This video is interesting, talking about how to train as a film-maker, listing a number of 'drills': TLDR: Practice setting up your camera rig, which helps with making sure you can do it quickly and don't forget things Mess up your camera settings deliberately then practice setting them all back to normal Practice manual focus, even if you use AF most of the time, MF is still something you probably need occasionally Practice moving shots, especially if you're hand-held or using a gimbal, but sliders and tripod moves too Practice going into new locations and finding compositions Same as above for lighting Get some work and do it, even if you're working for free it's great because there aren't high expectations, but weddings are also great because you have to do everything well and also quickly Sports people train to get better, so why wouldn't you do that as a film-maker... an hour a day would really help Interesting list of things, with an emphasis on speed (IIRC Matti has a documentary background so he talked about needing to work quickly) which can only be a useful skill.

It wouldn't surprise me if Adobe are advertising heavily to people searching for Resolve. I'm not a PP user, but from what I've read here, they are in damage control territory.

Tricky question. I'd be torn between the 17.5mm 0.95 on my GH5, vs a fast zoom and having to go to APSC or FF. Even then I'd have trouble choosing between a 24-70 or a 16-35. I really like 16mm, 35mm, and 80mm lengths, and having to choose between 16 with it's 'wow' factor vs something longer than 35mm would be tricky. I'd probably go the 16-35 and then go 8K ASAP to be able to crop in and extend the lens.

Yeah, the terminology is a tricky one. I'm very supportive of the fact that YouTube, Vimeo, FB, Instagram, Patreon, and a myriad of other sites has allowed artists to get paid for their work, and allow them to have full-time careers in their chosen artistic field. Unfortunately, it leaves us with a lack of terminology to refer to people that really seriously know how to create high-end content, vs people that know how to film unboxing videos and get brand deals. There is an absolutely enormous difference in the level of skill required to make high-end TV or award-winning features vs making a living on YouTube shooting prank videos with your phone. Have you ever held one? Ouch, I'd be pretty pissed if that happened to mine! Thank goodness no other cameras ever have hardware problems

Cinematography Database YT channel spots them in BTS pics every so often, and Filmmaker IQ owns one and they're much closer to the high budget film world than most of the YT camera channels, so that's what I am basing my judgements on. Plus, you know, that most people who criticise it haven't ever seen one. I think you're right that it does have a place, my point is that that place isn't very visible from the part of the filmmaking landscape most of us occupy, and just it's hard to know how much commercial content is shot with a GH5, it's hard to know how much commercial content is shot with an XC10 because it's good enough to blend in to stuff shot on other Canon cameras. Anyway, those DPreview people... am I right? ???

The kind where the talent is a solo-operator who films themselves on a set and might benefit from a wide-angle lens with 8K and cropping in to make virtual camera angles. You said that the wide angle is the enemy of the sound person and boom mics, and I said that these types of videos might use a lav and the boom could be off-screen and only for ambient sounds of them doing things. It's a very specific use-case for 8K, but one that I think might be quite popular on YT as it simulates a much more complex setup.

I find that over time we build a database in our heads about who knows what and how reliable they are. If I was thinking about audio recording for film then I'd count you as being a knowledgeable and reliable source of info, I'd also rate you highly in terms of growing a beard, but I haven't got any idea how knowledgeable or reliable you are with nuclear physics, so if you said some stuff relevant to that then I wouldn't automatically trust you. If you said some stuff that turned out to not being that reliable, I'd make a mental note of that. Jordan had an opinion about the XC10 that revealed a deeper lack of understanding that made him a less reliable source of camera info than many others who have not shown that weakness. Perhaps more troubling still was that it also revealed that he doesn't know when he's overstepping the limits of his knowledge, which means that he's not trustworthy. I also own an XC10 and a GH5, and have battle tested both, and while some of the XC10 criticisms they made are reasonable, others are completely ridiculous or blown completely out of proportion, so I have the ability to cut through the noise and rumour to what is actually true. The XC10 thread here was a fascinating read too, because the most vocal critics of the camera had mostly never seen one in real life, and in the early parts of the thread even seen any footage. There are more alternative sources for camera info on YT than I need that I haven't spotted talking outside the limits of their knowledge, so I unsubbed from their channel and get my info elsewhere. I'm sure much of the info they share is useful and valid, but if it's info that I don't already know then I can't trust that it's true, which is a difficult position for someone to recover from. Don't confuse hype with merit. The P4K had hype and merit, the XC10 had merit but lacked the hype. People get religious about cameras and paint them as saints or sinners, when in reality they are all mostly in the middle with various combinations of strengths and weaknesses. If hype was a great way to choose products then the only cables anyone would own would be spectacularly priced audiophile ones, we'd all drive Ferraris not Corollas, we'd all live in castles or eco yurts not 4x2s, etc. Imagine you're shooting a higher budget feature / doco / series, you're shooting C-Log on CFast cards with multiple camera units, you need a physically small and cheap camera for high-risk / drone / crash-cam / BTS shots, therefore you reach for a ...... P4K? Uhh, I don't think so. That's the main issue here - people shooting C-Log with multiple sources aren't on YouTube or forums, they're out there making content.

ok. my completely unscientific impression of these types of YT videos is that there's often a lav visible, or invisible but audible if they move too much.

That makes total sense. I guess I assumed that people shot in much higher DR situations than you and @IronFilm are indicating. If this was the case then you'd have to change mics between scenarios, but apparently that means you're doing specialist work and somehow that means the 'you never have to adjust levels' claim doesn't apply. Industries have such strange arbitrary lines in the sand, it's difficult for outsiders to know that DR below a certain level is normal and above that is completely beyond a normal discussion, even if that discussion is about a piece of equipment that specifically revolutionises the very thing that bounds what is a normal conversation.

It wasn't perfect, but just because an opinion is popular doesn't make it correct. The P4K has the same issues. Lots of people are criticising it for not having huge battery life, for requiring a rig, for not having an articulating screen. If it cost $8000 these criticisms wouldn't exist because people would view it the same as any other cinema camera, which needs external power, a rig, etc. But because it's not 5kg and $8k it gets compared to an A7iii. Same for XC10, which was billed as a C-camera by Canon, and is essentially the GoPro of the feature-film world. See my comments about most of YT only being aware of the first two worlds and not the third, but extend the logic to the forums too.

+2 on both of the above. What I would add is to do some test setups and go through the full workflow with each of the cameras and see it for yourself. Try it with a high DR scene as well as with a low DR scene as there might be differences. It will take a bit of effort to setup a test scene, setup and shoot with all cameras then media management and editing etc, but you'll get answers to your questions (about your existing equipment at least) and also find any unexpected issues you didn't anticipate. I know that people who shoot weddings and events often want to do as little grading as possible (to speed up the workflow) and some have success dialling in the look they want in-camera, which may also be attractive for your workflow, but of course, this means having to dial it in across all your different bodies, so that would be considerably more work up front. It may not suit your situation, but there are also a number of good camcorders that can do C-Log, such as the XC10/XC15. Because of their fixed lens they don't make the most flexible A cameras, but as a B or C camera they may be very useful, and I have found my XC10 to be a very reliable workhorse. Being a dedicated video-only camera also means their image processing and cooling is great too.

I used to, but then they gave the XC10 worst camera of the year, and I realised they don't actually know anything about video at all. I think they suffer from the common problem that many YouTuber types suffer from, which is knowing everything about video except how it's made by the real pros. There are kind of three 'professional' worlds for video: the one where YouTubers make a living with a DSLR, a laptop, clickbait social algorithm optimisation techniques and brand deals to review DSLRs and laptops the one where people film weddings, corporate gigs, and other types of videos for people that pay them the one where people make almost all the content for TV and cinema YT is saturated with the first one, and the level of knowledge between those who only understand the first and those who understand the second is absolutely huge. There are almost no YT people who understand the third (FilmmakerIQ is a notable exception to this). Every now and then something comes along that is tailored to the third group but is in the budget of the first couple and they don't know WTF it's for or anything. Chris and Jordan failed that test spectacularly.

Fair enough. Doesn't this just add to the number of sources of noise floor going into the F6?

If only we were having a normal conventional conversation Was my math correct?

That's ok - I am the sound department! For those videos the talent probably is too. Wouldn't they also probably be wearing a lav and any shotgun mics would only be for the cooking noises?

When I say microphone, I mean the transducer component, not the entire appliance. The problem is that I've designed and built audio equipment, so I find the way that other people talk about it to be vague and imprecise. Any mic that doesn't require phantom power wouldn't have self-noise because it's essentially glad wrap, two magnets and some coiled wire in a tube

I hadn't originally considered that the mic capsule and maybe mic circuitry exist prior to any attenuation, so that might be the missing piece. I see a couple of different signal paths.. Setup #1: "microphone" (which is a microphone capsule, feeding into an internal amplifier circuit of some kind) v Zoom F6 (which is likely to be an adjustable resistor -> the rest of the circuitry) Setup #2: "microphone" (which is a microphone capsule, feeding into an internal amplifier circuit of some kind) v "mic preamp" (which is likely to be: an adjustable resistor -> fixed gain circuit -> adjustable resistor -> fixed gain circuit) v Zoom F6 (which is likely to be an adjustable resistor -> the rest of the circuitry) If we assume that we adjust all the controls so that the microphone capsule on the edge of clipping physically aligns with every fixed gain circuit on the edge of clipping electronically, and we call this 0db, and we assume that every gain circuit has a self-noise figure of -100dB. Then we assume that we put the microphone near something very loud, and let's imagine that it has 15dB of head room above the average level, and we record, then we'll get noise in the recording at 85dB below our loud sound, which is a SNR of 85dB. Now we take that setup and go inside to record something very quiet, which is 80dB below the loud thing. The loud thing was averaging -15dB, so that means this thing averages -95dB. Our self-noise is still at -100dB, but that means that we only have a SNR of 5dB. Its an extreme example, but so is having 5dB SNR, so I think it remains relevant even if the difference in volume is less. Did I mess up the math? If that's the case, then it won't matter if the F6 is clean down to -200dB, the noise from the active circuitry in the microphone (which we know is there because it requires phantom power) will already be mixed into the signal before it gets to the F6. Microphone capsules are a passive transducer that are used the exact opposite way to a loudspeaker (which incidentally is why you can use headphones as a microphone) and therefore have no noise floor or self-noise, so the only setup where the F6 is the only active device and you plug a passive microphone straight into the F6. Then your recording will only be limited by the clipping of the microphone capsule and the F6s internal components. The camera analogy isn't a good one because in a camera the sensor is the first electronic component, whereas in an audio setup the recorder is likely preceded by multiple other electronic circuits that have their own limitations independent to the recorder.

Maybe it was an artistic decision. When I was investigating using video as a way to grab still frames as photos I did a bunch of reading about different shutter angles, and there was a great explanation about how one of those war movies (Saving Private Ryan IIRC) used 90 degree and 45 degree angles to make the horror seem less stylised and kind of blurred over. They spoke about how in 180 degree angle explosions are just big blurs, whereas if you shorten the shutter time then you can see the bits of things (and people) flying and it makes it much more visceral. In a sense the cinematic look is a pleasant style, and they didn't want it to be pleasant, they wanted it to be graphic and awful. Maybe Peaky Blinders make similar choices, it would certainly fit with their subject matter and storylines! The one I noticed was S4E2 at the 48 minute mark, with the shot looking up at a balcony with a ceiling fan above that. Just looking at it now the shutter angle is very short indeed, but it's not a graphic moment in itself, so who knows.