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Perhaps a side-note, but on the GH5 that tripod mode is excellent. Not only for completely eliminating motion (as it's designed) but also for doing heavily stabilised pans - It kind of feels like you're dragging the frame to one side, but the results really speak for themselves. If you're using stabilisation for hand-held work then it's worth trying that IBIS mode in whatever camera you have to see if this kind of behaviour is possible.

While I'm not about to buy, I'm also very interested in the quality of the 1080p on GH6. Double the thanks to anyone who shares this 🙂

Yeah, the FX6 is much smaller and the FX3 is really very small in cine camera territory. Even if it doesn't do RAW as Tom mentioned, for action sequences it's got to be very usable, especially considering that up until relatively recently GoPro footage was used in features... and let's just say there aren't any FX3 vs GoPro comparison videos because there'd be no point! Interesting that you draw the line between 'cinema' and not on the basis of RAW recording. I'm not suggesting some other line, I just hadn't thought about drawing it there, but I can see the logic. I think with the increasingly blurred lines between the categories of old, classifying things is becoming increasingly difficult and some definitions are so vague that they've been swallowed by hyperbole already.

The big fat answer is... it depends. One of the most significant factors is sharpening. All the A/B tests that people do leave the 1080p as-is and don't sharpen it to match the extra perceived sharpness of the higher resolution clip. I highly highly highly encourage everyone to do this comparison for themselves so they understand what it actually happening. Now, a better question is, can anyone tell when it's not a comparison and it's just what your film is shot on? I'd say no, considering that the lust for 4K cameras was quickly followed by a lust for diffusion filters to soften the "digital" look they created. .....and the best question is, does it matter to someone who is just watching and enjoying your content? To this I think the answer is quite obviously, no. Of course, the above is a "all else being equal" type of discussion, but all else isn't equal. When you're shooting or editing 1080p then you potentially have less hassles on-set with changing of memory cards, overheating of cameras, etc, meaning you can use the time you have to get one more take of a performance, or work in a way that's less interrupted. In post it either means you can use a cheaper editing setup or a highly spec'd setup will edit in a snappier way, making the tools nicer to use and you will literally create a better edit, and can have more layers of colour grading and more trackers etc so you can colour a bit nicer too. Not having to store such large files (camera media or SSD editing etc) means you can have more money to put into your film, which if you spend it on adding haze or renting a better lighting package or nicer production design will absolutely add to the quality of your output. There's no way in hell that the difference between appropriately sharpened 1080p and 4K can make anything like the improvement that will be made if you: get more/better takes have better production design make a nicer edit with nicer colour grading Resolution is hugely important if all you do is pixel-pee, but if you're interested in creativity it is a very low priority in making an enjoyable end product. (Standard disclaimer - resolution can matter more if your clients care about the spec, if you're doing VFX work like zoom in post by more than 40%, green screening, compositing, doing VR or AR, etc)

The think the other reason is that YT in 4K is far superior to YT in 1080p, but what people don't realise is that it has nothing to do with the resolution and is simply a factor of the bitrate instead. Mix 1080p footage with 4K on a 4K timeline and upload to YT in 4K and it's really quite difficult to be able to spot which clips are which resolution.

There are still some applications that need to go smaller still.... https://ymcinema.com/2022/05/16/meet-the-cockpit-lens-behind-top-gun-maverick/ I don't think you're getting 4 Alexa Mini bodies into the cockpit of a fighter jet, for example. Besides, the smaller they make the whole camera, the smaller they could make the detachable head, and therefore the smaller the places they could get it compared to the body.

Affordable anamorphics are really starting to arrive too, so it makes sense that this would be a new "standard" feature set for mirrorless cameras.

I have no idea what you mean.... They say "cameras are required to have capability to create more impressive and breathtaking expression" I want to create more impressive and breathtaking expression, I mean, don't we all? Finally a manufacturer has stopped using all these nouns all over their press releases and have started talking sense!

I have an enduring interest in tiny cameras with high image quality and every now and then I see a BTS with an odd compact camera in it, and it is often the head of the Venice mounted somewhere and connected by its umbilical cable. I would think it's too common a requirement, but it's not too uncommon either?

I'm guessing you have found people that you can socialise with during the week? I sometimes have breaks between contracts and found that basically everyone I knew was busy working Monday to Friday before 6pm, and were tired after that. I always suspected there was a parallel world of people who worked evenings and nights and weekends and they all just hung out with each other while the business-hours folks were all at work..

I saw that link, but (and I know this might make me sound a little crazy here....) I didn't think that manufacturers announced alliances by wearing t-shirts and posts on rumour sites. Yeah, I know, crazy talk. I guess if @MrSMW says "Panasonic and Leica made a joint announcement that they are 'furthering' their collaboration." then it must be true - regardless of the source!

This is an excellent question. I have been delving into things and I have come to three significant observations: Camera sensors are Linear measurement devices Normal cameras do not look anything like an Alexa - even when shooting RAW still images that aren't debayered and even well within their best operating area (low DR, base ISO, etc) The OLPF and spectral sensitivity of various cameras doesn't change much The problem with these three statements is that they can't all be correct without there being something else going on. The only way I know how to resolve this contradiction is if there is processing going on before the debayering in the ARRI cameras. I don't think the layout presents an enormous challenge for them to be able to put multiple sensors together like the LF does, but you might be right about it being a long wait. The 35 is named to match the 65, and the introduction of the 35 means that now they have cameras over 4K in all sensor sizes. Obviously the new 35 has greater dynamic range and colour depth than the ALEV3 cameras, but considering how much those already had, you could almost just think of the DR on the 35 like a special application camera (like super slow motion) where a production would just use one for those shots.

This seems like a good overview, and includes a few little sections to make sure social-media-bros now some of the basics...

Yeah, I've seen glimpses of that life and it doesn't look easy by any stretch of the imagination!

Link to the announcement?

I'm not sure that this applies for wedding videographers.... 🙂

I'd suggest that you also take into account resolution of the various platforms and what resolutions you'll want to deliver in. For example, it seems that snapchat might be the most extreme vertically: ...but if it only requires a very low resolution then you can get away with a wider sensor read-out and still oversample. Also take into account sensor resolution. An 8K 16:9 would give more resolution than a 4K 3:2. As is almost always the best advice - clearly define what it is that you want to end up with and then work backwards from there.

...and more chance of extra equipment getting stolen from set while everyone is busy doing things. I see posts on FB groups every so often listing serial numbers of items that got stolen so the group members can keep an eye out if they pop up for sale. Mostly someone asks how they got stolen and it's mostly out of the boot/trunk of locked cars, but the odd one disappears from set, unfortunately.

I must admit that I haven't kept up with your discussions on this, but I got the impression that you can't use the False Colour mode on the FP to accurately monitor things across all the ISOs - is that correct? The way I would use this camera would be either manually exposing or using it in auto-ISO and using exposure compensation, but I would be using the false-colours in either mode to tell me what was clipped and where the middle was. I'd be happy to adjust levels shot-by-shot in post (unlike professional workflows when working with a team) and know how to do that in Resolve, so I'd be comfortable raising or lowering the exposure based on what was clipping and what I wanted to retain in post. If the false-colour doesn't tell me those things then it would sort of defeat its entire purpose..

"HLG" isn't a standard as-such, more like a concept. There are multiple standards within HLG (rec2020 and rec2100, maybe more) but the HLG from the camera may not be an implementation of one of those. I've tried this on the GH5 and found it wasn't exact, but was a "good enough" match to the rec2100, but I'm not doing this at any professional level. It's easily testable though - just do a set of over/under exposures on a reference scene and see if matching the levels in post results in a match or not. You can try converting from various standards and see if any of them get the shots to match. Its very easy in Resolve to put a reference exposure over the top and set the blending mode to "Difference" and you can clearly see the errors. IIRC on the GH5 the errors were strange colour shifts in the shadows and highlights and some of the more saturated colours, but was a pretty good match in the mids and lower saturation. I tried compensating with curves etc but it was messy.

Good post and good points made, and nice to see appetite for a more nuanced discussion around it. I see a number of elements in the overall set of functionality: being able to reliably focus on a thing (this is where PDAF has the clear advantage) being able to recognise objects that might be good to focus on (face detect, eye detect, animals, etc) and also being able to recognise that there might be candidates that are quite out-of-focus being able to choose the right subject from the faces / animals detected being able to know what to do when an object tracking is lost (focus on someone else, the background, or hold focus?) being able to adjust the focus racking speed to be context-sensitive being able to anticipate focus on an object before that object is in frame The PDAF vs CDAF debate only applies to #1 - literally none of the other elements are related to it at all. Obviously PDAF is much better at number 1 than a non-dedicated focus puller, and this is what CDAF systems get criticised for (either not doing it at all, going the wrong way, or pulsing while tracking). Modern cameras are all getting much better at #2 with face-detect being pretty reliable and ubiquitous at this point. MILC/cinema cameras seem to have zero capability to do #3, which is why you have outlined the use of the joystick and touchscreen and other techniques, and I agree with you that if someone practices a bit and gets familiar with their camera then this is probably a good enough way to control the AF. #4 is only just being added to new cameras so I think is probably "cutting edge". Apart from the "face AF only" mode not being on all cameras, the ability to change the focus mode on the fly is probably absent or tedious (maybe I'm wrong here but I doubt that it's as easy as the controls for #3. #5 is adjustable deep in the menus of most cameras, but changing it on the fly is likely to be cumbersome / prohibitive, and the camera automatically doing it is completely absent from all cameras and will be a long wait. This is particularly relevant because there's always a balance to the camera not getting jumpy when something moves through the shot but also not having a huge lag when the thing to focus on actually does need to change. #6 isn't available in any real capacity from cameras Anyone who focuses manually will be worse at #1 than PDAF systems, and have full and complete capability on 2-6. Mostly the conversation only talks about #1 with sideways references to 2-3 and no acknowledgement the others exist. In terms of aesthetics, I greatly prefer to have imperfect #1 if the rest are on-point. In fact, as someone who spends most of the time behind the camera on my own family videos, the way I use the camera (and edit) has proven to be a significant presence in these videos, and focus pulling is a significant contributor to that aesthetic.

If only it were the case that something simply being true meant that no-one needed to be convinced of it! At this point, I've read so much BS online that I require quite a high amount of evidence that something is true before I repeat it to others, which was the point of me phrasing it like that in my original comment 🙂 It really seems like the FP is a great FF cinema camera really just lacking a good post-process and support for it in the NLE space. I really hope they rectify this in future firmware updates - the sensor has soooo much potential!

The thing never discussed in these debates is "who". Who should it focus on? Very early on in the AF game you could program your camera with photos of your family and then it would look for those faces specifically and focus on them, not whatever face happened to be most convenient at the time. I've never heard features like this mentioned in these debates. Sure, AF from Canon / Sony are phase detect, which means that it can focus on the object it chooses for you. Sure, AF from Canon / Sony are face / eye detect, which means that it can focus on the face or eye it chooses for you. I've used some of the worst AF systems ever made and had many many shots ruined by them. As often as not, they were ruined because it focussed on the wrong thing or wrong person. AF is great if you're trying to keep a talking head in-focus on 100mm at F1.2, so I guess it's good enough for professional videographers, but as someone who shoots home and travel content, it's no-where near sophisticated enough for my needs.