newfoundmass

OK, so I think I've decided that I'm going to stick with my Rode stereo omni mic as I really like the sound from that. I just ordered myself a nice vintage camera bag that the whole setup can go in and out of nice and easily.

So I didn't have to spend €300 in the end and I can still get sound that I like.
Today has been an education for me. Many hours spent on YouTube with my headphones on. The best test video I watched was this one. Ignore the thumbnail, it's a slow paced, contemplative, walking video (is that a genre now?) with lots of nice ambient sound.
 

I didn't film the above examples, but I assume they're better than what I can provide! All my online examples feature heavily mixed audio from multiple cameras (one of which is a shotgun mic) with commentary/voice overs and music. I will go through my raw footage and see if I can get some good examples though!
The Sennheiser I'm sure produces a better sound overall sound but for under $100 these blew away the internal microphones, and accomplished what I needed them to!

I've found it's pretty decent personally! I was scared because all the reviews for it were OLD and on DSLRs with crappy preamps, or featured people trying to use it as a vlogging mic, but I used it on my GH5 and now one of my S5s and I think it does a pretty good job. I've found it translates the arena sound pretty well, which is what I wanted. 

You should be able to find one for cheap! I stole that idea from @Mattias Burling when I was filming with the OG Pocket!

I'm still rocking the Rode Micro and am quite happy with it!

I'm not trying to lecture you, so forgive me if it comes off that way, but I don't know that you're getting the point that I was trying to make. 
How do you think we used to film in a low light situation when running and gunning with cameras that were infinitely worse at it than even a modern M43 camera? As @IronFilm said, the FX30 is miles ahead of what we had available to us back then, but people were still able to run and gun with those cameras in low light situations because we knew how to get around that limitation. Back then though we didn't have the luxury of owning LED pocket lights that cost under $100 and could easily be added to the camera's hot shoe. 
Is the hassle of carrying a small Aperture light when you need it really worth spending more on a FX3/A7Siii for those low light situations? For some I guess it is? Just seems silly to me.

I'm not trying to lecture you, so forgive me if it comes off that way, but I don't know that you're getting the point that I was trying to make. 
How do you think we used to film in a low light situation when running and gunning with cameras that were infinitely worse at it than even a modern M43 camera? As @IronFilm said, the FX30 is miles ahead of what we had available to us back then, but people were still able to run and gun with those cameras in low light situations because we knew how to get around that limitation. Back then though we didn't have the luxury of owning LED pocket lights that cost under $100 and could easily be added to the camera's hot shoe. 
Is the hassle of carrying a small Aperture light when you need it really worth spending more on a FX3/A7Siii for those low light situations? For some I guess it is? Just seems silly to me.

Obviously, everyone's needs are different. If one has to shoot almost always in very dark situation with absolutely no way to setup even the smallest of lights, like a newshooter, then he must have the camera with the best lowlight quality.
The FX30 is good enough in lowlight, as long as there is some light in the scene. Of couse it will do very poorly in pitch dark situation, but the same can be said for A7S3. Great in lowlight doesn't mean you don't have to light the scene. When we use the A7S3 at ISO 12800 setting on set of the short film, we still have to do porper lighting.
You need light to produce a good image. Great lowlight capablity is not the substitute for lighting.
Anyway, a cameraman has to adapt to the situation. In a lot of tight spaces or very poorly lit condition, even a small LED light panel can make the difference. Those are very cheap and portable, not luxurious at all.
There are many differences that make the A7S3 or FX3 the better camera than the FX30, such as FF look, no 4K120P crop. The lowlight advantage is there but IMO not as important as many other factors.
 

Greetings Fellow Creatives,

This week's new free MP3 music tracks are:

On my Chiptunes 5 page:

"TECHNO PIXEL MONSTER DANCE PARTY"
https://soundimage.org/chiptunes-5/

On my Drama 3 page:

"ON THE TRAIL"
https://soundimage.org/drama-3/

On my Fantasy 12 page:

"DARK QUEST"
https://soundimage.org/fantasy-12/

On my Funny 8 page:

"TECHNO MONSTER DANCE PARTY"
https://soundimage.org/funny-8/

And on my Sci-Fi 12 page:

"GALAXY GRAND PRIX"
https://soundimage.org/sci-fi-12/

Please make sure to check out my higher-quality Ogg music packs which enable you to download all of my tracks at once for all of my most popular genres.

https://soundimage.org/ogg-music-packs-2/

Enjoy, stay safe and keep being creative!  🙂

Happy November Everyone!

I can't believe a month has gone by...I've been super-busy creating custom music for clients.  Anyone need some custom music created? Give me a shout...my contact information is here:

https://soundimage.org/custom-work/

I can work with most budgets.  And, as always, my 2500+ tracks on my site are completely free to use with attribution.  🙂

Enjoy!   

Yeah, it's yet another example of how spoiled we are.
I came from the world of camcorders, so people talking about M43 being terrible in low light made me chuckle.

I own two C70s, a Red One MX, and even a 5D iii that also runs ML with more stability and at higher resolutions. I keep asking myself why I even care about this cheap little camera that I have never shot an actual project with, and why I haven't sold it yet. On the surface, it's because I think that once the ML firmware gets straightened out, the EOS-M has the potential to be one of the few raw-capturing cameras that can work with 16mm lenses. But it's dawned on me that it's not so much the camera as it is the community collaboration around this camera.
The "movement" (mostly happening in the FB group) is reminiscent of the early days of DSLR and mirrorless video, when people were all trying to squeeze every inch of quality out of these cameras that were never intended for cinematography. Nowadays, every camera has great IQ and a pleothera of custom-fitted accessories and perfected workflows. But 10-15 years ago, there were no dedicated cages or practical battery solutions and the cameras were full of quirks. You had to lean on the community for workarounds if you wanted to have a chance of creating anything worthwhile with these difficult cameras. Despite all of the hurdles, some people were able to do it and it always felt like a team victory.
I think what's going on with the EOS-M reflects the evolving hacks for the GH1 and GH2 in lot of ways. There is no dedicated cage for this camera either. Plug it into a battery and you have to find a place to hide the unruly adapter cable. Moire and aliasing abound in the lower resolutions. Rolling shutter is horrendous in the higher ones. The ergonomics make the GH cameras look like a dream. And it just doesn't make sense to throw a lot of money at a defunct $150 camera, which really ups the ante for DIY solutions. People share their rigging experiments freely (with lots of 3D printed parts), as well as their footage since the software is constantly being tweaked and improved.
That group is experimenting, tinkering, and collaborating like it's 2011. It's the fun side of camera geekery all over again.

The FX30 has low light performance people would have given their kidney for a decade or two ago. 
The fault is with the user, not the camera, if you can't get good images out of it. 

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










These provide a really solid foundation to grade from.

Not whining, just responding to your blanket statement about the A7S III being wrong for people who take their video seriously which is a load of nonsense. 

Being a Sony apologist isn't particularly professional, either. You've argued that the A7siii isn't meant for professionals, even though the very first thing Sony said in it's marketing material was how this camera is for "movie makers."
You've then faulted people for not immediately selling their A7siii and buying the FX3, because apparently that's a reasonable thing to expect people to do less than a year after they dropped $3500 on the A7siii. Frankly it's pretty ridiculous for Sony to have released the FX3 in the first place just six or so months after the A7siii, given it was pretty much the same camera in a different body, but that's a debate for another day.
And now you're faulting folks, many who use the camera professionally, for feeling burnt because they dare "whine" about features being withheld from their flagship cameras but not entry level ones even though it could be easily done in a firmware update.
This is silly. @Andrew Reid you should check to see if his IP address is located at one of Sony's headquarters! 😉

Being a Sony apologist isn't particularly professional, either. You've argued that the A7siii isn't meant for professionals, even though the very first thing Sony said in it's marketing material was how this camera is for "movie makers."
You've then faulted people for not immediately selling their A7siii and buying the FX3, because apparently that's a reasonable thing to expect people to do less than a year after they dropped $3500 on the A7siii. Frankly it's pretty ridiculous for Sony to have released the FX3 in the first place just six or so months after the A7siii, given it was pretty much the same camera in a different body, but that's a debate for another day.
And now you're faulting folks, many who use the camera professionally, for feeling burnt because they dare "whine" about features being withheld from their flagship cameras but not entry level ones even though it could be easily done in a firmware update.
This is silly. @Andrew Reid you should check to see if his IP address is located at one of Sony's headquarters! 😉

Being a Sony apologist isn't particularly professional, either. You've argued that the A7siii isn't meant for professionals, even though the very first thing Sony said in it's marketing material was how this camera is for "movie makers."
You've then faulted people for not immediately selling their A7siii and buying the FX3, because apparently that's a reasonable thing to expect people to do less than a year after they dropped $3500 on the A7siii. Frankly it's pretty ridiculous for Sony to have released the FX3 in the first place just six or so months after the A7siii, given it was pretty much the same camera in a different body, but that's a debate for another day.
And now you're faulting folks, many who use the camera professionally, for feeling burnt because they dare "whine" about features being withheld from their flagship cameras but not entry level ones even though it could be easily done in a firmware update.
This is silly. @Andrew Reid you should check to see if his IP address is located at one of Sony's headquarters! 😉

Being a Sony apologist isn't particularly professional, either. You've argued that the A7siii isn't meant for professionals, even though the very first thing Sony said in it's marketing material was how this camera is for "movie makers."
You've then faulted people for not immediately selling their A7siii and buying the FX3, because apparently that's a reasonable thing to expect people to do less than a year after they dropped $3500 on the A7siii. Frankly it's pretty ridiculous for Sony to have released the FX3 in the first place just six or so months after the A7siii, given it was pretty much the same camera in a different body, but that's a debate for another day.
And now you're faulting folks, many who use the camera professionally, for feeling burnt because they dare "whine" about features being withheld from their flagship cameras but not entry level ones even though it could be easily done in a firmware update.
This is silly. @Andrew Reid you should check to see if his IP address is located at one of Sony's headquarters! 😉

Yes, I acquired the a7siii when it first came out for its video features. It was the best option, then. As soon as the fx3 was introduced I traded. The fx3 was clearly superior as a video tool, even without the updates.
I agree not upgrading the a7siii is deliberate marketing. But if the new features of the fx3 are important and one's profession is video it seems odd to not trade up.
If a professional hangs on to the a7siii, then it is actually clear the new features are unimportant to her. The trade up cost is a tax-reducing investment and is a trivial expense, again, for a professional making a living based on video quality.
Just whining is not professional. Worse are those who say they will never buy Sony again over this. That is surely not professional.

A7Siii came out well before FX3/FX30 and was way overdue with about 4 years in between A7Sii. 
Its kinda easy today to claim it as the "wrong camera" "for people who take video seriously". 
Many spent their hard earned cash on it upon its release.
Regardless, breathing comp and a lot of the FX3/FX30 features are creeping into Alpha bodies. 
No reason Sony should withhold an A7Siii firmware update, aside from cripple hammer perspective.

People can repeat that until they're blue in the face but it won't suddenly make it true. 

It's kind of gimmicky, but I kinda like the different colors. They're fun.

People can repeat that until they're blue in the face but it won't suddenly make it true. 

People can repeat that until they're blue in the face but it won't suddenly make it true.