kye

I went away for the weekend and came back to find some cool posts on this thread!
There are definitely benefits in terms of consistency. I still haven't been able to find a vintage zoom with a useful focal length that focuses in the right direction and doesn't have smeary bokeh. Also, I'm not a huge fan of the 12+ element stacked flares that usually come with those lenses. The best I've been able to find it he Olympus 35-70 f3.6 but I wouldn't call it a character lens.
I saw this video about a year ago and tried to get one. I had a seller mislabel their listing and ended up with the variable aperture version. I was pretty irritated by this and it went into a drawer, only coming out when I dropped it off at Goodwill. I haven't looked again since.
Or f4 on S35. Absolutely. That's a case for M43 that is seldom made. But it also kind of forces you into wide, expensive glass. At least for vintage lenses. It's a bit of a catch 22.
Bought this one a couple of years ago. It wasn't for me. I was in agreement that it was the worst Nikon lens I'd ever tried. 
I found one of these with an M42 mount a few years ago. I really thought that it would scratch the itch but my copy was remarkably sharp. Amazing for the first zoom ever made.
This is actually a pretty neat idea. It might also work with step-down rings. It could also be a good way to standardize light transmission between lenses. I think I'm going to try this.

Canon FD might do it - price might be an issue perhaps?  Plenty of F3.5 or F4 lenses in the lineup, they focus the way you want, and you even get a choice of coatings (normal, S C, or S S C).  Some of the slower ones are macro lenses too!
https://cameraville.co/blog/list-every-canon-fd-lens-ever-made
Zooms are also an excellent idea.
An out of the box idea is to use faster lenses, but to keep the aperture wide open and cut a round hole in a lens cap and get the aperture you want that way.  I'm not sure if this would reduce the DOF in the right way?  It would definitely lower the exposure though, and would definitely keep the bokeh the shape you want.

I've played with diffusion before and not really liked it, but diffusion is a difficult topic because (the way I see it) it has four broad effects depending on the size of the diffusion.
The largest size of diffusion spreads light across the whole frame, reducing contrast.  I'm not really a fan of this one.
The smallest size spreads light into neighbouring pixels and essentially is the same as blurring the image.
The medium-large size spreads light between objects in the frame, creating halos and a strange appearance I'm not fond of.
The medium-small size spreads light far enough that it softens texture in the image.  This is why all the Hollywood actresses wanted diffusion because it hid any skin imperfections.  Apparently Cooke lenses all have this kind of diffusion in them but only for the frequencies of light around skin-tones - potentially a key part of the "Cooke Look".
Going back to your previous comment:
This has stuck in my head and after re-watching the Gawx videos I suspect this might be contributing to it.
I might have to do some investigation on this.
Also, now I have the anamorphic adapter and my new wide angle adapter, I'll step things up in terms of making things look a lot dirtier.  Anything in particular you think I should test?  (apart from having people in the image, which I think will end up being me).
 
 
 

I don't really use the audio for dialogue so can't really comment on it specifically.
To zoom out and think more holistically about sound, and also a bit about getting in front of the camera, there are a few approaches.
High-quality sound on location.  
This is great but you pay for it in terms of paying for extra equipment, extra faff of charging it, setting it up, using it, cleaning and maintaining it, etc.  High-quality in-camera audio is the most convenient and the most expensive to get.  External audio makes it easier / cheaper but creates extra work to keep the audio files managed and to sync them in post.
Acceptable sound on location.
This could be through a combination of average in-camera audio and average external audio.  
The in-camera audio could potentially using on-camera mics like the Rode VideoMicro or a plugin Lav mic that don't require any power and are plug-and-forget but are dependent on the quality of preamps in the camera.
The external audio could be as simple as using a smartphone right next to your mouth, or using the integrated mic in the headphones as a short lav mic.  I've seen lots of vloggers do this in very noisy environments and it works fine.  First example, second example.
Record in post.
ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) is where actors re-record their dialogue in post production to match their lips in the footage.  It is so common that many films simply didn't bother to get good sound and created the audio (dialogue, sound effects, sound design, the lot) in post after the fact.  I've done this before on short films and if you take a bit or time to do it then you can get results indistinguishable from doing it on-location.
Recording in post also comes into the idea of appearing on screen, or not.  
By taking lots of notes and recording your thoughts during the trip (potentially just using voice memos on your phone at the end of each day) you can then narrate the finished film and have a significant presence in the finished edit, have high quality audio, and also take away the burden of getting great audio for everything that happens throughout the whole trip.
Narrating the film will also enable you to communicate ideas and feelings and information in a concise way with carefully chosen words, rather than trying to piece together a coherent summary from fragmented snippets of footage.
Narrating the final piece also takes a huge burden off the footage too, because anything you didn't capture can be explained in V/O so the film doesn't rest solely on the footage to be self-explanatory, which is a high-bar to achieve. 
There's a hidden mindset that you're at the cutting edge of (and being cut by), which is that the entire film-making industry assumes that anyone wanting high-quality equipment doesn't mind it being large, and that if you care about size then you don't care about quality.  I've gone round and round with people online and it's like "small and good" is a combination that somehow doesn't exist in their world-view.
This has lessened over recent years, but is still the elephant in the room.
Speaking of the elephant in the room, be careful not to lose sight of the final prize, which is an engaging final product.  I don't know how much editing experience you have, but making a doc is like making a bunch of lego pieces without knowing what you're eventually going to want to make, then designing the building, and then trying to assemble the building out of the lego blocks you have made.  Obviously those with a lot of skill will be able to anticipate the final result better, and will make better pieces, but to a certain extent the more pieces you make and the more variety you include, the easier it will be to assemble the finished product you want.
This is why I advocate for setups that:
1) you will use (giving you more footage)
2) is fast to use (giving you more footage of things that happen quickly)
3) is flexible (giving you more variety of footage)
4) is enjoyable to use (making you more likely to use it and also making the whole thing more enjoyable and more likely to be successful overall).
Remember, this person is ready for anything, but misses almost everything switching equipment, and has a hernia by the end...

You should start with the idea of just using your phone and only add equipment that will make the end result better, not worse.

100% agree about the size, and when compared to the GH5 the difference in the hand is a lot more than what it looks like in pictures, so it's sort-of deceptively chunky.  By the time you're looking at a GH7 "small camera" territory is so far off you can't even see it in the rear-view mirror!
Perhaps the compromise is that the GH7 has an integrated cooling fan whereas neither the R5 nor Z6 III have it, and will be a larger again by the time you add on additional accessories etc.

I can vouch for the GH7 as a workhorse.
In terms of low light, I'd say it's fine.  Here are a couple of stills from the GH7 with the Voigt 17.5mm F0.95 lens.  I can't remember if the lens was fully wide-open or not, but I think the GH7 was at ISO 1600?
These have a film grain applied, so the grain is deliberate.  GH7 ISO tests are available online if you want to see the grain at various settings.  Also remember that NR exists in post, and compression does a pretty good job of NR as well.
The first shot is lit from the candle and the light of the fridge:

and this is just the candle:

Here's are some shots from the OG BMMCC from 2014 at its base ISO of 800, the 12-35mm F2.8 lens and shot at a 360 shutter to cheat an extra stop.  These locations looked about this bright with the naked eye, and I have excellent night vision.







You actually need far less low-light performance than most people think.
Thanks!
The issue is that you're either showing a very wide FOV, which will have significant distortions, or you're cropped in to the point where the quality is low because you're cropping out most of the data.
IIRC, If you have a 100Mbps 360 image then by the time you crop to the FOV of a 24mm lens you're down to something like only a few Mbps.  This is why I said the bitrates are what matters most.

Your checklist is a good start however everyone has their own perception of what defines "cinema". People have been chasing cinematic vibes long before DSLRs and mirrorless cameras were a thing. This forum has been part of that journey, evolving alongside gear and trends.
Online, “cinematic” usually means widescreen bars, shallow depth of field, slow-mo coffee shots, and the latest LUT everyone’s hyped about. Anamorphic lenses are popping right now, which probably explains why a lot of camera bros are jumping ship to Lumix to chase that look.
My point I guess is that there’s no single “cinema look.” Real cinema is about intention and personal choices. It’s the lighting/exposure that sets the mood, the colors that tell the story, natural dynamic range, and framing that pulls you in. The texture your gear adds, your lens choice, and how you pace things.. that’s what really gives something its look.
That’s why directors like Lynch, Soderbergh, and Baker sometimes break code and ditch the big rigs for DV, iPhones, or 35mm. Not because they can’t get a polished image, but because they want immediacy, rawness, and the happy accidents you just don’t get with giant setups. Baker’s Anora used 35mm not for nostalgia, but for the discipline and energy it forces, kind of like his iPhone stuff on the reverse end of the spectrum. Whether those projects click with you visually is personal, but that doesn’t make them any less cinema.
Sure, high-end productions lean on ARRI, RED, or Venice with top glass. But smaller cameras get their day too. The FX3 showed up in The Creator, F1 & Severance because of its low-light chops, portability, and multi-cam flexibility. When matched up right, it can hang with the big boys.
Chasing the cinematic look is totally valid, especially if it fires up your creativity. Again, your checklist is legit, but remember it’s always evolving and should serve what you want to say. Sometimes the weird or unexpected choices end up making something fresh and your own.

And now due to the overreach of the online safety bill in the UK, the government are determined that they will be in the room with us.
With regard to the look, have you got anywhere local to you that has featured in a programme/film that you like ?
Might be an idea to take a screen grab, put it on your phone as reference for framing and basic time of day and see if you can take some footage to get anywhere close to emulating it.

100% agree about the size, and when compared to the GH5 the difference in the hand is a lot more than what it looks like in pictures, so it's sort-of deceptively chunky.  By the time you're looking at a GH7 "small camera" territory is so far off you can't even see it in the rear-view mirror!
Perhaps the compromise is that the GH7 has an integrated cooling fan whereas neither the R5 nor Z6 III have it, and will be a larger again by the time you add on additional accessories etc.

I can vouch for the GH7 as a workhorse.
In terms of low light, I'd say it's fine.  Here are a couple of stills from the GH7 with the Voigt 17.5mm F0.95 lens.  I can't remember if the lens was fully wide-open or not, but I think the GH7 was at ISO 1600?
These have a film grain applied, so the grain is deliberate.  GH7 ISO tests are available online if you want to see the grain at various settings.  Also remember that NR exists in post, and compression does a pretty good job of NR as well.
The first shot is lit from the candle and the light of the fridge:

and this is just the candle:

Here's are some shots from the OG BMMCC from 2014 at its base ISO of 800, the 12-35mm F2.8 lens and shot at a 360 shutter to cheat an extra stop.  These locations looked about this bright with the naked eye, and I have excellent night vision.







You actually need far less low-light performance than most people think.
Thanks!
The issue is that you're either showing a very wide FOV, which will have significant distortions, or you're cropped in to the point where the quality is low because you're cropping out most of the data.
IIRC, If you have a 100Mbps 360 image then by the time you crop to the FOV of a 24mm lens you're down to something like only a few Mbps.  This is why I said the bitrates are what matters most.

I just saw my first 360 material from a bike last night and although it was interesting to be able to cut back and forth from multiple angles, I just couldn't get past how distorted everything was on the wides... and it seems to me that this doesn't go away when cropping in. Maybe I need to check out some other material to get a better sense of things... but I like it that you've thrown this option into the mix. Thanks!

Well said Kye, thank you.
I've seen your work over the years, it's impressive just how much you are able to ring out of your bodies and lenses. Seriously.
And yes, the S9 and 28-200 seems like it can deliver as a smaller unit. I wonder how much larger things get when professional audio comes into play.

I agree.  The ability to reframe in post is incredible.  
It even goes beyond that because you are essentially recording every camera angle at all times, so if there was something that happened around you, you could cut between multiple angles of the same event.  Even if you were psychic and were always pointing your normal camera in the best direction at all times, you couldn't record multiple angles at the same time with one camera, so it goes even beyond the mythical psychic camera person.
I saw a great example of this many years ago..  it was a guy recording his family walking through a fairground with mum and the kids walking behind him.  The sequence was something like:
his kids calmly looking around someone in a scary costume approaching from ahead his kids not seeing them scary monster seeing the kids and having the idea to scare them and starting to approach mum seeing him and smiling, knowing what is about to happen the kids suddenly seeing him and reacting very suddenly / loudly the monster reacting to their reaction the kids laughing the monster laughing mum laughing monster walking away It was essentially a three-camera shoot, and like all good reality TV I'm pretty sure he overlapped the shots to extend the event, which probably only took about 5 seconds.  
The killer thing is that just by having a 360 camera you're recording all the camera angles all the time, so when the thing happens you've probably got all/most of the angles to show it happening.
Just get the one with the highest resolution and highest bitrates.  When you crop in you're drastically reducing the quality of the footage.

I also doubt that "weather resistant" is sufficient for the random deluges that are likely to happen over that duration of trip, although it's absolutely worth reading the manufacturers description of what "weather resistant" means, just so you know what they are thinking of when they use the phrase.  It might be a lot more (or less) than what you might be thinking.  This is something I have pondered for some time but haven't gotten around to.
Better to just get something completely waterproof and be done with it.  Then you can record in monsoon rains and get good footage of waist-deep water, which would be a highlight of the doco in itself.
I would also suggest that the "bad weather low-light" situation isn't really that important.  Realistically, if it's bad weather due to rain or due to dust at night then you can't see that much anyway.  Just turn on your bike lights or headlamps and film the chaos.
My setup doesn't cover the "long-zoom low-light" combination because it's not a thing that you need to shoot normally, and while it would be great to have, I have only ever wanted this combination for taking shots out of the hotel window at night in Seoul, and that's hardly a situation to design my whole setup around.
I'm also surprised at how compact the 28-200mm lens is on the S9, it seems quite manageable.

I agree.  The ability to reframe in post is incredible.  
It even goes beyond that because you are essentially recording every camera angle at all times, so if there was something that happened around you, you could cut between multiple angles of the same event.  Even if you were psychic and were always pointing your normal camera in the best direction at all times, you couldn't record multiple angles at the same time with one camera, so it goes even beyond the mythical psychic camera person.
I saw a great example of this many years ago..  it was a guy recording his family walking through a fairground with mum and the kids walking behind him.  The sequence was something like:
his kids calmly looking around someone in a scary costume approaching from ahead his kids not seeing them scary monster seeing the kids and having the idea to scare them and starting to approach mum seeing him and smiling, knowing what is about to happen the kids suddenly seeing him and reacting very suddenly / loudly the monster reacting to their reaction the kids laughing the monster laughing mum laughing monster walking away It was essentially a three-camera shoot, and like all good reality TV I'm pretty sure he overlapped the shots to extend the event, which probably only took about 5 seconds.  
The killer thing is that just by having a 360 camera you're recording all the camera angles all the time, so when the thing happens you've probably got all/most of the angles to show it happening.
Just get the one with the highest resolution and highest bitrates.  When you crop in you're drastically reducing the quality of the footage.

Just pointing out that "weather sealing" is useful for more than just filming in the rain.
It's also protection against dust (which is a very common problem in arid areas).  It's protection against something in your bag breaking open and leaking on the camera.  Or your tent leaks in the rain at night and you had your camera sitting out.  Or you just drop it in a puddle/fountain/shallow water for a second.
And yes, it is good to understand how weatherproof something really is, but simply having gaskets around a lot of the buttons and on the lens mount is a big deal.  And sealing on a zoom lens can be even more important in a dusty area so that zooming the lens doesn't suck in a ton of dust.

Yesterday I played around with FLC and grading some clips from Korea and the GH7 and 14-140mm.  I plan to do a range of tests around settings for softening / sharpening / adding grain / other texture treatments in post, but YT compression is pretty diabolical so I'll need to do quite a number of upload tests to see what settings in Resolve get you what result on YT.  I also went much bolder with the colours too, thinking of Gawx.
This was a first attempt just to work out the ballpark of where to start.
Probably the immediate takeaway is how the grain is quite different per shot, despite it being applied evenly to all shots.
Here is a comparison between the timeline in Resolve, the 42Mbps h264 4K export, and the 12.6Mbps h265 4K YT download.
Shot 1 - Resolve:

Shot 1 - Export:

Shot 1 - YT stream:

Shot 2 - Resolve:

Shot 2 - Export:

Shot 2 - YT stream:

Shot 3 - Resolve:

Shot 3 - Export:

Shot 3 - YT stream:

Impressions:
I'm told that film grain is most noticeable in the mids and shadows, so the distribution is consistent with film, which partly explains why the first image has less noticeable grain as most of the image is quite bright or quite dark.
The sky shot seems to have lots of grain as it's a flat surface in the right luma range, but it seems that more grain is retained on the YT stream because there is less movement in the frame for the compression to cover.  Whereas on the street scene the grain is considerably reduced despite having similar darker flat surfaces.
I didn't apply any softening to this video, so the sharpness is direct from the 14-140mm -> GH7 5.7K to C4K downsample -> C4K 500Mbps Prores 422 -> 1080p timeline image path.  The 14-140mm isn't tack sharp but it's not too bad.  I've noticed in the past that grain can make images look sharper than they really are, but in this example the grain combined with the compression probably softens detail as a net result.  I will definitely be exploring this relationship more.  Film is known to have a sharpness of >1 at its maxima, so having some sharpening applied seems appropriate.
Overall it seems to do a pretty good job capturing the grain, here's the next frame from the YT download so you can compare what is grain and what is detail and texture in the scene.

I also doubt that "weather resistant" is sufficient for the random deluges that are likely to happen over that duration of trip, although it's absolutely worth reading the manufacturers description of what "weather resistant" means, just so you know what they are thinking of when they use the phrase.  It might be a lot more (or less) than what you might be thinking.  This is something I have pondered for some time but haven't gotten around to.
Better to just get something completely waterproof and be done with it.  Then you can record in monsoon rains and get good footage of waist-deep water, which would be a highlight of the doco in itself.
I would also suggest that the "bad weather low-light" situation isn't really that important.  Realistically, if it's bad weather due to rain or due to dust at night then you can't see that much anyway.  Just turn on your bike lights or headlamps and film the chaos.
My setup doesn't cover the "long-zoom low-light" combination because it's not a thing that you need to shoot normally, and while it would be great to have, I have only ever wanted this combination for taking shots out of the hotel window at night in Seoul, and that's hardly a situation to design my whole setup around.
I'm also surprised at how compact the 28-200mm lens is on the S9, it seems quite manageable.

This is hilarious… and exactly true! 😂
The other option is to just put this upcoming project aside and join a Buddhist monastery… but I’m going to try to take one last run at this type of thing and see what kind of ‘happiness’ it leads to.
Lets see…

@Tulpa
If you are buying from scratch and don't have a lot of lenses etc in a particular format that you want/need to use then I'd be looking at this camera too.
It is smaller and lighter than even the very compact GX-80/85.

Compared to the bigger MFT offerings in the G and GH series then it is even more of a stark difference in form factor but it is also dramatically cheaper.
Video specs, it shoots 4:2:2 10-Bit and has the open gate mode which for this sort of expedition might well be beneficial to you as you can more easily reformat the footage in different aspect ratios for social media etc.
It has the colour profiles for ease of use but it also shoots in both flavours of F-Log so you can roll your own look.
Lens wise, it has not only got a huge back catalogue of native lenses (a lot of which have stabilisation) and are plentiful on the used market but it also has a lot of fast compact 3rd party lenses like Viltrox which are available at the sort of prices we all remember MFT lenses being back in the day !
Obviously, it has the larger sensor too....
The "downsides" would be considered to be the lack of IBIS and having what appears to be a vague degree of weather resistance - I couldn't find any definitive answers on that one.
The lack of IBIS may well actually prove to be a blessing in disguise if the camera is going to spend any amount of time on the handlebars while you traverse over what for large chunks of the journey will be less than smooth surfaces. Wear and tear over three years will be bad enough without throwing the fragile mechanisms into the mix.
There is a reason why shows such as Top Gear went with the IBIS-less GH5s (although I'm not sure if the story of show wanting to use the GH5 minus it was actually the trigger for Panasonic to make that version is apocryphal or not).
Whatever way you go, I'd spend some research time on the best shock mounting options as it will be a point of failure for any camera that you go with over that period of time.
As for the weather sealing...
Back in the dark distant past when I was a professional sports photographer using battleships like the D3/D4/D5 etc they could take a hammering but as soon as the rain/sleet/snow became a bit too much none of us were taking that chance that they were immune to it so out would come the covers for both the bodies and the lenses.
Think Tank make good ones but they are all designed for bigger cameras rather than the X-M5 so on a more prosaic level, these are cheap and cheerful at less than £11 for a pack of four and won't take up much space.
On a trip like this when you are likely going to encounter very real weather, I wouldn't take any chances with the weather sealing rating vague or otherwise of smaller cameras.

Great info from John and definitely agree on the zoom + fast prime combo.
 I have the 14-140mm and love it.  I was tossing up between it and the 12-60mm F2.8-4.0 because I wasn't sure how often I'd use the 60-140mm part of the lens, but since getting it I was really surprised at how often it really comes in handy.  Essentially, it means you can shoot whatever you can see, which really helps when you're trying to give a sense of a place.
It's slower than the 12-60mm but neither is a low-light lens and the DOF differences aren't relevant in a doco situation.
Here's a video I did showing the stabilisation, but it should show you the versatility of the lens.
I shoot travel videos and have found that AF zooms best allow you to document the places and experience you're in, as they support the approach I've developed to shooting:
Shoot a good variety of shots so you have lots of options in the edit Shoot the wide so you have an establishing shot, shoot the people, shoot the buildings, shoot the motion, shoot the colour Shoot the space (especially if it's large), shoot the details, look down at the ground and look up at the buildings / trees and the sky Think about what makes this place special and shoot that Think about what makes this place feel the way it does and shoot that In general, the faster you can shoot the more you will capture and the more authentic it will be because it will be more spontaneous and more based around your initial impressions rather than shooting slowly and having too much time to think about it.  Plus, sometimes things happen very quickly and often they're the most important things to capture.
I'd also second @tbonnes idea of combining the action cam and mirrorless.
The action cam can be mounted on the bike ready to grab footage at a moments notice and doesn't need to be put away even in torrential rain or a dust storm.  Then, once you've stopped you can pull out the mirrorless and get some shots.  If you're a masochist then you can even go ahead, setup the mirrorless and hit record, go back again and ride through the frame, then go back and retrieve the camera.  It seems like a great way to shoot a film and a spectacular way to remove as much pleasure from the experience as possible.
This raises the other option - a drone.  It's the fastest way to get shots of you without having to ride the same section of road three times.  The laws for flying drones seem to have stabilised in a lot of places allowing drones under a certain weight, but it's something that would require an incredible amount of research beforehand to make sure it wouldn't get confiscated or get you into hot water just for having it.

@Tulpa
Maybe John is best placed to talk about camera bodies, but here's a few thoughts:
you absolutely want weather proofing, and should read the manual to see what this can cope with (and what it cannot) IBIS is great but the mechanisms are fragile and I'd imagine that if there are any constant vibrations from cycling you could easily break them (e.g. will there be hours and hours of off-road or riding on rough roads?) consider what you'll be doing for audio - if you want an audio input then you'll need the G or GH line of cameras, not the GX line which lacks audio inputs docos are about getting the shot, not having a setup that looks incredible but isn't flexible or fast enough to use in the field.  for this I recommend simple setups and zoom lenses.  if you go MFT the 12-35mm F2.8 is a great lens because it's got some flexibility and also enough low-light for most situations.   You need to think about the whole ecosystem involved.  
You will have the camera, lenses, filters, batteries and chargers, media, potentially separate microphones (and therefore all their battery and charging needs), etc.  You might want a cage and maybe external monitors. You'll need camera mounts, definitely for mounting things to the bikes, but also a tripod is probably a must-have too.  If you're shooting interviews you might want some small lights, which come with their own battery and charging requirements too.
Then there's media management.  How will you offload cards, and where will you store the data?  Will you be able to backup to the cloud as you go?  Can you buy drives along the way and mail them home as you go?  Having three copies of something is great but if they're all in your bag when it gets stolen then the footage is still lost.
This ecosystem is something you need to assemble and then use a few times to work out the kinks and get everything optimised.
The reason I say all that is that by the end of that process you might decide that you don't have space or the weight capacity for the camera after you pack a wireless mic and a laptop and some hard drives.

Yesterday I played around with FLC and grading some clips from Korea and the GH7 and 14-140mm.  I plan to do a range of tests around settings for softening / sharpening / adding grain / other texture treatments in post, but YT compression is pretty diabolical so I'll need to do quite a number of upload tests to see what settings in Resolve get you what result on YT.  I also went much bolder with the colours too, thinking of Gawx.
This was a first attempt just to work out the ballpark of where to start.
Probably the immediate takeaway is how the grain is quite different per shot, despite it being applied evenly to all shots.
Here is a comparison between the timeline in Resolve, the 42Mbps h264 4K export, and the 12.6Mbps h265 4K YT download.
Shot 1 - Resolve:

Shot 1 - Export:

Shot 1 - YT stream:

Shot 2 - Resolve:

Shot 2 - Export:

Shot 2 - YT stream:

Shot 3 - Resolve:

Shot 3 - Export:

Shot 3 - YT stream:

Impressions:
I'm told that film grain is most noticeable in the mids and shadows, so the distribution is consistent with film, which partly explains why the first image has less noticeable grain as most of the image is quite bright or quite dark.
The sky shot seems to have lots of grain as it's a flat surface in the right luma range, but it seems that more grain is retained on the YT stream because there is less movement in the frame for the compression to cover.  Whereas on the street scene the grain is considerably reduced despite having similar darker flat surfaces.
I didn't apply any softening to this video, so the sharpness is direct from the 14-140mm -> GH7 5.7K to C4K downsample -> C4K 500Mbps Prores 422 -> 1080p timeline image path.  The 14-140mm isn't tack sharp but it's not too bad.  I've noticed in the past that grain can make images look sharper than they really are, but in this example the grain combined with the compression probably softens detail as a net result.  I will definitely be exploring this relationship more.  Film is known to have a sharpness of >1 at its maxima, so having some sharpening applied seems appropriate.
Overall it seems to do a pretty good job capturing the grain, here's the next frame from the YT download so you can compare what is grain and what is detail and texture in the scene.

@Tulpa
Maybe John is best placed to talk about camera bodies, but here's a few thoughts:
you absolutely want weather proofing, and should read the manual to see what this can cope with (and what it cannot) IBIS is great but the mechanisms are fragile and I'd imagine that if there are any constant vibrations from cycling you could easily break them (e.g. will there be hours and hours of off-road or riding on rough roads?) consider what you'll be doing for audio - if you want an audio input then you'll need the G or GH line of cameras, not the GX line which lacks audio inputs docos are about getting the shot, not having a setup that looks incredible but isn't flexible or fast enough to use in the field.  for this I recommend simple setups and zoom lenses.  if you go MFT the 12-35mm F2.8 is a great lens because it's got some flexibility and also enough low-light for most situations.   You need to think about the whole ecosystem involved.  
You will have the camera, lenses, filters, batteries and chargers, media, potentially separate microphones (and therefore all their battery and charging needs), etc.  You might want a cage and maybe external monitors. You'll need camera mounts, definitely for mounting things to the bikes, but also a tripod is probably a must-have too.  If you're shooting interviews you might want some small lights, which come with their own battery and charging requirements too.
Then there's media management.  How will you offload cards, and where will you store the data?  Will you be able to backup to the cloud as you go?  Can you buy drives along the way and mail them home as you go?  Having three copies of something is great but if they're all in your bag when it gets stolen then the footage is still lost.
This ecosystem is something you need to assemble and then use a few times to work out the kinks and get everything optimised.
The reason I say all that is that by the end of that process you might decide that you don't have space or the weight capacity for the camera after you pack a wireless mic and a laptop and some hard drives.

Great info from John and definitely agree on the zoom + fast prime combo.
 I have the 14-140mm and love it.  I was tossing up between it and the 12-60mm F2.8-4.0 because I wasn't sure how often I'd use the 60-140mm part of the lens, but since getting it I was really surprised at how often it really comes in handy.  Essentially, it means you can shoot whatever you can see, which really helps when you're trying to give a sense of a place.
It's slower than the 12-60mm but neither is a low-light lens and the DOF differences aren't relevant in a doco situation.
Here's a video I did showing the stabilisation, but it should show you the versatility of the lens.
I shoot travel videos and have found that AF zooms best allow you to document the places and experience you're in, as they support the approach I've developed to shooting:
Shoot a good variety of shots so you have lots of options in the edit Shoot the wide so you have an establishing shot, shoot the people, shoot the buildings, shoot the motion, shoot the colour Shoot the space (especially if it's large), shoot the details, look down at the ground and look up at the buildings / trees and the sky Think about what makes this place special and shoot that Think about what makes this place feel the way it does and shoot that In general, the faster you can shoot the more you will capture and the more authentic it will be because it will be more spontaneous and more based around your initial impressions rather than shooting slowly and having too much time to think about it.  Plus, sometimes things happen very quickly and often they're the most important things to capture.
I'd also second @tbonnes idea of combining the action cam and mirrorless.
The action cam can be mounted on the bike ready to grab footage at a moments notice and doesn't need to be put away even in torrential rain or a dust storm.  Then, once you've stopped you can pull out the mirrorless and get some shots.  If you're a masochist then you can even go ahead, setup the mirrorless and hit record, go back again and ride through the frame, then go back and retrieve the camera.  It seems like a great way to shoot a film and a spectacular way to remove as much pleasure from the experience as possible.
This raises the other option - a drone.  It's the fastest way to get shots of you without having to ride the same section of road three times.  The laws for flying drones seem to have stabilised in a lot of places allowing drones under a certain weight, but it's something that would require an incredible amount of research beforehand to make sure it wouldn't get confiscated or get you into hot water just for having it.