eatstoomuchjam

Self-indulgence?  😉 
 
Entertainment is probably an overly-broad category, but that's splitting hairs.

The majority of YT that I watch has nothing to do with cameras, and in general the people that have the most followers have the least fancy camera equipment.
I mean, there are probably more channels that have over 500K subscribers and are just shot with a smartphone than all the active camera YT channels combined.

Well I'm no pro, but I do want to get pro results.
The tiles were, happily, a fairly neutral dark grey, but the room itself was tiny. You literally could not swing a cat in there. I lit it quite easily - 1 x 5800K Lupo into a bounce on the wall opposite the talent, a 3200K Lupo offside and behind, a 3200K tube on the floor at his feet and then the M20 at 6300K behind him lighting the sloping roof at around 40% to give a bit of separation.
It certainly looked nice enough in the monitor! Today's shots (which only took just over an hour - the advantage of the tiny location was that you can only do so many CUs and mids of a guy sitting on a stool playing a guitar and staring at a laptop!)n will be used as B-roll to run as interview cutaways and also to create a monitor LUT for all the other studio work we'll be doing over the next couple of months.

One of the things I find hilarious about YouTube is that a lot of the big camera influencers talk about leveling up channels and increasing production value, etc.  A lot of the bigger names have between 50-200k subscribers and a lot of them had the advantage of being early to starting camera channels.  Newer, theoretically popular people like Cam Mackey have like 65k.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine decided to do something with his YouTube channel a couple of years ago after the news did a story about his having purchased the monorail for $1/car from our local zoo when they stopped running it and turning it into a private campsite on some land in Wisconsin.  He mostly repurposes junk that he finds at garage sales and thrift stores into things like push-pull carts on railroad tracks and satellite dishes coated in aluminum foil.  The cameras he uses are mostly potatoes - like 25-year old camcorders and Hero 3-type stuff.  He has a pretty decent natural grasp of editing and story, though, and he's a funny guy.  He also would freely admit that he neither knows a lot about cameras nor cares to know any more.  Last I checked, he was at about 187k subscribers (including me - I like watching his stuff).
So if the goal is just to grow a YouTube channel, the quality of the camera is probably the least important bit.  Making half of your video be slow motion slideshow garbage so that you can put "cinematic" in the title doesn't really get views if the rest of the content is garbage.
I buy too much gear for my own mediocre talent, but that's partly just because I want it and after a lot of years, I can almost always find something to trade in to make stuff more affordable.  I have no illusions that buying a Komodo-X will substantially improve anything I do, but I might do it anyway.  If I get it, I'll probably like it a lot for a while and then after a couple of years, I'll probably trade it in toward something else.
 
Anyway, another thing to remember with these YouTubers that are in the business of making day 1 review commercials for various channels - when they're showing "what this camera can do," go watch their older stuff with a camera from last year.  Most of the time, it looks almost exactly like whatever they're doing with the new camera because they're really not that different.  One of the most laughable things that people say on various camera forums or YT comments is "I can't wait for (creator name here) to get it so we can see what that camera can really do."  Wanna know what that camera will look at when your favorite creator gets it?  Go watch the review they did of the camera before it.  It'll look pretty much like that.

One of the things I find hilarious about YouTube is that a lot of the big camera influencers talk about leveling up channels and increasing production value, etc.  A lot of the bigger names have between 50-200k subscribers and a lot of them had the advantage of being early to starting camera channels.  Newer, theoretically popular people like Cam Mackey have like 65k.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine decided to do something with his YouTube channel a couple of years ago after the news did a story about his having purchased the monorail for $1/car from our local zoo when they stopped running it and turning it into a private campsite on some land in Wisconsin.  He mostly repurposes junk that he finds at garage sales and thrift stores into things like push-pull carts on railroad tracks and satellite dishes coated in aluminum foil.  The cameras he uses are mostly potatoes - like 25-year old camcorders and Hero 3-type stuff.  He has a pretty decent natural grasp of editing and story, though, and he's a funny guy.  He also would freely admit that he neither knows a lot about cameras nor cares to know any more.  Last I checked, he was at about 187k subscribers (including me - I like watching his stuff).
So if the goal is just to grow a YouTube channel, the quality of the camera is probably the least important bit.  Making half of your video be slow motion slideshow garbage so that you can put "cinematic" in the title doesn't really get views if the rest of the content is garbage.
I buy too much gear for my own mediocre talent, but that's partly just because I want it and after a lot of years, I can almost always find something to trade in to make stuff more affordable.  I have no illusions that buying a Komodo-X will substantially improve anything I do, but I might do it anyway.  If I get it, I'll probably like it a lot for a while and then after a couple of years, I'll probably trade it in toward something else.
 
Anyway, another thing to remember with these YouTubers that are in the business of making day 1 review commercials for various channels - when they're showing "what this camera can do," go watch their older stuff with a camera from last year.  Most of the time, it looks almost exactly like whatever they're doing with the new camera because they're really not that different.  One of the most laughable things that people say on various camera forums or YT comments is "I can't wait for (creator name here) to get it so we can see what that camera can really do."  Wanna know what that camera will look at when your favorite creator gets it?  Go watch the review they did of the camera before it.  It'll look pretty much like that.

Have you checked out the Shotdeck channel? There aren' a huge number of videos there yet, but those that are seem very good. Basically hour-long Lawrence Sher interviews with directors/DPs etc about their movies, using the images from the site as jumping off points.

I like Luc, but it does seem that since he started really pushing his paid courses the channel seems to have shifted emphasis from practical stuff to more talking head stuff.

Saying "even the a6700 can look good" is sort-of like saying "even the cheapest Ferrari can go fast"..  the a6700 is a very modern camera and high-spec camera.
I can understand why you would say something like this though - you've been watching too much "camera YT" and have fallen prey to the two biggest hidden problems:
Older cameras are invisible on YT, despite being the majority of what is used
People that talk about cameras, or even mention them in the video or description so they're searchable, are using the most recent cameras, or relatively recent cameras.  The reason for this is simple - if you shot a video with the Sony a4000 then you're obviously not into the "tech" so it's not something you're thinking about , and putting that in the description isn't going to benefit you because no-one is searching for a4000 anymore.
However, the people making videos about anything else other than cameras might be using the a4000, the a3000 or their phone from 5 years ago.  I recently discovered a woodworking / renovation channel I like shoots with a C100, which records 24Mbps 1080p but his YT uploads are in 4K and the image is basically flawless.  It's over a decade old and you can get entire setups with lenses batteries etc for $500 or so if you snag a deal.
The camera body is the most discussed film-making item, but is the least important
Go watch almost any video that talks about camera equipment in a balanced way and they'll tell you that the camera body is less important than the lenses or tripods etc.  Watch and video about film-making equipment in a balanced way and they'll  tell you that the camera rig is less important than lighting or cinematography etc.  Watch and video about technical film-making in a balanced way and they'll tell you that equipment is less important than location choice, production design, hair & makeup, etc..  Watch and video about creative film-making in a balanced way and they'll tell you that the technical stuff is important to get right, but is far less important than writing, casting, acting and directing, etc.
So...  the camera body is the least important item in the least important sub-category of the least important sub-category of film-making.

I'm doing a b-roll shoot over lunch today for one of the documentaries I'm making this year (first shoot on this one, so looking forward to it!). I haven't been able to scout the room, which is a recording/rehearsal studio, but I do know that it's very small and that the walls are lined with those acoustic tile thingies. So I'm taking:

1 x tiny Ulanzi 40W bi-colour
2 x RGB wands
2 x Lupo 20W bi-colour Smartpanels
1 x Zhiyun M20 bi-colour
1 x FalconEyes RGB panel
Also a bunch of pipe clamps, spring clamps, 1/4 20 magnet plates etc, plus 2 5-in-1 reflectors, one of them folded out to black.
All battery powered. I probably won't use all of these, but I wanted to give myself some adaptability given that I'm going in near-blind.
The look I'll be gunning for is classic split tone so I'll be setting up a daylight wash with the 40W light and using some of the other lights for warm accents. Camera set to 4300K.
All of this fits in a single standard aluminium photographer's case from which I've stripped the foam, which is good because the camera weighs about 40 tonnes!

There's a lot more to the question than just which lights to use.  If you're indoors and feel like you're fighting the sun and if the windows will be mostly out of focus in the background, you can just put ND gel over them - it's fairly cheap and fast.  If they'll be in focus, IMO ND gels look a little bit like shit so that might not be your best option.
If you're outdoors and fighting the sun, especially for close-ups, a collapsible reflector or two (or three if you have one which can give some negative fill) is often a lot better than trying to compete with the sun with your light.  You can get a pretty big reflector for about $30 from almost any photo store in the world.
Otherwise, short of going with really big lights, if you're trying to blast a light through a window and have it compete with the sun, it's going to have to be a pretty big light.  In those cases, I'd probably try to find a way to shoot the scene differently.  😄
These days my main kit consists of 1xAputure 600X, 1xAputure P300C, 1xAmaran 300C, 2xAmaran 150C - as well as the B7C lunchbox, MC4 mini-lunchbox, and a few scattered MX's.  It's more than enough for almost anything that I shoot.  I'll probably continue adding some stuff here and there when Aputure have huge sales (their Black Friday sale is legit - I got a huge discount on the 600X plus a couple of bonus things).  If I need to go bigger than that, I'm more likely to rent it or to just hire a gaffer to roll up with a box truck full of stuff.
For shooting on the go, I just also put together a kit with 3xStellaPro's with their Bowen mount - they're tiny and run off of USB-C so I can plug 'em into a V mount plate or even a battery bank.  Only disadvantage?  Above 30% or so, the fan runs constantly.  I'm excited to actually do a shoot with 'em.  I also picked up a Molus X100 for the cases where I want somebody to hand hold a light.  It's alright, but the reflector in the Bowens mount seems to do some funky things with my softboxes.
 

Yeah, I assume that too.  
I've always been conscious of this too.  The only potentially impartial reviews are when the person buys it anonymously like any member of the public would, gets it the same time it ships to everyone else, then they put it through their paces.
The other issue with "reviews" that aren't long-term reviews is that the person hasn't had the product for long enough to really test it.  People like Gerald might know what shortcomings to look for and actively go looking for them, but no-one can test reliability in less than a week.  
I find the same issues with product reviews on Amazon etc - they are essentially first-impression reviews.

My guess is that the difference in actual user experience of a system receiving a 923 and one receiving 893 will be negligible.  Between the two, I'd choose the one where I get a better deal.

By the time you add the size and weight of a converter box, you should probably just get the Z Cam EVF or the Portkeys OEYE and save money.

If you're in the PC world, you're definitely better off editing on desktop vs laptop if you're working with high-res footage or doing effects, etc.  Most laptops throttle down a lot when not plugged in and (in my experience) make a jet engine noise when dealing with a prolonged load on CPU/GPU.  And as ac6000cw says, the mobile GPU's are almost always lesser versions of their desktop counterparts.  Also when on battery, life tends to be very short because CPU/GPU pull a lot of power.
My M2 Max, on the other hand, can handle 8k Canon raw acceptably - and I got the weaker variant of it.  Performance is almost the same whether plugged in or on battery.  Fans do ramp up when working it hard (now that I've added denoising to most of the scenes that need it, the 14-minute short I'm currently working on/grading definitely has the fans running full blast when I run an export).  
Basically, in absolute performance numbers a high-end PC desktop will beat any Mac currently on the market and at a fraction of the cost of a Mac Studio ($3k for a decent Ryzen + RTX 4090!).  A top-of-the-line PC laptop plugged into the wall will also outperform the MBP in absolute numbers (except whoooooosh fan noise)...  but if you want to actually be mobile, the Mac is the hands-down winner.
 

Hollywood shoots ProRes for the most part, except for VFX plates. 

It's worth pointing out that the thermals might be the dominant factor here, considering that laptops will throttle down on their performance in order to manage overheating, so a few extra fans in the laptop can make more difference than which model of CPU / GPU you buy!

That makes total sense.  One would expect a professional colorist to groan a bit if handed 8-bit log footage vs 10-bit log (or 12-bit raw).  I'd imagine that most want the most flexible image to work with when possible - there's a reason that Hollywood tends to shoot most stuff on Arri and it's not ease of use or portability. 

The internet says CP-16 - maybe Auricon.

HA!  I guess that goes to show that their target customers aren't the colourists then!!

In general, the stills stuff is a really close match for the film stocks (differences in the production are tiny)...  and we weren't talking about a small difference, especially in the greens.  Meanwhile, FilmConvert and Fuji's own Velvia profile both look quite a bit like my slides.  😄
As you said, though, a lot of the people using it have never actually used the film stocks that it claims to emulate - and some of their emulations look nice.  If you won't suffer cognitive dissonance from many of them not looking a lot like what they claim to be and/or want to use ACES as a starting point, it's a decent product.  Unless something changed recently, FilmConvert really doesn't have a good story for ACES (I think that last time I checked, it was "transform out of ACES into something else, apply FilmConvert, and then transform back").

The budget is just for the body and not for the body+glass?
1) Used GFX 100S - the video is good enough for vacation and the stills are incredible
2a) C70 - looks nice SOOC, built-in ND's, nearly the perfect camera for a fast turn-around
2b) GFX 100 II (Love mine)
3a) C70 - as before and the raw from it is flexible enough for anything I do
3b) Used Monstro 8K VV - I haven't actually shot with one, but they seem pretty nice and I sometimes consider doing some trade-in toward one - used models are now about 6k for the brain on reputable used sites

True.  Especially if you wanted to have good control over it independently across the 6 main colours.
There's a lot of talk about how these two plugins are going to put DCTL writers (plugin scripts essentially) out of business. I don't think it will, because DCTLs can be made to do a lot more things than they are currently used for, but it's an interesting observation that the DCTL writers were using them to do things like this because they weren't so easy from the UI.
In the same way that a new camera gets everyone on here excited and then start to argue with each other, discussing film emulation has the same effect on the colourist groups.
I've found two things:
1) The more I read these discussions the more I realise I don't know.  
2) The more I read these discussions the more I realise I don't care!
Seriously, the focus for the colourists who are arguing seems to be how accurate they are.  What is interesting though, is like here with cameras, the people arguing seem to care a lot about tiny little things, and yet the people out in the world doing the things also don't care about the accuracy of the tiny little things, but just see the emulations as useful for actually doing real work.
I suspect that the niche for Dehancer is likely to either be that it's more accurate, at least for certain film-stocks, or that it is more useful in some feature or other.  These are the kinds of things that colourists seem to care about.  The fact you tested it with a stills film rather than a motion picture stock might also be significant as the colourists likely don't care too much about those.

I was given a free temporary license of Dehancer to do a review for them and they said I would receive a free permanent license upon finishing the review (whether I gave it a positive or negative review).  I tried it and declined to continue.  If you already have a Nitrate license from FilmConvert, you're in the right place.  Dehancer did a few things better and could make a pretty nice starting point for an image, but the output colors in many cases didn't actually match the film that it claimed to be emulating (like not even close with Velvia 50) - and their answers for why made no sense at all.

I debated between the two last year and went with the C70.  It's my go-to A camera these days with the R5 as B camera.  Without watching that video, I'd guess that the image on the right is the C70 (more highlight and shadow detail).

Both of those cameras are great, you should get one. What are you shooting with now?