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Interesting results - thanks all who took the poll so far, if you haven't, please do Currently, these seem to be the trends: People seem to think that colour grading is an important part of the process of making a film (it's useful or magic) The majority of people go beyond using a LUT into more custom adjustments, and also want to get better results The minority who basically only use a LUT are more happy with their results than wanting better results The vast majority believe that you don't need Resolve level grading software My theory (that caused me to create this poll) was that getting a great grade is more about using the simple controls well, rather than having all the tools in the world. I wondered if I should try and 'prove' that by exploring some grades using only basic tools and sharing them here. It looks like lots of people want to get better results, but there are also lots of grading tutorials out there and I'm not sure if people are watching them or not. I can imagine that we're all wanting to get better results from every aspect of our film-making, but it's a matter of time and energy, rather than availability of information or resources. Is there interest in seeing before-and-after grading examples that also show the adjustments made to create the grade? Would that be useful?

Ah, that might explain the complicated looking microphones it has..

Brexit sure is a fascinating thing to watch. I know it's not in-keeping with the level of content on this thread, but there's a pretty good coverage and explanation of it on this channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSMqateX8OA2s1wsOR2EgJA I'm not sure how biased their analysis is, but they explain the logic and options of the situation pretty clearly, you know, if you're into that sort of thing

I'm wondering if the protector is special in some way due to the holographic display (that's right isn't it? holographic?). If that's the case then I can understand $40, and the problem lies with either the RED marketing team for not explaining that, or the fanbois who didn't know about it or explain it properly. Or it could be price gouging and zealotry. I'm not ruling that out either ? edit: send us pictures when the roses arrive in your drive

Much of what you say makes sense, but I disagree with some of it. Are you aware that shooting the 12-35 f2.8 at 25mm f2.8 isn't the same as shooting a 50mm f2.8 on FF? 25mm f2.8 on MFT is the same as 50mm f5.6 on FF. To get the same DOF on MFT as you get from FF 50mm f1.2 would require something like 25mm f0.6, which I don't think even exists. This is a handy tool for comparing equivalent focal lengths and apertures: https://mmcalc.com This is a handy tool for comparing DOF: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html I also disagree that f2.8 on MFT will be enough light. Late last year I did a couple of trips with my GH5, shooting in ambient light conditions, sometimes at night (eg, streetlights and shop windows), with my Voigtlander 17.5mm 0.95, and I found two things: f0.95 was needed to reduce noise in the image, and f0.95 wasn't as crazy shallow DOF as you'd think. This is an image I have shared previously, and I think you would agree that it's not a crazy shallow DOF shot - but this was absolutely at f0.95. In terms of what the OP needs to film a building at night with tall ceilings only lit by candles, is probably more than what I needed when filming my family in being lit by street-lights, shop windows, and Christmas lights. I don't know if the GH5 with fast lenses will even be enough - they might shoot it and be left with a very noisy image that suffers in quality after sufficient noise-reduction has been applied. If they want to get any shots where their lenses aren't fully open then they're in trouble with the GH5 too, although how many of these shots they'd need is dependent on the situation and their shooting style. At least with the A7Sii they'd have some wiggle-room in between having too shallow DOF and having too much noise in the final image. It's an extreme recommendation to make, but it's an extreme situation too.

I agree. Camera comparisons can be useful when you're researching what to buy, but there isn't a lot of content around how a certain specification or feature will help you to make a finished product, which is ultimately what matters. I think there are four levels of review: Useless reviews where you learn nothing about the camera (beyond the specs) Good reviews where you get a sense of what the camera can offer to a real shoot Great reviews where you learn about film-making as well as what the camera is capable of Most YT commentary is in the first category, there are a smattering of the second, and the occasional flash of the third. I think it's mostly the reviewers fault, because mostly they either don't know anything about film-making so can't link camera features to real productions, or assume that you already know everything about film-making and don't have to link camera features to real productions. The former are the YT vlogger wannabes and the latter are the working cinematographers who often publish their camera / lens / lighting tests for you to decipher yourself.

The biggest challenge for me was the edges of the frame being kind of out-of-focus in a way my eyes didn't like, so I'm not sure I like that lens wide open. Of course, if that's the biggest criticism then it's doing well, considering that on YT we watch content from multi-thousand dollar cameras shot in 10-bit (or more), shot in RAW, shot in 4K, etc... then it's punching well above it's weight!!

@BTM_Pix Great post - thanks for taking the time to type all that The consolation makes sense, both from an economics perspective as well as an efficiency perspective (which are related under the assumption that a perfect market optimises efficiency) and the subsequent exclusivity and price hikes also make sense from a profit and power-broking perspective. I was once part of a business that ran an online store of sorts, and the system provided an easy way to gather competitive pricing for the clients, and they were surprised when the system provided better prices than their "special deals" with suppliers (who knew they were the only people quoting), and then after some time our business went under because the main client tried to eliminate the fixed per-order cost that we charged by going back to the "special arrangements" they were being promised by the suppliers behind our backs. Capitalism is a strange thing when you understand how far from a perfect market we actually have. In terms of the images suffering, I can see competing priorities. Having wide angles for the TV audience to follow the ball and stay oriented with who has the ball and who is open for passes etc, having simultaneous coverage and detail for the virtual umpire to make decisions on, and having the right angle and framing for the killer photo are definitely things that aren't 100% overlapping. 8K will help to crop in to wider shots for stills, but there are still fundamental conflicts because no matter how much you crop in to this angle: you can't get this angle: In a sense that decision isn't one I'm forced to make personally as my only choice at my kids games is to sit down or stand up, but if I'm shooting for video then I'll still want images that are a lot wider than the portrait shots, and without multiple cameras it's a tradeoff between resolution for stills, wide enough shots for video, and simply being too cropped in and losing track of the action or players. It's also a tradeoff in terms of having a nicer image with a larger aperture vs losing focus and missing a moment, or having a shorter shutter speed for images vs 180 shutter for nicer movement, etc.

Wow - the Fujinon and Leica are expensive! Although the Contax looks interesting, I'll have to read more about it. One thing I don't know is what part of the vintage look I'm interested in. I suspect I'm interested in the rendering being a bit softer, but I'm not sure if this is just lowering the sharpening in-camera, or if this is something I need to get from the lens. I have a Minolta and a Super Takumar on their way so I should be able to compare those to the Helios and Voigtlander and start to get a feel for what I like and don't like about the image. It is appealing to have a zoom that does 35-109mm equivalent but f3-3.5 is still quite slow, and with primes I have the ETC mode which gives good flexibility without having to change lenses. Yes, I suspect the default process-everything settings on TVs is a big issue as well. The guys at LiftGammaGain are always struggling with these things, because they deliver a grade to their client who then watches it on some random TV and then calls them in the middle of the night to tell them the film looks all f*cked up without realising it's grandmas TV and not the grade.

Does that lens cover the m43 sensor? I looked up that mount and found the image circle was 11mm diagonally, which was a lot less than m43, but it looks like I missed something...? Ah, yes, that's a bit better. The other image was a bit worse as it had the parallel lines from the handrail that stood out, but the lines at the waterline are less distracting. TBH I'm not sure how much that stuff matters when you're watching a moving image, and there's probably also an element of it not mattering if you can direct and hold people's attention - "if people notice continuity problems then your film sucks" type thing

Excellent points. In a sense I've been lucky as apart from 2 disposable film cameras (IIRC) I've only shot on digital. I've also been careful / lucky enough to still have all the files, and they're backed up too, on a disconnected drive so a reduced risk of ransomware. The only thing I don't have is an offsite backup, which is probably something I should get around to doing. There are also overlooked backups these days, with things like facebook and YT having been steadily fed the highlights of life, assuming you use those things. The wife and I have plans for some photo walls in the house but life has been absolutely insane over the last 3 years so we've not gotten around to it yet.

I hear very mixed things about colour grading and I'm curious to get a bit more info on how people think about it. My theory is that it's actually simpler than people think, but maybe I'm not getting the full picture.

My goal is the best of both worlds. I film my kid playing, so I don't have the pressure of having to get every moment or get coverage or whatever. I made a highlight video of his 50th game (banner, game, award, speeches), but really my brief is to get enough footage to be able to cut something together down the line as a highlights reel for the family history, and to get a few shots where we can extract a frame and hang it on the wall, as you say. I am pretty good at anticipating the action and operating the equipment, the main challenge is that I don't know what framing or shots to try and get. I want to capture the effort he puts in and to make him look good essentially, so studying professional sports photography and videography will help me see that. I don't watch sports on TV or read about it, so my exposure is pretty minimal. I tell you one thing though, using video as 24fps burst mode for photographs sure gives you a lot of options for choosing shots, and really makes you appreciate the skill in photographers who only have 5-10fps non-continuous burst-mode, let alone the film days when bursts were what happened between changing rolls of film! Probably the biggest demand is that when the game is finished he always asks if we saw that goal / kick / or key moment, and of course, he remembers exactly what happened because he's out there putting in 110% and so you better have seen it and remember it! He's the top tackler in his team and if the players end up in a heap then there's a good chance he's underneath most of them, so trying to get footage or stills that live up to the intensity of his experience is a tall order.

Indeed! I should do some research into what makes a good sports photograph. I've pretty much sorted the equipment I have for next season of Aussie rules football, so now I need to learn where the point the camera!

There are only three skills needed to be a good colourist: To know what you like, what you want, and what is good for the project To be able to see colour - to look at an image and notice that the shadows are cooler, or the highlights have a soft rolloff, etc To know what knobs to twiddle When you have the first two, the third becomes almost a non-issue. Watching truly skilled colourists work has taught me that the top people can get 90% of the results with only a few controls - even if you only gave them lift/gamma/gain controls then they'd still put out beautiful work, add curves and they can make magic.

As a GH5 owner, I'm winning all the time. I see people all bitching about newer cameras and I just sit back and relax, I see newer features on cameras that I think might be cool and then I remember how it feels to look at your footage and be reminded of film, to see people grading UMP / RED / Alexa footage and then grade the 10-bit HLG and have it feel the same. To read about 8K and think about how that will be true 4K footage and not feel like somehow your equipment isn't good enough any more. When someone develops a LUT pack to match with the Alexa and have the best colourist on YT (Juan Melara) comment "This is actually really impressive. Top work!" and I know that I can get the Alexa look with any of my footage if I want to. The GH6 could be $1 and have 8K 16-bit RAW with integrated drone and I wouldn't feel bad about my GH5 at all. My only stress now is buying lenses - there are so many and I want to have all of them!

Remind me again - that's the AR15, right?

The Zeiss is a lot bluer which makes sense given the time of day - you can't use that as a fair test. Having said that, take away the lesson that this is what happens when you grade like this - if you have a go matching the Nikkor to the Zeiss then it's a free lesson in grading Interestingly, I was distracted by how sharp the bokeh was in both the Zeiss and Nikkor images above and prefer the softer Angenieux rendering below, but for night shots with bright light bokeh maybe harder edges would be better. Great - now we need a set of day lenses and a set of night lenses! "at some point all this shit has to mean something tangible in terms of an image" Truth. Otherwise we're just the video equivalents of those people that photograph brick walls! There's the same problem in audio of describing aesthetics in a consistent way. It creates all the same confusions and arguments because people all hear differently, and people have different preferences, so comments like "A is better than B" "worth the price" etc are automatically a problem, but even things like "X is faster than Y" "X has better imaging than Y" "X has better bass than Y" etc are also difficult because even when people have the same definition of what those words mean (which takes a shared history of experience) each person might hear different aspects of those things differently and depending on how you value those different aspects of that trait will depend on how you think each one rates. There's also another complication which I'm not sure is true for video, but if definitely true for audio and that is that the 'rules' change depending on the overall quality level of your equipment. For example, if you have a low quality digital source, like a cheap CD player, then the high frequencies are unpleasant and so speakers that don't have an extended high-frequency response are more musical because they're covering up a problem elsewhere in your system. However, when you start going up the levels going from a bad CD player to a very good CD player there is a point at which having speakers that hide the problem by de-emphasising the whole high-frequency range becomes a liability and not an asset. Unfortunately what this means is that people with low quality systems will evaluate high-quality speakers and dislike them, then flood the internet with comments about how they sound awful. The main difference is that you can't hear an audio system over the internet, so video is a bit different in that sense. Imagine all the issues you'd have with cameras if people were all warring in the forums and reviewers relied on ad money etc, but you couldn't see any photographs or video except in person! Yeah, it is that bad. Synergy is always a thing, art is always subjective, haters gonna hate but who cares! Just like Casey Neistat said about haters.. "People who don't create don't get an opinion"

So, are the sports photographer jobs turning into sports videographer jobs then? Or will we end up with a single agency having a few cameras around the place and only employing a few people? I know that it used to be that there was a photography team at every newspaper and it's not like that anymore, but people still want to see sports events without being there, surely?

What software are you using @Snowbro? LUTs are a last-resort for me, but in Resolve there are more options than other platforms, so you play the cards you have I agree with @mercer about exposing C-Log as ETTR, or just don't shoot C-log unless you need to for the DR. I suspect that the LUT you use probably isn't the issue, it's the image. The way to check this is to film a scene in C-Log, and in one of the normal modes (whatever takes your fancy) and then compare the following: the normal profile SOOC the C-Log with a LUT the C-Log graded manually to match the LUT I suspect you'll see that the last two are pretty similar, although that will depend on how many tools your software has and how good at grading you are. Even if this just re-affirms what you already know, you'll still learn something.

I agree. The other part of this equation is to remember the bigger picture. For me, that means lenses. I think a lot of people were Canon or Nikon shooters, and invested in that glass. Then the combination of GH line of cameras, the small size of Panasonic and Olympus m43 cameras for travel, and the lacklustre video quality from CaNikon might have tempted many away from CaNikon to m43 and investing in that lens system. At the start of that progression Fuji was no-where for video (that I'm aware of anyway) and so m43 might have stolen some video shooters from them too. Now what we're talking about is Fuji releasing an excellent offering for video and supposedly all the m43 users will change systems? Or that the CaNikon users who didn't change when the GH line had 4K and CaNikon had 720p will somehow be tempted by Fuji? For me, it will take Fuji releasing a string of solid and really superior camera offerings, and not releasing a bad one, before people will shift in any great numbers, and although they've hit a good combo with the XT-3, the Pocket 4K (and potentially GH6) is keeping m43 people interested, Nikon getting RAW will keep Nikon people interested, who knows what Canon is doing to keep their video users but it's still working, and Sony are releasing cameras at break-neck speed with a long-anticipated A7SIII in the wings, not to mention Panasonic who will likely announce 8K in FF and Sharp who already have for m43. If Fuji are going to keep from being an also-run in video they're going to have to go 8K, RAW, or deliver the exact combination of features that everyone wants and no-one else provides, or a combination of both. Personally, I think it's a great time to go to full-manual FF lenses with adapters, that way you're not trapped in a system.

I agree. With respect to the Northrups, they have consistently pointed out that Sony was an incomplete offering, missing pro features, pro lenses, and the pro support facilities and servicing networks, but as they gradually get the whole infrastructure in place there is a chance that features like faster burst mode could actually impact what the pros choose to use. It's easy to assume that no-one on YT can spell 'nuance', and you'd be forgiven because it is true for most, unfortunately, but I actually like the Northrups because they present facts as facts, opinions as opinions, guesses as guesses, and when they make claims they are happy to show their logic. If you don't agree with something they say then that's normal, but you're not left feeling that anything sly or underhanded is going on.

I agree. There are so many people in the market already and now Sharp throwing their hat in the ring. I've always had a bit of a question mark around people like Sigma who have released a camera you've never heard of and you go look it up and it was released two years ago. You wonder if they sold any at all. I thought that the Sony A9 had potential as a sports shooter? I have no experience with it personally, but I remember the Northrups saying it had a burst mode that killed the CaNikon flagship sports cameras. I think that was when Sony released some longer lenses. I agree. In fact, here's a professional 360 camera that's 11k30 in 3D (ie, two video signals), 8k30 3D 10-bit, 5k120, h264/h265 and 12 stops of DR. https://www.insta360.com/product/insta360-titan/

I think those are the Focus Pixels? If so, MLVApp removes them when you process the footage - it's a tick-box. Andrew wasn't kidding about MLVApp being a pretty cool piece of software - it is super easy to use and has so many features it's starting to look like using Adobe Lightroom!

Would it also limit your ability to control practicals too? Eg, if you wanted to have a practical be a subtle thing in the background, you would only be able to overpower it to a certain degree. BUT, if you aren't competing with other lights then it makes sense to me!