Camera Choice: Cycle Touring Documentary?

[Tulpa]

Dear Eoshd members,

I've been a long time lurker and it's clear that there are some with an exceptional wealth of experience here.

I used to be quite up to speed with the latest camera tech but completely fell off a cliff about 3 years ago. I'm not so sure a lot has happened since then, but I would be curious to have your insights on what would make a solid camera choice for an upcoming project that I'm moving towards.

The project involves cycling around the world for several years under all kinds of conditions and producing a cinematic documentary about it.

I know that many use things like GoPro, Insta 360 etc with decent results. But I'm wondering what you folks would use to obtain your results if you were to embark on such an adventure and why?

I'd be grateful for any insights or observations any of you may have!

[eatstoomuchjam]

If it's being mounted to the bike, then yes, any of the current crop of decent action cameras would be a good choice, especially assuming that some parts of the tour would be in the rain or dusty areas, etc.  Even better yet if they can pair directly with the manufacturer's wireless microphone system (DJI and Insta360 both do this).  This can also be augmented with any halfway decent modern phone.

Otherwise, if you wouldn't want to go the action camera+phone route, I'd find the smallest and lightest camera on the market with decent weatherproofing and go with that, making sure that all of the lenses are similarly weather-sealed.  There are lots of used options, especially that are M43 mount, that would be good fits for small and light and can give better results than an action camera.  Better than 1080p is nice, but as far as I know, any festival will still accept it as a resolution.  More than 4K is realistically unnecessary unless you plan to crop/reframe in post.

[Tulpa]

5 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

If it's being mounted to the bike, then yes, any of the current crop of decent action cameras would be a good choice, especially assuming that some parts of the tour would be in the rain or dusty areas, etc.  Even better yet if they can pair directly with the manufacturer's wireless microphone system (DJI and Insta360 both do this).  This can also be augmented with any halfway decent modern phone.

Otherwise, if you wouldn't want to go the action camera+phone route, I'd find the smallest and lightest camera on the market with decent weatherproofing and go with that, making sure that all of the lenses are similarly weather-sealed.  There are lots of used options, especially that are M43 mount, that would be good fits for small and light and can give better results than an action camera.  Better than 1080p is nice, but as far as I know, any festival will still accept it as a resolution.  More than 4K is realistically unnecessary unless you plan to crop/reframe in post.

Thank you for this eatstoomuchjam.
And if you you could have your pick of camera and lens, do you know what that would be? 10bit and 4k as a minimum with good low light capabilities?
I'm not only considering shooting from the bicycle, but collecting stories from the situations with people along the way.
Any thoughts?

[eatstoomuchjam]

I'd be apt to leave that to the micro 4/3 enthusiasts like @kye and @John Matthews. 

My guess, and please do take this with a huge grain of salt, as I haven't owned a real micro 4/3 camera in years, is that the camera body suggestion will look something like a GX85 or OM-3/OM-5 II for small/light/sealed, but I don't follow m43 enough to know off the top of my head which have 10 bit.  If the Panasonic 14/2.5 or 20/1.7 are weather sealed, they could be alright.  Otherwise, the humble Panasonic 14-42mm kit lens is not bad.  The Olympus equivalent might be alright too.  You'd probably want one of the primes for low light.

[kye]

@Tulpa

Maybe John is best placed to talk about camera bodies, but here's a few thoughts:

• you absolutely want weather proofing, and should read the manual to see what this can cope with (and what it cannot)
• IBIS is great but the mechanisms are fragile and I'd imagine that if there are any constant vibrations from cycling you could easily break them (e.g. will there be hours and hours of off-road or riding on rough roads?)
• consider what you'll be doing for audio - if you want an audio input then you'll need the G or GH line of cameras, not the GX line which lacks audio inputs
• docos are about getting the shot, not having a setup that looks incredible but isn't flexible or fast enough to use in the field.  for this I recommend simple setups and zoom lenses.  if you go MFT the 12-35mm F2.8 is a great lens because it's got some flexibility and also enough low-light for most situations.  

You need to think about the whole ecosystem involved.  
You will have the camera, lenses, filters, batteries and chargers, media, potentially separate microphones (and therefore all their battery and charging needs), etc.  You might want a cage and maybe external monitors. You'll need camera mounts, definitely for mounting things to the bikes, but also a tripod is probably a must-have too.  If you're shooting interviews you might want some small lights, which come with their own battery and charging requirements too.
Then there's media management.  How will you offload cards, and where will you store the data?  Will you be able to backup to the cloud as you go?  Can you buy drives along the way and mail them home as you go?  Having three copies of something is great but if they're all in your bag when it gets stolen then the footage is still lost.

This ecosystem is something you need to assemble and then use a few times to work out the kinks and get everything optimised.

The reason I say all that is that by the end of that process you might decide that you don't have space or the weight capacity for the camera after you pack a wireless mic and a laptop and some hard drives.

[MrSMW]

Olympus/OM System OM-1 + 12-35mm f2.8