kye

And for people that run it as a studio camera, they could even just plug it into a large cheap HDD, assuming that it could handle the bitrate. That would make the setup cheaper again. All new cameras should have a USB port as a media option

Never underestimate the potential for people to take online comments the wrong way, or just emotional insecurity and immaturity. One of my favourite things to say to people is that most people don't grow up or become adults, they just get older. It gets a few laughs normally, often enthusiastic agreement, but it's kind of the opposite of a joke because it's mostly true, and I only say it when the subject of someone being a total !@#%^ comes up in conversation. I'd rather have a different saying on repeat, but alas..

Works for me.. but if it's a bug and they're doing their software development right then they'll have it fixed in a very short time.

..and if you're an amateur like me, you're budget limited and partly overwhelmed when shooting but have hours and hours to fiddle in post. If you're able to spare the extra render time, you can create a nice set of preset looks that you can just apply to each project, so post work doesn't have to take a lot of time.

Yeah, IBIS seems to be like IS but can handle more movement. Having IBIS to stabilise fully manual lenses gives you the best of both worlds. I've just registered over at reduser to hopefully be able to see image attachments when they talk about lenses, as they seem to share my taste in lenses: manual, fast, and expensive! ???

I agree completely. IBIS is something that people who don't need it don't understand the value in. That's like everything in a sense, we don't appreciate what we don't use or don't need. For me, IBIS provides a nice level of camera movement. If you hand-hold a camera it's ok for action scenes, but too jerky for anything else and just screams "8mm home video". Something like a shoulder rig gives a nice level of motion, the extra size eliminates the hand-shake but keeps the human movement, especially when paired with IS in a lens. More stable than that are the glide cams which are very smooth, but @KnightsFan is right in saying they're still intuitive and can still have that human movement. Gimbals are very difficult to control to let that human movement through, but I think part of the difficulty with them is that they let basically no changes to where the camera is pointing but still let through all of the changes in where the camera is positioned, and the combination looks odd. You're absolutely right that it allows something new. We used to have glide cams or shoulder-rigs to give that level of movement, we also used to have rigs that were very fast to setup and use which allowed spontaneity and life to blossom in front of the camera easily, and we also used to have small setups that you could take into places that don't allow professional filming. IBIS brings these three together in a way that we never had before, and for me that's what creates new creative possibilities. You can use the size and speed to allow filming in situations where there wouldn't have been time, or to allow more movement that would have been very difficult before. Shooting calligraphy is a beautiful way of saying it, another might be to have a dance between the subject and the camera. I am attempting to make videos of my family (who don't re-do things and I'm not going to ask them to) in places where there is no professional shooting allowed and I'm carrying around the camera all day, and I want the end results to be as beautiful as I can make them, which hand-shake completely destroys IMHO. IBIS is what allows me to shoot in places and not get told off or asked to leave. I suspect they will get better, and may incorporate additional features that make this easier in the future. For example, if there was a little camera looking at you scanning your face and you could steer the direction of the camera by angling your head, like those separate controllers do when you tilt or rotate them now. This would be very intuitive because I know that when I'm watching something and I want the camera to look somewhere else at something off-screen I move my head by instinct as if trying to get the camera to move.

Screw what is over-used or under-used or what the cool kids are wearing, if it fits the story then use it It's like that saying about continuity "if someone notices continuity issues, then your film is crap". Shoot the whole film in slow-motion in golden hour and into the sun with flares all over the place and it will be fine as long as all that stuff fits the story. It's when it doesn't fit that people start complaining. I used to think that the 3D thing was just a DOF thing, but I'm beginning to understand. Last night I did a bunch of reading and found this comparison: https://www.thephotoforum.com/threads/warning-lrg-lens-shootout-contax-zeiss-planar-50mm-f-1-4-t-vs-pentax-smc-takumar-55mm-f-1-8.394768/ Tell me that the 5mm difference in focal length (and therefore aperture) is responsible for the differences in those shots. I suspect it's the contrast, which likely comes from the coatings. I would have expected the Takumar to be sharper than the CZ, but not so. Maybe I just let my mind wander with Takumar sounding like Tak, as in "tack sharp"

@heart0less I'm assuming you're laughing at the last part of my post? I wish it were a joke, but sadly not. We've all heard jokes about how we have to apologise to our wives if we do something mean to them in one of their dreams, but it happens to all of us despite not wanting to admit it. I remember reading about a debut album that was meant to be spectacular and I went and listened to it at the shop but it didn't do anything for me. Months later a friend had it with him and asked if I'd heard it and said I'd really like it. I said I had and that I didn't, and he told me I was crazy and made me listen to it again on his Discman. What followed was an hour of the best music I have ever heard. That album is spectacular, received wide critical acclaim, and is still one of my favourite albums 20+ years later. I thought long and hard about why it didn't strike me on my first listen and the only explanation I can find is that maybe I wasn't in the right mood for it at the time. Photography is such a subtle art that it's hard to get past all the noise to be able to really see properly. Even great photographers deliberately sit with their work and only over time do they decide if they like an image or not. If I can work out what to look for in an image then my brain can cut through some of that noise and I'll at least get in the ballpark of which lens characteristics I like or don't fuss me.

Their comments were about the reaction emojis, not your posts. People do get touchy about those emojis.. I figured you'd done it by accident, I know I've done that before! I gather you shot that video as a test shoot to see what the camera/lens combo was capable of? I'm a big fan of camera tests being made into a nice end product (like you did with this) so that they serve artistic value as well as just technical usefulness. I'm particularly fond of the idea of shooting a test video of your family or friends, as it makes a nice family momento as well as serving as a real-world test, although privacy comes into it a bit and so shooting in public can be a good alternative.

I know, right!

Jeez, you say one nice thing and there goes your whole reputation!!???

I've heard that too, and seen it a bit in some lens comparisons but it was pretty subtle, at least to my eyes. OMG keep quiet!! If you say things like that people will realise that 4K isn't 4X better than 1080! and then people would stop buying things, manufacturers would go under, and we'd be left with only one or two companies left.... and knowing our luck Canon would be one of them. So keep quiet.. even if not for yourself, think of the children!!

Does anyone have any good links to articles or whatever talking about the artistic aspects of lenses? Like, how to look at images and understand the visual aspects that the lenses contribute.. I'm not talking about lenses 101 with the "the background blur is caused by aperture" or anything, I'm talking like if I sat down with a Hollywood cinematographer and asked them to explain what makes a great lens great and what to pay attention to and how you can tell when looking at the images. I know I prefer a Zeiss or Angenieux to my kit lens, even when on the same settings, but if someone asked me what differences there really are I don't think I could say much beyond "it looks nicer". If I can work out what I'm looking at and responding to then I can figure out what works for me and use my brain to evaluate options, instead of just using emotional reactions and having my impression of a lens also being influenced by how recently I ate, exercised, or if the kids are behaving nicely or not.

This isn't you, this is ML. It took me quite a while to figure it out, and I have a degree in computer science, so don't feel bad! People talk about the Sony menus being difficult to use, but ML is on a whole other level... and in a parallel dimension! It's almost like they don't want anyone to be able to use it.

I went down a several-hundred-dollar dead end before switching to Rode. I'm sure there are alternatives that are better, but considering the Rode VMP range has been battle-tested by the vloggers the world over, and the VMP+ update basically addressed every issue that vloggers had, Rode seems like the safe choice. Plus with 19 hour battery life, if you can charge it daily then you can turn it on when you wake up and still have it available all day without having to carry extra batteries. It even turns on and off automatically, so apart from charging it I basically don't even think about it. I couldn't have bought any other mic and had that certainty.

Lots of kids also want to be astronauts or firemen but sales of space-suits and fire-axes isn't through the roof, I suspect due to the same problem. Both my kids have made a dozen or so YT videos each, plus who-knows how many other videos on Musically/TikTok etc, and with my entire camera collection the only thing they've ever wanted to borrow was my tripod - they just use their phones. I gave my daughter my Rode VideoMic Me as her phone still has a headphone port and mine doesn't but I'm not sure if she ended up using it much. My daughter asked about using one of my cameras once, and I didn't even get through explaining that it records to an SD card, then you get an SD card reader and plug it into your computer, and then... <screws up face> "nah, I'll just use my phone". She uses airdrop. But what about video quality you ask? They care about content, editing, and making them funny. They don't even have the YT flippy screen problem because they use the selfie camera not the much better quality rear one. The screen of a phone kills almost any camera screen and it's built in. Kids are like professional film-makers - they want to get from idea to pay-off in as quick a time as possible. You'd be forgiven for thinking that vloggers want flippy screens for their DSLR / MILC cameras but I'd say the vast vast majority of them are using 'lesser' cameras. YouTubers are like online marketing people - the internet makes it look like the world is full of them, but in reality the world is run by other people doing useful things instead of just endlessly talking about themselves online. Of course, we probably watch the camera vloggers who talk about cameras much more than the fashion/food/lifestyle vloggers who talk about everything else, and the camera guys are telling you that you need a 1DXII and cinematic b-roll partly to get you to get you to click the affiliate links in the description. Besides, quality from a phone can be just great... My advice to my daughter goes something like "your phone is fine, but use a shitload of light" and to use the microphone I gave her because it will make the sound less like she's recording in a bathroom. She's 15 BTW, so no dummy. If these things mattered to her then she'd be all over it by this age, but they just don't.

...and gets the images you want to get. This is art, not science.

They say that restriction breeds creativity... Sony says "you're welcome!"

Nice work!!

If you didn't like the experience then you're right to change. Film-making is a creative pursuit and it's hard to remain creative if every time you think about your camera it gives you a little bump of negative emotion. There are so many cameras around these days that are "good enough" that you should be able to find one that gives you a little positive bump throughout the process, or at least doesn't detract or get in the way.

Be aware of focus ring direction on lenses. IIRC Minolta and Nikon are opposites, so if you have any muscle memory then it won't like changing from one to the other! A 4K monitor is useful for having a 1:1 window of 1080p plug the tools of your NLE visible at the same time. Just like how they were advertising 5K monitors as having 4K preview with a GUI also visible. So if you want to justify your 4K monitor purchase then get shooting and then get editing!!

What are you shooting? 70-200 sounds pretty long as your only lens. Unless you're buying some other ones to go with it? The Northmen videos are really nice. I kind of wish they were pumping them out like lots of other creators. I think YT has spoiled me!

You're right. I just found the C200 review I got that from and discovered I read it wrong. My bad ??? That makes it even more of a general purpose lens I guess, but my point was that my default is 35mm so it's all relative to how you shoot and what you like to see

When you crop is it to try and create an additional camera angle? My wife does public speaking and they film the talks but only from one angle, so if you want to edit them without jump cuts then you have to crop to create a virtual second angle. It's an odd thing but it kind of works. I'm curious how you use it.

In terms of focal lengths, having the 20mm lens on the C200 (with it's 1.74x crop factor when shooting 4K) would be the same field-of-view as a 35mm lens, which is a nice length. I shoot home videos and travel films and the occasional project for a friend and these mainly consist of landscapes, environmental portraits, and close-ups when people are close by (like at a table). I'd been shooting with the normal 24-80 / 80-400 range of my zooms and my phone and came to the realisation that 24mm isn't wide enough, and also not long enough, so when I changed camera systems to the GH5 and had to start a lens collection from scratch I decided to avoid 24mm altogether. I now have these 35mm equivalents: 16mm f5.6 (great for landscapes, architecture, and that Wow factor of a wide lens) 35mm f1.4 (this is my main lens, it works for people, environmental detail shots, or general environment shots) 116mm f4 (this was my only longer lens and I found it to be a bit too long, so I'm looking for a replacement around 80mm) I'm also looking for a good sports lens in the 270-400mm equivalent range. Although I can use the ETC mode to get a 1.4x digital crop which makes the 16mm a 24mm equivalent I never found myself doing that, I'd change to the 16mm only if there was something really Wow and then just change back to the 35mm 1.4 without thinking about it as that's my default lens. The same crop mode turns the 35mm into a 50mm and I did use this quite a bit. When I have the GH5 being stored at home I always have it charged, with memory card in it and ready to go so that when something interesting happens I can run and grab it and capture the moment. For this reason I always store it with the 35mm lens on it because that's such a good all-around lens for me. It's good to really pay attention to what you're shooting and understand what focal lengths work for you. Also pay attention to the aperture - having fast lenses is great but if you never open them up that much, or those shots never make the final edit, then you might be better off with a slower but more flexible zoom. Everyone is going to have their own preferences that suit their style. Just as I skip 24mm the next person might only ever use that length and might love it.