kye

I've had an initial look at the test I shot that compared shutter speeds, including longer exposure times than 180-degrees as you suggest, but didn't really notice any improvement there. Maybe there is and I'm just not sensitive to it, but it's not what I'm sensing. I absolutely agree that human movement is better, but I don't have any volunteers handy that don't mind being published on the open internet, so unfortunately that isn't something I can easily do. I edited up my other test of the four-camera setup and that didn't yield any joy either. That test included lots of camera movement as well as subject movement and so I probably would have noticed if there were significant differences, so not noticing any is probably a good thing because it means that the camera isn't the answer. I was beginning to wonder if I wasn't viewing things objectively, but then I randomly fired up The Bourne Supremacy and it auto-resumed to some random timestamp and within seconds delivered these two frames, which have it in spades. I'm now convinced I'm not chasing a ghost, so that's positive. I think I've been struggling because I've been conflating the look I've been chasing with the fact that I have mostly witnessed it on movies shot on film, so I've perhaps paid too much attention to sharpness and grain and not enough on other aspects of the image. The fact that I haven't seen anything above about 2K projected until very very recently probably also plays into it. Recently I've sourced some higher quality reference materials and have found examples that contain the look but are also higher resolution. These are all 4K so be sure to open the full resolution file, not just viewing the highly-compressed preview image the forum shows. I will be studying these as my next area of focus. At the very least, I'm eliminating things that it isn't, and that's progress of a sort. My anamorphic adapter has finally left China so I think that'll be the next round of tests. Now I've eliminated the camera body as the source of the look I can venture out and hopefully capture some footage with people in it, but it's very wet here right now so we'll have to see.

Speaking of serious image degradation, here are a couple of test shots of the 58mm wide angle adapter I ordered. It seems to vignette quite a bit on the wide end of the GX85 + 12-35mm combo, so you don't get a wider FOV by the time you zoom in to eliminate the vignette: The fact it's so much more degraded at 35mm than 16mm makes me think that the adapter is interacting with the optics inside the zoom. If there wasn't an interaction then when it's at 35mm it should be less degraded because it would essentially just be taking a smaller centre-crop and the edges of the frame should be cleaner. Anyway, this level of distortion isn't what I'm chasing, but it might be very different on other lenses and it's still quite fun to play around with.

Wow, "too clean" wasn't a reaction I anticipated!! Yes, it was 24p (well, 23.976p anyway). I don't think I've heard of shooting a little slower to give a more filmic cadence - interesting idea and one I will absolutely try. I'm not sure how I would actually shoot at that speed, as I don't know which of my cameras would offer that option, but as a test I could just slow some of the above 24p plant footage down as plants moving slightly slower in the wind is a thing that happens so shouldn't be too surreal. I've slowed 30p cameras down to 24p, which is a 20% speed reduction and noticeable, which would be about the same for slowing 24p down to 20p. I am yet to really study that test I posted, but my initial impressions were that while it looked like film, it didn't have that certain something I'm looking for. What I'm looking for I can't describe, but it's sort-of the opposite of that "video look" of shooting 60p with sharp lenses and with accurate colour science and proper WB. I watched Old Guard 2 a few days ago and was impressed with how it seemed to have a cinema look but was also quite sharp (which I think have a strong negative relationship) but when I went back and took screenshots I found it actually wasn't that sharp. I then went looking at film trailers trying to find examples with this real cinema look, but most of them were sort-of "neutral" in the sense that they looked somewhere between cinema and video, with some being closer to cinema than others but none being fully at that end of the spectrum. They were mostly uploaded in 1080p from the studios, and the ones in 4K were from other movie review sites and looked a lot more detailed but I can't be sure if these are AI upscaled or what the image pipeline was, so I didn't look at them. When I think about what looked really cinematic to me is mostly old films that were actually shot on film and are surprisingly soft and grainy, so I really need to go looking for some high-quality footage (that I can trust) from more recent films. Anyway, this all sort of made me question if I was now just seeing things, or if all the trailers looked too sharp to me (including the trailer for the first Knives Out movie which seemed to be very high quality upload), so I am going to do some more testing and try and reality check myself with more research and more testing. Also here in Australia some services stream in SD (for a variety of reasons) so there's a non-zero chance I've just gotten used to that, but having said that when I go to the cinema to watch the really big films (like Dune 2 or Bond movies etc) they don't look sharper than I was anticipating, so I don't think it's that. In an attempt to give myself some perspective, yesterday I shot a motion test where I shot the same shot of the plants and then I walked through the backyard, with the following settings: - iPhone 60p using auto-SS (short shutter) - iPhone 30p using auto-SS (short shutter) - iPhone 24p using auto-SS (short shutter) - GX85 24p using auto-SS (short shutter) - GX85 24p using 180-degree shutter - GH7 24p using 180-degree shutter - GH7 24p using 216-degree shutter - GH7 24p using 288-degree shutter - GH7 24p using 360-degree shutter - GH7 24p using 108-degree shutter - GH7 24p using 70-degree shutter I haven't looked at that one in detail yet either, but it was sort of a combined test of subtle variations in shutter speeds (the GH7 shots) and also a reality check to judge the GH7 shots against actual video (iPhone and GX85 auto-SS shots). Today, I've just finished assembling this monstrosity: This is the P2K and GX85 on top, with GH5 and GH7 on the bottom. I finally own enough vNDs to do this, although the 82mm vND I bought for the Sirui anamorphic adapter does look rather ridiculous on the P2K and 12-35mm! I'll shoot a side-by-side with all of them rolling and will walk around the yard to get a number of compositions and lots of movement. I forgot to include the P2K in yesterdays test, but I also want to have a reference where the motion is essentially the same, which is why I have rigged them together. I can replicate a 35mm F11.5 FOV on all these, so should have mostly the same image. There will be resolution/sharpness differences, but I can level the playing field in post by applying various FLC profiles, which will be a good test to see if any perceived differences disappear or not. I'm still waiting for my Sirui 1.25x anamorphic adapter to arrive, but once it does some future tests will include various combinations of the wide-angle adapters, the anamorphic adapter, modern AF lenses, modern MF lenses, vintage lenses, and probably some filters too, as I've got a small collection of softening filters and a few vNDs of vastly varying quality which should add a look to the footage too. I might also shoot some tests comparing various amounts of rolling shutter too, as I think the GH7 has strong enough codecs and enough modes to make meaningful comparisons between these too.

Next test is a big one - comparing a few different ways to soften the image in post. Test shots I shot a number of compositions with a few different lenses. To give a range of inputs, I shot with the following settings: - GH7 shooting 5.7K Prores HQ (1500Mbps) - Panasonic 12-35mm F2.8 at F2.8 and at F4.0 (it sharpens up a little) - Voigtländer 42.5mm F0.95 at F2.8 - Minolta Rokkor 135mm F2.8 at F2.8, F5.6 and F8.0 Shots included wides, mids, teles and had shots where it was overcast and shots in direct sun (including raindrops on things!) so there should be a range of scenes. All shots were 180 shutter and using the K&F True Colour vND. Treatment in post I then put each shot onto a timeline, and you get to see each of the above shots put through each of the following: - 5.7K shots directly on a 4K timeline - Exported from 4K timeline to 4K Prores HQ then pulled back into the main 4K timeline - Exported from 4K timeline to 3K Prores HQ then pulled back into the main 4K timeline - Exported from 4K timeline to 2.5K Prores HQ then pulled back into the main 4K timeline - Exported from 4K timeline to 1.9K (1080p) Prores HQ then pulled back into the main 4K timeline - Exported from 4K timeline to 1.5K Prores HQ then pulled back into the main 4K timeline - Exported from 4K timeline to 1.2K (720p) Prores HQ then pulled back into the main 4K timeline - 5.7K shots directly on a 4K timeline with Film Look Creator emulating the grain and softness of a 65mm neg - 5.7K shots directly on a 4K timeline with Film Look Creator emulating the grain and softness of a 50mm neg - 5.7K shots directly on a 4K timeline with Film Look Creator emulating the grain and softness of a 35mm neg - 5.7K shots directly on a 4K timeline with Film Look Creator emulating the grain and softness of a 30mm neg - 5.7K shots directly on a 4K timeline with Film Look Creator emulating the grain and softness of a 25mm neg - 5.7K shots directly on a 4K timeline with Film Look Creator emulating the grain and softness of a 20mm neg - 5.7K shots directly on a 4K timeline with Film Look Creator emulating the grain and softness of a 16mm neg - 5.7K shots directly on a 4K timeline with Film Look Creator emulating the grain and softness of a 12.5mm neg - 5.7K shots directly on a 4K timeline with Film Look Creator emulating the grain and softness of a 10mm neg - 5.7K shots directly on a 4K timeline with Film Look Creator emulating the grain and softness of a 8mm neg Yes, this is a lot of shots! Each shot on the timeline is 5s, and there are 8 shots across 17 treatments, giving 136 looks over 11m21s video. All shots had the FLC "Cinematic" look applied, and I adjusted the WB and that was it. I disabled all the other stuff, so it was just the colour profile and the grain / softening. Export I then exported it in both 4K Prores HQ (56GB!) and 4K h264 (3.65GB) and after comparing the two I uploaded the 3.65GB h264 file, which is about 45Mbps so good enough. There were slight differences between the two but it was minor and I tend to export in h264 for YT upload anyway. I will be downloading the resulting file from YT and judging the image from that file, as that's the one that gets viewed in the end. Film Look Creator settings The FLC Grain section has various settings, and has presets for 65mm, 35mm, 16mm, and 8mm, but allows you to mess with the settings. To emulate sizes in-between these presets, I interpolated the values using either a linear or logarithmic approach. Here's the values: Goal My goal is twofold. First is to work out what looks the most like cinema to me (in the final YT stream), and the second is to know what settings to use in Resolve to get that look in the final YT stream. If I could play with the controls live and see what the YT stream would look like in real-time then I'd just do that, but this is the next-best option, where I just vary something from too little to far too much and then just see if I like it and if so then where the sweet spot is. Enjoy.

I just found out that Stalker is free on YouTube.... I saw the movie when I was young but not since, so I'm waiting for a good time where I can sit and watch uninterrupted.

Cool video! The shots with the perspective shift really work, like a dolly-zoom but with a changing perspective. Other shots are more traditional, but work too. Gotta watch those shadows though. This is perhaps the main challenge of 360 video, keeping the equipment and operator out of the shot.

I have a M42-M43 speed booster and recommend getting one. It makes the focal lengths more useful and for any given FOV gives you the ability to get shallower DoF or if you stop down to keep the same DoF the lenses sharpen up a bit. Depending on what your preferences are in image and rendering, there are lots of other M42 lenses around too.

Actually, I screwed up the last image, so here's a replacement: and here's the revised node graph:

I've also started looking at things in post. First was to look at the grain section of the Film Look Creator, which softens the image as well as adds grain (because that's how film works!). I tried it on a few images and was actually surprised at how subtle the effects were, especially compared to how strong the look of some of the lenses is. It's more visible on motion rather than on frame grabs, but still. I also had a go at emulating some of that edge softness. There's a whole world of ways you can do this in Resolve, but this is one way. Here's the node graph. If anyone is curious for an explanation of why I'm doing it this way, just ask.

Another thing about lenses is the flares, which are far more than just bloom. For example, I love the way that zooms have lots of elements to their flares.

I've sort of been waiting for my adapters to arrive to shoot the next round of tests, but I figured that sharing some early impressions might be useful and help me organise my thoughts a bit too. I shot my first round of the test quite poorly, so images have different exposures etc, which is why I wasn't sharing them before, but there are some interesting things to note from some of the different lenses. The 14mm F2.5 is sharp from edge to edge and has relatively deep DoF, so this is a reference. The Takumar 35mm F3.5 is sharp in the middle and still relatively deep DoF but has significant "zoom" radial blur on the edges. ..as does the Cosmicar 12.5mm F1.9.. The TTartisans 17mm F1.4 has a lot of blooming when wide open (but is clean from F2 onwards) and the Yashica 28mm F2.8 has a lot of blooming when wide open too, although the blooming seems to be a lot larger (with the light from brighter areas being distributed a lot further away in the image than with the 17/1.4) The blur on the edges of the Yashica also seems to have a lot of colour separation too: unlike the TTartisans: or Cosmicar: The Mir-1b 37mm F2.8 is all over the place, reminding me that I have never liked it and never saw what others saw in it: The Helios is about as you'd expect - sharp in the middle but edges that are hype-worthy despite essentially being a one-trick pony: (Note that this is the Helios 44M, not the 44-2. I have the 44-2 and it's easily one of the worst lenses I own, with blooming far in excess of anything I included in this test. It sits in a drawer and stays there.) In contrast to the Helios, the Takumar 55mm F1.8 is much cleaner (bearing in mind this is a shallow DoF image and I'm standing at an angle compared to the fence so the edge softness is likely to be partly the shallow DoF) : The Voigt 42.5mm F0.95 is softer in the middle but has cleaner edges: and the TTartisans 50mm F1.2 doesn't have the blooming of the Voigt, but might not be sharper as bloom and sharpness are independent attributes: but the 12-35mm F2.8 makes all of these look positively vintage: Obviously the other lenses can be stopped down to potentially be as sharp as this is, but I shot all these wide open to learn more about aesthetics, not to perform a technical test, because that's what MTF charts are for. I'd like to say that I can draw some conclusions from this test but realistically it's too early. I do have some impressions though. I suspect I don't like the lenses that have too much bloom. I bought a Tiffen Black Promist 1/8 and shot with it on the 12-35mm and ended up not liking the images in post, and some of these lenses are a lot more bloom-y than the BPM. The purpose of using any lenses other than my AF set (9/1.7 and 14/2.5 and 12-35/2.8 and 14-140/3.5-5.6) is to get shallow DoF or DoF-related things (e.g. oval bokeh from anamorphics) which are essentially the only things you can't apply in post. I have thought before that I don't really like colour separation, like the red halation from film or CA, but the example shots from Attack on London and also from the wide angle adapter don't seem that objectionable, so maybe I'm changing my mind about this? One thing that came out of this test was how much I like the Tokina 28-70mm F3.5-4.5 zoom. It has a vintage flavour for sure, but doesn't seem to be too degraded. I am really looking forward to testing the wide angle adapter and 1.25x anamorphic adapter on this lens, as I suspect those adapters will be limited to around F2.8 anyway, so trading off the flexibility of a zoom for only one extra stop doesn't seem that worthwhile in that configuration. The only lens not yet mentioned is the 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 kit zoom, which in this situation isn't that different from the 12-35mm F2.8. The next test I'll shoot will have significant depth of field, so I can see things like bokeh shapes and rendering (e.g. swirly vs cats-eyes vs not), and I'll have to work out some way to expose all the images the same (or use the GH7 and correct in post) as exposure makes a difference perceptually. I just wish my adapters would get here sooner!

Yeah, I watched a few comparison videos and took notes, decided I wanted the Blazar 1.5x adapter as it was the softest, lightest and had the least horizontal flares. Then I looked up how much they all cost and bought the Sirui! I genuinely have no idea if I'll like it, but I figure it should either be useful to take the edge off my modern zooms, or to add another layer onto my vintage lenses. If I combine it with my 0.71 m42-m43 speed booster, it makes the end result a 1.14 crop factor, so basically a FF camera, which will make a lot of my lenses a bit easier to use in practice. I got the email from Sirui Australia but I guess maybe the bottlenecks might be upstream. Who knows. Reverse-engineering global supply line logistics is probably an impossible task and won't get my adapter here any faster! Thanks, my Global Head of Design was responsible for the selection. My fairy lights are excellent - the lights are bright, tiny (so are essentially point sources), and the whole thing runs off a USB so no power adapters etc to deal with. The wire is just a thin single-core wire so easily bends and is relatively fragile, so I'll have to work out where to put them up for testing. I was thinking I might just put them up in my studio and when I want to test bokeh I can just plug a portable USB charger into them, turn off all the other lights and then wave the camera around.

Yes, I noticed it too, but as it was just a quick test I didn't bother. It's just from the jpg compression so I'm not having to upload 8.5MB per image (yes, really!). I'll watch for it on the next batch 🙂 I got an email from Sirui Australia that shipping on my anamorphic adapter is delayed due to the Amazon Prime Day sales, so I'm guessing that lots of Aussies must have sent some money their way.

An update on my testing. I was thinking about what I wanted - something low quality in the optical path to dirty up the image a bit, and then it struck me - what I want is a cheap wide angle adapter! Then I remembered I had bought one years ago and went and found it and gave it a go. It's too small for most of my lenses (it's 52mm but most of my lenses are 58mm) but is a cheap 0.45x wide angle adapter so I shot some quick tests. Here are some direct with/without comparisons to give an idea of what does. These are all SOOC so ignore the incorrect WB settings and mismatched exposures etc. All lenses are wide open. GX85 + 14mm F2.5 without adapter: GX85 + 14mm F2.5 WITH adapter: Very interesting and definitely makes the image wider. If I use a zoom then I can match the framing and we can get a more direct comparison. GX85 + 12-35mm F2.8 at 12mm without adapter: GX85 + 12-35mm F2.8 at ~18mm WITH adapter: GX85 + 12-35mm F2.8 at ~25mm without adapter: GX85 + 12-35mm F2.8 at 35mm WITH adapter: Very interesting results and in the direction I'm going for. As a proof of concept it definitely has promise, but I'd need to buy one correctly sized of course. BUT, then I put it on the TTartisans 50mm F1.2 and fully wide open (of course!) basically all hell breaks loose! GX85 + TTartisans 50mm F1.2 without adapter: GX85 + TTartisans 50mm F1.2 WITH adapter: It's obviously not rated for F1.2 lenses!! The bokeh is also heavily modified too, which the above images hint at, but check this out.... GX85 + TTartisans 50mm F1.2 without adapter: GX85 + TTartisans 50mm F1.2 WITH adapter: These are the sorts of things you can't do with plugins, so this is what I'd be chasing real optics to do. However, the most interesting thing about a wide angle adapter is that it's basically a speed booster, so you get more light into the lenses and you also get a wider angle of view, which means that to get the same angle of view with the adapter you can use longer lenses, which can give shallower DOF for a given f-stop. Double bonus for MFT! So, I ordered the cheapest 58mm wide angle adapter I could find, and ordered the cheapest vND I could find to fit it (as the fronts are larger than the rear which makes it larger than my good vND. Oh yeah, and I also watched a bunch of reviews of anamorphic adapters and after seeing the prices (wow!) I just ordered a Sirui 1.25x anamorphic adapter, which is the cheapest of the bunch by a long shot. I'm not really that interested in the streaks but the softening and edge distortions should be great, and it's also like a horizontal-only speed booster so will let me use longer lenses for the same FOV.

Interesting video, and I guess it really shows what can and cannot be done in post. I have played with the AI depth mapping in Resolve in the past (maybe v18 or v19 but not v20) and I found that it was worse than the iPhone portrait mode, so wasn't really usable in most uncontrolled situations. I suspect it will eventually get good enough to use, but I don't think that will happen that quickly. The rest of the effects are already doable in Resolve if you're willing to do them the manual way with power-windows and plugins, but this tool is probably worth it if you wanted to do it fast or if you wanted a specific aesthetic. Interesting demo though, and for what it does it seems pretty good. No, I just went and looked and while both the 55mm F1.8 and also the Mir-1B next to it have some yellowing, with the Takumar having more than the Mir, my Tak 35mm F3.5 doesn't appear to have any. However, be mindful that it's pretty easy to get rid of any yellowing in these lenses (IIRC even by just leaving the lens in the sun for a while) so mine might simply have been treated.

There is a time for a clean aesthetic. There is a time for a more timeless more filmic aesthetic. There are times for a far grittier aesthetic too. Those who have been following my other thread will know I've mostly got my travel / walk-around AF setup nailed. (GH7 and GX85 bodies combined with the 14-140mm zoom, 12-35mm F2.8 zoom, 9mm F1.7, and 14mm F2.5 pancake lens) This setup will give a relatively clean starting point which can be graded to create a pretty wide range of looks. However, not everything can be achieved in post. I have also collected a bunch of modern MF lenses and vintage lenses over the years and these might be useful in creating other looks that I can't do in post with the above kit. So I'm trying to work out if I should just archive them or if they're still good for anything I want to do, and if so, what might that be? I've looked through my continually growing collection of lens comparisons, but found nothing conclusive. Thus begins a moderately sized lens / camera test... The setups included in the test are below. The details in brackets are the FF equivalents. OG BMPCC + 12-35mm F2.8 (35-100mm F8.0) This setup is included as I think it will be a reference for the rest of the setups (at worst) and might end up becoming part of my standard kit (at best). GF3 + 15mm F8 (30mm F16) This setup is included as it's essentially a modern Super-8mm camera, and considering it is absolutely tiny and takes the same batteries as the GX85 it's almost inconsequential to bring on a trip. GX85 with: Modern: Panasonic 12-35mm F2.8 (24-70mm F5.6) Modern: Panasonic 14mm F2.5 (28mm F5) Modern: Panasonic 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 (28-84mm F7.0-11.2) Modern MF: TTartisans 17mm F1.4 (34mm F2.8) Vintage: Cosmicar 12.5mm F1.9 SB (36mm F5.5) Modern MF: Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95 (35mm F1.9) Vintage: SB + Yashica 28mm F2.8 (40mm F4.0) Vintage: SB + Tokina 28-70mm F3.5-4.5 (40-100mm F5.0-6.4) Vintage: SB + Takumar 35mm F3.5 (50mm F5) Vintage: SB + Mir-1B 37mm F2.8 (53mm F4) Vintage: SB + Takumar 55mm F1.8 (78mm F2.6) Vintage: SB + Helios 44M 58mm F2.0 (82mm F2.8) Modern MF: Voigtländer 42.5mm f0.95 (85mm F1.9) Modern MF: TTartisans 50mm f1.2 (100mm F2.4) I haven't included all my lenses, but the ones I have omitted have been included in other tests previously and are broadly similar to ones I have included, so if they become interesting as a result of this test I have some more reference materials. I watched a doco on Netflix the other day called Attack on London, and was really inspired by the look of the 'recreation' images they have obviously filmed for the doc, and seem to have used one of the filthiest anamorphic lenses around (and potentially added more dirt in post as well). Here are some screenshots.. These might not have been streamed at the highest bitrate available, but I don't care - they look great and have so much texture and feel. This isn't the exact aesthetic I'm going for, but it's one that I saw recently that has a lot of texture and FEEL. My hope is to work out what the ingredients are to getting this kind of feel and then work out when I would want it and then work backwards to what equipment and processes I'd use to get it. My initial impressions (guesses) are that the ingredients are: shallower DoF lower levels of sharpness decent amounts of grain film colours (especially having a tint and having subtractive sat) The above images have more elements to them than this, but I don't care much for things like CA etc, so I don't think they're part of the minimum required elements. I plan to shoot comparisons with the setups above in a range of different scenarios and then see what I can see, before moving onto the post workflows and what role those play.

Nice images! I feel like you've absolutely nailed the core concept - it's about capturing "the way they felt at the time". This is where the pixel peeing leads the creativity astray, it's not about capturing the way it appeared at the time, it's the way it felt at the time.

Wow, I'll have to look into this!! Sounds super useful if you want to share something quickly rather than publishing a set of finished stills. I have noticed over the years that I tend to continually refer back to the stills I have saved, so I've gotten much more organised in labelling them etc as they're more of a permanent reference than a temporary thing.

What specifically have you mapped to F4? Is it a two-step process to capture a still in the colour page, and then afterwards you have to export all the stills to the disk? or is there now a way to directly save a frame from the timeline straight to the disk? This is something many people have been wishing for..

Makes sense. One other thing I just thought of is wondering if Lightroom can import stills directly from video files? I have no idea, but I remember that Photoshop had integrated some rudimentary video functionality some time ago so maybe Lightroom has some? It's not completely beyond comprehension that they might anticipate solo wedding shooters wanting to pull stills from video files. One thing to keep in mind is the creative impacts of inserting a stills step into your video workflow. On my last couple of trips I worked out a dailies workflow where I backed up the footage, pulled it into a timeline, applied some basic colour grading, and then reviewed it (it's a dailies workflow after all!) but also pulled stills as I went. The creative impact is that while looking for good stills I was focusing on clips that had a single good frame, which is often not creatively relevant for doing a video edit, and could definitely impact your mental inventory of your footage. If you're doing this before you've done the edit, or if the edit is predictable or formulaic enough, then it might not matter, but otherwise it might negatively impact the editing process. Resolve has an ever-increasing catalogue of AI features, but I doubt they'll be sophisticated enough to choose the nicest compositions and facial expressions etc, as making the happiest movie possible isn't really the focus of many film-makers.

The C100 would suffer from the same problem that all workhorse cameras suffer from - the best images from them are made by people who are so good at making images they don't post to social media and/or don't list their equipment if they do post. I wonder how many big budget productions have C100 shots mixed in with the C200/C300 main stuff but used the C100 as a higher-risk or mounted cam due to its size and relatively low cost if something happened to it. I've got the occasional beautiful image from my XC10 when the stars aligned and the location and lighting and composition were all working together, and that had a tiny sensor and 10x variable aperture zoom lens. The C100 almost matched it in pixel-peeing terms despite being 1080p and In similar situations the much larger sensor and ability to have nice lenses would be game over.

VLC has a feature (available via a hotkey) that saves a screen grab as a PNG. It's not a very good player though unfortunately, on Mac anyway. It can't play backwards, and the feature to advance a single frame works at first but seems to get bogged down, and after you've advanced even a few frames it seems incapable of going back to playing again. I know you said you were editing in Premier, but (IIRC) the free version of Resolve does timelines up to UHD and can grab screen grabs relatively easily. It would require a bit of setup where you pull the clips into a timeline, then the grabbing would be like butter, then the export of all the grabs takes a few steps, but the ease of finding the right frames might be worth the 30s to setup and export at the end? Both are options though.

I deliver in 4K too. Just upscale your 1080p project to 4K on export - no-one can tell the difference! Wow - 35-350mm.... now THAT is a lens! That's definitely a lot, and I can understand why you'd feel a bit entitled too, after paying so much. If you're likely to see some animals while you're travelling around seeing other sites then that's probably the best way, as the animals you do see will seem like good fortune rather than focusing on the animals you paid to see and didn't. Those other places seem really cool too. Africa seems like a strange continent in many ways. Of course, in lots of those ways it's quite like the remote places here in Australia, but although I've seen quite a number of them they still seem strange.

Equivalency of DOF is the elephant in the room for sure. In comparison, MFT lacks in the selection of gargantuan lenses with super-shallow DOF and FF lacks in small lenses without shallow DOF. If someone made a FF 28-280mm F7.0-11 lens then it should be the same size as my 14-140mm F3.5-5.6 lens, but of course the internet would go ballistic over it and run whatever manufacturer dared to create such an abomination out of town faster than you can say "grab your pitchforks - the devil has come for our children!". It depends on what you're doing of course, but for me personally when I switched from watching YT lens reviews to watching award winning movies and TV shows from the worlds leading professionals I had the Ah-ha moment when I realised very few shots had shallower DOF than could be achieved with relatively normal MFT lenses. Even when looking at the shots that would have required quite fast lenses on MFT, the aesthetic penalty for the DOF being deeper was very low. I then looked at what potential benefits would be traded-away for it.... lighter cameras that make me more likely to carry them around and use them and therefore get more shots to use in the edit... smaller equipment making me more pleasant to be around and having a nicer trip and causing the people around me to be happier and more relaxed and look nicer in frame... the smaller rig making the people around me less distracted and suspicious... the deeper DOF meaning there was less chance of having one person in focus but the others out of focus or it simply missing focus by focusing on the wrong thing... the much lower likelihood of having a difficult conversation with law enforcement or self-important security staff, etc. I concluded that getting slightly shallower DOF was a very small benefit competing against a significant number of advantages that would make far more impact to the end product and to my experience in using it. The extra cropping potential is one of the only benefits I can see for sensors above 2.5K. I put the cropping modes on my GH5 and GX85 into good use when I was shooting on primes and have been hugely impressed with them with my GH7 + 9mm F1.7 PanaLeica which I'll use for shooting in ultra-low-light. The R5 + EF-RF + 40mm F2.8 would be a great medium size setup. Perhaps the best second camera FF setup I could think of would be your R5 + 24-105mm F4. Like I mentioned above, the flexibility and speed of using a zoom when shooting in uncontrolled conditions just gives you more coverage - there's a reason doco and ENG shooters use zooms! Yeah, that's a real gem, I'm still seeing footage crop up on YT that really shows how much you can push things. I've also noticed it's very popular with the vlogging crowd and it seems to give really good results, similar to those who might use a small mirrorless, which is definitely saying something when you consider the size of it. Nah. Do a complete end-to-end analysis of what gives you the best results in the final edit or final photos, work out what equipment aligns best with those trade-offs, buy it, test it and learn the settings, then shift focus to actually shooting and don't look back. Beauty magazines make you feel ugly, and camera YT makes you regret your equipment. Best strategy is to ignore both. By far the most important skill in uncontrolled environments is being able to understand and predict the behaviour of your subjects. Not only does this matter for shooting people in public, but it matters doubly (triply?) for safari because the biggest struggle seems to be even finding the animals in the first place. A professional animal tracker would probably get better footage with an iPhone than an amateur with all the equipment in the world who spent a week and only saw a few animals the whole time. Perhaps a good exercise is to think about what the total cost will be of the trip, think about how much it would matter if you didn't see any animals at all, and then see how much it would cost to hire a guide or some other service that would help you locate things. There's a reason that people hire a model instead of just walking the streets hoping to find someone to shoot!

Yes, AI is a real wildcard. I see that there are really three fundamentally different groups when it comes to generative content. The first is professionals who create material for the general public, or various niches of the public. This is where AI will have incredible impacts. The second is professionals who create for their clients directly. This is people like wedding photographers etc, where the client is the audience. This has been debated, but I think that there will still be a market here. If I did something and wanted a record of it, I would want the final images to be of me, not AI generated content that looks like the people I know might have looked during the thing that actually happened. The third is people creating for themselves, where there is no client or money changing hands. This is every amateur, every personal project from professionals, etc. The goal is to have a final result that this person created. Amateur photographers take photos and print and hang the best ones, not because they're the best photos ever taken, but because they were taken themselves. Personally, I'm in the last category and I am completely resigned to the fact that my videos will never be great, will never attract a significant audience, will never be regarded as important, etc, but that's not why I do it so in that sense AI is no threat to me at all. I do understand that people are all in different segments of the industry and have very different perspectives for very good reasons..