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Speaking as someone who’s a long time user of the Olympus 4/3 (anyone remember that format??) and then micro 4/3 format. I own many 4/3 and m4/3 lenses from Olympus, Panasonic and others (Veydra, SLR Magic, Voigtlander) Generally speaking Olympus m4/3 lenses are better corrected optically. Panny tend to rely more heavily on in-camera / post correction. Olympus also OEM many lenses for others. You’d be surprised what major brands have lenses that are made by Olympus. Optics have always been their primary strength. (They are absolute leaders in other fields like medical where they have near monolopoly market share of endoscopes etc). Olympus are a really interesting company, very innovative. They were the first to do live view in a stills camera. First to have an ultrasonic cleaning of the sensor. And of course their IBIS has always been the best along with weatherproofing. In the past few years I have been consulting with Olympus on improving their product and features to appeal to more cinematographers. These things typically take time to filter though their product development cycle. The Pro primes are actually beautiful lenses. And they’re great for cinematography. Hard stops on focus for example. BMD asked me to shoot with the Olympus primes to show what could be done with inexpensive native 4/3 lenses and they do not disappoint. JB

Hi everybody! It´s been a long time since the last time i pass on this forum. Now i wanna share my last work, a fashion/music film. Shot with GH5 and using @Sage Alexa color for starting point in the grading. Using 2,21 aspect ratio. Mastered in 2.3k (2386x1080) Hope anyone can enjoy it. PS: Soon I'll share some stills for comparison.

Or an indication that the AF is so horribly bad you'll be using MF permanently hence the clutch focus of the Olympus lenses makes them far more appropriate than the Panasonic ones. Where is the emoticon for "Of course I'm kidding about the AF so keep your drawers on but its worth bearing in mind this feature if you are choosing between Olympus and Panasonic lenses at similar focal lengths if you intend to do a lot of manual focus on this camera" ?

Hello! It's me again, last time I made a lighting breakdown and it was really cool to hear your thoughts and to get a discussion going. This time it's a much shorter post about gripping for low budget film. I made a short post about creating a car rig to mount the camera on a car hood with minimal setup and cost. Hopefully it's helpful for somebody, or at least you can draw some inspiration from this to do something similar! Here's the blog post, feel free to ask any questions!

Wow... I'd call it "educational framing". Bravo!

I've bought and sold 7 bmpcc since the fire sale so I think its pretty accurate. You gotta know how to negotiate. But thats OT. Lets get back to the bmpcc4k.

Nice rig! Definitely loose the gimbal on a simple hood mount. Also, you really should safety your rig with a motorcycle strap or ratchet strap. For your small setup, you probably need only one strap going across the hood, hooking into opposite wheel wells. Here is an example of a larger rig with straps: In the above car rig images, note the padding where the buckles/hooks make contact with the car body. I would also add soft "groovetyne" fabric scraps at any point at which the the strap webbing contacts the car's body. For a small camera hood rig, I usually avoid suction cups and instead use a simple pancake (1/8 apple box with baby plate) with groovetyne or neoprene underneath: There are plenty of inexpensive tilting heads with 1/4"-20 camera threads that fit on the baby pin. This pancake rig is usually secured with two straps and possibly a sandbag (if there is wobble). One more thing about shooting in a car in which an actor is actually driving -- avoid busy streets! The actor is constantly trying to be the character, which can significantly distract him/her from noticing other cars, pedestrians and road hazards. Having a "spotter" car ahead of the picture car can provide extra safety and can govern the speed (slow speeds often look faster in the footage, so there is usually no need to "press the pedal to the metal").

You say that but I bet you somewhere out there there is a knitting forum where people are lambasting each other over their choice of needle, getting into seething rages about people not using the same wool as they do and referencing influencer YouTube channels like Mo Knows Mohair.

Amongst all the debate about what Nikon has got right or wrong about this camera, I think one thing that everyone must surely agree on is just how badly wrong they got it with the demo setups at the launch events. It wasn't just that it was bad in its own right - although it was - but it was also how much worse it was comparatively to what Sony gets up to at their versions of these events. In Jared Polin's video above he illustrates this huge gulf and you just have to wonder how anyone from Nikon thought that what they laid on was even adequate let alone comparable. Of course Sony has a much bigger budget for this stuff than Nikon but its not like we are talking about them launching a new speedlite or a consumer compact, this is about a crucial new line for them. I'm not sure how anyone is gleaning anything particularly useful about these cameras based on the output we've seen from these events as everyone who has posted their content is, quite understandably, couching everything they say in relation to how mediocre at best the shooting conditions were. Sony makes it very easy for everyone who attends and reports on those events to get decent images whereas Nikon seemed to have approached it like some sort of challenge to them to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Weird.

As Kris the product manager wrote on Facebook, we have not communicated any such date to them.

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K ‘Models Walking in Daylight’ John Brawley talks about the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K for the first time. ‘Models Walking in Daylight’ is his first camera test where he checked out the camera’s ability to handle different skin tones. “The whole point to this daylight test was to see how the camera handled skin tones. We were shooting these scenes later in the afternoon, so I was at ISO1000 or 1250, so it was at the lower ISO for this camera. I understand this gives more in dynamic range, so you have a little bit more highlight-headroom there. When I look at those shots now, I am really impressed at how good the dynamic range is. It is great to see all of that detail I was seeing was actually captured in those shots.” “I don’t think people realize how easy it is to make things look cinematic with Micro Four Thirds! I know that there are a lot of people who like that 35mm full frame look, but it’s still very easy to get images with an out of focus background with the Micro Four Thirds sensor. I found it a great 4K sensor and really good compromise for a small camera that still gets really, really good looking pictures.” Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K
Apple ProRes 422 HQ 
ISO1000 and 1250
Olympus Pro 25, 45, 1.2 micro and Olympus Pro 12-100 F4 zoom Micro Four Thirds lenses

Lens chart all on one page.

Just got my II-Pro today. WOAH!,...the image quality is LIGHT YEARS ahead of the old Mavic Pro. Noise processing is fantastic. Shadows are clean and not washed out. No 15 frame temporal NR pulsing. If you add +1 on sharpness, noise reduction backs off even more. This camera looks VERY detailed on both FOV and HQ crop modes. Even better news....the stability of this aircraft and it's ability to perform flawless yaw movements is like none other that I have flown. I have flown, Mavic Pro, Mavic Air, Phantom 4 Pro, Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 and Inspire 2. This one is THE winner and is absolutely buttery smooooooth. Woah! It's clear to me now that you can't judge any detail of this camera on YouTube. You have to download actual card files to really see this thing. Will include some downloadable clips tonight. Waiting on my Zoom arrival tomorrow. CT

I use a Ninja flame with my d750, what it brings is so much more than just a recorder, show me one dslr/milc that have has the functionality that an Atomos recorder brings you . The NinjaV will still be viable with its 60p 4k and even raw recording for at least two more generations of cameras, that I don't even think will have all its exposure tool, etc in any small MILC for the next 5 years. If in 2018 the equivalence of a 70mm Imax camera esthetics can be put in a small hand bag including the camera and a 5 inch size screen, I am baffled. 10 bit was the last limitation in the affordable cinema quality. We first got large sensor with the Canon 5d, then came resolution with 4k minus moire/aliasing, but what was missing was 10 bit. Those two bits add so much in terms of colour information and level of shade that have been plaguing dslr/milc image. You can have 8k, log etc but without those at least 2 bit it is useless. Those 10 bit will make log usable so that you can use the maximum of the DR of your camera and eliminate banding. If putting a screen that would fit in a big pocket is outrageous for you, so image quality is not important to you. And for what cost $ 2700!!!!!!! Much less that what the 5d use to cost... 10 years ago. Please rant a bit more... because for me, this is a pivotal point, where the camera has become good enough or exceed the capacities of the operator. If you can't do some serious/gorgeous imagery with this camera, it is not the camera the limiting factor, but you. The same as what happened in photography with the D800 camera, if you could not do good photography with it, it is your fault.

I wonder what gimbal was used

Yes you are. You are right that each individual photo taken taken at 1/200 will be sharper and 'too sharp'. But if you take 4 consecutive shots at '1/200' and blend them together by 'mean averaging' you will introduce the same motion blur on anything moving as one shot taken at 1/50. You can test it yourself with stills and photoshop.

The camera doesn't make the craft. It's just a tool. So, use decent tools. The OP asked which is more important. Codec or AF. I put both of them very very low on the priority list, but since those are the two choices I say codec. Ever try shooting video with a Nikon D90? Hoo boy.

I'm pretty thrilled with that. Visual masterpiece* There are so many amazing shots *Btw, I showed all your shorts to my friend this past weekend

Thanks @JeremyDulac I've been looking for it so I could experiment with it.

I feel the opposite way, the Mavic Pro 2 HQ clips with sharpening at 0 look better than any consumer drone footage I've seen by far. Whereas even the clips posted above with +1 sharpening look more like over-sharpened consumer drone video to me, but still very good. The unsharpened log clips look much more like a cinema camera to me, though (then again, most 4k cinema cameras are very soft per-pixel, except maybe the F65). Overall, I think the Mavic Pro 2 HQ mode looks way better than any previous Phantom or Mavic or consumer drone, with tonality that resembles the Inspire raw footage (but nowhere near as sharp). But it's just my opinion. I was hoping not to like the footage since I don't need a drone, but now I'm looking at how I can afford one... I'm guessing the sharpening setting will be able to fix things for you to your liking, though but I also think mosquito noise and aliasing look a lot like sharpness and this seems to have less of both. (Just like how the 5D Mark II looks sharper than the 5D Mark III because of aliasing and noise, and imo it does look better in some cases.) For a super sharp image, maybe this isn't the right drone, but you could buy another Mavic Air if that's the case. That said, it looks sharper than an Alexa Mini, and the Alexa Mini drone footage in the Revenant intercut with Alexa 65 fine and looked fine from the front row, so I'll take it. . But yes, compared with the older consumer drones and Inspire, it looks softer to me, too, but with much better tonality, which should mean it can take more sharpening without falling apart. Just a matter of taste whether the sharpening is something you want. I suspect in-camera sharpening will help get toward the image quality you want, and/or sharpening in post, or just using a higher contrast grade. I wouldn't give up on it yet!

its funny how panasonic is the more video orientated camera but olympus lenses are better for video with the manual clutch and look better too

I don't think that is totally accurate. I sold mine used for 650 about a year or more after the sale. The pocket was steady around 700 until maybe the last 6-12 months. The fire sale was like 3/4 years ago. The deals you can get on packages are incredible right now. I just bought one with a speed booster and cage for 630.

FWIW as I pointed out in the other thread, DPR just added a bunch of sample pics from Japan, including exterior night scenes at high ISO (up to 25,600) which i find much more interesting then anything from the NYC launch event..

Absolutely they're not 100% ideal either and you make a very valid point but at least those images are approaching somewhere where you would be interested enough in them to then look closer for defects. There is a night and day difference between the overall aesthetic of those Sony images and those from the Z7 launch. The vast majority of the output I've seen from the Z7 hasn't been worth the click and the zoom as far as I'm concerned. Does it mean that I think the output from the camera is or will be shit in general terms? After four decades of using Nikon cameras (which is a confession rather than a boast by the way ) I'm inclined to believe it probably won't be shit. If I came to this from never having used their gear or was looking to change though then I'd have looked at the stuff from the launch and had serious doubts about what the fuss was all about. If you take DPReview as a yardstick of this then look at the reaction to the sample gallery of the Z7. Even factoring in the usual hysteria on there, it is overwhelmingly scathing and in this case I have absolutely no issue with that because how else are people supposed to react to such underwhelming output from a £3.5K camera? The blame for that I'm afraid and the potential consequences of it are Nikon's because they controlled the parameters of those launches and are responsible for what has ended up out there. Including the banding by the way that Polin's video exhibits. I'm conscious of the fact that I have not had too much positive to say about these new cameras but I want to stress again that I had/have as much if not more vested interest in Nikon getting things right and establishing themselves in mirrorless as most people, even if I knew ahead of time that these ones would likely not be the most appropriate for me. So I want Nikon to do well with these cameras and any negativity that I have been raising is genuinely coming from a place of concern rather than one of hate. Basically, even from a purely selfish point of view, I want them to do well enough with them that they are still in the game when it comes round to them making versions of it that I would actually want to buy and that means they need to sell these ones to everyone else. I haven't seen much to fill me with the confidence that they have made the best of the platform they had to impress, let alone slay, the wider world outside of a core "You had me at Nikon" audience. Worse than that, there really hasn't been much in the way of an outpouring of love from some of the quarters that I would have expected either. That doesn't mean they are absolutely slating it but I do get the feeling that there is a slight amount of this going on with them I suppose my general point here is that there are undeniably some issues that have irked people about the system as a whole (price, lens lineup, single card slot, ergonomics etc) that are gaining even greater traction because they aren't being mitigated by anyone being able to convincingly say "Yeah but forget all that, just look at the images coming off this thing". I think that Nikon shot themselves in the foot by not offering an environment where that kind of counter point could be generated. None of that means Nikon have created a bad camera system but I do think it amounts to them having created a bad impression. That can change when they start delivering the cameras and people start doing real reviews of course so it will probably be a blessing that there is a short time between the launch event and actual delivery.

Well... it was only "backlight" if the photographer chose that particular angle to shoot from. I could be wrong, but I thought the way sony set it up that the photographers there could shoot from pretty much anywhere... and as Jim Kasson explains, it is really only in certain situations with it being more prominent with certain lenses. But the people who have gone to both Sony and Nikon events claim that the Sony events are better set up than the Nikon ones. Should that fact influence anyone's decision to buy one camera over another??? No, not at all.

you guys seemed to have missed my point.It was about Sony not always doing a particularly great job of staging launch events like it's been implied. surely the guy who thought it was a good idea to place that backlight in that angle got the boot considering the online shitstorm it created heh..

I don't know Sony might be better but their events still have silly setups too imo.. mirrors galore.. harsh backlights exposing nasty grid artifacts..

Picked up one for $2400 from a production company. Totally still the top of my budget at the moment, but it will hang on the credit card for a month till I can make it up with an extra job. I have seen some great footage online from the mark 2's. I am a pretty good editor and know my way around the canon DSLR's so I hope the learning curve isn't that steep. I also am going to try out the 24-105 Mark II. I know the original 24-105 is a workhorse but the world is sort of split on it's results. Half say it works, half say it's to dark. So I picked up a 24-105 Mark ii yesterday during eBays %15 off sale ($100 off) I'll either keep to replace my 24-70 f/4, or resell if it doesn't work. I have used my 18-135 a lot, but I know the quality is just not that great. I did a test a while ago on 80d of the 18-135, my current 24-70 f/4 and at the time, a Canon Refurb Purchased 24-105 Mark ii. The L's were so much sharper, even at iso 100 that it was hard to even justify having the 18-135, but before my 6d2, I really needed something for the range, so returned the 24-105 and kept switching between the 35 f/2 and 18-135 when I needed it. Now, with a 6d2, and the c100ii I have use for a 24-105. I'm hoping that the new 24-105mkii, while not "blow you away good" will be much closer to f/4 and with the better low light on c100 compared to my 80d tests, won't make it suffer. I know the IS is much better than the original. Of course I'll use 35 f/2 for a lot of B-roll, but I'm hoping the 24-105 will cover way better than the 18-135. Also, c100 is only 1.5 crop instead of 1.6, so that might help the wide end of the 24 a little bit. I have my 16-35 f/4 or even 10-18 stm if I need wider. I've also seen a lot of people using 24 primes on c100's so it can't be that bad of a focal length. No matter what my desire for primes or my 70-200 f/2.8 offers me, I still need that run and gun zoom lens so I'm not missing shots in and out of classrooms and other places in my school. Can't wait to start using it! Thanks for all the advice.

Is it weird that I'm seriously considering trading my NX1 for one of these? Having played with one in the store the ergonomics are somewhat similar. Of course the advanced photo features I will probably never ever use but the combo of good Olympus color SOOC, amazing stabilization, over sampled 4k with a decent codec, and a non-dead lens system is really tempting. The only thing giving me pause is that the EM-5 III will likely have all of that as well in a smaller, cheaper package. And since I already traded my NX500 for a GX85 it seems like the logical next step. P.S. If anybody has pull with Olympus please ask them to axe the 29 minute video recording limit for non-EU markets. Many people don't care but for those of us that film long static events (e.g. lectures) it is a major annoyance.

My YouTube channel also has a bunch of videos with car rigs featured:

Aw shucks matthere beat me to it! See the YT version the post 'up' mine... hehe!

More from JB.. Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K ‘Models Walking at Night’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dv4iSzhMjA

No, the comment I am talking about was in response to B&H updating their release date. I'm also expecting second of September at the earliest though, to be honest.

If anyone is comparing lenses, be aware that one of the advantages of having a fast lens is that you can stop down and get less distortion. For example, if you get a 50mm F1.4 and use it at 1.8 then it is likely to be optically superior to the 50mm 1.8 at 1.8. This is why people would buy a 1.2 lens in comparison to an 1.4 lens - it's not because they want to shoot a lot at 1.2, it's the performance at 1.4 or 1.8.

There are always sellers with 100% feedback, and I agree some people complain for nothing, but to choose a seller with 80% when you are spending more than 500 buks is suicide, you have to review all his negative feedback, check it carefully, and if you see a lot of unjustified complains, well yes, you can choose a seller up to 98%, there is a reason I never had an issue buying from ebay meanwhile others are craying in the corners their money gone, as I said, I have more than ten years buying from ebay....and never lost my money!!!!

Then stay with the pocket This looks pretty high-end to me. The color is certainly better than the Panasonic variants of this sensor. I am actually quite impressed. Given the price, so far the images more than match some of the higher end cameras, unless you are being extremely picky (looking for details in extreme shadows), which to me is nonsense.

Yawn... wake me when all of this has been hashed out... Too much to keep up with. BMPC4K, Nikon FFmirrorless, Canon FF mirorrless, I guess Olympus is next, then Panny, Fuji...

My A7s ended up being $248.00 dollars, plus shipping to California, 12 bucks with insurance. No cost to ship back to Ohio.. Broken SD card door. Sony A7S Sn:5075767 Parts side door (complete rear unit) and side door locker base $198.00 Labor side door (complete rear unit) and side door locker base replaced $50.00 General service cleaned No Charge $0.00 Subtotal $248.00 Total $248.00 Amount paid $248.00 Amount due $0.00 USD

Pretty cool the Z7 & Z6 are made in Japan at the historical Sendai factory. Currently only D5, DF & F6 are still made there. All other Nikon cameras are made in Thailand/China. D850 production/supply shortage hasn't got anything to do with it. The thirst is real!

Wait, hang on--are we seriously comparing footage uploaded to YouTube? Doesn't comparing compressed sRGB files sort of defeat the purpose of having higher data rates and dynamic range? I think we should wait for files straight out of the camera before making any real judgments.

More M mount stuff with the rather cosmetically battered but still optically very much not battered Leica 90mm f2 that I picked up recently. Stills again for now but I'll definitely do some grabs of it and the other M mounts I've picked up on a the A6500 and X-T2 in a few days.

Here 'ya go. Mavic-II Pro - UHD - 100mbp/s H.264 .mp4 container Profile is "standard" Sharpness +1 Contrast -3 Saturation 0 Both files are directly off the card and are short. One is Full "FOV" view and teh other is HQ crop view both on the exact same scene. (remember, the color is flat rec709) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1c-k4pnmzrEwuwfnumzATMr4W4o__iI7l?usp=sharing This is the real thing.....Enjoy!! CT

There is a good chance this is a line skipping or pixel binning process. It's hard to say for sure though. We know that Sony has created a high tech "full pixel readout" for their fantastic scaling engines but DJI does not buy Sony SOC's. DJI buys Sony sensors and uses Ambarella image processors on Phantom and Mavics. The original Mavic Pro used a dinosaur Ambarella A9 processor that has the absolute worst temporal noise reduction algorithm. It SEVERELY scrubbed the life out of everything below middle grey it's temporal analysis artifacts caused a "pulse" every 15 frames. Shadows are 90% washed, scrubbed and flattened SEVERELY! (a lot of people blamed 60mbp/s h.264 when it was really that disgusting noise reduction circuit to blame) Total junk chip that dates back to the GoPro 3. The Phantom 4 Pro uses the Ambarella H1 and it's pretty good. The Mavic Air used the Ambarella H1 and doesn't suffer that same noise reduction Hell that the Mavic Pro does and gives you 100mbp/s too. Today we have the Ambarella H2, H22 and H3 chips which are far more powerful than the H1 now. It's going to be interesting to see what video processor that DJI used for these new Mavics. The Ambarella H3 can do 4k at 120fps and 8K at 30p! It's very possible that DJI is making these motherboard designs usable for the new Phantom 5 too. This allows them to buy H3 or H2 chips, do all the programming work together and only activate features the need for each model and leave others hidden. This saves lots of programming man hours. To see this HORRIBLE Ambarella A9 vs Ambarella H1 noise reduction lab analysis comparison, check out my video here. I think it will answer a lot of people's questions about DJI Mavic image quality problems. It's NOT 60mbps vs 100mbp/s like we have all though for years. https://youtu.be/5WDc9PKCDm0?t=1m30s CT p.s....DJI is using H.265 HEVC but they are only using "main" profile and NOT "high" profile. This means it is only using a fraction of the HEVC tool sets and calculations that are available to the full HEVC/H.265 specification. So,...the "50% gains" over H.264/AVC are reduced even further. This is a "light" or "partial" HEVC profile designed to keep calculations per second lower and easier.

OR just buy a REALLY wide angle lens and leave it on F8, set to infinity, and have a Big stick with a nail in it to beat people that get closer than, eh say 8 feet from the camera, especially if this guy is close!!!

The BM PK4 is probably going to be just like the BMPCC. A pain in the ass to use with pretty amazing output. It is not going to AF worth crap probably, no IBIS, no preset of just shoot and post to the web video, not going to use it on vacation, give it to your wife to take shots of the kids, on and on. Bu it will be great LoL. The Sony A7 mk III is the jack of all trades. And a master at a lot of the trades. Probably the best Point n Shoot ever made. Other than better codecs I can't see nuch it is lacking in other than Big MP for landscape photos. Though choice no doubt. PK4, Kind of a poor mans Cine camera, or A7 mk III, an all arounder that can get the job done with ease other than a really great Cine look.

I would 100% go with a better codec. For the most part, as long as you're in focus, everything else can be fixed in post with the proper codecs. Aside from that, seeing a hunting AF in a video drives me crazy, and is big enough reason for me to never even turn AF on. If you slip out of focus manually, it can look stylish and add to the image. If AF goes out, it looks terrible. If you're making a short film, AF is even less important as I assume the actors will have fixed paths while they're moving, so you can practice pulling focus.

@tupp @youshouldtry11 thanks for this, had never heard of the cameflex mount! Shooting in raw is stable even with the SD overclock hack - I rarely had problems with corrupt footage, unless it's an extremely experimental build. The only issue with the SD hack is activating it, which can be a bit risky, but after activation, the camera is fine to use as normal. If you want to avoid the SD card hack and want to use s8 or s16 lenses, just download the latest 4k lossless experimental build from the magic lantern website, select "movie crop mode" in 10 or 12 bit lossless raw up to 1800x1030 resolution (4.66x crop). That mode is nice to use as it gives you a properly framed liveview, and should give you fairly continuous recording times. Of course you can also select lower resolutions whilst in movie crop mode if you want a bigger crop or a different aspect ratio.

can you take a photo of your lens back? I want to compare it .... isn't this a c mount?

Vignette and light loss are far less when you position anamorphic rear and taking lens front optic as close as possible.