kye

Interesting comments about the ASIC vs FPGA, and the trade-offs of not being able to add new features via updates. I guess everything comes with benefits and drawbacks. The sad thing is that the more that people lower their expectations about stuff like this, the more the manufacturers will take advantage of it. In economics the phrase is "what the market will bear". Dictionary definition: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/charge+what+the+market+will+bare Quote from HBR: https://hbr.org/2012/09/how-to-find-out-what-customers-will-pay The HBR article goes on to talk about various strategies for setting pricing, but one element is common - it's about the customers perceptions and their willingness. The more we normalise products overheating, having crippled functionality, endlessly increasing resolution but not fixing the existing pain points in their product lines, the more they will do it.

I suggest you start with the finished edit and work backwards. Your end goal is to create a certain type of content with a certain type of look. This will best be achieved using a certain type of shooting and a certain type of equipment that makes this easier and faster. Then look at options for lenses across the crop-factors, then choose your format/sensor-size, then the camera body.

I guess to reply directly on to your comments, yes, the DR testing algorithms seem to be quite gullible and "hackable" which I'd agree that Apple has likely done specifically for headlines. None of the measurements in the charts really map directly to how usable I think the image would be in real projects, but I haven't read the technical documents by ImaTest, although if I was going to look into it more I think that would be a good idea so you'd know what is actually being measured.

The more I read about DR, the less I realise I understand it. I mean, the idea is pretty simple - how much brighter is the brightest change it can detect compared to the darkest change it can detect, but that has a lot of assumptions in it when you want to apply it to the real-world. I have essentially given up on DR figures. Firstly it's because my camera choice has moved away from being based on image quality and into the quality of the final edit I can make with it, but even if I was comparing the stats I'd be looking at latitude. Specifically, I'd be looking at how many stops under still look broadly usable, and I'd also be looking at the tail of the histogram and comparing the lowest stops: how many are separate to the noise floor (where the noise in that stop doesn't touch the noise floor) how many are visible above the noise floor (but the noise in that stop touches the noise floor) how many are visible within the noise floor (the noise from the stop is visible above the noise floor) how high up is the noise floor In the real world, you will be adding a shadow rolloff, so any noise will be pretty dramatically compressed, so it really comes down to the overall level of the noise floor (which will tell you how much quantisation the file will have SOOC and how much you can push it around) and how much noise there is in the lowest regions, which will give a feel for what the shadows look like. You can always apply a subtle NR to bring it under control, and if it's chroma noise then it doesn't matter much because you're likely going to desaturate the shadows and highlights anyway. The only time you will really see those lowest stops is if you're pulling up some dark objects in the image to be visible, but this is a rare case and with more than 12 or 13 stops you're most likely still pushing down the last couple of stops into a shadow rolloff anyway, so it's just down to the tint of the overall image. Think about the latitude tests and how most cameras are fine 3-stops down, some are good further than that - how often are you going to be pulling something out of the shadows by three whole stops?? That's pretty radical! Most likely you're just grading so that a very contrasty scene can be balanced so that the higher DR fits within the 709 output, but you'd be matching highlight and shadow rolloffs in order to match the shots to the grade on the other shots, so your last few stops would still be in the shadows and can be heavily processed if required.

The entire answer is that it has a fan, despite being tiny. It doesn't need to act as a heatsink because it has a fan, and if the BMMCC can have a fan, then any small camera can have a fan. Do you think that adding a screen and EVF and a handle to the BMMCC would take it from shooting for 24 hours straight in 120F / 48C to overheating in air-conditioning in under an hour? Of course not, because.. it has a fan! It was also considerably cheaper than many/all of the cameras being discussed here. But it's not even just about having a fan.. even without one, there are cameras with much better thermal controls around. I routinely shoot in very hot conditions (35-40+C / 95-105+F) and have overheated my iPhone, but have never overheated my XC10, my GH5, my OG BMPCC, my BMMCC, or my GX85. All this "it's tiny so it overheats in air-conditioning" just sounds like Stockholm Syndrome to me.

11.2 stops is pretty close to the bottom of the list of DR specs that I keep. Of course, DR specs are a minor aspect of film-making, and not even really indicative of the actual usable dynamic range of the camera (which is better represented by the latitude testing). For example the iPhone 15 tests as having 13.4 stops of DR, but the latitude test shows that it only has 5 stops of latitude, whereas the a6700 has 8 stops, yet only tests as 11.4 stops of DR. If you're going to do a dive into the specifications, you really need to understand what they mean when you're actually using the camera for making images. The reason you want high DR is so that you can use those extreme ends of the exposure range - if you can't use them then there's no point in having them and so a big number on a spec sheet is just a meaningless number on a piece of paper.

I guess once it's released we'll see a new round of strange AF testing from the YT camera gaggle!

The BMMCC that did that recorded for 24 hours straight in 120F / 48C was smaller than almost any other MILC. There are no excuses.

New firmware update just announced: https://www.panasonic.com/global/consumer/lumix/firmware_update.html

Shot a bunch of test shots, this time with skintones. I shot the usual shots gradually under-exposing, but instead of changing the WB in-camera manually to create the off-WB shots I bought a pack of flash gels and held them in front of the single LED light. Also, as @John Matthews enquired about skintones, I have just done a first attempt at grading for the skintones rather than the chart. I looked at the chart of course, but considering that people is what the audience is looking at in the image, skintones are vastly more important. So I didn't try to get the greyscale on the test chart perfect, or correct the highlights or shadows perfectly, etc. The first image is the reference. Those following that are each one-stop darker than the previous one. Then comes the gels. The gels are so strong they're essentially a stress test, not how anyone would / should / will be shooting, but it's nice to see where the limits are. The first set is using only the basic grading controls and no colour management: The results aren't perfect, but if you're shooting this horrifically then you don't deserve good images anyway! What is interesting is that some images fell straight into line and I felt like I was fighting with the controls on others, but this had no correlation with how large a correction was required. I suspect it's my inexperience and getting lucky on some shots and unlucky on others - sometimes I'd create a new version and reset and have another go and get significantly better (or worse) results than the previous one. No single technique or approach seemed reliable between images. The next set had colour management involved and grading was done in a LOG space: I also felt this set was very hit and miss in grading. This next set was a different set of tools again, and I added the Kodak 2383 Print Film Emulation LUT at the end. I did this because any serious colour grading work done in post is likely to be through a 'look' of some kind and the heavier the look is the more it obscures small differences in the source images being fed into it. Next set was a different set of tools, but keeping the 2383 LUT in the grade: ...and the final set was adding a film-like grade in addition to the Kodak 2383 LUT. I mean, no self-respecting colourist would be using a PFE LUT as the only element of their final look... right? All in all, I am pretty impressed with how much latitude is in the files, and although lots of the above results aren't the nicest images ever made, if you're shooting anywhere close to correctly then the artefacts after correction are going to be incredibly minor, and if you actually shot something that was 2 stops under and was lit by a single candle using a daylight WB then you'd be pretty freaking happy with the results because you would have been thinking that that your film was completely ruined. This is all even more true if your shots were all shot badly but using the same wrong settings, as the artefacts from neutralising the images you apply will be consistent between shots and so will have a common look. I'm also quite surprised at how the skintones seem to survive much greater abuse than the colour chart - lots of the images are missing one whole side of the colour wheel and yet the skintones just look like you decided on the bleach-bypass look for your film and you actually know what you're doing. The fact that half the colour chart is missing likely won't matter that much because the patches on the colour chart are very strongly saturated and real-life scenes mostly don't contain anything even close to those colours. I'm still working on this (and in fact am programming my own set of plugins) so there will be more on this to come, especially as now I have a good set of test images. I think I should find a series of real-world shots that only require a small adjustment so I can demo the small changes required on real projects.

To compliment Geralds tech-but-not-filmmaker review, here's a filmmaker-but-not-tech review. TLDR; he's also not so impressed, once you consider the price.

Tony Northrup did a video, probably over a decade ago now, comparing ISO between cameras and found that in the same exact situation different cameras give different exposures at the same ISO, up to almost a stop. IIRC his test was meticulous using the same lens etc and he was shooting RAW, so there was no in-camera processing etc. His conclusion? It doesn't matter... because of all the reasons people have posted above.

The pro cameras are pro because they have xls, nd, double recording, sci out, etc. It's like saying "I really like my Toyota hatchback. it bests all of my so called super-cars and hyper-cars. if you don't care about acceleration, top speed, braking, cornering, cool factor, etc." 🙂

Yeah. Considering those cameras both have quite high-end images, it's not surprising there wasn't a significant improvement. Perhaps focus on something other than the SOOC image? What films do you make?

Also, and I cannot emphasise this enough.... The image SOOC is like looking at the negative film SOOC. It's not fit for direct display, it's not meant to be for direct display, and no-one really cares the differences in the SOOC image unless it appears in the final image. Think of the post-production process as "developing" the image captured by the camera.

Sure. But we've known for a long time that different cameras have differences even with the same settings. If one is brighter and the other is darker, but are basically identical if you adjust the settings to match the image, then does it really matter? Like, if ISO200 on one is the same as ISO250 on the other, how does this impact you making a better film?

Most camera comparisons are pretty worthless because you're almost never compare two cameras in the real-world, and even if you are: They'll be from different angles, so will have different content They'll be colour graded, and matching cameras that shoot LOG is pretty easy Things like DR don't matter unless the scene has huge amounts of it, but this is rare these days Videos get compressed to within an inch of their lives by the streaming services, so anything subtle will get crunched You don't need to get that close in colour in order for people to not notice different camera angles not matching perfectly Even if camera angles don't match, it only bothers people if your film is completely crap A much more significant impact on your final film will be the features of the camera, as they make a different on set in terms of efficiency of shooting and your ability to spend any time savings on lighting, directing, etc etc Trying to improve your film by concentrating on the minute differences in cameras is like trying to improve your paintings by concentrating on minute differences in your paint brushes.

Those are all absolutely KILLER deals... well done!!

We all know that cameras produce (sometimes dramatically) different images and image quality, and yet we also know that within a given price range those same cameras typically use the same sensors from Sony and are recording to the same codecs in basically the same bitrates. It's maddening! So, WTF is going on? Well, I just came upon this talk below, which goes through and demonstrates some of the inner workings in greater detail than I had previously seen: It's long, but here's my notes... Firstly, how you de-mosaic / de-bayer the image really matters, with some algorithms being higher quality and require higher processing power: (Click on the images to zoom in - quality isn't the best but the effects are visible) If you're not shooting RAW then this will be done in-camera, and if your manufacturer skimped on the processor they put in there, this will be happening to your footage. If the camera is scaling the image, then the quality of this matters too: and if the scaling even gets done in the wrong colour space then it can really screw things up: There's more discussions in there, especially around colour science which has been discussed to death, but I thought these might be illuminating as it's not something we get to see that much because it's buried in the camera and typically it's not something we can easily play with in the NLE. All these add up to a fundamental principle that I have been gradually gravitating towards. If you're shooting non-RAW then shoot in the highest resolution you can shoot in, and just un-sharpen (blur) the image in post. Shooting in the highest resolution means that your camera will be doing the least downscaling (or none), and most glitches and bad processing will be at the pixel-level, which means that the higher the resolution the smaller those glitches and errors compared to the size of the image, and un-sharpening de-emphasises these in the footage. You might notice that all of these shortcomings make the footage sharper, not duller, so the errors have made your footage sharp but in a way that it never was - it's fictional sharpness. Also, the more modern displays are also themselves becoming sharper, so it's no wonder that footage all now looks like those glitch websites from the late 90s that were trying to be cool but looked like a graphic designer threw up into them... FilmLight (who make BaseLight which is the Resolve competitor that costs as much as a house) seem to be on a mission to get deeper into the image and bring along the industry on that journey, and I'm really appreciative of their efforts as they're providing more insight into things we can do to get better images and get more value from our limited budgets.

I'd try a range of things, and I'm sure others will have more to add, but I would: Check the camera physically to make sure the screen works, buttons, EVF, etc I'd update the firmware straight away to the latest Put on several lenses and test that they're recognised correctly and the AF and OIS are working After putting in a new battery and formatting a memory card in it, I'd pick the best quality normal mode (24/25/30p) and do a long recording on it of something that has a lot of movement in it (a great test is putting three still images on a timeline each at 1 frame and then loop the video).. if it records without issue for 20+ minutes without anything odd happening that's good, but if you have time I'd test until the card fills up or the battery dies I'd also do the same but on the highest frame rate mode Check the files are playable in the camera and work on the computer If it passes all of the above then it's unlikely that it has some lingering issue that isn't also present on new copies as well.

About half my cameras were second hand, with a couple of them likely having a lot more than two previous owners, but haven't had any issues with mine. If you're concerned about overheating, get a camera with a fan. A fan is the difference between a camera overheating in air-conditioning in under 45 minutes vs a camera recording for 24 hours in a race car at 120F / 48C.

The size and cost of the 14/2.5 and 20/1.7 sure make them compelling lenses to own and carry around with you, that's for sure. I don't know what the AF is like on the 20mm but all I do is frame up a composition, do a single AF-S via a custom button, then hit record and maintain the focus distance during the clip. I shoot short clips for the edit, so I don't need or want AF-C. From that perspective the 20mm might be just fine. The alternative is manually focusing with peaking, which would likely take longer than most AF. Speaking of AF speed, I read something the other day - it said that Panasonics DFD sped up their CDAF, and I realised that I never see a CDAF Panasonic camera doing that thing where the focus racks the whole way to one end and then the whole way to the other end before acquiring focus, it just seems to do a quick jitter and it's done. I never thought about that being DFD but I guess it is. I watched a lot of landscape photographer YT (Thomas Heaton etc) and they made a strong case for landscapes being shot with wide lenses and ultra-long lenses. Some of those shots that show just the jagged peak of the mountain or the lone tree or castle on a distant hilltop can be the most stunning. Some time ago I realised that DOF depends not only on aperture but also on focal length, so although a variable zoom gets slower as it gets longer (making the DOF deeper), it's also getting longer as it's getting longer (making the DOF shallower) and so I did a bunch of math to calculate DOF of the same composition. I posted the results in some other thread somewhere here, but the summary is that a lot of variable aperture zooms are almost constant DOF lenses, when taking the same composition (ie, if you double the focal length then you'd be twice as far away for the same composition). Here's the table of the 14-140mm lens. The "Mid DoF" column is the DoF of a mid portrait shot (chest and up) and the "Close DoF" is just top of shoulders and up: It's not constant DoF but it's pretty close. I then realised that for my environmental portraits, where I want the subject in focus but the background should at least be recognisable, I didn't want something that just had the subject floating in a sea of mush. Also, nailing focus is more important to me than shallower DoF, and if the focus isn't going to get it perfect every time, and also pick the right focus subject each time, or if there are two people next to each other but slightly different distances from the camera because I'm not standing exactly 90-degrees to the line between them, then I'd rather the DoF be a few meters rather than the shot be missed. The other reason to have a fast lens is the low-light capabilities. FF obviously has the advantage because, all else being equal it gets 4x the amount of light onto the sensor, but this has to be balanced against the DoF which will also be radically shallower for the same T-stop. So if you don't want to shoot with a razor-thin DoF in low-light then you have to stop down. I find that in practice this would level the playing field in many compositions. Not all of them of course, and the seemingly greater investment in sensor technology from Sony in the larger sensors is also a factor, but it makes the topic more complex and far less one-sided than it might first appear. Yeah, it's definitely a case of "get the shot" first, "make the scene better by not making everyone uncomfortable" second, and "have a rig with a great image quality" third.

It was this one: I modified my SJ4000 action camera with it: When zoomed out the lens doesn't have great close-focus but about 2/3 of the focus range is past infinity, and when zoomed out it can only focus past infinity by a tiny little bit but is perfectly capable of focusing on the dust on the front element and then of going even closer and focusing on the dust inside the lens.

Congratulations!!

These images are really about what the camera captured - with colour grading there is a huge latitude to change things in post, which is where the taste and preference comes in. The challenge is what you have to work with in the first place. In the thread about colour grading 8-bit footage I showed that there is huge latitude to push things around in post - to the point that you can bring things up by 4-stops without ruining the image: Of course, if your highlights are clipped then there's basically zero ability to change it in post! After reflecting on things after posting the images above (and also of reviewing a bunch of other shots I didn't post) I think that the images look and feel like reality somewhere in-between the two extremes I posted. I can't recall how much I had to stop down to pull the highlights back into range, and it probably varied depending on the situation, but it might be a case of maybe shooting a stop under what the GX85 wants to shoot at that might give a nice middle ground. I must admit that the highlight blooming on the lens is quite nice, giving a sort-of magical feel to the lighting, while not making the image to surreal in daylight situations or being impossible to use with strong light-sources. There's always more lenses to add to the kit!! I used to shoot exclusively with manual primes and I worked out that for the travel work I do that the following were the right lengths: 16mm equivalent FOV: This is used for WOW!! shots.. buildings and landscapes. It also does crowded interiors too. Going wider than this makes things look too distorted, and going longer doesn't give that WOW!! factor. I forgot to mention it in my equipment summary, but I have the iPhone for the super-wides during the day (it isn't good enough at night unfortunately) so that compliments the walk-around zoom lenses. 35mm equivalent FOV: This is for environmental portraits, which is essentially the main subject of my work. I shoot mostly travel with family and friends and the subject of these films is the people interacting with the environment. Combined with the distance I am normally standing away from the subject, this is about the right FOV. If I went wider then the people are smaller in the frame than I'd like and if you get closer to compensate then lens distortion becomes undesirable. It's also good for landscape shots too: 80mm equivalent FOV: For things that are further away. When I first started travelling with the 3-prime setup I took the Helios 58mm F2 with a non-speed-boosted adapter but found the 116mm equivalent FOV on the GH5 to be too long - it was too much of a gap and I found myself swapping from the 17.5mm prime to the Helios and then swapping back. The gap between the 35mm FOV and 116mm is a 3.3x increase in focal length. I have since bought a M42-M43 speed booster which remedies this. So now that I've moved to the GX85 and the crop factor in 4K is 2.2x, the FOV of the lenses is: Laowa 7.5mm F2 is 16.2mm FOV TTartisans 17mm F1.4 is 37.4mm FOV (2.3x previous) Helios 58mm F2 with SB is 90.6mm FOV (2.4x previous) The 20mm F1.7 would be a 44mm FOV, which is a bit too tight in my experience. Of course, if I use the 14-140mm F3.5-5.6 zoom during the day and 12-35mm F2.8 for walking around "well-lit" places at night, the only use for the primes I would have is for very low light situations where I can shoot slower and take the time to MF properly. In terms of what those situations demand, I'm not really all that sure. The Olympus 75mm 1.8 might be a useful addition for super-tight low-light shots, although it might be a pretty specific lens. I want to capture what I see, so it's not a case of going out with a lens and finding the frame, it's a case of going out and experiencing things and capturing the most that I can. What use cases would the 75mm f1.8 capture that the 14-140mm F3.5-5.6 couldn't? If I had the budget, the 20mm F1.7 is so small that I could easily fit it into my bag, but the 15mm F1.7 is also a lot smaller than the TTartisans 17mm F1.4 as well that either one would work just as well, except that the 15mm is wider. The 4K from the GX85 can always be cropped slightly without much impact to image quality too. I already own the 17mm F1.4 so it's not a case of having a preference, although the 20/1.7 is 2.7x the price of the 17/1.4 and the 15/1.7 is 4.4x - so budget might have had something to do with it! I was using only fast manual primes, but now I've come to value AF over DOF, so the primes are relegated to low-light duties, however if I could get fast AF primes then that would be desirable too. It's probably something I'd look at upgrading to over time, assuming I stay in the MFT system, of course.