kye

Man, I lost my GX7 years ago --and when I look at that 1080 footage I still find myself coveting it.

Indeed it is, and indeed I do!
Haven't turned it on in.. well.. some time.  
I must admit I find it funny that my first video-first camera was the XC10 but moved on because I wanted shallower DoF, and now I'm back to shooting deep DoF with a 10x zoom lens.  This is why I never sell anything - I've lost count of the number of times I learn something new and then pull things out of the discard pile again, and although it's mostly lenses, you never really know.

Went hot-air ballooning and if there was ever a challenge for shooting, this was it.  Extreme low-light and extreme DR from hugely bright light-sources.
They say you can't take bags in the balloon, and it had been really wet weather, so I decided to go small.  I took the GX85, TTartisans 17mm F1.4 for the low-light, Laowa 7.5mm F2 for an ultra-wide, and the 12-35mm F2.8.  I was a bit cheeky and took a sling bag and kept it under my jacket.  The requirement is that nothing is loose in the basket and that you can hold on with both hands for landing, so I figured my bag under my jacket was basically the same as having a big pocket.
It's a crazy early start.  We arrived in the field before first-light and they started setting up in pitch darkness guided only by torches.  I started shooting at F1.7 and needed ISO6400 at first to get any kind of level on anything except their torches.  I shot on the 17mm at F1.7 and gradually reduce the ISO until the balloon was mostly inflated, then swapped to the 7.5mm for a few wide shots, and then swapped to the 12-35mm F2.8 and it was time to get in the balloon and off we went.  
I also shot with my iPhone 12 mini for some quick shots using the ultra-wide when I didn't want to change lenses, and also as we were approaching landing, as I had put the camera away in anticipation.  It was super-foggy and the pilot ended up having to land early and for a while we were going pretty close to the treetops so I'd put my camera away when he told us that he'd be landing at the next opportunity.
Frame grabs..  mix of GX85 and iPhone, put through a quite moderate FLC pipeline.










In retrospect I took the complete wrong equipment and used it in the wrong way (so, it's business as usual!) but the FLC pipeline really took the footage to the next level, and I used just enough strength on the film emulation to get rid of the digital look to the images.
Here's a comparison.
Grade (same as above):

SOOC:

The GX85 has super-whites so despite being SOOC that image is actually slightly clipped in-post and some highlights can be recovered, which the FLC grade has done, but you get the idea.  The SOOC is with the GX85 default profile and has much more of a video look to it, despite being pretty good compared to other similar cameras.
If I was to take the same equipment again, I'd lean into the darkness and just use the 17mm at F2.0 where it cleans up and use the GX85 at something sensible like ISO1600.  This would have the early shots as perhaps being unusable, but it would mean that the torches the crew used wouldn't have been clipped (I clipped them in favour of exposing what they were shining on).
We're going to go again later this year, and for that I plan to take the GH7, 9mm F1.7 and 14-140mm F3.5-5.6.
This will be a much larger setup but if I use a neck strap then I only have to have one lens in a pocket and so I won't need a bag at all.  I just bought the 9mm F1.7 and it's sharp wide-open, so apart from having AF, it is both an ultra-wide as well as a low-light lens.  I can crop in-camera and/or in-post to get a tighter FOV, but you don't normally need long focal-lengths when it's that dark.
The more I use this FLC pipeline the more I like it.  If I'd have shown these images to my 2018 self, I wouldn't have believed me when I said that it was me that made them.  

A great benchmark.
Do you still have that XC10?

I have now imported my iPhone footage and put it through the same FLC pipeline as my GH7 footage.  
As you may recall, I shot the "home video" parts of the trip with my iPhone 12 Mini, and part of the goals of the new FLC pipeline is to be able to improve the iPhone footage and match it better with the GH7 footage.
Overall, I am pleasantly surprised with both the images and the user experience.
With my phone in my left-front pocket and GH7 in my right-hand, I could extend the pop-socket out, pull my phone out, shoot with it, then put it back, all with my left hand and not having to even turn off the GH7.  Having the ability to swap from shooting with the GH7 and 14-140mm to an ultra-wide in seconds is great when you want to capture the action in real-time:


It has surprisingly good handling of real-world DR:


It allows for quick and unobtrusive shooting in restaurants and cafes:


which also gives some background defocus which is nice.
...and it is great for shooting in very cramped or crowded situations:


I struggled shooting in the Myongdong night-markets just because the GH7 was so conspicuous and just not well designed for such things, however the iPhone worked quite well for those chaos-and-people-everywhere shots, and was great for shooting situations at point-blank range:



In retrospect I wish I had shot more whimsical footage with it throughout the trip, but that's a note for next time.
In order to see how the FLC is contributing to these images, let's compare some of the above shots to how they would have looked with a simple CST workflow (I did a CST to DWG, matched exposure, then CST to 709-A).
FLC:

709-A:

FLC:

709-A:

FLC:

709-A:

I find that it takes the digititis out of the images quite a bit.
Another thing it does is hide some of the limitations of the iPhone too.  Here's a shot I took from out the train window.  It's obviously a very low-light shot and the iPhone NR was probably set to "armageddon".
709-A:

FLC (with a touch of sharpening):

Anything in post that applies across all your shots will help to unify them, and so having a slight softening applied to all the footage, as well as similar colour treatment, can really help to smooth things around any rough shots.  I created my own powergrade using FLC I called "50mm" because I took the grain and softening settings from the 35mm and 65mm presets and set things to the mid-point between the two, effectively emulating a 50mm film process.  I have more work to do, including working out what settings give what results once the footage has gone through the YT compression, but it's a start.

Went hot-air ballooning and if there was ever a challenge for shooting, this was it.  Extreme low-light and extreme DR from hugely bright light-sources.
They say you can't take bags in the balloon, and it had been really wet weather, so I decided to go small.  I took the GX85, TTartisans 17mm F1.4 for the low-light, Laowa 7.5mm F2 for an ultra-wide, and the 12-35mm F2.8.  I was a bit cheeky and took a sling bag and kept it under my jacket.  The requirement is that nothing is loose in the basket and that you can hold on with both hands for landing, so I figured my bag under my jacket was basically the same as having a big pocket.
It's a crazy early start.  We arrived in the field before first-light and they started setting up in pitch darkness guided only by torches.  I started shooting at F1.7 and needed ISO6400 at first to get any kind of level on anything except their torches.  I shot on the 17mm at F1.7 and gradually reduce the ISO until the balloon was mostly inflated, then swapped to the 7.5mm for a few wide shots, and then swapped to the 12-35mm F2.8 and it was time to get in the balloon and off we went.  
I also shot with my iPhone 12 mini for some quick shots using the ultra-wide when I didn't want to change lenses, and also as we were approaching landing, as I had put the camera away in anticipation.  It was super-foggy and the pilot ended up having to land early and for a while we were going pretty close to the treetops so I'd put my camera away when he told us that he'd be landing at the next opportunity.
Frame grabs..  mix of GX85 and iPhone, put through a quite moderate FLC pipeline.










In retrospect I took the complete wrong equipment and used it in the wrong way (so, it's business as usual!) but the FLC pipeline really took the footage to the next level, and I used just enough strength on the film emulation to get rid of the digital look to the images.
Here's a comparison.
Grade (same as above):

SOOC:

The GX85 has super-whites so despite being SOOC that image is actually slightly clipped in-post and some highlights can be recovered, which the FLC grade has done, but you get the idea.  The SOOC is with the GX85 default profile and has much more of a video look to it, despite being pretty good compared to other similar cameras.
If I was to take the same equipment again, I'd lean into the darkness and just use the 17mm at F2.0 where it cleans up and use the GX85 at something sensible like ISO1600.  This would have the early shots as perhaps being unusable, but it would mean that the torches the crew used wouldn't have been clipped (I clipped them in favour of exposing what they were shining on).
We're going to go again later this year, and for that I plan to take the GH7, 9mm F1.7 and 14-140mm F3.5-5.6.
This will be a much larger setup but if I use a neck strap then I only have to have one lens in a pocket and so I won't need a bag at all.  I just bought the 9mm F1.7 and it's sharp wide-open, so apart from having AF, it is both an ultra-wide as well as a low-light lens.  I can crop in-camera and/or in-post to get a tighter FOV, but you don't normally need long focal-lengths when it's that dark.
The more I use this FLC pipeline the more I like it.  If I'd have shown these images to my 2018 self, I wouldn't have believed me when I said that it was me that made them.  

Raining in Seoul today, so pushed the GH7 + 14-140mm combo to its limits, including the in-camera digital zoom to get to 179mm, equivalent to 358mm on FF!!










Don't judge the lens by these images, apart from having a film emulation applied, I was also shooting through two layers of hotel glass on a range of angles, and the rain and dirt on the outside of the glass wouldn't have helped either.  
My normal thoughts when shooting through dirty glass is to have the fastest lens possible to blur it all into oblivion, but the DOF calculator says that a 50mm F1.2 lens focused at 100m will have 41.6m in focus in front of the focal plane, but the 140mm F5.6 lens also focused at 100m will only have 30.2m in focus in front of the focal plane, so the 140mm will blur the raindrops on the glass more, presumably because of the longer focal length.  Win!
This is the situation I had in mind when buying the 14-140mm lens, although obviously I knew I would use it for other things too.  I must admit that I've been using the long end while out and about much more than I thought I would, so not regretting the purchase at all.

Visited Jikjisa Temple yesterday, which was founded in the year 418, and looks straight out of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.  Everywhere you turn there are compositions that make you gasp.








The main challenge with full sun like this is the high contrast scenes, and then grading them so they don't look faded and also don't have half the image almost while or half of it pitch black.
This one has slightly more contrast than I'm happy with, but it gives you a sense of the look things start to drift into.

When I'm grading them for real, I think I'll likely use large power-windows and pull things down or up using those.
As a reference, here's the kind of shot I'm talking about where the contrast ratios are just overwhelming.  The information is all in the files, so I'm capturing it all, I just have to pull it out.

First day out shooting in Seoul.  Here are some images.
These are all frame-grabs, were ETTR, had a look put over them with Resolve FLC plugin, and I adjusted exposure on each (and contrast on the odd one or two) and that's it.  I'm sure I will finesse them once I start editing for real, but this is essentially just looking at my dailies.










Setup is incredibly easy to use thanks to the huge DR, AF is super-snappy, the 14-140mm zoom gives so much flexibility and I'm finding I'm using the long end a lot more than I thought I would.
I'll post some video footage of it later, but I'm also finding that I can hand-hold at 140mm (280mm FF equivalent) and with the OIS + IBIS working together get almost no movement in the frame at all, and with a slight crop in post I'd get locked-off images.  At anything below 80mm or 100mm the frame is locked and won't need any stabilisation in post.  Incredible results.

Yes, that's the one.
K&F Concept 58mm True Color Variable ND2-32 (1-5 Stops) ND Lens Filter, Adjustable Neutral Density Filter with 28 Multi-Layer Coatings for Camera Lens
The key phrases are "True Color" and "ND2-32 (1-5 Stops)".  They sell ones that have a wider range, but aren't as high quality and will have greater colour shifts over the operating range.
Having hard stops is the key to preventing you pushing it too far and getting into the range where the performance is poor (which I think is inevitable of this design, so the hard stops just stop you before you get there).

Thanks..  
To be honest I just find it baffling that everyone is throwing the word "cinematic" around and yet all the colour grades look like they haven't been converted from LOG to 709.  It's one of the easiest changes you can make in post to take your footage from video to cinema, and yet hardly anyone does it.
Pushing as much contrast and saturation as you can was the best film-making advice I ever got.

HA!  I didn't notice that until you pointed it out, as I hadn't hit play on that shot yet.
I guess nothing is immune to moire, although this was worse than I would have thought.
The GH7 has no crop in its full resolution modes, and none in the 1080p modes, but the 4K modes do have slight crops - with the C4K having slightly less crop which is why I chose it, so I wonder why that is and what tom-foolery might be going on with that.  The bitrates for the native resolutions are pretty brutal without Prores LT, so I'll likely stick to the C4K mode unless it starts being an issue.
Thanks!
I didn't get the LogC upgrade.  I haven't seen any tests that were done properly so am assuming that it's not worth the cost unless proven otherwise.  I also figure that even if there is some magic in there, I'm taking a hammer to the image with the FLC anyway, so it's not like I'm precious about it.  The only thing I am precious about is getting images that have the right aesthetic to support the subject matter and get out of the way rather than being distracting.
When I saw Goodfellas and a bunch of film trailers projected on 35mm film, the two most stunning things about the images were:
1) how fundamentally flawed they were from a technical perspective
2) how quickly and completely those incredible flaws evaporated and you saw effortlessly through and into the scene
I'm still at the beginning of my FLC journey, but I'm convinced this pipeline is capable of removing the digital distractions from the image that bug me so much.

Part 2...  how did I get here?
I've written about this previously, but the summary is that I went through a sequence of trial and error, continually bumping up against the limits of the hardware, the software, my skill, and mindset.
Setup: GH5, fast manual-focus primes
I shot a bunch with the GH5 and a set of very fast MF primes.  I chose this setup as it had 10-bit LOG, IBIS, and the fast primes gave good low-light and some background blur.  I knowingly sacrificed AF, essentially swapping a fast / accurate / robotic AF for a slow / human / aesthetically-appropriate focusing mechanism.
The MF worked, but not always (especially for my kids, who wait for no-one), and took time and effort to operate the camera away from the things that literally every other crew member does on set.
The 10-bit LOG worked, but wasn't a properly supported LOG profile so didn't colour grade flawlessly in post.
The primes provided the low-light and shallow-DoF but the shots I missed because I couldn't change lenses fast enough were more valuable in the edit than having shallow-DoF.
The DR was lacking.
Setup: GX85 with 12-35/2.8
I owned the GX85 and 12-35mm zoom, so I did some testing.  
I loved the speed of AF-S, and the deeper DoF meant that the number of shots unusable due to missed focus dropped to almost zero.
I tested it with low-light and for well-lit night-time areas, like outdoor shopping malls, it was sufficient.  
The Dual IS (IBIS + lens OIS) was absolutely spectacular and a welcome addition, and having a zoom made me realise why doco and ENG shooters have them as standard issue.
The DR and 709 profile was a real limitation though, and I really felt it in the grade.
It was around this time I figured out proper colour management, and the Film Look Creator was released.  These made a huge boost to grading the GX85, despite its 709 profile.
The mindset shift
The fundamental pivot was in mindset.  As social media became faster and more showy, I noticed the gulf between it and 'real' film-making more and more.  I went minimalist, thinking more and more about the days before digital where the process was to shoot as best you could, cut it, do sound-design, and that was it.  The focus was on what was in-front of the camera, how the cuts made you feel, and sound design that supported that vision.  Even those shooting docs on 16mm film could make magic.
Without throwing away the baby with the bathwater, I decided to re-focus.  To shoot what I could shoot, to learn to cut with feeling, and to simulate a film-like colour grading process where the look was applied and only very basic adjustments were made.
Setup: OG BMMCC with 12-35/2.8
I owned these already, and on my last trip to South Korea I took these as well as the GX85.  My shooting moved from shooting people I knew to shooting more general scenes, giving me more time and taking the time pressure off.
The setup was large (comparatively!) and very slow to work with, but it validated my mindset shift.
The images were organic and rich, but in a way that drew you into their contents, rather than towards the medium.
The DR was finally sufficient, and the colours were delightful.
But the monitor wasn't bright enough, the lack of IBIS meant that the OIS stabilised tilt and pan but not roll, so the images all needed to be stabilised in post, but had roll motion blur due to the 180 shutter.
The low-light wasn't ideal either, even with fast lenses.
The moire from the 1080p sensor was real and ruined shots.
I also got a lot more comfortable shooting in public with a more visible camera setup.
New Setup: GH7 with 14-140 and 12-35.....
So what I wanted was the best of all worlds.  
Dynamic range.  
I knew the OG BMMCC and OG BMPCC were the same/similar sensor, and I knew the GH7 had more.  
What I didn't expect was how much more that would be in real life.  Here's a high DR scene from Monday.

Here it is without the FLC, which I set to add contrast.

Now with the shot raised by 3 stops.  Notice the detail in the railings and under the eves on the right.

Now with the shot lowered by 3 stops.  Notice that the roof, and even the body of the car are still not clipped, with the only clipping being the sun reflecting off the car window.

In grading, there is more DR than you can fit in the DR of the final shot - assuming you haven't developed Stockholm Syndrome for your LOG footage that is.
Low light.  
I had previously established that the GX85 and 12-35mm F2.8 were good enough for well-lit night locations.  I also knew that the BMMCC at ISO800 and the 12-35mm F2.8 set to a 360 shutter was good enough for semi-well-lit night locations.  I also knew that the BMMCC with my 50mm F1.2 lens was passable at the darkest scenes I shot in Korea - which were from the hotel window at night.
I've compared the GH7 vs the GX85 and BMMCC and the noise profiles are all very different, but I concluded that the GH7 had probably 2-4 stops of advantage over those.  This means that I might be able to shoot well-lit night locations with the 14-140mm lens, and might be able to shoot from the hotel window at night with the 12-35mm lens.  
I'm still contemplating if I should take my F1.2-1.4 primes on my up-coming trip, but if I don't I'll still be able to shoot 99% of what I want to with the zooms.
Camera size.
Perhaps the only drawback when compared to my previous setups.  
I'll be taking the GX85 and 14mm F2.5 pancake lens as the pocketable tiny camera.  This combo is no slouch by itself, so although it lacks some of the specs from more serious cameras, it is easily in the capable category, especially when helped by Resolve+FLC and from a shoot-cut-sound-publish mindset.
Absolute speed.
When it comes to absolute speed, nothing beats a smartphone, which is always in your pocket, can be pulled out and rolling in seconds.  This is also a serious tool when combined with Resolve+FLC and a shoot-cut-sound-publish mindset.

I have a new setup and pipeline and I'm really happy with it.
GH7 shooting V-Log in C4K Prores 422 internally, at around 500Mbps 14-140mm F3.5-5.6 lens for daytime, 12-35mm F2.8 for night-time K&F True Colour 1-5 stop vND Pipeline in Resolve: CST to DWG as working colour space Plugin for basic shot adjustments Film Look Creator for overall look (and for taking the digititis out of the image) ARRI709 LUT to get to 709 output I went on a walk on Monday to test the full setup, and it was a crazy hot day (37C/99F) and direct midday sun, so seriously challenging conditions.  Here are a few grabs (be sure to click-through rather than viewing the preview files embedded in the post).










My notes and impressions - while shooting:
Setup was GH7, 14-140mm lens, vND, and a wrist-strap and that's it I used the integrated screen, showing histogram, zebras, and focus-peaking to monitor I used back-button focus to AF before hitting record, so no AF-C going on while shooting (and randomly changing its mind about what to focus on) All shots were 14-140mm at F5.6 for constant exposure The K&F 1-5 stop vND had enough range, when combined with the DR of the GH7, so I never needed to change settings, despite going in and out of shadow (and even inside, which isn't included in the above images) The vND had a much more consistent sky and colour render than my old (crappy) vND, so I'm really happy with it I did ETTR and bring images down in post, but my tests indicated that V-LOG is very linear so there are a good few stops of latitude there The "tripod mode" of IBIS, which locks the frame completely, was very effective (despite me being hot and not having eaten for hours) and I could hand-hold past 70mm without it needing to drift, and even at 140mm (280mm FF equivalent) the shots will be fine with a bit of stabilisation in post (C4K on 1080p timeline) I shot about 18mins of footage in about 1.5 hours, camera was on most of the time with screen at full brightness, and didn't get any notifications about the battery, and didn't look to see how much was left since I have a spare My notes and impressions - in post:
I chose a Film Look Creator preset and then just messed with it for maybe 10 mins, while scrolling back and forth through the footage, and I deliberately pushed the contrast to create a really strong sense of the contrast between the beating sun and the deep shadows Shots had exposure adjusted (obviously, due to ETTR) and some had contrast lowered and a few had slight WB tweaks, but that's it I never felt like I was fighting with the footage, and it didn't feel like work when creating the look..  I've shot with a lot of cheap cameras with tiny sensors and you always feel like you're trying to make gold out of lead, but playing in the FLC was more like choosing between a large range of high-quality options I used another copy of the FLC to adjust exposure etc per shot, with it set to not impart and 'look'.  The advantage of that is that in Resolve there is a mode (Shift-F) that maximises the preview image and gets rid of the GUI except for the vertical toolbar on the right-hand-side where the DCTL and OFX plugins are, so it's a way of getting almost a full-screen view but keeping the controls visible..  very useful if you don't have a control surface or a second monitor handy. I'll talk more about my thought process and how I got to this setup in a later post, and also go into some of the technical stuff (DR, high-ISO, etc) but more importantly than that, I finally feel like the tech has come of age.
What I mean by that is that I now have a setup where:
I can shoot with a conveniently sized setup that doesn't need a rig and is ergonomic to use It has the right usability features, such as histograms, zebras, focus-peaking etc internally The monitor is bright enough The GH7 plus lenses (14-140mm F3.5-5.6 and 12-35mm F2.8) are long enough and fast enough to shoot what I see, without being too large, heavy, or prohibitively expensive It has enough spec that it can deal with almost all the situations that I actually shoot in, with enough DR for the sun, enough ISO for night-time, and fans so it doesn't overheat before I do, etc It shoots internally using a colour space and codec that don't look cheap/amateurish and make me think about upgrading It doesn't fight with me in the colour grade Resolve and the Film Look Creator are able to easily give me the flexibility in post to match images and correct any weaknesses from shooting (e.g. if there's a bit of movement when shooting hand-held at 140mm) Resolve and the Film Look Creator are able to remove the 'digital/video' look and instead give me a range of options that don't look artificial and most importantly, contribute a feeling to the footage without distracting from the content of the images (this is, after all, the entire purpose of what we're doing here.....) For the first time it feels like I'm getting the results I want because of the equipment I have, rather than in spite of it.

Went hot-air ballooning and if there was ever a challenge for shooting, this was it.  Extreme low-light and extreme DR from hugely bright light-sources.
They say you can't take bags in the balloon, and it had been really wet weather, so I decided to go small.  I took the GX85, TTartisans 17mm F1.4 for the low-light, Laowa 7.5mm F2 for an ultra-wide, and the 12-35mm F2.8.  I was a bit cheeky and took a sling bag and kept it under my jacket.  The requirement is that nothing is loose in the basket and that you can hold on with both hands for landing, so I figured my bag under my jacket was basically the same as having a big pocket.
It's a crazy early start.  We arrived in the field before first-light and they started setting up in pitch darkness guided only by torches.  I started shooting at F1.7 and needed ISO6400 at first to get any kind of level on anything except their torches.  I shot on the 17mm at F1.7 and gradually reduce the ISO until the balloon was mostly inflated, then swapped to the 7.5mm for a few wide shots, and then swapped to the 12-35mm F2.8 and it was time to get in the balloon and off we went.  
I also shot with my iPhone 12 mini for some quick shots using the ultra-wide when I didn't want to change lenses, and also as we were approaching landing, as I had put the camera away in anticipation.  It was super-foggy and the pilot ended up having to land early and for a while we were going pretty close to the treetops so I'd put my camera away when he told us that he'd be landing at the next opportunity.
Frame grabs..  mix of GX85 and iPhone, put through a quite moderate FLC pipeline.










In retrospect I took the complete wrong equipment and used it in the wrong way (so, it's business as usual!) but the FLC pipeline really took the footage to the next level, and I used just enough strength on the film emulation to get rid of the digital look to the images.
Here's a comparison.
Grade (same as above):

SOOC:

The GX85 has super-whites so despite being SOOC that image is actually slightly clipped in-post and some highlights can be recovered, which the FLC grade has done, but you get the idea.  The SOOC is with the GX85 default profile and has much more of a video look to it, despite being pretty good compared to other similar cameras.
If I was to take the same equipment again, I'd lean into the darkness and just use the 17mm at F2.0 where it cleans up and use the GX85 at something sensible like ISO1600.  This would have the early shots as perhaps being unusable, but it would mean that the torches the crew used wouldn't have been clipped (I clipped them in favour of exposing what they were shining on).
We're going to go again later this year, and for that I plan to take the GH7, 9mm F1.7 and 14-140mm F3.5-5.6.
This will be a much larger setup but if I use a neck strap then I only have to have one lens in a pocket and so I won't need a bag at all.  I just bought the 9mm F1.7 and it's sharp wide-open, so apart from having AF, it is both an ultra-wide as well as a low-light lens.  I can crop in-camera and/or in-post to get a tighter FOV, but you don't normally need long focal-lengths when it's that dark.
The more I use this FLC pipeline the more I like it.  If I'd have shown these images to my 2018 self, I wouldn't have believed me when I said that it was me that made them.  

Went hot-air ballooning and if there was ever a challenge for shooting, this was it.  Extreme low-light and extreme DR from hugely bright light-sources.
They say you can't take bags in the balloon, and it had been really wet weather, so I decided to go small.  I took the GX85, TTartisans 17mm F1.4 for the low-light, Laowa 7.5mm F2 for an ultra-wide, and the 12-35mm F2.8.  I was a bit cheeky and took a sling bag and kept it under my jacket.  The requirement is that nothing is loose in the basket and that you can hold on with both hands for landing, so I figured my bag under my jacket was basically the same as having a big pocket.
It's a crazy early start.  We arrived in the field before first-light and they started setting up in pitch darkness guided only by torches.  I started shooting at F1.7 and needed ISO6400 at first to get any kind of level on anything except their torches.  I shot on the 17mm at F1.7 and gradually reduce the ISO until the balloon was mostly inflated, then swapped to the 7.5mm for a few wide shots, and then swapped to the 12-35mm F2.8 and it was time to get in the balloon and off we went.  
I also shot with my iPhone 12 mini for some quick shots using the ultra-wide when I didn't want to change lenses, and also as we were approaching landing, as I had put the camera away in anticipation.  It was super-foggy and the pilot ended up having to land early and for a while we were going pretty close to the treetops so I'd put my camera away when he told us that he'd be landing at the next opportunity.
Frame grabs..  mix of GX85 and iPhone, put through a quite moderate FLC pipeline.










In retrospect I took the complete wrong equipment and used it in the wrong way (so, it's business as usual!) but the FLC pipeline really took the footage to the next level, and I used just enough strength on the film emulation to get rid of the digital look to the images.
Here's a comparison.
Grade (same as above):

SOOC:

The GX85 has super-whites so despite being SOOC that image is actually slightly clipped in-post and some highlights can be recovered, which the FLC grade has done, but you get the idea.  The SOOC is with the GX85 default profile and has much more of a video look to it, despite being pretty good compared to other similar cameras.
If I was to take the same equipment again, I'd lean into the darkness and just use the 17mm at F2.0 where it cleans up and use the GX85 at something sensible like ISO1600.  This would have the early shots as perhaps being unusable, but it would mean that the torches the crew used wouldn't have been clipped (I clipped them in favour of exposing what they were shining on).
We're going to go again later this year, and for that I plan to take the GH7, 9mm F1.7 and 14-140mm F3.5-5.6.
This will be a much larger setup but if I use a neck strap then I only have to have one lens in a pocket and so I won't need a bag at all.  I just bought the 9mm F1.7 and it's sharp wide-open, so apart from having AF, it is both an ultra-wide as well as a low-light lens.  I can crop in-camera and/or in-post to get a tighter FOV, but you don't normally need long focal-lengths when it's that dark.
The more I use this FLC pipeline the more I like it.  If I'd have shown these images to my 2018 self, I wouldn't have believed me when I said that it was me that made them.  

Went hot-air ballooning and if there was ever a challenge for shooting, this was it.  Extreme low-light and extreme DR from hugely bright light-sources.
They say you can't take bags in the balloon, and it had been really wet weather, so I decided to go small.  I took the GX85, TTartisans 17mm F1.4 for the low-light, Laowa 7.5mm F2 for an ultra-wide, and the 12-35mm F2.8.  I was a bit cheeky and took a sling bag and kept it under my jacket.  The requirement is that nothing is loose in the basket and that you can hold on with both hands for landing, so I figured my bag under my jacket was basically the same as having a big pocket.
It's a crazy early start.  We arrived in the field before first-light and they started setting up in pitch darkness guided only by torches.  I started shooting at F1.7 and needed ISO6400 at first to get any kind of level on anything except their torches.  I shot on the 17mm at F1.7 and gradually reduce the ISO until the balloon was mostly inflated, then swapped to the 7.5mm for a few wide shots, and then swapped to the 12-35mm F2.8 and it was time to get in the balloon and off we went.  
I also shot with my iPhone 12 mini for some quick shots using the ultra-wide when I didn't want to change lenses, and also as we were approaching landing, as I had put the camera away in anticipation.  It was super-foggy and the pilot ended up having to land early and for a while we were going pretty close to the treetops so I'd put my camera away when he told us that he'd be landing at the next opportunity.
Frame grabs..  mix of GX85 and iPhone, put through a quite moderate FLC pipeline.










In retrospect I took the complete wrong equipment and used it in the wrong way (so, it's business as usual!) but the FLC pipeline really took the footage to the next level, and I used just enough strength on the film emulation to get rid of the digital look to the images.
Here's a comparison.
Grade (same as above):

SOOC:

The GX85 has super-whites so despite being SOOC that image is actually slightly clipped in-post and some highlights can be recovered, which the FLC grade has done, but you get the idea.  The SOOC is with the GX85 default profile and has much more of a video look to it, despite being pretty good compared to other similar cameras.
If I was to take the same equipment again, I'd lean into the darkness and just use the 17mm at F2.0 where it cleans up and use the GX85 at something sensible like ISO1600.  This would have the early shots as perhaps being unusable, but it would mean that the torches the crew used wouldn't have been clipped (I clipped them in favour of exposing what they were shining on).
We're going to go again later this year, and for that I plan to take the GH7, 9mm F1.7 and 14-140mm F3.5-5.6.
This will be a much larger setup but if I use a neck strap then I only have to have one lens in a pocket and so I won't need a bag at all.  I just bought the 9mm F1.7 and it's sharp wide-open, so apart from having AF, it is both an ultra-wide as well as a low-light lens.  I can crop in-camera and/or in-post to get a tighter FOV, but you don't normally need long focal-lengths when it's that dark.
The more I use this FLC pipeline the more I like it.  If I'd have shown these images to my 2018 self, I wouldn't have believed me when I said that it was me that made them.  

Went hot-air ballooning and if there was ever a challenge for shooting, this was it.  Extreme low-light and extreme DR from hugely bright light-sources.
They say you can't take bags in the balloon, and it had been really wet weather, so I decided to go small.  I took the GX85, TTartisans 17mm F1.4 for the low-light, Laowa 7.5mm F2 for an ultra-wide, and the 12-35mm F2.8.  I was a bit cheeky and took a sling bag and kept it under my jacket.  The requirement is that nothing is loose in the basket and that you can hold on with both hands for landing, so I figured my bag under my jacket was basically the same as having a big pocket.
It's a crazy early start.  We arrived in the field before first-light and they started setting up in pitch darkness guided only by torches.  I started shooting at F1.7 and needed ISO6400 at first to get any kind of level on anything except their torches.  I shot on the 17mm at F1.7 and gradually reduce the ISO until the balloon was mostly inflated, then swapped to the 7.5mm for a few wide shots, and then swapped to the 12-35mm F2.8 and it was time to get in the balloon and off we went.  
I also shot with my iPhone 12 mini for some quick shots using the ultra-wide when I didn't want to change lenses, and also as we were approaching landing, as I had put the camera away in anticipation.  It was super-foggy and the pilot ended up having to land early and for a while we were going pretty close to the treetops so I'd put my camera away when he told us that he'd be landing at the next opportunity.
Frame grabs..  mix of GX85 and iPhone, put through a quite moderate FLC pipeline.










In retrospect I took the complete wrong equipment and used it in the wrong way (so, it's business as usual!) but the FLC pipeline really took the footage to the next level, and I used just enough strength on the film emulation to get rid of the digital look to the images.
Here's a comparison.
Grade (same as above):

SOOC:

The GX85 has super-whites so despite being SOOC that image is actually slightly clipped in-post and some highlights can be recovered, which the FLC grade has done, but you get the idea.  The SOOC is with the GX85 default profile and has much more of a video look to it, despite being pretty good compared to other similar cameras.
If I was to take the same equipment again, I'd lean into the darkness and just use the 17mm at F2.0 where it cleans up and use the GX85 at something sensible like ISO1600.  This would have the early shots as perhaps being unusable, but it would mean that the torches the crew used wouldn't have been clipped (I clipped them in favour of exposing what they were shining on).
We're going to go again later this year, and for that I plan to take the GH7, 9mm F1.7 and 14-140mm F3.5-5.6.
This will be a much larger setup but if I use a neck strap then I only have to have one lens in a pocket and so I won't need a bag at all.  I just bought the 9mm F1.7 and it's sharp wide-open, so apart from having AF, it is both an ultra-wide as well as a low-light lens.  I can crop in-camera and/or in-post to get a tighter FOV, but you don't normally need long focal-lengths when it's that dark.
The more I use this FLC pipeline the more I like it.  If I'd have shown these images to my 2018 self, I wouldn't have believed me when I said that it was me that made them.  

I have now imported my iPhone footage and put it through the same FLC pipeline as my GH7 footage.  
As you may recall, I shot the "home video" parts of the trip with my iPhone 12 Mini, and part of the goals of the new FLC pipeline is to be able to improve the iPhone footage and match it better with the GH7 footage.
Overall, I am pleasantly surprised with both the images and the user experience.
With my phone in my left-front pocket and GH7 in my right-hand, I could extend the pop-socket out, pull my phone out, shoot with it, then put it back, all with my left hand and not having to even turn off the GH7.  Having the ability to swap from shooting with the GH7 and 14-140mm to an ultra-wide in seconds is great when you want to capture the action in real-time:


It has surprisingly good handling of real-world DR:


It allows for quick and unobtrusive shooting in restaurants and cafes:


which also gives some background defocus which is nice.
...and it is great for shooting in very cramped or crowded situations:


I struggled shooting in the Myongdong night-markets just because the GH7 was so conspicuous and just not well designed for such things, however the iPhone worked quite well for those chaos-and-people-everywhere shots, and was great for shooting situations at point-blank range:



In retrospect I wish I had shot more whimsical footage with it throughout the trip, but that's a note for next time.
In order to see how the FLC is contributing to these images, let's compare some of the above shots to how they would have looked with a simple CST workflow (I did a CST to DWG, matched exposure, then CST to 709-A).
FLC:

709-A:

FLC:

709-A:

FLC:

709-A:

I find that it takes the digititis out of the images quite a bit.
Another thing it does is hide some of the limitations of the iPhone too.  Here's a shot I took from out the train window.  It's obviously a very low-light shot and the iPhone NR was probably set to "armageddon".
709-A:

FLC (with a touch of sharpening):

Anything in post that applies across all your shots will help to unify them, and so having a slight softening applied to all the footage, as well as similar colour treatment, can really help to smooth things around any rough shots.  I created my own powergrade using FLC I called "50mm" because I took the grain and softening settings from the 35mm and 65mm presets and set things to the mid-point between the two, effectively emulating a 50mm film process.  I have more work to do, including working out what settings give what results once the footage has gone through the YT compression, but it's a start.

I have now imported my iPhone footage and put it through the same FLC pipeline as my GH7 footage.  
As you may recall, I shot the "home video" parts of the trip with my iPhone 12 Mini, and part of the goals of the new FLC pipeline is to be able to improve the iPhone footage and match it better with the GH7 footage.
Overall, I am pleasantly surprised with both the images and the user experience.
With my phone in my left-front pocket and GH7 in my right-hand, I could extend the pop-socket out, pull my phone out, shoot with it, then put it back, all with my left hand and not having to even turn off the GH7.  Having the ability to swap from shooting with the GH7 and 14-140mm to an ultra-wide in seconds is great when you want to capture the action in real-time:


It has surprisingly good handling of real-world DR:


It allows for quick and unobtrusive shooting in restaurants and cafes:


which also gives some background defocus which is nice.
...and it is great for shooting in very cramped or crowded situations:


I struggled shooting in the Myongdong night-markets just because the GH7 was so conspicuous and just not well designed for such things, however the iPhone worked quite well for those chaos-and-people-everywhere shots, and was great for shooting situations at point-blank range:



In retrospect I wish I had shot more whimsical footage with it throughout the trip, but that's a note for next time.
In order to see how the FLC is contributing to these images, let's compare some of the above shots to how they would have looked with a simple CST workflow (I did a CST to DWG, matched exposure, then CST to 709-A).
FLC:

709-A:

FLC:

709-A:

FLC:

709-A:

I find that it takes the digititis out of the images quite a bit.
Another thing it does is hide some of the limitations of the iPhone too.  Here's a shot I took from out the train window.  It's obviously a very low-light shot and the iPhone NR was probably set to "armageddon".
709-A:

FLC (with a touch of sharpening):

Anything in post that applies across all your shots will help to unify them, and so having a slight softening applied to all the footage, as well as similar colour treatment, can really help to smooth things around any rough shots.  I created my own powergrade using FLC I called "50mm" because I took the grain and softening settings from the 35mm and 65mm presets and set things to the mid-point between the two, effectively emulating a 50mm film process.  I have more work to do, including working out what settings give what results once the footage has gone through the YT compression, but it's a start.

I'm not really seeing any difference between any of them; S5, S1H, S5ii.
Yes there are some very subtle differences such as that from the S1H is a teeny weeny bit softer due to the OLPF, but otherwise, nothing for me.
There's some chatter about over-sharpening. I don't see it.
There's some chatter about moire. I'm not seeing that either.
Highlight roll off and blah di blah, - what are we shooting here with these things? Are we really comparing the results from our humble mirrorless cameras with Hollywood lighting, productions, lenses and budgets? I'm not, - to be even remotely in the ball park is hilariously ridiculous.
Here's a screen grab from my S9 which is my principal run & gun unit, from last weekends wedding I am currently editing.
A pretty dark hole of a room for bride prep and unless anywhere near that window, then screwed. It's SOOC and not touched it in any way; exposure, WB...nuffink. 6k 30p shot at 1/50th, 4000 iso, 5000 WB, Freewell ND 2-5, exposure otherwise eyeballed on the rear LCD with the wave form I rarely look at.

One way to think about it is that if you put on the 14-140mm then you can just think of it like a camcorder, BUT (unlike a camcorder) you can swap to a different lens in those rare situations that come up from time to time.  The 14-140mm with its seriously extended focal length at the long end, combined with the reasonable high-ISO performance of the GH7, means that it can do most things, but in those rare situations you're not stuck.
Having an ultra-wide is really handy, especially for travel, and having a fast prime is really handy for low-light situations.  Having a vintage lens can also be a fun addition too, when you want to go from having a normal look to having a dreamy or nostalgic look.
In terms of shooting travel, I shot several different 'genres' on my last trip, and I actually found it to be quite straight-forward to do (I had wondered if it would just be too confusing / overwhelming but it didn't turn out to be).  So you could easily swap between a few options for those different genres.  
I really feel like the GH7 + 14-140mm has all the advantages of a camcorder or an ENG or doco setup where I just use it and don't think about the camera almost at all while shooting, but then I can swap lenses when the need arises.  

I went with the GH6 again for for a few reasons...
1. Official Arri LogC profile - it's even embedded in the metadata, so FCPX reads it as Arri footage. For someone who will probably never shoot with an Alexa, I must admit it's a stupidly cool thing...
2. ProRes
3. IBIS
4. Flip up screen
Honorable Mention - I didn't realize how good the preamps in it were going to be. With good mic placement,  some of the audio is perfectly usable. 

I also had the GH6 for about a year, but I'm really considering getting one again. I'll probably do like @kye and use that 14-140 most of the time. I'm still debating in my head though. The problem is simple- there are just so many old smaller "good enough" cameras, but nothing small and modern that can do 4k120 in the system. The G9ii is the smallest.
On another note, I'm not exactly how MPB decides to offload cameras sometimes. One day, there're 20 GH6 bodies and the next day none. 

My first priority was to make the images not look like cheap digital, which I am confident I've achieved with my current workflow.  The images I'm getting sure look like film to me, especially seeing how it reacts when dialling the Exposure up and down within the plugin.
I think I have more work to do in learning to control the high DR shots, but that's something for when I am back at home and have time to experiment with different techniques.  I am still contemplating modifying my custom DCTL that works in L*a*b space to be the front-end that I will use to grade underneath the overall film look.
Once I've gotten a handle on the files and how to control them, then I was going to go back to the BMMCC images I took on my last visit here and then try to match the GH7 images to those BMMCC ones.  The light here is a bit different to at home, so having footage from the same place to compare is very useful.
I feel like up until now I've been struggling with footage that wasn't up to the (very difficult) conditions I shoot in, and now I have equipment that is giving me files that I can make into whatever I like, so the question then becomes what I want them to look like, which is a whole other journey.