newfoundmass

Like with your GH5 post the other day, almost all cameras made in the last 10 years are capable tools that can produce nice images. It doesn't mean though that you should go out and buy a GH4 in 2024. There are plenty of "quality of life" improvements that have occured since the GH4's release that make it a lot less desirable camera compared to something like the GH5 or S1. We're blessed to be at a point where we could use a 10 year old camera and still get good results if we HAD to, but let's not pretend that the cameras that have come out since aren't significantly better in every way. IBIS alone radically changed the way I film and work.

1 hour ago, zlfan said:

did not expect s5ii's dr is so good. 

Why not?

On 7/3/2024 at 9:40 PM, Al Dolega said:

I think you'd be waiting for at least a year. The S1Hii seems to be set for later this year or early next year, possibly an S1 or S1R replacement as well. They wouldn't do a new S5 until well after those release, and they wouldn't be able to get away with doing another IMX410 iteration, so it would probably depend on an better-enough sensor getting cheap enough to keep the S5 at the same price. The Z6iii sensor is probably exclusive to Nikon for a while, and then Sony might use it, so that might be out of the picture for a year or two.

Yeah, I wouldn't expect there to be another S5 until 2026 sometime. There really isn't a reason to release a mark III sooner than that, especially with whatever else they have in the pipeline. Even a year from now the S5 II/X will be a really good value, and they can lower the price if needed to keep it competitive. They hit a home run with their entry model, now it's time to focus on their other cameras.

12 hours ago, zlfan said:

 

s5's video af seems not far behind the s5ii. 

 

Having owned both, the S5ii is much more reliable. But the AF "issues" with Panasonic cameras were always overblown in most instances and easy to manage. The biggest damage the dfd system did was to their reputation. I still use two S5s to film pro-wrestling, a pretty unpredictable endeavor, and the AF is fine, which if you'd only seen unpractical AF tests from Youtubers you'd never believe was possible  

It IS though almost absolutely unusable for small objects and animals in video

15 hours ago, A_Urquhart said:

There's not much we can do about it once it's posted online and IF it's posted online. 

I used Adobe for work and many still do now. Adobe are scraping your artwork data right from the very app you are paying to use. There is a big difference doing that to AI scouri g the internet! 

Surely you can see it? 

It blows my mind that so many people have this apathetic attitude to things like this.

It's not apathy, it's just being a realist. There is very little that I can do when my business depends on using these programs. There simply are not alternatives out there that would seamlessly slip into my workflow without adding time and limitations. I wish there was, as I've spent time and money trying other applications out because I despise the subscription model. Things that take literally a few clicks in Photoshop can take minutes to achieve in Affinity Photo or Gimp, and for me that's just not an option.

55 minutes ago, A_Urquhart said:

I am not paying to use this forum and this forum is not my lively hood. 

 

If I pay for software and at the same time am providing a company like Adobe my artwork for them to profit off, shouldn't they be paying me! 

 

Just found this: 

for anyone still using Adobe in this day and age, it's time to give them the finger.

You don't think that artwork is being used when it's posted to the internet? 

What do you think is being fed to AI, man? 

Until there are laws in place there's not a ton we can do. Not excusing it, just being honest. 

I'd love to say goodbye to Photoshop and Illustrator because of the subscription mode alone, but as I said there's nothing out there replaces them for me. 

Most everything, honestly, has jumped the shark at this point. I was watching a toy YouTube channel over the weekend with my niece and it had more shallow DOF than a Zack Snyder film AND used slow motion when filming the toys. You think the 6 year olds watching were impressed?!

The problem is that there's nothing that comes close to replacing Photoshop and Illustrator for a lot of us. I bought Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, but they overall slowed me down and lacked features. For all the criticisms that there are for Photoshop and Illustrator, and they are all legitimate, they get the job done and for those of us who've used them for 25 years it's very difficult to switch.

Unfortunately this is the new future. We're all training AI every single day without even realizing it. Our posts on this message board are probably being used to train AI, not to mention our social media, search history, etc.

As a Final Cut Pro user who has also used Resolve, my primary reason for sticking to Final Cut Pro is all of the plugins that I've purchased that are a part of my workflow. If I was starting over though there really isn't a single reason I can think of that I'd choose Final Cut Pro over Resolve. Export times are very impressive on the new chips Apple uses, but they aren't that much faster than the performance you'd get from Resolve.

There are still things about Final Cut Pro X that confuse and frustrate me, even after all these years, and honestly I've still not forgiven them for deviating so far away from the Final Cut Pro UI and workflow.

5 hours ago, ac6000cw said:

There are a few camera-mount mics around like the AT8024, which combine a mono cardioid mic with a mid-side mic and are switchable between mono and stereo - https://www.audio-technica.com/en-us/at8024 (I've never used it so no idea what the sound quality is like).

That will plug directly into the 3.5mm mic jack on the camera if you want to keep things as light/small/simple as possible.

As an alternative, if you can take two mics, I'd be tempted to take maybe a stereo Rode Stereo VideoMic Pro for the 'ambient sound' situations, plus a mono Rode VideoMic NTG for when you need a more directional, more focused mic. Both will plug directly into the camera and are lightweight (about 100g each), not huge and not too expensive. Again, I've not used either mic so can't comment on the sound quality.

If you're going to be recording outdoors a lot, make sure you have decent furry windshields/windsocks for the mics - you'll definitely need them at some point...

Azden also has something similar: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1621121-REG/azden_smx_30v_30v_stereo_mono_mixable_video.html

I've never used it, but I've heard it uses the same (or similar) shotgun capsule as my Azden SGM-250CX which I'm quite fond of and have had for nearly 10 years.

6 hours ago, lsquare said:

I guess I'm looking for an all-in-one mic, but I guess that doesn't exist. Bringing multiple mics will be an issue due to space and weight.

A lot of the mics mentioned in this post could fit in your pocket very easily. The other thing is, you can get "decent" (decent being subjective, obviously) sound with a $100 (even less on the used market) stereo mic like the Tascam TM-2X and a $49 supercardioid mic like Deity V-Mic D4. You could fit both of those mics in the same pocket. You could also just use something like a Zoom H1 as a stereo mic, mounting it to the top of and plugging it into your camera.

Basically there are options that fit within almost any budget that don't take up a ton of room. And if you buy from a reputable dealer that allows returns, you can always order something, try it out and return it if it's not what you're looking for.

50 minutes ago, lsquare said:

Whenever I see a shotgun microphone, I think it's unidirectional and useful for capturing audio coming in front of me, which would be useful for interviews or stuff like that. As I said, I want to capture audio like as if I'm standing right there and soaking it in. I don't know if that makes any sense. I thought my OP was self-explanatory when I outlined what I wanted to do. Or picture this, you're standing in the street and you want to record all of the sounds of city life while recording videos of people walking on the street. 

With regards to the Rode stereo mic, in which situation would that mic be usefully compared to the shotgun mica that you keep on referencing? A detailed explanation would go a long way to help me understand what I need to do. I honestly don't know how else to explain what I'm looking to do. 

 

A shotgun mic would be better to pick up a specific sound in that scenario, while still getting some of the other sounds around it.

A stereo mic, like the Rode or the Sennheiser, will do a better job of capturing the environment as a whole. 

Let's say you're on a busy street and there's a man playing music on the corner. With the Deity you'll be able to focus in more on the music, with less street noise in the recording. With a stereo mic you'll pick up the street noise a lot more when focusing on the musician. 

In nature, replace the musician with a waterfall or stream. You'll be able to focus in on the noise the waterfall or stream makes, but won't hear the other noises (such as birds chirping) as well. With a stereo mic you'll capture more of the sound around you, at the cost of being able to focus in on specific noises.

Ideally you'll have multiple microphones for whatever situation you'll be in. Kind of like lenses. Some mics can also do both, or at least say they can.  

It boils down to preference and what sounds you want to capture. 

I personally would go for something like the Sennheiser MKE 440. I really don't think a supercardioid is the ideal mic to pic up full sounding ambient noise in nature. If you wanted to do more specific sound recording in the forest then that's different. 

On 6/14/2024 at 11:38 PM, IronFilm said:

@lsquareif you want a scratch mic with your DWM-XLR2 to get decent-ish ambient audio, then get the Deity SMic3S if on a very low budget, or the Sanken CSM1 if on a medium budget. 

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1830582-REG/deity_microphones_dtm0304d11_s_mic_3s_short_shotgun.html

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1404643-REG/sanken_cs_m1_super_cardioid_short.html 

If I'm outdoors standing on a cliff and want to capture the sounds of the forest around me, I definitely wouldn't go the supercardioid route. While not an identical scenario, when I was looking for mics for my pro-wrestling work, I went with stereo ones that could better pick up the spectators and arena atmosphere. My beloved supercardioid mic (the Azden SGM-250CX, a very underrated mic IMO) did a poor job of it, because it mostly picked up what was going on in the ring itself, which for me is actually a negative because it picked up the wrestlers talking to each other during the matches.

4 hours ago, lsquare said:

What do you mean by a scratch mic?

Scratch mics are generally mics that pick up audio that isn't used in the final edit but only as a reference. It doesn't really apply to your question, I'm not sure why he brought it up.

4 hours ago, lsquare said:

I'm assuming it'll be compatible with the Panasonic adapter to record 32-bit audio?

Yes, but you really don't need 32-bit for the uses you've described. Simply plugging a microphone into the GH7 and setting your levels will be more than enough for what you're talking about doing. I use 32-bit float audio because I deal with situations that are unpredictable, where audio will suddenly get way louder out of nowhere so I need to be able to bring it down in post. For what you're doing, you really won't have that problem.

A simple stereo mic that you plug into your GH7 is more than enough, and will save you hundreds of dollars in buying an adapter you don't need to achieve what you're talking about.

Unless you need 32 bit float audio or are using an XLR microphone you don't need the XLR adapter.

There are a lot of different mics you can go with to get good ambient sound, with different configurations. The Stereo VideoMic for example has an XY configuration, while the Sennheiser MKE 440 has a more directional dual shotgun configuration. Which is better comes down to preference and what you're looking for.

6 hours ago, lsquare said:

The Samsung QN90B is a very good TV and 4K UHD discs look spectacular.

That has just as much to do with bitrate than resolution.

6 hours ago, lsquare said:

Anyway, I'm not really interested in debating whether 8K is necessary or not. Even if the difference between full HD and 4K is minimal, I'm not going to shoot in full HD. 

No one said that there isn't a difference between shooting 4K and FHD, merely that there is not much difference when watching them on the televisions most of us have, at the distance most of us watch them at.

I've been filming in 4K instead of FHD for nearly 10 years at this point for a reason. But 4K displays were mostly a gimmick. While most people now have them almost all content watched on them is FHD because most people have thus far decided that 4K isn't worth the premium they want you to pay (example: Netflix's most popular tier by far is the Standard tier which is only FHD.)

That's why I bring it up: you're already worried about 8K and whether or not 6K will look good on it, when 4K hasn't even become the primary resolution in which people consume content and still, most of us don't even have big enough 4K displays to appreciate 4K content all that much more than we do FHD.

6 hours ago, lsquare said:

I guess what I want to ask now is will 5.7K/6K videos look sharp from about 5 feet away with a future 85" 8K TV? Will it look softer from the same distance with a natively shot 8K video?

Thank you. 

LOL. Man, 5' is way too close to be watching an 85" TV whether it's 8K or 4K.  Seriously, don't ever do that. But to answer your bigger question: 6K will look fine on an 8K... and so will FHD and 4K, assuming you buy a reasonable TV size for your room and seating.

9 hours ago, lsquare said:

I always want to shoot at the highest resolution possible. The Fujifilm X-H2 is probably the cheapest 8K capable camera on the market, but the Panasonic GH7 and a bunch of other cameras can shoot high-quality 5.7K/6K videos. 8K displays will continue to get cheaper and better. It is the future whether people like it or not. Reminds me of all the naysayers about how 4K was useless in the era of 1080p displays. I know the quality of the upscaler will be important. AI upscaling software will only get better in time. Even right now, will 5.7K/6K videos look soft when viewed on an 8K screen?

No, they won't look soft. You'll never own an 8K screen big enough to truly see much difference between 4K and 8K, just as most folks don't really see that significant of a difference between 1080p and 4K screens, in part because the majority of the content consumed today is still 1080p.

All my TVs are 55 inch 4K. To see the difference between 4K and FHD I need to be uncomfortably close. 10 feet away I can't really tell much of a difference, and neither can most people. 

They'll push 8K on us to get people to unnecessarily "upgrade" but it'll be even less necessary than the switch from FHD to 4K.

Must be just a Windows thing for now. I notice that thread is 4 months old.

12 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Nah, that person has had the camera and got a full years of use out of it!

I appreciate your optimistic take, but that's not how most people look at it, nor should it be. A camera you purchased for $2000 a year or two ago should not be dead already, and it's value on the used market should not be 1/4 of the price just because the manufacturer decided to discontinue it and run a fire sale.

I'd have a very bad taste in my mouth if I'd bought the GH6.

12 hours ago, IronFilm said:

If a GH6 drops down to that price after a couple more years, then that seems reasonable to me. 

A three year cycle from a GH5 to a GH6 then matching the price. That's roughly what a life cycle is for a camera.

My GH5 was nearly 6 years old when I sold it. 2017 to 2023. No amount of spin is going to make a GH6 user happy that the camera they spent $2000 on is selling for $550 brand new with lens.

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

@homestar_kevin does not sound pissed at all! Rather very happy with their new GH6

He paid like 1/4 retail cost haha. If I'd bought one a year ago at full retail cost I'd be pretty upset that my camera was discontinued and now has almost no value on the used market to help pay for a GH7 because they're now available for new for $550 with kit lens. 

That's about what I got paid for my used GH5 about a year ago. 

First: I'd be pissed if I bought a GH6. I get why they released it, people (including myself) were getting impatient, but discontinuing it (thus killing the resale price) is a pretty big blow to a user base that already saw Lumix release better cameras almost immediately after it's release. 

With all that said: I think the GH7 is a pretty darn good release. If I was still in M43 I'd be getting 3 of them. It's honestly the first time I've regretted getting rid of all my M43 lenses, as even now I think two of them would go great with my S5II X. I miss the small lenses quite a bit, especially on show days. The only thing I'm a bit bummed about is the battery life. 

I hope there's a way they can push a firmware update to make the new audio adapter work with the S5II X. 

When I upgrade my b and c cams they'll probably be S5II bodies because I've already got the lenses for them, but I'll be damned if m43 didn't make me think about dipping my toe back in. 

16 hours ago, BenEricson said:

Anecdotal. Depends on your market. They are huge here in Seattle. It's either Arri or Canon. Corporate work is generally Canon.

In my travels Sony has been by far more common than Canon. That wasn't the case 10 years ago. From Chicago to Vermont, FX cameras are king and it's not even close. 

People i know that used to have C100s either got R bodies or switched to Sony because Canon took too long to bring out a successor. 

1 hour ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

The YouTuber scene probably won't find much to be excited about, but I suspect that Canon is going to sell a ton of these to owner/operators. 

I know so few people that actually own/use these Canon cinema cameras. Everyone I know has switched to Sony. Those that didn't have pretty much ditched the cinema line altogether and gone with one of Canon's mirrorless options. I'd be curious to see how many cinema cameras they actually sell these days.

14 hours ago, IronFilm said:

$600 for a 35mm f1.8 or $800 for a 24mm f1.8 or $900 for an 18mm f1.8!

They really needed to develop a cheaper lens, even if means a compromise on image quality, even if it means it is slower (but not slower than f4) to cater to the wide angle needs of S9 users. 

20mm f4 would have been a fantastic lens for the selfie shooter. Throw in a mid-wide like a 35mm f2.8 at a very cheap price, and you'd have lots of happy S9 users. 

Yes, Panasonic's lens options are a weakness. The primes they have are excellent and geared towards video shooters in that they are roughly the same size and weight, have the same filter size, have minimal focus breathing, etc. but they are bigger than their competitors. They are more expensive than Canon's f1.8 primes, which are under $300 and much smaller, but the build quality isn't nearly as good as the Panasonic lenses. Sony has a lot of options, with their sub $600 primes being pretty small but they're also F1.8, f2.5, and f2.8. 

Panasonic should really look into doing budget primes along the lines of what they have for m43 (14mm f2.5, 20mm f1.7, 25mm f1.7, 30mm f1/7, 42.5mm f1.7) A bunch of compact f2.5 or F2/8 lenses for under $300 would be appealing.

We're all aware of the exploitation of people and countries resources...

But you're gonna have a hard time convincing anyone that Panasonic has honey potted a bunch of camera nerds with prostitutes so that they'll shill their cameras. 

I assure you, 98% of them only need a free trip and free swag to do it. Hell, half of them will do it if they get a nice email from some PR person pretending they're interested in their opinions and feedback. 

22 hours ago, hojomo said:

Americans mostly have the memory of gerbils, and many (key being voters in swing states) are looking at increased cost of living and telling themselves it was better under the orange con man.

We live in a bizarre world where a large chunk of the middle class and low income folks think the guy that literally shits on gold toilets cares about them.