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The GX85 is the next challenge. For Priority 1 it needs to be kept handy and accessible. This means either being kept in-the-hand or kept in a pocket - keeping it in a bag adds access time unless the bag is on the front of my chest. Both of these mean that the rig has to be kept as small as possible, which essentially boils down to lens choice. The 14mm f2.5 lens is an absolute gem in this regard. In the 4K mode (which has a 10% crop into the sensor) it's got a 30.8mm equivalent FOV. I edit and deliver in 1080p, like all sensible people in the real world who haven't confused their ass for their elbow do, and so I can also use the 2x digital crop feature, which gives a 61.6mm equivalent FOV. These two FOVs are hugely handy for showing people interacting with the environment around them - environmental portraits. It also has good low-light, good close-focus distance, and has a bit of background defocus if the subject is close. I have the GX85 configured with back-button focus. This means that I hold down a button on the back when I want to engage AF and hitting the shutter button doesn't engage it. This works brilliantly in practice as it means that I can focus once for a scene and then shoot without having to wait for the camera to AF. I also have the viewfinder set to B&W and have focus peaking enabled in red, making it easily visible. The histogram is also really handy to know what is going on too. For Priority 2, this setup works well - the tilt-screen is great, AF is super-fast, IBIS is impressive and very functional, and I find using it in real-world situations to be easy, fast, and very low-friction. It still gets some attention, but it's not excessive. I find that for most shots I want to stop down to ensure that everything is in focus. This is because my work is about the subjects experiencing the location and the interactions that are going on. A nice portrait with a blurred-beyond-recognition serves very little purpose as it could have been shot anywhere at any time and therefore has no relevance. This lens can give a satisfying amount of background defocus for mid-shots if required, and especially for macro shots, which are occasionally relevant in an edit. Here are a few grabs SOOC. In grading I would typically lower the shadows to the point where the contrast is consistent (assuming it makes sense for the scene - lots of these have haze which you have to treat differently) and I would even out the levels of saturation etc. I'd also sharpen or soften images to even out the perceptual sharpness too. Interestingly enough, most of these images have enough DR, and even have elevated shadows, despite the camera not having a log profile. These provide a really solid foundation to grade from.

So, where does this leave us? Well, the iPhone wins Priority 1 hands down - so many people are vlogging or whatever in public now that it's almost invisible and I feel very little friction in using it. It's always handy in an easily accessible pocket, and the camera is fast to use from the lock screen. Once you're in the app it changes FOVs almost instantaneously, and will even change camera while recording, so that's hugely usable too. It's also pretty amazing at Priority 2. The stabilisation is simply incredible - I do the ninja walk pretty badly but it manages to give practically perfectly stable images even when walking on stairs etc. The AF is also fast and reliable, and because it has a very deep DOF it doesn't have the problem of choosing the wrong thing to focus on. It's got a large screen that is pretty easy to see in full-sun, even if you're trying to get a high or low angle and aren't looking straight at the screen.

I've gone through a journey over the last few months, and have come to a new clarity in my work. As most know, I shoot video of my family but want to make it look as much like high-end TV and films as possible. This involves shooting in completely uncontrolled situations with no re-takes. My new found clarity is this. Priority 1: Get the shot You can't use the shots you didn't get. Priority 2: Get shots in the best way Shots that aren't in focus, are shaky, don't have good composition etc aren't optimal. Also, having shots where subjects are aware and nervous of the camera, people in the background are staring at the camera, etc are also not optimal. Priority 4: Get the nicest image quality Insert all the normal camera stuff here... DR, colour science, etc. No, I didn't mis-number this, it's priority 4 because it's so far away from priority 1 & 2 that there is no Priority 3. Priority 1 is about feeling comfortable pulling out the camera and shooting, and having it be easy and fast to use. No fuss. Priority 2 is about stabilisation and focus, but is also about camera size. Smaller is better. This means that iPhone > GX85 > GH5, but unfortunately for priority 4 it's the opposite. Overriding principle: Use the biggest camera that won't draw too much attention in the situation. My first challenge was to see if using the iPhone was going to even be feasible. I mean, the image quality that I saw from it was horrendous. @mercer laughed when I called it "MAXIMUM AWESOME BRO BANGER FOR THE 'GRAM" but it was potentially the most savage insult I could think of - and the way to make images look as cheap and amateurish as possible. I own the iPhone 12 mini, which has the normal and wide cameras, but not the tele. One thing that escaped even my attention was that this has HDR and 10-bit support natively, so it's got at least some potential. Long story short, I filmed a test scene with all three cameras, as well as a colour chart I made in Resolve and a colour checker and attempted to match them. Matching to the GH5 was obviously not feasible, but I like the GX85 so I matched to that. Matching the GH5 to the GX85 was as simple as making a few basic adjustments. Then came the iPhone.... I tried matching the scenes first, with limited success. Hues and saturation and Luma behaviour were clearly different and not in easy or nice ways. That's when I turned to the colour chart and tried to look at what was going on. At first, the iPhone vector-scope was horrifically tangled, but in a stroke of luck I noticed that the luma curve was pushed up to brighten the mids, and when I brought it back to being linear, the vector-scope immediately fixed itself and was stunningly plain and straight-forwards. Win! This is the before/after of the greyscale from the colour chart: While this isn't a perfect linearisation, check out this before/after of what it does to the vector-scope from my Hue vs Sat test pattern in Resolve.... (I'd removed a few rows in the mildly-saturated region so I could more easily compare between cameras. This is the GH5 in HLG without a conversion to 709 for comparison) If I apply a CST to the GH5 (from rec2100 to rec709) and include saturation compression, we get this horrific thing: I've used that CST technique in the past and it's been fine on real footage, so it's not as bad as it looks. But the moral of the story is that the iPhone now has easily manageable colours. I was absolutely stunned when I realised that grading the iPhone footage could be as easy as working with the GH5 footage. Plus, it's 709 footage in 10-bit, so it should be prone to less banding and artefacts than the GH5 footage, which is 10-bit log. Next step is to use the colour checker to match the hues and saturation levels of the GX85. Here are the vector-scopes before matching.. GX85: GH5: iPhone with curve: Obviously the iPhone is nothing like the others, which is what you'd expect - Apple gave it a very distinct look and it's very different to the Panasonics. I also took shots of the colour checker in -3 stops and +3 stops. This showed that on the underexposed image (-3 stops) the iPhone is less saturated than the GX85/GH5 and on the overexposed image (+3 stops) the iPhone is more saturated. Resolve has a curve for this. I couldn't match it completely as it required a brutal adjustment but I pushed it in the right general direction. After applying some hue and saturation adjustments, we get quite a good match. iPhone: The plots at -3 match well, but the plots at +3 are all over the place, with the GH5 clearly having some rather strange issues. I'll ignore these for now - the goal is to make the iPhone into a camera that can be used for filming more than just memes, it doesn't have to match perfectly. I also applied a gaussian blur to the footage to un-do the horrendous sharpening that is applied. Here are some sample images from a recent trip with the above adjustments applied, without even adjusting each image individually - this is just the starting point. As I shoot auto-WB I'd be adjusting each image individually, main focusing on skin-tones. It should also be noted that these adjustments apply equally well to the normal, wide, and selfie cameras, and also apply to the 1080p120 and 1080p240 modes from both the wide and normal cameras. These shots include a mix of these. It looks like a real camera to me! Not the best in the world, but it doesn't make me regret shooting with it, so firmly in the usable category.

I'm curious to know what cameras people are actually using? By reading the forums I get the impression that everyone is using the latest and (so called) greatest cameras, but I suspect that's not the case. I haven't been posting lately because I've gotten the impression that no-one would be interested unless I was pixel-peeing a Z9 or whatever, and I've moved past that now.

Well, if I can't talk about cameras I haven't used, don't get to join the discussion even if I bring facts, and can't talk about the ones I do have, I guess you're banning me from having any involvement at all? I mean, you are the internet police, right?

After my own experience learning video after being a stills shooter, and reading many threads on photography sites talking about learning video, I'm not surprised that there hasn't been a huge migration from stills to doing both. ...and considering the level of skill and speed required at weddings, I would imagine that would make such a transition even more daunting for those contemplating such a thing! TBH though, the biggest challenge that I saw online from stills photogs was that they simply weren't willing to try. Even when someone who had developed some video skills gave simple advice about how to start, most wouldn't even do it, despite how simple the assignment was. Combined with the mass layoffs of photogs from newspapers and magazines that was occurring at that time, I got the sense that most had just given up on trying to adapt and stay relevant.

Do you have trouble comparing objects in photographs? I would have thought it was pretty straight forwards, but maybe not for everyone. ......but maybe those photos are somehow lying! Let's see, the C100 is ~1020g, and: Approx 135 x 170 x 129mm (thumbrest attached); => this is about 3L in volume Approx 182 x 170 x 129mm (grip attached); => this is about 4L in volume My 700D is ~580g, and: 133.1 x 99.8 x 78.8 mm => this is about 1L in volume So, the C100 with thumb rest is: Almost identical in width 1.7x taller 1.63x deeper about 3x as large in volume (however the C100 is quite curved, so this is much more subjective than the other measures) In terms of my 700D, I shot with it for years, and it is quite similar in size to my GH5 and XC10 once setup. I have shot many thousands of clips and tens of thousands of photographs across dozens of countries across many continents with those setups. Those cameras are not small. and yet, I am expected to believe that a camera 1.7x taller and 1.63x deeper is somehow TINY. Please.... Well said, however you have perhaps underestimated the attention that you get when you have a camera even the size of a GH5. Remember that a 5D is universally recognised practically the world over as being as professional a camera as you can get, and it's not so much larger than a GH5. Of course, the discussion wasn't about what was palatable in public, it was on camera size, and when I made a simple remark about an absolute statement, for some reason instead of clarifying, our friend just doubled down on an absolute statement, and then tried to make it personal.

No. I looked at a bunch of pictures online that showed both the C100 as well as various other DSLR bodies and saw that the C100 was around the same size as other cameras that I knew to be large through my own experience. I know everything is relative, but if someone says "I drive a large sedan and I'm looking at the Tesla truck" replying with "the Tesla truck is tiny!" because the Tesla truck is a truck and you're now comparing it to a triple road train then it's still not really in context.

That vlog life tho...

I've seen this a lot on camera comparisons. Two images look like they have a different WB, but when you compare them the neutral greys are both neutral but there will be different tints with the highlights/shadows or on hues that are beyond a certain level of saturation. It makes looking and comparing images very confusing - they look different but sensible adjustments don't seem to be effective in making them match. The good thing with the FP is (I assume) you can CST back to a neutral point and then apply whatever colour science you want, side-stepping any oddities from a particular colour science or other.

Hey - you've got to be careful saying crazy things like that around here... I'm reliably informed that the C100 is practically microscopic!

Wow, that's definitely a neat setup!

All I'm seeing is that it won't be that expensive to get into!

Ah, that makes more sense. For some reason I was imagining the little electronic EVF accessory (EVF-11) and wondering how that worked! Yes, that is quite a neat package if that suits your shooting style 🙂

Are you able to share a photo of the rig with the SD on top of the EVF? I'm curious as rig size is important for me.

You have proven my point - they're huge cameras!! The C100 is tiny.... for a cinema camera... but it's not tiny... as a camera. If someone says "what cameras would you say are tiny?" your answer is much more likely to include GoPro or GX85 or maybe a 360 camera, but you'd be crazy to say "the C100!". The context of the conversation is Nikon Z6 - and the C100 isn't remotely tiny in that context.

Kids these days.... they can barely spell! In that case, let me talk about if you should buy a GH5 instead of an FX30...... don't.

If you're concerned about breathing then it's worth mentioning that Sony have lens breathing compensation built into some of their newer bodies. The lenses still breathe, but the camera knows their 'profile' and crops into the image a small amount and as the lens changes focus the camera adjusts the digital zoom to keep a perfect frame and eliminate the focus breathing. In the tests I've seen the results are absolutely perfect and it's one of those things that I didn't think I cared about much until I saw images where it was eliminated and you see how much of an improvement it is to have it gone. I think that unless you have a huge amount of money to spend on lenses then you'd be better off going for a system like this that adjusts digitally rather than paying a lot for a lens without much breathing, as I'd imagine those are likely to be more expensive cine lenses. Happy to be proven wrong, but the Sony compensation seem to do a great job. Sony AF is also very impressive so you wouldn't be compromising there either.

Umm... I'm sorry, what now? Only if you compare it to larger cameras. It's still huge if you're used to modern mirrorless bodies.

I subscribe to many YT channels across an extremely broad range of topics, and I can say an emphatic YES that there is bizarre pedantry in virtually any hobby on earth. Artists get hate comments about their paintings based on if they use natural or artificial bristles in their paint brushes, woodworking channels get hate comments if they take a large piece of wood and cut it up into smaller pieces, people who make outdoor off-roading videos get hate comments on how they choose to drive around corners, people who talk about coffee and coffee-making equipment get hate comments if they put milk in their coffee (and don't get anyone started on milk-alternatives).... If anyone out there can find a hobby that has more than two people interested in it where there aren't people arguing about some minute aspect like the fate of the world depends on it then I'd be curious to see it because I haven't found one yet. PS:

When I (eventually) get around to grading these, any objections to me posting the graded images in the thread?

Good to hear you're learning more about the issue and might have found a fix. One of the things that I think really dominates our discussions and how we use cameras and how the manufacturers design and build their products is that combinations of features really matter and everyone is different and the manufacturers are pushing the tech on many fronts at once and need to make decisions on what they sacrifice and what they don't. So one manufacturer might try to offer the highest resolution and frame rates but sacrifice bit-depth to do it, and another would keep the bit-depth and limit something else instead. Manufacturers try to give us lots of options (especially regarding resolution / frame rate / bit-depth) but there are other things in there that they're not giving us the options to choose, like which modes (if any) give availability of things like colour profiles, exposure guides, sharpening and image processing, etc. These options are essentially hidden from the user by most manufacturers. Of course, if they gave access to all the functions then not only would the firmware be incredibly difficult to program, but using it would be like trying to fly the space shuttle! The other thing that dominates many discussions is that people don't understand that other people shoot in different situations for different style projects and with different aesthetic preferences, so rather than just acknowledging that we're all different there are these "well, you should just be more like me..." style comments which don't do much except show that the poster doesn't really understand life, business, people, or many other things 🙂

Not many direct comparisons likely to be out there, so I'd say just watch a bunch of C100ii and C300 videos and see what you think. If you watch videos / footage that is more targeted to interviews and documentaries then you're more likely to see what the cameras are capable of if used properly and not screwed up in post - watching music videos / camera bro footage / etc is more likely to have bad technique and crappy grading. If you watch enough test footage you can get a feel for what a camera is capable of. Those cameras are both pretty large though - are you looking to change to a professionally sized cinema camera type setup?

Are you asking why there isn't an RF to RF adapter with a vND in it? That would be a bit of a challenge, because either it has no glass in it and therefore has to be zero thickness and can't fit an ND, or it isn't zero thickness and therefore needs glass in it to keep infinity focus and can't fit an ND as the glass would be in the way. The EF-RF adapter works because the adapter must have some thickness to align with the right distances for those mounts.

I think it's literally just been added in the last day or two. Obviously that video only showed a few different scenarios, but how well do you think this compares to other third-party options? I'm not that familiar with the professional audio processing tools, but when I first got Resolve I remember some of the features were equivalent to separate packages costing many times what Resolve cost (eg. Twixtor which used optical flow for interpolated slow-motion) etc, so maybe it's right up there with the alternatives, or maybe not. I think this feature would be really useful for the occasional shot that I might have with someone talking in a loud environment, so it's caught my attention.