New travel film-making setup and pipeline - I feel like the tech has finally come of age

[kye]

22 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

A great benchmark.

Do you still have that XC10?

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.

[fuzzynormal]

4 hours ago, kye said:

pull things out of the discard pile

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

[BTM_Pix]

4 hours ago, kye said:

Haven't turned it on in.. well.. some time.

I think you should.

I think you’d be pleasantly surprised at the degree of enhancement the accumulated knowledge of these intervening years brings.

It’s a camera that has always appealed to me and I’ve been waiting patiently to pick a used one up for £200 for years now.

Still waiting !

Which is likely a testament to how many people have held on to them and are still getting great results .

[John Matthews]

24 minutes ago, fuzzynormal said:

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

I had that camera for about 1 month and then sent it back to Amazon because the GX80 came out at the same time. Still, I recorded some great moments on it. One of the videos is so precious that I have it on my desktop at all times.

[PannySVHS]

I bought myself a second GX85. It will hopefully arrive this week. Comes with the 12-32, which I already own and enjoyed using for some test clips with the og pocket. I think I should let go my GM5, as it was more an object of desire than being a practical artists tool for me.

What do you guys think? Prices are pretty nice and high for these at the moment. Mine is orange and in a very good shape. Much usage would rub the faux leather off I think.

I love the subtle color grade @kye Great results with your GX85 cinema beast.:) Btw I really love the colors of the GX' raw files when taking photos . This camera is perfect for street and to carry along. Anyway, how is Prores on the GH7?:) Any nasty artefacts? Awesome to hear and read about your findings with this exciting camera, Kye!

[John Matthews]

14 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

I bought myself a second GX85. It will hopefully arrive this week. Comes with the 12-32, which I already own and enjoyed using for some test clips with the og pocket. I think I should let go my GM5, as it was more an object of desire than being a practical artists tool for me.

What do you guys think? Prices are pretty nice and high for these at the moment. Mine is orange and in a very good shape. Much usage would rub the faux leather off I think.

I love the subtle color grade @kye Great results with your GX85 cinema beast.:) Btw I really love the colors of the GX' raw files when taking photos . This camera is perfect for street and to carry along. Anyway, how is Prores on the GH7?:) Any nasty artefacts? Awesome to hear and read about your findings with this exciting camera, Kye!

Out of curiosity, how much is that combo going for where you live? I'm always looking for it, but it often seems a bit pricy for me. In France, it can be found for about 350 euros.

[PannySVHS]

Hehe, I got lucky paying 250 for mine with the 12-32 and a Lumix bag. These bags are highly fashionable in certain groups of clumsy professor photographers.:) The combo usually goes for 350 with the lens. I got my first one eight years ago and paid around 430 for the body. It's still going strong, even without the backwheel which quit on me a few years ago. My favorite lens with it for photo is the 14mm pancake. I also liked using my Oly 45. But it's silver and kinda shiny for street. Planning on getting the Panny 42.5 F1.7. I also got a G3, a cute and small but solid plastic fantastic Dslm style camera. It's the dslrish sister to the GX1. The latter also going for higher prices than a few years ago. GX85 is the best of them all imo for a variety of reasons. 4K video is still great for being 8bit and Rec709. But you know that of course. @John Matthews I just had to get my second one for that nice price and I am looking forward to do a photo tour with two cameras and lenses.

[kye]

On 6/16/2025 at 1:38 AM, PannySVHS said:

I bought myself a second GX85. It will hopefully arrive this week. Comes with the 12-32, which I already own and enjoyed using for some test clips with the og pocket. I think I should let go my GM5, as it was more an object of desire than being a practical artists tool for me.

What do you guys think? Prices are pretty nice and high for these at the moment. Mine is orange and in a very good shape. Much usage would rub the faux leather off I think.

Think about selling it and see how you feel.  If you don't have a negative reaction to the thought, and it's not a practical choice, then sell it.  

If you do have a negative reaction to the thought of selling it, then think about how much you might get for it and what you could do with that money.  Then think about swapping the camera for those other things and see which gives more excitement.

Ultimately, if you're not shooting for money, then you're doing it for enjoyment, so ignore the specs and go with what would bring you the most happiness.

On 6/16/2025 at 1:38 AM, PannySVHS said:

I love the subtle color grade @kye Great results with your GX85 cinema beast.:) Btw I really love the colors of the GX' raw files when taking photos . This camera is perfect for street and to carry along.

Thanks!

Not sure if I said this above, but my approach for the GX85 shots was to just apply enough of the film simulation in the FLC to get rid of the "video" look in the files, which I think was only about a third.  The GX85 has a strong look to begin with, so I didn't need to add much to the colours.  

After many years working out colour grading tools and techniques across lots of cameras I've worked out how to get images to not look so digital, but now I can do whatever I want with them, I have to now work out what I want!  It's a work in progress as everything is.

On 6/16/2025 at 1:38 AM, PannySVHS said:

Anyway, how is Prores on the GH7?:) Any nasty artefacts? Awesome to hear and read about your findings with this exciting camera, Kye!

Prores V-Log on the GH7 is an absolute joy.

I have been doing some low-light testing over the last week or so in anticipation of my next balloon adventure, and I compared using a 17mm lens with using my new 9mm lens to get a 17mm FOV (firstly by shooting C4K Prores 422 and cropping to 17mm FOV in post, and also by shooting 1080p Prores HQ and cropping to 17mm in-camera) and even then, at ISOs of 5000 or more, the results were still not like the normal results from cheap cameras.  In the grade it feels like footage from any cinema camera I've tried - the controls all feel great and the image responds how you want it to without colour shifts etc.  Hell, I'm in groups where there are guys dealing with FPN from their RED cameras at base ISO that is worse than this camera has at ISO3200.

20 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

My favorite lens with it for photo is the 14mm pancake.

Absolutely!  There is something magical about this combo.  I don't know what, but it's a joy to use and the files just seem to have something special to them.

20 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

I just had to get my second one for that nice price and I am looking forward to do a photo tour with two cameras and lenses.

Dual GX85 bodies is a great way to go actually, and saves time in changing lenses all the time.  Great stuff!!

[PannySVHS]

My second GX85 has arrived yesterday. It feels like new. I'll sell the 12-32mm, since I'm owning two of them now. Great deal for a great camera. I still got my first one, which I bought eight years ago thanks to a great thread on this forum. I should let the GM5 go, since the faux orange rubber coating is kinda too cute to stress test it when using the camera for photography. I might give it a photo tour before departing from it. Decisions.:)

That sounds great, coming from a og pocket and Bmmcc afficiando like you! @kye How is sharpness on the GH7, artificial looking or natural? What about punchin focussing during recording? Does the camera offer a 2x crop mode with good codecs and quality for some b3/4 goodness? True S16 mode or 16, 2.87 vs 3x? More questions to come.:) Thanks!😊

[John Matthews]

13 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

My second GX85 has arrived yesterday. It feels like new. I'll sell the 12-32mm, since I'm owning two of them now. Great deal for a great camera. I still got my first one, which I bought eight years ago thanks to a great thread on this forum. I should let the GM5 go, since the faux orange rubber coating is kinda too cute to stress test it when using the camera for photography. I might give it a photo tour before departing from it. Decisions.:)

That sounds great, coming from a og pocket and Bmmcc afficiando like you! @kye How is sharpness on the GH7, artificial looking or natural? What about punchin focussing during recording? Does the camera offer a 2x crop mode with good codecs and quality for some b3/4 goodness? True S16 mode or 16, 2.87 vs 3x? More questions to come.:) Thanks!😊

I have so much great footage I've taken with the gx80- the one that was used in that gx85 thread started way back when (and briefly became the most popular thread on EOSHD ever). Every camera I've used since (there have been many of all shapes and sizes) was either bigger, lacking features, or didn't have add significant improvements over it. In retrospect, I probably should have stuck with it and I would have saved a bundle and paid off my house that much quicker.

Just last night, I was live streaming via HDMI with my S9 (not recording) and the camera over-heated mid-session (about a hour in), something  my M43 cameras NEVER did. Granted, I don't think the S9 is made for what I was doing with it in a VERY hot attic (~35C), but still I wasn't even recording and I had a dummy battery. I guess the S5ii will now need to be doing that job and I'll set up my GH2 as a backup (just in case it happens again).

[kye]

15 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

That sounds great, coming from a og pocket and Bmmcc afficiando like you! @kye How is sharpness on the GH7, artificial looking or natural? What about punchin focussing during recording? Does the camera offer a 2x crop mode with good codecs and quality for some b3/4 goodness? True S16 mode or 16, 2.87 vs 3x? More questions to come.:) Thanks!😊

Sharpness seems very natural to me, although I am not at the level of pixel peeing as others around!

What I can say is that the Prores feels like Prores from a cinema camera.  So the files edit like butter, the grain is well captured and not removed / crunched, etc.  I've done quite a lot of low light high-ISO testing in the last few weeks and even up to ISO 12,800 the footage cleans up in post using temporal NR, which wouldn't work if the compression killed all the noise.

Punch-in focussing is available during recording, and pops up automatically if you touch the focus ring on a native lens, and has a custom amount of zoom.  I'd assume it's the same as previous cameras where you have an option to give you a punch-in box in the middle of the monitor, or for the whole monitor to show the punched-in part.  The focus peaking was also active within and outside the punched-in part of the screen.

The in-camera digital zoom is changed from previous models, and significantly improved at that.  It's quite different now.
Let's say I have my 9mm lens fitted.  I hit the button I have mapped it to (it's called Crop Zoom "CrZ") and it activates the feature, showing me the current focal length (9mm) and there are a bunch of ways to get it to smoothly zoom in and out, displaying the current equivalent focal length as it goes (10mm, then 11mm, etc).  
The function is integrated into the zoom controls for the powered zoom lenses too, so I think you can zoom in and it will zoom the lens in as much as it can and then (if enabled) it will keep zooming in with the digital zoom.
I thought the idea was it will keep zooming in until it gets to a 1:1 sensor read-out and then won't go any further, but the manual just lists some rather arbitrary zoom amounts.  With my 9mm lens, if I shoot with the C4K mode it will go to 11mm, but on the 1080p mode it will zoom in to 24mm.

In my tests I've found that the in-camera cropped images are free from artefacts, and I'd even zoom in/out during recording using it if I felt the need to.  

I'd happily use it for S16 cropping, or any other cropping you wanted.  Perhaps the only caveat is that if you wanted to crop more than the 1.3x it will do in C4K, or 1.4x in UHD, then you have to use the 1080p mode, and that mode seems to have a slightly different look to the images, a bit more like the OG BM cameras in that it looks like a lower-resolution sensor readout.  It's got a bit of that lower-resolution more sharpening look to it, rather than a higher-res-downscaled look to it.  It's subtle, but it's there.  It's still high-quality, but just compared to the 4K modes it's noticeable.

I've been doing lots of tests for my next ballooning trip, and these include low-light testing.  I figured I'd take my 14-140mm zoom for when the light is sufficient, and I'll take my new 9mm F1.7 as my ultra-wide, but was wondering if the 9mm could be my low-light non-wide lens as well.  

I did two tests.

The first test was an ultra-low-light test.  
I tested:
- GX85 with TTartisans 17mm F1.4 manual prime at F1.4
- GX85 with TTartisans 17mm F1.4 manual prime at F2
- GH7 with 9mm F1.7 at F1.7 (shot in C4K and cropped to be 17mm FOV in-post)
- GH7 with 9mm F1.7 at F1.7 (shot in 1080p and cropped in-camera to be 17mm FOV)
- GH7 with 12-35mm F2.8 at F2.8 and 17mm
- GH7 with 14-140mm at 17mm
- GH7 with TTartisans 17mm F1.4 manual prime at F1.4
- GH7 with TTartisans 17mm F1.4 manual prime at F2.0
- GH7 with Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95 manual prime at F0.95
- GH7 with Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95 manual prime at F1.4
- GH7 with Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95 manual prime at F2.0
I reviewed all of them with just a 709 conversion, with NR/sharpening, and with tonnes of NR/sharpening.
This is a test of lots of things being traded-off against each other, as the slower lenses all needed a higher ISO, and the 9mm was sharp wide-open and brighter but also pulling from a smaller sensor area, but I didn't upload to YT so it's not a full pipeline test.
The result was that the Voigtlander won, the TTartisans at F2.0 was good, the 12-35 was good, but the 9mm was still acceptable and waaaaaay better than the GX85 + TTartisans wide open (which was what I shot the previous outing with and I found to be disappointing - the combo of the TTartisans at F1.4 combined with the GX85 ISO6400 was just a killer combo).  

I also tested the 9mm F1.7 wide-open vs the 12-35mm F2.8 stopped down to F4.0 against each other in good lighting and native ISO and using the 1080p in-camera zoom to match focal lengths.
I reviewed all of them with just a 709 conversion, with NR/sharpening, and with NR/sharpening put through my FLC pipeline (which includes softening the image slightly and adding grain).  I didn't upload it to YT either, so it's not a full-pipeline test but was a good indicator of it.
I found that the 9mm zoomed to 12mm was equivalent to the 12-35mm, at 18m it was noticeably softer, and at 24mm it was really noticeable and getting into vintage territory.  

I can post some stills if you're really curious.