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Trying to get nice 1080 while casual handheld shooting with an ILC is a mine-field I've been trying to cross for some time. To grossly over-simplify: All cinema cameras are out because they're either too heavy or too attention grabbing Canon non-cinema cameras are deliberately crippled to protect their cinema line Canon with ML is unreliable and has a steep learning curve The GH5 either can't focus reliably or people can't work out how to do it The Sonys all seem to overheat (although depending on what you shoot this might not be an issue) and the smaller/cheaper ones have bad RS The Fuji XH-1 chews batteries and the extra grip costs extra and makes it pretty heavy Things like the original BMPCC need a rig and becomes cumbersome (BMPCC needs external power) Going modular with things like the BMMCC requires a rig and BMMCC has almost no controls and so you can't use it to adapt to changing situations Mostly the way I see people getting around this combination is to either choose Canons soft 1080, sacrifice reliability and use Canon ML RAW, get a fast fixed-lens camera like RX100 or RX10, accept RS and overheating with a6300/6500, or accept a fixed focal length and give a big middle-finger to the whole industry and use their phone (where with up to 4k60 and 1080p240 it beats everything up to 10x or 20x the price). Or just put it on a tripod, and accept that you'll get hassled or barred from most places you go. The basic issue is that industry assumes that consumers who want convenience don't want image quality (compact point-and-shoots), consumers who want image quality only take photos (Canon DSLRs take lovely photos), or that if you want image quality then you're a pro and you can use a tripod and don't mind a huge camera. We're caught between the other users basically.

@Inazuma My guess is that if you didn't use the TRRS cable then the phone wouldn't have 'seen' the microphone and wouldn't have used it - instead using the internal microphones as you suggested. This is the cable @Don Kotlos mentioned here: http://www.rode.com/accessories/sc7 but any good quality alternative should also work. I've used this setup and it works well. @Kisaha is correct that the Rode VideoMicro is a good mic but is pretty wide. As others have said, the general sound quality advice definitely applies here in terms of getting the mics close and providing appropriate wind protection (dead cats). If you want to get the Rode mic close you could just mount the mic / phone combination somewhere close-by, or run an extension cable, but if you're going to do that beware of interference. Running long cables without interference is the main reason why pros use balanced audio connections (XLRs) - for short runs it normally doesn't matter. To expand on the reference that @Kisaha made to my comments in another thread, I mentioned that putting dead-cat style wind mufflers on internal microphones can be very effective if done correctly, however there are a few things to keep in mind. I've seen reviews of products similar to the one Kisaha linked to and they are mixed - some work ok and others are terrible. The best results I've seen were DIY and turned massive wind noise (from someone using the internal microphones on a point-and-shoot camera while riding a skateboard at perhaps 20mph into a decent headwind) where no dialog was audible into the same situation having audible but subdued wind noise. This is a huge difference, thus my comment about it in the other thread, however it may or may not work for your situation and I've seen most DIY solutions of this type fail almost completely. I would recommend buying an adapter cable for the Rode mic and then doing as many tests as is required to confirm that you're getting the best audio out of the equipment you have, and only then working out what other equipment you might need. Preparation and knowledge of your equipment and basic techniques is absolutely critical, which is why pros can reliably get good results even with modest equipment.

That's every shoot for me! ooh, that's interesting. effectively multi-channel audio. With those codecs I guess it's not going to really be a big deal in terms of writing more data to the card!!

LOL.. I'm not sure if that was specifically aimed at me, but it's pretty funny, and if I end up with this camera then it's totally something I would do!! I think I missed a specification or something.. does the camera have three inputs? Apart from those crazy YouTubers, another use for these might be recording on camera audio for use with those automatic audio syncing functions that editing software seems to have these days.. If the audio in-camera was too omnidirectional or had too much wind or handling noise then it might not be able to sync but potentially a bit more quality might save some work in post. I'm not sure how useful this is to film-makers who care enough about audio to record to a separate recorder, but maybe it's a thing? Time is definitely money, but it might also facilitate audio syncs to be fast enough for on-set review, potentially being part of the feedback loop to the creative teams. I've read articles about productions that shot test footage, roughly graded it, and then turned that into a LUT so that the rough 'look' of the film could be seen on set (and applied to a large monitor) giving the crew a better idea of how well things were working artistically. Maybe @IronFilm has seen sets like this where the audio is roughly mixed on set for review during the shoot?

In terms of these mics being usable for "real world" situations, I'd be more concerned about handling noise and directionality (isolation of what you're pointing the camera at) than wind noise. Handling noise might be a reason for them being so large - if there was a suspension mechanism in there of some kind. The capsules likely to be in there are quite small so I suspect something interesting is going on in there The reason I'm less worried about wind noise is that I've seen YouTubers (the ultimate "real world" shooters!) put fluff over in-camera microphones with quite amazing results in some cases, so it might be something that can be retrofitted pretty simply. Considering the location they might not get in the way much either.

I will be.. partly due to the rumours of impending releases (gold at the end of the rainbow) but also due to there being no good options that seem to suit my (very particular) needs at the moment!!

The XC10 is almost perfect for me, if only it had a faster lens (and the AF to keep up with the resulting shallower DOF).

Two setups: Canon 700D / ML raw and SD card hack / Sigma 18-35 Canon XC10 My problem is that the 700D with ML is unreliable, the 700D without ML isn't good enough image quality, the XC10 looks flat, and the AF on both isn't the best. I was hoping that a Canon DSLR with DPAF might be 'good enough' IQ, but it seems not.

Awesome, thanks.. So, 4K downscaling + 24Mbps = nice image. This means that the 50Mbps bit-rate isn't fundamentally flawed. I'd also suggest that YT videos are pretty low bitrate when they go from YT to the viewer so that's a second point of reference for bit-rate. I'm not sure if all H264 encoding is of the same quality, so maybe there is some other limitation to the codec other than bitrate. Agreed. I'm skeptical that there's a huge difference between H264 encoders (other than the bitrate) and a quick google didn't reveal lots of people comparing encoders so it doesn't appear to be a thing (happy to be proven wrong though!). This would leave the 'processing' step, which could contain who-know-what! Interesting - I'll have a read of that thread, thanks. I am pretty sure that my 700D upscales from 1.7K to 1.9K. I've directly compared Canon stock 1080 vs ML compressed 1080 at both 1x quality mode and 3x quality mode vs 1.7K RAW upscaled in Resolve 14 and there wasn't enormous differences in terms of detail, just that the detail was smeared in the compressed versions. The question about the quality of the external feed is whether it is just upscaled or if the bad processing is also applied? There will be processing applied (colour science for example) so it depends on what else is in the processing apart from that. Agreed. Considering that the >22.3MP models aren't magically better I think we can conclude that the upscaling isn't the main issue, and that it's the processing that gets applied. Combined with the C-line cameras not seeming to suffer these issues, I'd suggest that the poor processing is either a function of the hardware in DSLRs or a deliberate choice in software, perhaps to protect their C-line products. Regardless, this means that unless they deliberately change this, that 4K seems to be the only likely solution for getting good 1080 out of these cameras (by recording 4K and downscaling to 1080). Unfortunately this isn't likely to happen soon IMO, considering how slow they've been to introduce it, and considering the awful RS on the M50, which combined with this article from Andrew suggests that it's more of a fundamental problem. Bummer. Looks like I'm not only up for a new camera, but also have to change to a new lens system.

I'm very interested in this. The A7III is very high on my list right now, but I live in Australia and need something that will be reliable in up to 40degC / 104degF in full sunlight. I've had my iPhone 8 overheat while shooting before which isn't a widely encountered problem in the northern hemisphere.

Maybe a small selection will be announced with an appropriate camera when (if!) the time comes The Pocket 2 will be an absolute killer even if it only has half the features promised, but it depends on what particular features your style of film-making requires. The lineup of cameras is getting better and better but each still has significant flaws - there is no perfect camera unfortunately (or if there is - please let me in on the secret!!)

Damn, was hoping those cameras with enough pixels would be one destructive processing step less (which they might well be) and that it would be one of the ones that did the most damage (which it sounds like it isn't).

So, about the Pocket 2 then....

There's no doubt that Canons huge lens catalog helps to keep customers from changing systems, and we definitely live in a time of ecosystems. If they did decide to jump head-first into the mirrorless market how long would it take for them to build up a decent lens selection? It would be interesting to know how long it took them to build previous lens systems - I'm assuming they happened slowly and steadily but I could be wrong. Considering how important lenses are, it could be a huge factor in their business model in coming times, and if the rumours about an ILC XC20 eventuate then they'll need to have a decent collection for it. Maybe that's why the first two had fixed lenses - they weren't ready to unveil their masterpiece EOS-M lens lineup!! (Here's hoping!!)

I see your point, but the counter-argument is flexibility. Specifically, the flexibility that comes from modularity. Since John Brawley kindly shared the BM Micro Cinema Camera / BM Video Assist rig he uses handheld it got me thinking about cameras from a more modular perspective. If they added an audio interface then it would be easier, but it would also be another point where people might not like the choice they made - was it good enough? was it too big? is it now too heavy for drone usage? what if you don't record audio in-camera? It's flexibility vs the efficiency of including everything.

I have a theory about why Canon video quality is typically bad, and which models may be better than others. We know from Magic Lantern that Canon uses every third pixel across the sensor to get 1920 x 1080. The problem is that for most of their cameras there aren't quite enough pixels. For my 18MP 700D, which is 5184x3456 that means the 3x3 resolution is 1728x1152 which cropped to 16:9 is 1728x972. This then needs to be upscaled 111.11% to get 1920. We all know that upscaling video is not a nice thing to do, so despite Canon probably applying sharpening before compressing it, the recipe of RAW video -> upscaled -> processed -> compressed isn't a recipe for success! I suspect the combination of upscaling combined with the heavy ~56Mbps compression is the culprit as upscaling tends to soften detail and compression tends to crunch things that aren't sharp. We know that sharp images can still survive a 50Mbps codec, and my ML RAW experiments seem to indicate that 1728x1152 isn't fundamentally terrible if treated nicely. This leads me to question what the right recipe is. If we start with 1920 and work backwards, we get 1920*3 = 5760. This is how wide the sensor has to be for a 3x3 reduction to not need upscaling. If the sensor is 3:2 then we need 5760x3840 which is 22.21MP. Therefore, my theory is that all the Canon cameras with resolutions above 22.3MP should have superior 1080p quality. According to this comparison table this would mean that the 5DIII, 5D4, 5DS, 6DII, 77D, 80D, 750D, 760D, 800D, 2000D, 200D, M3, M5, M6, M50 and M100 are the potential winners. Does people's experience of these cameras back this up? Of course, if any of the <22.3MP cameras took a higher resolution reading of the sensor and downscaled it then they would produce a nice 1080 image, but I don't know if any Canon DSLRs work in this way?

Good summary. I can verify the first two because I did some extensive tests... anyone interested can read about them here (with bonus amusing comments!): No need to convert if YT accepts your file format, every re-encode loses quality - like photocopying a photocopy of a photocopy...

Nice video Andrew - your work? It definitely has a distinctive aesthetic, with the combination of distorted bokeh and chromatic aberration, which the emphasised colours in the video played up. The lightweight combination of the M50 and C-mount lenses would be prone to camera shake (and the last shot shows some) so pairing the setup with some kind of folding stabiliser might yield benefits. I shoot primarily hand-held and in my research have come upon a lot of products and some are quite innovative.

that guy looks so cool!!! look at his collar!

I shoot almost exclusively hand-held and IS is wonderful, but you are right that it doesn't replace a dolly or slider for camera moves. IS only smooths out camera rotation, not camera movement. Which is why I try and do a dolly shot by hand it looks terrible because instead of the foreground moving smoothly in front of the background the two planes move around shakily in relation to each other because I can't move the camera at a fixed speed horizontally, and I can't eliminate me moving it vertically! I think this is one of the key reasons that all the cool kids on YouTube shooting hand-held always use slow motion for their shallow depth-of-field B-Roll shots because when you slow things down you also slow down their jerky camera movement.

Was he selling the DVDs? or using the DVDs as a business card for getting film-making work? In the eyes of business owners who might hire someone being able to "make a DVD" might be completely different to "upload a video" (which their kids can do). Perhaps similar to having a big and professional looking camera...

When those lenses are mounted do they touch any electrical contacts that connect to the camera? It sounds to me like the camera might be frantically trying to talk to the lens and it's interfering with the cameras ability to function smoothly. Perhaps a bit of sticky-tape over any pins or contacts might stop it? It may not work but is cheap and worth a try Or, maybe there's a mode in the camera for shooting without a lens? Also worth trying perhaps.

Isn't the technical term "optical low pass filter" ??? Just like the early days of Microsoft... it's not a bug - it's a FEATURE!

Communication is a pretty typical weakness for the kind of people that are capable of designing a product. It's also something people avoid if they feel guilty about not keeping to schedule or having to admit there are problems that you haven't managed to overcome yet. Which is why it's rare to mistake the engineering department for the marketing department, or vice versa. There are exceptions of course.. I remember when I used to work it IT tech support there was a joke. "What's the first thing you do when the server goes down?" "Take the phone off the hook. You can't fix the problem while answering the phone....". Of course, with social media you don't have to talk to people individually, but it was pretty indicative of the culture.

My impression was that kickstarter and similar sites were all high-risk medium-reward investments, because you're betting that the people involved can get a product through a complete development and release cycle, which is no small feat. IIRC, in his review of the Digital Bolex Philip Bloom mentioned that despite the success of the product and the demand for other variants from customers that the process had been so difficult that the people who made it declined to repeat it. My take on it is that the vast majority of people that start a campaign like this have genuine intentions, and they fail because of their inability to solve the hundred squillion issues that are involved, rather than having sinister intentions. There are lots of companies that release products with significant flaws, and many that work away for months/years on products that never see the light of day (and we might never know even existed), so if they can't do it reliably then a few enthusiasts attempting simply makes success improbable. It's a real pity because a $1000+ device that we all regularly upgrade every year or three that is exactly the right size and shape would make a brilliant monitor. I guess there's a chance that it will eventuate, but with each passing month I think the odds reduce.