How Many Cameras?

[fuzzynormal]

GH5

GH4

EM10iii

OM-1

5Dii

XPRO2

XT-5

P1100

DSC-RX10

iPhone15

iPhone12

Xiaomi12 Ultra

DJI Mavic Pro

GoPro Hero

All those different cameras were used to make our latest indy documentary on-and-off over the last 3 years.  We finally finished post-production (for real this time) last month.  Not to mention all the different ridiculous vintage lenses and modern lenses employed along the way. 

So that happened.  

My advice?  Yeah, don't use so many cameras...and then try to make all that cohere somehow with no legitimate color grading skills...

Surprisingly, I found the EM10iii footage the most pleasant looking color-wise when exposed correctly.

[kye]

On 11/29/2025 at 1:06 AM, fuzzynormal said:

GH5

GH4

EM10iii

OM-1

5Dii

XPRO2

XT-5

P1100

DSC-RX10

iPhone15

iPhone12

Xiaomi12 Ultra

DJI Mavic Pro

GoPro Hero

All those different cameras were used to make our latest indy documentary on-and-off over the last 3 years.  We finally finished post-production (for real this time) last month.  Not to mention all the different ridiculous vintage lenses and modern lenses employed along the way. 

So that happened.  

My advice?  Yeah, don't use so many cameras...and then try to make all that cohere somehow with no legitimate color grading skills...

Surprisingly, I found the EM10iii footage the most pleasant looking color-wise when exposed correctly.

I sympathise deeply - well done for getting through it.

I shot a number of trips with a nice camera + smartphone + action camera, and only in the last few months did I shoot my first trip where every camera had colour management support.

Matching footage from multiple older/budget cameras that don't have log profiles and colour management support is perhaps one of the hardest challenges in colour grading.  
Not only are the colours and gammas a challenge, but matching sharpness and NR and compression artefacts are also things that can make clips stand-out from each other.  I've lost count of the number of times I spot a 1-2s clip from an action camera spliced into a high-end production based solely on how much sharper it is than the rest of the footage, which could all be avoided with a simple low-strength small-radius blur to take the edge off.

Obviously ultra-low-budget docos are often subject to using whatever cameras are available at the time, and docos often need to use more rugged cameras like action cameras etc to survive different conditions, not to mention dealing with footage from other sources.

To me, a camera has to be pretty bad or pretty ill-suited to make it worthwhile to break consistency with the other material already shot.  As much as you can, pick a camera, pick a few lenses (or just one lens), do your due diligence to get familiar with them, and then just get on with it.  

It's only when you can see past the camera and the lens and the filters that you'll be able to see what you're pointing the camera at.

[MrSMW]

On 11/28/2025 at 6:06 PM, fuzzynormal said:

All those different cameras were used to make our latest indy documentary on-and-off over the last 3 years.  We finally finished post-production (for real this time) last month.  Not to mention all the different ridiculous vintage lenses and modern lenses employed along the way. 

So that happened.  

My advice?  Yeah, don't use so many cameras...and then try to make all that cohere somehow with no legitimate color grading skills...

Yes, my OCD would not be able to cope with that.

I don't like even having 2 different cameras within the same brand, never mind other brands...

I can just about get my head around having and mixing in drone footage, but that is because the alternative is not realistic and as a fan of minimalism (well, as minimalist as I can be without compromising any major element), I'm all in on one system now.

[fuzzynormal]

8 hours ago, MrSMW said:

my OCD would not be able to cope with that.

I'm of a more ramshackle mentality, but even my loosey-goosey philosophies hit a limit. 

fyi, this particular doc was about people that are trying to help conserve raptor migration through SoCal.  So, lots of bird shots.  Which we don't really do, nor have done.

The whole thing became kind of a production experiment.  We were only answering to ourselves so we could take risks like that.

The scope of the project kept changing, but the finances never did.  There was very little money in our pockets, and what we did have we needed to save for travel.  And being a seriously-non-affluent-filmmaker, it basically came down to a make-do-as-we-can process.  Our personal finances, as well as the various situations of the shoot, were all over the place.  

We were borrowing/renting lenses and gear in a very haphazard way. Sometimes it worked.  Mostly it did not.  Meanwhile, the stuff we had in our own collection was inferior.  For instance we used a POS Vintage Photax 500mm w/2x extender for an entire season to get a lot of the BIF shots.  That was an insanely unfortunate thing to do, but it's what we could afford to have on hand.

The biggest bitch was not having a real tripod.  We truly wished we had friends/colleagues that could have let us use a pro Sacthler or Miller.  More than willing to carry some sort of hefty rig into the wild if it would've allowed smooth shots when filming at a +2000mm FF equiv.  That FOV reach is f'in hard to control. 

As a side note, it was pretty wild running around with birders carrying equipment that was so expensive and professional while us "filmmakers" were often using, basically, consumer toys to grab video.

At the end of the day, the images are passable by a certain standard, but when you pixel peep you can tell it's all held together with spit, bubblegum, hopes, and prayers. "f8 and be there" was the mantra we had to talk ourselves into and accept.  "The best camera is the one you got." 

...That sort of thing.