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*cough* proxies *cough* An 8K reference monitor will be crushingly expensive, just like every other genuine reference monitor out there. Here's a thread where professional colourists discuss reference monitors that might prove interesting to everyone here.... https://lowepost.com/forums/topic/467-budget-grading-monitors/ We are all playing in the very shallow end when it comes to grading (and our wallets are very grateful..) 8K is a resolution to shoot in, to do VFX in, and to export in. It's not a resolution to edit in, or grade in.

Photography is completely different to video.. If I still did stills (ha ha) then I'd be shooting my 700D and loving it, but for video, well, it was so disappointing that it inspired me to go 4K.

Canon cameras have a lot of things going for them in both the image and non-image departments - from things like colour science and DPAF, to reliability, and to ergonomics and lens selection. Sometimes the internet can overlook non-image considerations like reliability and ergonomics and be caught up in a frenzy of just wanting pure specs like stupidly high resolution, enormous bitrates, and radical over-sharpening. This forum tries not to get caught up in specs-only discussions (although we do sometimes), and we have a healthy respect for the softer cinema-like rendering of film, the lower resolutions from ARRI and pre-4K cinema cameras, but mostly we draw the line at the barely-720p fuzziness that Canon passes off as it's 1080p files. Partly it's because the image from Canon is so lacking in comparison to other offerings at similar price points (or even getting used equipment at half or a third their price points), and partly because through Magic Lantern we've seen what the hardware is capable of producing, and yet Canon continues to protect it's cinema line-up by not wringing the best out of its existing hardware architectures. A lot of people on here started shooting video on Canon DSLRs and have migrated through frustration to the other brands because the image quality just didn't meet minimum standards. In terms of being nice, you won't find people here being nice all the time... however you will find that most people here are forthright with their opinions but are mostly sincere and want to help. Welcome!

AF on the GH5 has always had problems, but testing AF reliably is almost impossible too, as you can never perfectly replicate the same subject framing, movement, lighting, noise patters, etc. If you had water damage in the camera then I think it would be really obvious, with it trying to focus all over the place or not doing anything at all. I'd get out and shoot stuff and see how you go

Well, there are exceptions of course

That's kind of the challenge isn't it. We see people doing small budget fast turn-around projects like news reporting or micro-docs and doing a great job but these people are often too busy to talk about gear or just don't care about nerdy things, so we don't know what they're using or get their impressions. Also, these people often have a really solid understanding of the fundamentals like exposure and controlling DR with excellent lighting, etc, and so for them most cameras with pro features are really the same because they can get great results with almost anything. We see people doing small budget fast turn-around projects from nerds who like to talk gear, but most of the time they don't do a good job so their output isn't really demonstrating the potential. And finally, we talk to people who are doing higher quality larger budget productions where we could really see what the potential of the equipment is, but things don't air for ages, so even if the person is willing to talk about gear and techniques etc we have to wait ages before the end result is broadcast and we can see things for ourselves (like John Brawley for example). These people are often late adopters too, so they'll wait a year to pick up a camera, then after production it will be another year before the footage sees the light of day. In a sense, the only chances we really have are the amateur YouTubers who have an interest in high-quality film-making to buy the latest gear and talk about it, who have the money from their full-time job to travel and point their camera at interesting things, and who have the time to do more than just slap on a LUT and upload.

Excellent points. People often discuss camera bodies in isolation without thinking about lenses or media, or often talk about those things as a single rig without thinking about those who have multiple camera setups, or those who talk about multiple camera setups often do so without taking into account that they're running a business and have to make money etc. Having three matched cameras also guarantees things like compatibility of batteries, lenses, media, and then in post things like exposure / DR / bit depth as well as technical aspects like compatibility of file formats, etc.

Yan, your sensor and images look fine to me. @webrunner5 is right about exposure, the advice I got from the professional colourists was to just expose normally. I really like grain in b&w too. Which made things good for street photography because you typically set the camera to MF, pre-focus at maybe 1.5m, then have a slower aperture to get a bit of depth of field, and you still want to have a fast shutter, which means you use auto-ISO to expose and that means you get noise unless you're in bright sunlight.

I'd recommend the other videos from John on that same channel too. Thorough, well researched, clearly explained, and is one of the very few film-making channels that remembers that there were films before the year 2000.

I doubt it would be. How does the image look from it now?

Having a million secondaries is totally fine as long as each of them gets you closer to where you want to be. Unfortunately, for people like me, after a certain point I'm really just making things worse!

Just saw this video and thought it would be useful for those with Dual ISO cameras like BMPCC4K, GH5S, etc.. Includes how Dual ISO works, impacts on DR, and how to expose - really great content from John Hess.

The best way is to avoid getting condensation on the camera at all. The best way is to keep the camera in a bag and let everything come up to temperature over a 5-20 minute period. If you have the camera exposed when you make the transition, it's unlikely that much condensation has happened inside the camera, unless you take the lens off, so don't do that. If you are going from cold to warm/humid and need to use the camera quickly then I would suggest changing the lens before the transition and then de-fogging the camera by gently blowing air on it with a blower, but not enough to create drops of water from the fog. Don't blow on them yourself - lungs make air humid and will make the fog worse.

IIRC Juan Melara said that he likes LogC because it's closest to the cineon log curve. Having codecs that have knees in their luminance response makes them very difficult to work with unless you convert them and iron those knees out, otherwise by changing anything you're essentially compressing on one side of the knee and expanding on the other with every adjustment. Absolutely. This is why I recommend against YT wannabe colourists. I think of grading a bit like golf. You start a long way away from where you want to be, so the first adjustment is large, but crude. Each further adjustment should be progressively more refined and get you closer to where you want to be. Ultimately, you want each adjustment to get you much closer to the hole. In golf, you see people hitting the ball and sometimes it's further away from the hole after they hit it than it was before they hit it. This is the same for the amateurs on YT - you see them make adjustment after adjustment and each one improves something but creates almost as many problems as it solves. One of the guys at LiftGammaGain said that you know someone is clueless when they adjust something in a node that they have already adjusted in a previous node. I really believe that - if you later on adjust something you already adjusted, then it means you didn't do it right in the first place. This is a broad statement and there are exceptions where technically it's not true, but the principle still stands. I think this is why when we spend ages doing complicated grades we often just make matters worse, instead of approaching the end result - it's because we're just not good enough at each adjustment.

Yeah, fair enough. The difference between 444 and 422 is real but small, especially since our vision does edge detection based on luminance not hue, so having less resolution for colour information isn't as noticed as luma resolution. Ultimately the best setup would be a setup that took the full sensor readout, debayered it, downscaled it to 1080, then saved it in a HQ or uncompressed codec. That would give the best image possible with the benefits of the smaller file sizes. Imagine if the next models of hybrids plus external recorders could read 8K resolution and save it to Prores 4444 12-bit. 4444 UHD has the same bitrate as RAW 1080, and 4444 HD has slightly less bitrate than RAW 720. That would mean that for the same file sizes you'd get basically the cleanest and highest resolution possible, smooth-like-butter editing, affordable media, and have a rig that was still quite portable - especially if they made the external recorder available in the Atomos Ninja Star form-factor! Ah, dreaming

Remember that the only way to get 1080 444 is to read the sensor at 4K and downres. ML RAW is great because it's RAW, but 4K RAW would be better, even for publishing in 1080.

Yes, I'm familiar with it. It's definitely a hard question to answer, that's for sure!

In a sense I disagree with you. I would say that getting the colours you want by making changes in post is grading, regardless of how you do it. There was a discussion on LiftGammaGain forums about colour grading vs colour correction and their opinion was that they are the same thing, because colour work is just doing what is necessary. They talk a lot about just adjusting contrast and the colour primaries from the colour chart and that if it was shot and lit properly then this is enough to get great results. After watching a bunch of YT wannabe colourists taking log footage and screwing with it via all sorts of manual methods I then found the pros and they talk about using ACES, Resolve Colour Management, Colour Space Transforms in software or LUT form, and then making simple adjustments to correct for shot-to-shot variance and they're done. They don't care about being fancy - they care about how efficient they can be with their workflows. Getting the job done quickly means a higher hourly rate or extra time to really lift the project and deliver a higher quality result. Of course, it's different if you're colouring a low budget documentary or a high budget Hollywood blockbuster, but the 'leg work' of the process is the same in terms of matching shots, removing anything distracting (like strong colours in the background or whatever).

LOL! I read an interesting book called Visions by Michio Kaku and one of the things he talked about was where we are in our evolution as a civilisation. According to The Kardashev scale, which is a system to categorise civilisations: Michio Kaku argued that we are actually a Type 0 civilisation going through the rough transition to become a Type 1 civilisation. He said that everything you read about in the newspaper and all the significant aspects of the news are related to this process. He mentioned things like the internet being a Type 1 civilisation telephone and data network, globalisation as being a Type 1 civilisation economic forum, etc. This creates enormous change within society, especially considering the difference between how culturally isolated the pre-baby boomer and baby boomer generations were growing up and how completely not isolated they are now from a large spectrum of languages, cultures, religions, and races. Growing up, everyone looked like them, talked like them, valued what they valued, etc. When things change too fast people resist and want to wind back the clock, which is what has caused things like Brexit, the rise of nationalist political parties, ISIS, etc. Those who are old enough will remember that terrorists didn't used to be called terrorists - they used to mainly be called 'separatists' because they were people wanting to remain separate - to not mix with other people who were different/inferior to them. In short, we're being forced to learn to get along, and most people don't like it and want to just make the people they don't like go away. Personally, the UK has a special place in my heart because they made a nice place to live by stealing wealth from other countries, and are now shocked (SHOCKED!!) that those people want to move to the UK and enjoy it too.

Yes, consolidation, not consolation! 8K at 120p.... and we're sitting around talking about if 8K 30p is possible!! That's amazing. but one thing that I think you're wrong about..... instead of accepting defeat instead you should work on your levitation skills ???

Cool. Sadly, there are a lot of people running around thinking the 12-35 f2.8 is the same as a 24-70 f2.8 Canon L lens. I run my GH5 with the Voigtlander 17.5mm f0.95 on by default, an SLR Magic 8mm f4 for getting those 'wow' landscapes or interior shots, and am still working out my options for the 80-120mm equivalent length (in the running are a few 50/55/58mm lenses from Minolta, Pentax, and Helios), and also the options for sports lenses. On my trip I used the 17.5mm maybe 80% of the time, the 8mm maybe 10% and the 58mm the other 10% of the time. The right trio of lenses and you're ready to just work and get shots, it's great when the gear gets out of the way like that.

That is very interesting indeed! I didn't think about the TC giving a lens a larger image circle. Do all TC's do that? I would imagine that some of them might obscure the image circle due to other elements of their physical design, but maybe not?

That's true, but I think it's not familiarity with the camera that's the weak point. Imagine two kinds of reviews.. the first just says things about the camera, the second about what that really means. Type 1 review: "The GH5 has X stops of DR. It has 10-bit internal recording." Type 2 review: "The X stops of DR combined with the 10-bit internal recording means that if I shoot this building against the sky I can bring up the shadows in post to get this image here, exposing the building correctly and not blowing out the sky - here's the same image from my control camera and you can see the noise from the 8-bit means the shot is ruined. This means that if you're shooting outdoors there is enough latitude for shots of this nature, such as documentary work on location. This is a real differentiator for those who would typically use an XYZ model camera for this type of shooting". How many reviews of the GH5 showed what shots the GH5 could get that the other cameras couldn't get? A reviewer can tell me the specs and I haven't got the faintest idea what that means to me in real life. If I was trying to figure out which was the better camera for high DR work I'd be screwed if I only got given the stats - shadow recovery depends on ISO noise, bit-depth, codec, bit-rate, DR, and colour space - try getting two cameras with different sets of specs and trading all those things off against each other. Not to mention if the noise looks nasty or lovely in character. That's why we have reviewers!! How many reviews of the BM Micro showed us that do to its size and image quality it would be useful in filming a TV drama like John Brawley showed us he'd done in shooting The Resident? How many reviews of the C100 explained the practical benefits of having a high-quality and low-bitrate codec in terms that compared to other cameras? Let's imagine you're getting a similar quality image from two cameras, but one is lower bitrate and more expensive. At the current HDD prices, how long do you have to record for until the more expensive camera pays for the difference because of the reduced file sizes? No-one gives us that kind of information! Most reviewers are only one step away from just getting Siri to read us the spec sheets, giving us an unedited monologue about how they liked the packaging, and putting music and their branding package on it before hitting publish. I can understand why the working cinematographers don't elaborate on what they're looking for in a sensor / lens / filter or how it matters to the production because they're really in their own space creating content for other working cinematographers. It's a pity though, because there are people like me who are lurking and trying to learn but don't know that a lens with X optical attribute is good for scenes of type Y lit with lights of type Z. Sure, I'm not in the market for either of those $100k lens kits, but I'd like to learn the links between equipment and end-result, especially from those who really have depth in that knowledge and experience.

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..