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I have the GH5, GH5s, & BMPCC4K cameras. We do lots of events, frequently in low light, and always in 4K. I love the GH5 & GH5s combo, but it gets *really* time consuming having to encode the video for Final Cut. I have terabytes of footage on a weekly basis to process. Being able to record ProRes in camera was one of the reasons that I purchased several of the BMPCC4K cameras. However, there *is* a solution for this issue now for the GH5/GH5s. Just get an Atomos Ninja V for the GH5/GH5s. You then get a larger screen and you get Prores recording. But, your GH5s setup costs now costs ~$3k-$3,500 each, the Prores 422 files are even larger than the 400mbps All-I files from the GH5s, and you are running a big rig (compared to the BM). The BMPCC4K really is an amazing package deal, despite its issues. We haven't yet fully switched away from the GH5(s), but I imagine that we will do so soon.

This is the most basic and oldest color grading textbook I can think of. I must have read it six years ago. But I found it more useful than online tutorials, because of its broader focus: https://www.amazon.com/Color-Correction-Handbook-Professional-Techniques/dp/0321929667/ref=asc_df_0321929667/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312091457223&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14846167971322217554&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001876&hvtargid=pla-524043500801&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=62820903995&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312091457223&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14846167971322217554&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001876&hvtargid=pla-524043500801 I know many people here claim camera doesn't matter much if you can grade really well, but I readily admit I can't. So for me I think camera matters more. And I think there are things you can do with LUTs that are difficult to do without them. Light Iron and CO3 both have proprietary LUTs. That's the smaller part of what makes those places as good as they are, and they work they do really is fantastic. But I think it's still a factor. Anyhow, I highly recommend the book.

That’s always been my complaint with Alexa footage... definitely not detailed enough.

As you say, it depends on your usage and what you want out of a camera. I don't feel the need for a GH5s, however if I did have the GH5s I might pine for internal ProRes and RAW. It's also not about RAW for me. I wanted to shoot ProRes because the files off both my GX80 and LS300 were driving me nuts. In my experience no edit suite can play JVC's 422 files at all, and I was also having some issues with h264 realtime playback, even if the files are untouched. I'd imagine the GH5s would give me similar results. On the same machine, I can grade the ProRes files and playback in full quality as if it's nothing. Sure you can convert the files to ProRes, but that adds a lot of time to the workflow. Yes you can also record externally, which I did on the JVC but that's more gear to carry around. For me this camera is fantastic in the field, the only thing I need to carry that the other cameras don't need is extra batteries... in fact, the same batteries I'd have used in the recorders I mentioned. Then when I get home to edit, it's like I'm dreaming. Having used it almost daily since October, I'm fairly convinced I have the best camera available for my requirements, for everyone else, that may vary.

Just saw this video and thought it would be useful for those with Dual ISO cameras like BMPCC4K, GH5S, etc.. Includes how Dual ISO works, impacts on DR, and how to expose - really great content from John Hess.

New Northrup AF video on the A6400, firmware for the A9, etc. Pretty impressive.

do you speak about colors or the small dot? I haven't taken sun pictures... it looks like a spot to me, not sun damage oh, the colors, it's because my room lights, not from sensor XD

You know now if you are lucky you can find a used Canon M50 for 500 bucks or a bit more. I know they don't have all the video bells and whistles a Panasonic has, but they are an interesting camera for the money.They sure do have the Canon CS and DPAF in 1080p. And I bet down the road they will have ML out for it. No IBIS though.

Well, it’s all relative. I owned both the GX85 and the G85 and I preferred the ergonomics of the G85 to the GX85 and I felt the IBIS was a little better... not as good as Olympus’ but a little better than the GX85. Also if you’re talking sub $1000, you can buy a G9 for less than a grand now, and the IBIS on that camera is supposedly 2 stops better than the GX85 plus it has 4K up to 60p... so it’s all relative. With that being said, the GX85 is a great camera and other than a used Pocket/Micro it’s the best camera under $500.

I agree with you, the micro is very appealing at a lower budget.

Oh I hear you and get your point. But a huge difference in price isn’t necessarily a valid point for a visual comparison. You can do the same comparison with any cheap camera and ask the same question. It’s a gotcha comparison designed for a specific answer. For instance, I could do a similar comparison with a D5500 vs the Alexa. The D5500 has about 11 stops of DR... if I had to guess... but it has very clean shadows. Then I could say, “obviously the Alexa wins but it is a $65,000 camera vs. a $500 camera...” Clearly in that video, the Alexa wins. No question. With that being said, I felt the guy did a good job and it shows the strengths of the P4K... but he could have done that without the clickbait “vs” nonsense.

I doubt it would be. How does the image look from it now?

Sony is still selling the original A7 with kit lens for £879. They can do this by reducing the price of legacy models, which obviously Nikon can't in the mirrorless market. Nikon wants to compete in that segment, makes perfect sense. They may have to cut some corners to do it, but the A7 is a perfectly respectable stills camera (with less than brilliant AF), and the full frame stills market is probably still larger than those looking for 4K video shooting.

Brilliant stuff! I think Blackmagic should include this video with every camera they sell. Seriously. Cheers @kye

I use my cameras in Lapland at down to -35. Condensation is unfortunately unavoidable if used outside for hours. My habit is simply to take the batteries out and then leave the cameras alone - occasionally wiping excess moisture away and eventually things clear. I never remove the lens. I don’t go outside again until the camera is dry otherwise (I assume) there’s a risk of ice damage. The only camera which didn’t like the cold was the original Pocket - it switched off very quickly. The A7S was dropped into powder snow occasionally and (again making sure it was dry before switching it on) was fine. The biggest problem was the Micro - impossible to use with gloves on so fingers got very very cold. I must be one of the few who has got a Sony rx100 to shut down due to cold... The P4k is perfect having a plastic shell and given the price isn’t going to cause me absolute panic if something does happen. I’m sure professional rigs use heated jackets (covers with hand warmers) but other than a plastic bag if it snows heavily (pulled down over the tripod) my cameras are naked. There must be a degree of heat generation internally which is protective during operation. I think the most important factor is time - let the camera adjust naturally.

Ah, hi Steve Huff! ?? I think it's perfectly usable. Aside from the slowmo that I find rather poor noisy and smudgy quality even in very bright conditions and the glitchy at best wireless connectivity with the accessory that's finally in, I find it alright... that is with the little time I've been trying it out. There's nothing quite like it, really. Guess it really depends what you expect/want from it. Do hope that like the Mavic series they'll come with a Gen II Osmo Pocket 2 Pro and Zoom, now that would be interesting.

I’ve never used either camera but based on comparison videos of X camera vs. the Alexa in the past... yes there is a difference.

I am still astonished with this camera, a game changer not only but also because of the ease of use for sure. Let alone IQ. Impossible to ignore : ) Is there 50x of price difference?

Yeah but what John Brawley does is because they can't archive all that stuff in 4k. They generate too much footage an episode. You don't shoot enough to worry about that problem. Jesus it's 2019. Kick it up a notch like Emeril Lagasse says. Hell you might get famous down the road and be stuck with a bunch of 720 stuff. O the Horror! ?

I am not familiar with that because an old git like me can't afford any Any Leica toys. ?

Do you know about the Fermi Paradox? " In 1966, Sagan and Shklovskii speculated that technological civilizations will either tend to destroy themselves within a century of developing interstellar communicative capability or master their self-destructive tendencies and survive for billion-year timescales." I believe we chose the first one.

Sunnylife in general seems to bring some color cast in most of their filters. I am reading good things about the Pgytech ones, and of course the Polar pro.

I'm going to make an analogy to recording music because it has already been through the democratisation (for want of a better word) process that film making is going through. This is a local band from my town making a half decent album in 1967. Great room, great mics, great mic placement. Because they'd got those aspects so right, it didn't matter anywhere near as much that they had such limited capabilities of a console like this to fix it in the mix. My phone has more recording and mixing capability than they had available there but unless I take that same approach to acquisition then I can tweak away forever without really being able to get anywhere near it. That isn't necessarily about having to have a world class room and world class mics but it does involve approaching the craft of it in the same way but also making an artistic decision about what it is you are trying to capture in the first place. The same is true for image making. I think it is great that we have the colour grading tools available to transform and even potentially rescue footage that you would ideally have shot under more controlled circumstances but I certainly hold with it being something to enhance or finesse a solid base. I actually find one of the Pocket4K's most interesting yet hardly ever discussed features is the ability to record with baked in LUTs as I think creating a virtual film stock and taking the time to learn its response inside out and making those commitments to the final vision when shooting will ultimately yield better and more consistent results over time than the time draining options of noodling around with RAW all day. To offer a parallel to this, for work I have to shoot jpeg with very limited latitude time or manipulation wise to make anything other than minor tweaks. Due to this, I have the same 'film stock' on the multiple cameras I'm using and I'm completely familiar and comfortable with how it will react to the multiple types of lighting that I have to shoot in in terms of colour balance and dynamic range, how far I can underexpose it to boost shutter speed etc so no image that comes off any of them is a surprise or a challenge to get it where it needs to be. As a consequence, images fly in and fly out with no delay, angst, analysis paralysis or regret. By contrast, if you give me a single RAW file, I can fuck about all day with it. Often with inversely proportional benefits.

Sorry, I was just joking around and yes I guess it isn’t as detailed as a 4K Raw video might look but that wasn’t my first takeaway from the video. I guess I’m in the middle of deciding how important 4K video is to my needs right now and I keep coming back to the same answer... 9 out of 10 times, 1080p has more than enough resolution for my needs. In a lot of ways, I think lens choices are more important than resolution. YMMV.

Being an ML Raw shooter, I can say that the MLVApp is pretty awesome and I think I have an older version. The LogC curve conversion alone is worth its weight in gold in my opinion. It’s pretty insane what is possible with the basic nightly builds of ML Raw. I’ve never tried any type of uprezzing but after seeing that video, I am definitely intrigued. I think even a simple 1080p to 2.5K could be a nice POP. Takumars are great lenses and are so cheap. Some have the radioactive yellowing issue, so be diligent about what you buy. Pentax made a replacement line of SMC lenses in the K Mount shortly after the Takumars and what’s interesting about them is that they used the same optical formulas without the Thorium glass, so the same 50mm 1.4 doesn’t have the yellowing issues that the Takumar has.

In that video, it seemed like the ISOs didn't match very well between the GH5s and the BMPCC4K at the lower end. It seemed like up to around 6400 the BM was darker. Also, his brightness levels as he changed ISOs was all over the place. In my casual testing, my GH5s cameras seem to be a fair bit less noisy at the same ISO settings than my P4Ks. I will have to revisit this on my cameras after seeing his video. This most surprising thing that I have found after getting the P4Ks is that they don't fit my bags. I am having to completely rethink my bags and storage systems to fit the P4K cameras The added width really does make a big difference in this regard.

Hague are a UK company that make a wide range of internal and external camera mounting gear for car shooting at reasonable prices. Nice people too. https://www.cameragrip.com/camera-car-mounts-suction-pads/

...is oftentimes better than Master of One - really depends on what phrase you read ?

Of course it's not, i just said it's easy to find f2.8 lenses that matches the f4 of ff which is still 'okish' dof. What really makes the GH5 specifically useful to me are two lenses that after trying different things are now keepers: Olympus pro 17mm f1.2 and the 45mm f1.2 combined with Ibis and the full manual focus on the lenses make it a everyday tool on every production. I keep a 35mm 1.4 Glied to the eva1 and have a wide and portrait equivalent of 35mm f2.4 and a 90mm 2.4 in FF terms but with 1.2 light gathering. All together a very good package.

Of course! The 6400 is not the camera for someone like you. But it doesn't make it a "turkey". It's like a car person saying VW Golf is a turkey because it's not a Porsche. VW sells a lot of Golfs even if they're just front-wheel drive that understeer and are not as much fun for people who love rear-wheel drive cars. That said, I don't love Sony cameras and that's probably what you're referring to. They're good gadget but never feel like a tool you want to use. I have the 6000 and the A7Riii. I'm glad the 6400 kept the old battery and stay true to its size. I think sony understands this market segment well. They are delivering everything a newcomer would want and more. Most importantly you want the camera to work. What that means is, that it takes good videos or photos. Most people people would not care about bit depth, etc. What they want is photos or videos that are in focus. Secondly they want it to work where a phone would not work, like in dark situations etc. This is what this camera is optimize to do. A small little wonder that you can use to take selfies, low light photos and videos and the AF is so good that you're 95% guaranteed to take a photo or video that looks decent. Sony will acquire more new users and some of them might ultimately invest more into the ecosystem of Sony. It's a market win for them.

The a7 is old. This is a 2019 camera we are talking about. I assume it will have 4k and high frame rate of some sort, etc, much different from a years-old camera having dropped in price to $800

Its a combination of a few different elements of that. Exclusivity of event access given to certain agencies would be one aspect of it and in cases where that isn't the official case it is becoming the de-facto one by virtue of a combination of preferential pre-allocated positioning and the number of accreditations granted. So if you take football as an example, a small agency would be given one accreditation and have to take their chances where they are positioned and cross their fingers the most important action of the event happens where they are sat while the larger agency are able to cover the entire field from four or five positions guaranteeing they get the shot. Subscription based distribution of images favoured by those agencies also means that per image payments are becoming rarer as its so much easier and cheaper for a newspaper to illustrate a story with any number of images as part of their subscription plan than it is to deal with individual payments per image. If you combine both of those factors then it becomes economically unviable for a lot of agencies and photographers to cover events so where you might have had a typical match with, for example, 30-40 photographers covering it then even if you have two agencies with subscription models and multiple photographers at it the opportunities to earn a worthwhile sum is reduced to a very small amount for half of them. When the market opportunity for the images to be able to be sold into gets reduced to that extent then so does the market for the purchase of the gear to make those images, hence why I'm bewildered by Sony getting involved for anything other than vanity or completeness purposes in it. These agencies also have direct deals with the clubs themselves which also severely limits the opportunity to sell images from aspects outside of the 90 minutes such as training sessions and press conferences both by price (because again, these images are "free" for publications who have all you can eat subscriptions) and also by virtue of them having enhanced access to the stadium and the players. The same agencies also have deals with the organising associations of the tournaments so its a short hop to tie the whole thing together into a deal to being the official and exclusive supplier of images. Its worth bearing in mind that as with any editorial content, in sports photography it is often the most controversial images that will earn the biggest fees through syndication bolstered by exclusivity. Very often of course those images would be considered 'off brand' for players, clubs and organising associations so control of the brand image though exclusivity of access is also a powerful driver for this change. And then you get on to the TV rights holders who are paying literally billions of pounds to broadcast the events and who are also very keen on protecting and polishing the brand as well. If there is a fight in the crowd at a football match or a streaker runs on the pitch etc then you are very unlikely to see that on your TV screen as the broadcasters choose what goes out so it irks them that photographers (who pay zero of course to cover the event) don't also turn their lenses away from a disturbance but are very much likely to turn their full attention towards it and start firing away. With the super fast distribution of still images from pitch side these days those unfiltered scenes can be on newspaper sites unhindered within a minute and be damaging the 'brand'. Taking all of that into account leads to a logical conclusion that TV rights holders will eventually do a deal with a large agency to give them live access to the TV images for frame extraction and editing (transmission of out of camera images to remote editors is already standard practice anyway) as soon as the image quality is there. Will the pictures suffer ? Yes and no. The TV companies have the best coverage positions and quantity of coverage of anyone in the stadium so they can produce arguably more interesting content anyway. What you will lose is the individual aspect of choice with which a photographer will create the image as you will be stuck with making something out of what you are given so if the TV framing of a piece of action is wide then so will your 'picture' of it and if its in tight then so will your version of it be as well whereas you might well have chosen to do the exact opposite in both cases. One thing that will also advance its introduction in football at least is the phasing in of the VAR video refereeing decision system which is used for supporting or overturning decisions made by the on field referee. As these are normally the contentious and hence newsworthy incidents such as was it a penalty, was he offside etc, the images from the numerous cameras that the system uses arguably capture the peak moments of action and frame extracts are increasingly being used by newspapers to illustrate them with. I'm going to give the whole thing probably three or four years tops (particularly in light of the 8K at the Tokyo Olympics) before the balance tips, which is why I've wound down my involvement in it virtually completely in the past six month.

Way cool, love the LUT.

this thread is great this is what the internet and message boards are all about i would like to think that we're all friends here, and that we should be able to have a spirited discussion about anything from cameras to global politics without devolving to personal attacks, and being mean spirited cheers, guys ??

It depends on the camera and camera settings (and what look you like) but imo diffusion filters are a key missing ingredient toward a more "organic" look, if that's what you're after. They add an extra layer beyond even using vintage lenses, and imo it's worth combining the two if you want a "cinematic" look rather than a technical one. I think @Zach Goodwin2 proselytized extensively about them, and while I think he was using stronger grades perhaps than I settled on (don't really remember), I agree they have great value. That said, most on this forum seem inclined toward sharpening video and generally going for a sharper image than I prefer personally. So it is a matter of taste. I like the Alexa, which is quite soft, and I really like the look of 16mm and late-90s films shot by Richardson and Kaminski, which make heavy use of promist, classic soft, and nets. I think JFK is a beautiful movie. (And the Alexa is a weird camera. I'm convinced it has an optical diffusion filter in front of the OLPF similar to Tiffen digital diffusion but that the pipeline also applies a slight wide-radius unsharp mask. Which isn't crazy. Film's modulation transfer function curve can exceed 100% mtf and then it drops off to extinction more slowly than digital; so this approach could emulate that. And give the "3d" look people talk about while still making skin smooth. But this is conjecture.) The issue with black promist (also with classic softs and Hollywood black magic) is that you can see "speckles" in the bokeh, which may or may not be desirable, and at very deep stops sometimes the black dots that mitigate the promist's natural halation come into focus. (Also you need a matte box if you want to use a 4x4 filter, so screw on filters might make more sense depending on if you want to keep your rig small... but 1/4 BPM has a good look. Surprisingly strong, though.) I find these tests interesting: Particularly the latter. It's amazing how close the C300 with 1/4 to 1/2 digital diffusion looks to the Alexa. Imo it's a big improvement, however subtle.

Canon needs to start giving you commissions. ?

This is some of the bullshit you only read in online forums. If you say something like that, is is only because you are justifying paying more for the g85 over the gx80. The gx80 has equivalent 4k to the g85. That is what matters. If you really think that they process the image differently in fhd, then give me an official enginnering source or make that judgment over your own footage, do not just reference another test because you are lazy to do your own. I think a couple of points have to be added here. The GX80 is by far the better professional budget option then the g85. Who cares if the fhd is worse then something else, you are not gonna buy a porsche and then only drive it at 100kms an hour, comparing the sound to a fiat. Why? In 4k, there is no visual difference to be seen to the gh5 4k, and equivalence to the g85 4k. We have recently shot a documentary and noone could tell much difference to the gh5, even at 200mbs, to the 100mbs 4k of the gx85. Feel free to post a screengrab with the gh5, I will give you one of my gx80 that will look as good. You get the gx80 for around 200 to 300 bucks less then the g85. The gx85 is missing external audio jack, but this does not matter, since if you shoot professionally, you will not allow bad pre amps or camera sounds to go on your audio and go dual audio. One other thing is weight, people say the gx80 is missing weight, but as a b-camera, this is a huge upside. We were shooting while hiking and carrying the gh5 on a gimbal/glidecam slash the gx80, we always ended up using the gx80 on the glideplus a 40mm voigtlander, and we got the most beutiful shots. The gx85 has professional features that if you go dual audio, you not really need and, if you have the same budget, it allows you to get a cage, grip and a zoom h1, which will take your gh5 audio apart. To summarize, the gx85 is in my opinion the best price/value under 1000 dollars, its a beast. So getting the gx85 over the g85 is a no brainer. Comparing it to the gh3, I think the gh3 is a beautiful camera, and if there would be image stabilization, I would recommend the gh3 over the gx80. But ibis is still what kills the gh3. On top, I am currently building up anamorphic, and the gx85 allows you to shoot 4:3 in 4k photo mode, which the gh3 does not. On the other hand, the gh3 has internal audio (bad preamps). The gh3 also gives you better slow motion then the gx80 at 50mbit/s vs 28mbit/s. The G7 is the gh3 with worse slow-motion and worse fhd, so I would go for the gh3 over the g7 and the gx80 beats the g7 as well because of ibis. I don't wanna be mean but there has been some junk written in this thread about high iso and soft footage of the gx80. If you are gonna use iso higher iso than 1000 with a m43 camera, you are already doing something wrong. Without loss of IQ, you are gonna use fast lenses or lighting to shoot at the right light. I do own the gx80 and I can recommend over the g7 and g85 as a first cam, b-roll cam or professional b-cam, for a gimbal/glidecam for stuff like weddings, or as the first camera to get at the current state of technology (which is 4k)