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@anonim thanks for the video - it's very nice! @sgreszcz I think there are degrees of low light performance. I have found that you need ISO 6400 to record anything with normal indoor lighting (unless you have heaps of lights on) which means anything after sunset, so birthday parties, dinners, etc. However, cameras these days like GH5 have relatively good ISO performance, but things like my Canon 700D get significant noise in even the highlights at 6400, so things are relative! @tellure pace is an interesting thing. The way I think about pace is from a few perspectives. 1) we often perceive pace according to our mood - if we are in a fast paced mindset then something slow and delicate (like @anonim's video) will seem too slow, but later on when we're in a slower mood it might seem fine. 2) I think the way we experience each shot is over four stages: "what is this", then "look at all the interesting stuff in here", then just enjoying the feeling of the shot / music, then "bored now!!". Obviously the art of editing a shot is to cut before we get to the "bored now!" part. 3) The length of a video, or each section, or each sequence, is kind of like the above, and this is where the storytelling aspect comes in. The trap of editing your own footage is to be too precious and include too much. I shoot and edit home videos and my sister (who worked in the film industry for 20 years) would always tell me to cut things out, and she was always right. The test for me is to get a narrative for each shot / sequence / section / film. In @anonim's video there were things like "the buildings are old", the shot with the note might be something like "these places have meaning for people" and the shots of pulling focus between the buildings and plants and buildings and the view is to kind of paint the picture that the buildings are overgrown, or that it's a rich and fertile area, or that the buildings are on the side of a hill facing the ocean, etc. The challenge is to understand what it is that you're trying to say, and then to say it with as few shots as possible, whilst not going too fast for the overall pace and music choices you have made. One piece of advice I thought was wonderful was that your video should feel "a bit too fast" but not a lot. So keep cutting until it's just feeling too fast and then stop. In terms of pace, I thought that @anonim's video had roughly the right shot lengths as it suited the music, but perhaps some shots could have been cut as they had the same story elements as other shots. However the Gone Fishing video of the little girl that @sgreszcz posted seemed way too long in parts - especially the shot of the girl walking which was way too long and was then followed by another shot that didn't offer anything new either! Yes, children are much more interesting to those who know them and love them, but there are limits and I think this might have pushed those even for relatives! @tellure I liked your video quite a bit. Beautiful place. @stv Your video was really quite wonderful. I think the filters you applied were actually contributing to the overall vibe of the film, and because they were aligned with the music and cutting style and subject matter I think it worked really well, despite them being really heavily applied. I am also not a fan of micro-jitters and camera shake, but I found your footage to not have too much of them, and the ones that were there suited the filters etc you applied. As I've mentioned before I think duration is a matter of cutting until the content moves fast enough. Much is written about the short attention spans of Social Media people, but look at Casey Neistat whose YT channel has almost 10M subscribers, 2.3B views, and whose top ten videos include five videos longer than 8.5 minutes. IIRC his total watch time averaged something like >5minutes per video, and his most popular age group is something like 10-12 year olds (happy to be corrected here - the stats aren't visible anymore). And then look at how many people watched 10 seasons of Friends, 5 of Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones is still going strong, etc. The answer is content. Keep the pace up and you can almost go for as long as you like. My kids watch YT for hours, and will watch meme mashup videos that go for 30+ minutes, even without moving or even taking toilet breaks, and we talk about how people spend so much time on social media that it's is "addictive". People have huge amounts of attention - if they're not spending it on your content then it's the fault of the content, not the viewer! I've seen people setup gimbals with a quick-release plate that is balanced nicely (normally for the middle position on a zoom lens if that's what they're using) and then taking the camera on and off can be done very quickly. Shown at this point of this video (the rest of this video is really useful too):

Very impressive! Well done!! I think it's difficult for people who haven't done it to understand what an achievement it is to create a project with custom hardware and software and get it to actually work. Let alone be reliable, physically tough, etc in the real world. Large companies spend millions of dollars on R&D like this. It is a bit noisy, but I would imagine that with different servo motors this would be mostly / completely eliminated? But if you were using a longer lens and sound via a shotgun mic on a boom pole it would probably be inaudible anyway. Good luck with your wireless conversion - I would imagine that the system architecture would accommodate this without many issues? Perhaps just putting the wireless transmitter / receiver between the potentiometer and the processor? What kind of film-making do you use the setup for?

This is interesting and I can see the logic. In that sense RAID 6 is what you want. I'm being really pedantic here (and may well be telling you what you already know) but RAID 1 will need rebuilding if one of the drives fail. Yes, the disk will keep working in terms of having your data still available, but if you have RAID 5 and a drive fails it will also have data available too, so the RAID needs to be rebuilt in both of these situations. Rebuilding is the process to return the array to a state where it has one or more redundant disks. In terms of SSDs, do people run them in RAID? Is this a thing that is commonly done? I would imagine that for large data rates you might have the drives in parallel without any redundancy perhaps?

An analysis of the video previously posted, plus some conjecture.

Ah, I didn't know about the DX mode, and your optimism about both providing a crop mode and digital zooms is encouraging. 24-105 with the option to go 2.25x more is really a great coverage and F4 on FF is enough DoF separation, for me at least. Great stuff!

I thought you were joking about all three, but the first two are actually competitors. Or maybe I'm confusing myself. When I said that you said that I said...... ? I think FullHD to 4K took 10 years. I bought one of the first half-reasonably priced FullHD computer monitors 11 years ago, and one of the first half-reasonably priced 4K computer monitors 1 year ago after the first one died. I agree about diminishing returns for 8K but we're not talking about 8K display, we're talking 8K capture and we already have 6K which is half-way there, so in theory Sony should release an 8K downsizing camera in about 2 years or so! I agree it won't be 2 years, but it'll be closer to 10 than it will be to 20

The pixi is pretty short, but you might still be able to use it like this? You'd have to use the articulating screen to tilt up a bit. It might be a bit cramped but worth a shot and gives you an extra contact point.

I figured the 8K was an 8K camera competitor.. but cinema cameras are a long way from where I play. The XC10 used to be a cinema camera on Canons website when it launched, but it's been moved since then!! I figured you were joking with the Kinefinity and Z Cam, but I looked up the prices and they were in the same ballpark as the A7's! They're basically the same size as XC10 or A7III. By the time you put a microphone on the top for directional audio (so my footage of my kid in a go-kart doesn't include the parents sitting behind me gossiping - true story) and a handle / rig of some kind (so the video at 10x zoom, which is 240mm, is minimised while being hand-held in places like tour busses where you can't fit a tripod or monopod - also true story) then the rig is the same size. I started with a pocket camera and have gradually navigated to my current setup one change at a time to address a real issue or limitation I hit while actually shooting. Anyway, let's hope that Nikon make a camera as small as they can while still including the features and ergonomics they designed in, rather than something that makes retired ENG shooters feel like they're back on the job!!

I know you come from a history of larger cameras and are comfortable with them. By contrast, I'm embarrassed to be seen with any camera that attracts attention from non-camera-people. I recently went on a sunset cruise in the tropics and was sitting with my family on the top desk enjoying a cheese platter and the sunset, and grabbing the odd shot with my XC10, Rode VMP+ and Gorillapod. It was lovely and relaxing, but when the table next to us had a 25 minute conversation about my camera I was a lot less relaxed and it took me away from enjoying the experience. In this way it was the classic problem of "don't let the photography get in the way of enjoying your holidays and time with your family" but it wasn't me doing the photography that was the distraction but the size of the equipment and other peoples reactions to it... If the RX100 or my smartphone could do 4K for 30 minute takes with a 10x zoom lens and log profile with decent IS and directional audio then I'd ditch big camera rigs in a millisecond and never look back.

Photography and videography are creative pursuits. Creativity is an emotional task, and if technology gets in the way of that, making us angry or frustrated or even disappointed, then we're not going to be as creative, or enjoy ourselves as much. Buy the camera that supports your creativity the best.

*sigh* I don't blame canon for wanting you to spend more money, I blame them for assuming that if I want good video (a nice codec and ILC) I'm willing to carry around a huge camera body. I know that some people don't think the C200 or C100 are large, but when you look at the A7 series, or their XC10, they're enormous.

well, ignoring the Red Weapon competitor you slipped in there, these are really Pocket 2 competitors not A7 or CaNikon competitors. I think the only reason that the Pocket 2 is an A7 competitor is because you get RAW 4K60 and it's cheaper. Otherwise they're really for different markets. For me, the A7III is almost the perfect camera, but my brain thinks "yes, A7III is wonderful but the Pocket 2 has RAW 4K60 and the Pocket1 looks gorgeous in so many shorts that the colour science must be really easy to work with and I know the A7III can do similar DR but it will require work to learn to grade it, and I know that I normally hand-hold but 4K60 RAW!! Maybe I can learn to shoot films completely differently? I can learn to use tripods, and vloggers seem to use their gorilla pods as tripods and do static shots all the time. Of course the Sony 24-105 with crop and digital zoom is the equivalent of a m43 12-120 F2 lens which doesn't exist or would cost the earth so I'd have to get primes and then I'd have to shoot much slower and make quite different films, but fark me 4k60 RAW!! Maybe I can become a completely different person because of this camera???" It's kind of like at school when you'd see a gorgeous girl who liked football players and you'd think "maybe if I changed my entire personality I'd have a shot??" ??? I believe they included a 24-70 F4? Well, Moores law states that computer power doubles every 18 months or so. If we assume this is true then it means that it will take 3 years to go from 4K to 8K processing. Even if thermal solutions and marketing and investment don't keep pace, it will still be within 5-10. Think about how long it took to go from SD to HD to FullHD and to 4K. SD to HD was 2.25x pixels, HD to FullHD was 2.25x pixels, FullHD to 4K was 4x pixels. Plus we already have a 6K to 4K downsample in a "base model camera". History says that progress is slower than we'd like, but steady and faster than we predict. Holy wow! That video spiked my blood pressure!! I'm probably a little bit too careful with cameras (although I did take my iPhone8 swimming at the beach deliberately, so there's that). Yeah, the A7III is just about perfect for non-commercial uses, even if you're a real connoisseur. I am hoping Canon hits a home run with their FF too, but I'm not holding my breath. The issue with their codecs is the processing, and unless they put a video DIGIC processor in there its unlikely we'll get a sensible codec. Personally, I'm secretly hoping they put a stills DIGIC and a video DIGIC in there. They have dual processors in their high end cameras so it's possible, and they've put a thermal solution in the XC10 which has a very small body so fans don't mean huge size, however fans kill weather sealing and the first FF ML offering may be aimed at their core customers instead of their evaporating share of the (tiny) DSLR video market. If they do go EF-M then lets hope they get the naming right so it's clear which EF-M lenses are FF and which are APSC - unlike Sony which is a fricking maze to try and understand with two lens mounts and two sensor sizes but lenses in all 4 combinations!

Something that might be changed in a firmware update perhaps? Is this a function available with other lenses? It would be strange if Sony didn't enable all the available features for use with their own lenses. I've heard people say that. I'm less concerned with it because I've heard the GH5 is spectacular, and I think the combination of A7III and 24-105 F4 has double IS which should be better than the IS I'm used to from my XC10 and Canon 18-55 and 55-250 lenses. I also use the Gorillapod 5K (the biggest bendy tripod available) as a stabiliser, sometimes it just hangs down under the camera as a counterweight, sometimes I prop the camera up on it like a monopod, and other times I swing the legs horizontally and put them against my chest like a rifle / shoulder mount. I don't know what your shooting rig and style is like but maybe adding something like this might help? I don't know what software you're using, but I think of it like if you're willing to grade the footage then it's not much more work to put a converter on the footage to go from log to something else before working on the footage. This means you can shoot in log and be a bit safer from exposure errors. My current approach with my XC10 is to shoot in C-Log, and then in Resolve: Have the first node correcting any exposure or WB issues Then the next to convert from C-Log to Rec709 Then grade as you would normally I've found that when shooting in log there is much more latitude to change exposure and WB in post (with that first node) than if you're shooting a more REC709 style profile and trying to correct that in post. If I end up with the A7III I would experiment with the above workflow and trial either Slog2 or Slog3. I've heard that Slog2 is harder to grade, but if you have a decent converter then that difference doesn't really apply. IIRC Slog3 has greater dynamic range than Slog2 so I would trial that and see how it goes. The thing to watch for in Slog3 would be if there is enough contrast in skin tones so that when you stretch things back out again with the converter they don't look blotchy or strange. I can't recall if the A7III allows you to put a LUT on the screen / viewfinder while shooting log? If not, then another downside of shooting log is that it's harder to see the monitor as it's such a flat profile.

@DBounce @Drew Allegre @Lenscamera @keessie65 - let's all settle back and let the manufacturers bid for our money!! A7III vs Pocket 2 vs A7SIII vs Nikon FF ML vs Canon FF ML!! Personally I am also 80% of the way to just buying the A7III right now, so they will have to make something really special to beat it for me. I think the Pocket 2 is ruled out for me because of the crop factor and lack of stabilisation. On the A7III the 24-105 F4 is double stabilised and when combined with the crop mode and clear image zoom there would need to be a m43 lens that was 12-120mm F2 zoom to keep the zoom range and DoF. I think the Canon and Nikon aren't likely to be able to match the zoom range either, although I'd be happily proven wrong! The A7SIII will likely be better but will be much more expensive, which combined with the premium prices for Sony lenses rules it out. The A7III doesn't have proper weather sealing? The website says: "Major buttons and dials are sealed. Sealing is provided throughout the body to minimise entry of dust and moisture" and "Not guaranteed to be 100% dust and moisture proof." I'm new to weather sealing, so what does this really mean? Don't shoot in the rain? Don't shoot in heavy rain? Be careful of sprinklers? I know we all tend to get our hopes up and then have manufacturers disappoint us, but one thing that would be incredible from a medium format sensor is full-sensor readout with no binning for 4K video. The Sonys already downsample from 6K to 4K, but debayered 6K isn't full-res 4K video so if anyone steps up with 8K downsampling that would be spectacular! Or, probably more likely, it should give the ability to do a more significant digital punch-in, which would be awesome as well.

I'm not on RAID yet - once I outgrow my current HDD then I'll need to go there. Just a single drive at the moment. RAID 5 means that if you have one drive fail then you're ok, but if two drives fail you lose your data. RAID 6 means that you need to have three drives fail to lose your data. In server environments I can understand that, but for video? Considering that if you have a drive failure then you just order a replacement drive and a few hours / days later then you're back to safety again, I don't see that as being too risky for data that you've already got a backup of somewhere else. You could even back up the array when the first drive fails as an extra layer of protection. Drives are quite reliable these days - every computer without RAID is only a single failure away from disaster but the people aren't running around screaming in panic!

Thanks @Charlie it's always interesting to see how other people approach a project! I also thought your tutorial was good - well paced with the right level of information provided.. I'm definitely interested in more. I'm especially interested in how you record things when you're out shooting

@jonpais - thanks! Lovely images. Can you share what picture profile and any important settings you used? Those interested in emulating that look may find it useful

Thanks @John Brawley that makes sense, and the data logistics would be significant. However, I thought someone had mentioned that Prores was preferred even in situations where the data rates were similar? I probably should have included it in my original question Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly, or perhaps that statement might have been in a different context?

I agree with you about the 8mm jerky look not being desirable, and considering that I'd rather keep a small setup that doesn't attract attention that's why I've opted for image stabilisation. That shake was probably the one thing that I disliked about the BMPCC films I watched. What is the monopod look? What kind of camera movement does it have? Is it a gentle but smooth movement perhaps?

I'm curious to understand a bit more about how RAW differs to Prores in post. To preface this, I'm a Resolve user and I don't know much about PP or FCPX, so maybe there are larger differences there? In terms of Resolve, when you shoot DNG sequences: the sequence appears in the media browser and other windows as one item, the same as a clip, and behaves like one throughout the RAW panel is available (which isn't for other file formats obviously) but I think the defaults are just to defer to the camera metadata, so you don't have to change anything here if you don't need / want to (this is the part I'm less familiar with so maybe there are things you need to do here?) everything else behaves the same way a clip would Assuming the above is correct and I'm not missing something, where is the extra difficulty? Is it in extra processing power required to debayer the files perhaps? Or does PP / FCPX not handle image sequences as clips? People online talk about image sequences from time lapses as an extra bother because you have 'lots of files' or 'you have an extra step to combine them' but in Resolve that's completely automated.

To save everyone else the math, it takes light 8 seconds to travel 2.3 million kms. I guess that's written the camera off for me - there's no way I can hand-hold something that size, even if it does have IBIS!

Remember that RAID isn't a backup solution. Yes, it protects your data if one of the drives stops working, but if your files get corrupted / you delete something important by accident / you get a virus / etc then it's still your only copy of the data. The backup copy should not be connected to the computer (if it is then it can also be corrupted by viruses or software malfunctions) and ideally it would be somewhere protected so if you get robbed or if there is a fire then you still have the data. The solution I'm working towards is having a RAID 5 system for the 'live' version of my data and archiving onto single hard disk drives as backup. I just bought a 12TB drive and that is my 'live' drive and I have a couple of 4TB drives as backups (ie, I backup projects by date and when the first drive is full I then backup to the second). My MBP isn't powerful enough to edit my 4K source footage so I make 720p proxy files and edit with these from the SSD in my computer so the speed of the drive with my 4K footage on it isn't a big deal for me at the moment. In terms of your data rates for the Pocket 2, BM lists these: The highest there is for 4K60P which would be 272 x 2 = 544MB/s which the specs you quoted easily matched. It's a bit of a separate topic but I think that lots of people are going to get the Pocket 2, and after testing the various codecs (and seeing the file sizes!!) will realise that a lower quality codec is absolutely fine for what they're doing. To put it in context, YouTube 4K is something like 35Mbps, which is a hell of a lot less than the 2176Mbps of the Pocket 2. Obviously you want to record at a higher bitrate than YT streams at, but I'm not sure that you need 62x the bitrate!!

@Aussie Ash I thought you'd chosen a bad frame to screenshot, but no! Let the speculation commence!!

Yeah, I saw that and wondered if it was a different model, which is why I mentioned the model number on mine. On looking a bit further the CFX650 seems to be a better model with the performance I got in my tests: https://www.transcend-info.com/Products/No-672 Something to look out for when purchasing I guess! If there are any tests you'd like me to perform just ask. Just people recording their kids and pets then... I guess if you already own some m43 lenses then $1300 is worth it to have 4K 60P in RAW of Mr Mittens!!!

I think it depends on which threads you look at, and which conversations you choose to read