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Seems like lots of new affordable modular cinema cameras have come out, with some cool specs like 4K120 or 4K60 10-bit, etc.... or even just getting FF video without a crop, overheating, or crippled codecs. So, who is going modular? How are you finding the transition? My most recent acquisition was a BMMCC and my first modular setup, and I found that getting used to having a separate monitor, needing multiple batteries, cables and cable management, as well as having to rely on a rig just for ergonomics were all a bit of a PITA actually. Plus, despite the BMMCC being really small, and paired with a tiny monitor, the whole rig gets large pretty quickly. and considering that we can't talk about modular cameras without showing awesome pictures of rigs, here's the BMMCC in my sunset configuration:

Here are some frame grabs from my first feature length film Bad Decisions. I started on the GH4, then shot some scenes on the GH5. I will finish this next year with the S5 and S1H if COVID-19 doesn't turn into COVID-20. 😬 I'm probably going to go straight to Amazon Prime. My budget thus far has been $10K and I have another $3K or so for the last two scenes. As so many of you know, no ifs, ands or buts about it; filmmaking is fucking hard! This is probably why this is my last one. I've been discouraged so many times that I had pretty much decided to delete the whole film and just quit altogether. But looking at these grabs, and knowing that I lit that, I blocked that, I wrote that, I shot that and I directed that gives me the courage to complete what I've started. It would be nice if I break even, but even if I don't, I can say that "Hey, I did that!" And boy I didn't do that alone! I had so much help from friends, family and complete strangers that it's too much to even count! They were angels, there just when I needed them, and for not a moment longer, There was one scene, that I was shooting straight guerrilla style. I needed to shoot on three city blocks at night, and I had to light it, and there was a gun scene that kinda made me nervous for the safety of the cast and crew. We have no permit process in my city, so I went to the police department, and explained what I was doing that night, and they were like "Ok". As soon as it got dark around cast and crew call time was at 6pm. We went to the neighbors houses and let them know what we were doing. We started blocking, and laying down markers for lights tripods and actors. It got dark at 9pm, and we started shooting. We were shooting in moving cars, had special effects, and every scene was lit. We even faked a window getting shot out. We wrapped that scene at 5am the next day, right before the sun came up. Do you know for the entire time we were shooting, not a single car drove up any block visible? It's like we rented 100 homes, paid everyone to stay inside and blocked off the area for a 1/4 mile radius! God was most definitely on my side that day, and it was one of the best scenes in the entire film!

Respectfully, it’s not. The lens is just one part of the equation. You can put great glass on a shit camera and it’s still a shit camera just as a shit lens on a great camera is still a shit lens. A great photographer with an average camera will always out-shoot a complete muppet with uber-expensive kit. I will put skills before kit every time. But phones, some of them are looking a bit good and I’m one of those people that went to just using my phone over a camera...but gone back to camera despite the ‘inconvenience’. Can’t deny the capability of some phones these days in the right hands however. There’s some great stuff in another thread on this forum.

Okay but he's shooting too high ... He just needs a used gh5 ... to start ... lots of objectives and accessories out there cheap ... Fx6 or c90 will not be cheap and not very far from 10k!

It does look great in low iso and with sharp glass, but it's not as sharp as the fullframe 6k downsampled to 4k where the detail just pops off the screen, in lowlight the noise is approximately 2/3 of stop noisier in my experience.

Give it 3 years and people will be saying they prefer the classic dynamic C70 look over the C120.

Monday bm will release resolve 17. Exited to see what they will announce.

Lovely, now put some Zeiss Tevidons to use with it and show off this beauty with some tasty 60fps CDNG Raw!:) Is the HDMI a full size port? BMMCC is one of the vintage cameras like the Sony F3 which have risen in prices again over the last months. There is some mojo to them as many have stated before on this forum. I personally would have loved a 60p variante of the BMCC 2.5K!

Lenses can be matched in post if you're willing to put in a bit of effort. Here's an example where I match a Samyang to a Lomo... unedited: and matched: If you put a look over the whole film you'll also help to even things out too.

Gave my R5 a workout a few days ago. Outside Temp 59F, Shot varying 8K Raw, 4K HQ/HDR 30s - 60s clips at a park. The RF 50 1.2 AF is loud AF. Wasn't expecting that with a 2300 lens. Where the nano USM? Over the course of 2 hrs got the timer down to 5min but not even a overheating warning. Not expecting that when summer comes back around. I was able to shoot until the battery ran out. I was able to get by with just 2 batteries on my A7III for an entire day, but that's not going to be the case with the R5 going to have to get more than 2. Loving the 8K RAW/4K HQ footage. Finally a camera worthy to my NX1. Really impressed with the HDR PQ, but couldn't get it to play back on my HDR TV via USB. Viewing it on the DPP software is stunning. Now I need a resolve workflow to keep the HDR PQ & metadata when I render it. Just my initial observation... ,

Yes of course it's multiple frames at different exposes fused together. Tap the shutter button and it's done for you, by a neural network no-less, with AI. And certainly more than just 3 frames fused together, due to the speed of the sensor. The GFX 100 burst isn't fast enough for this to work. It does show that small, fast smartphone sensors can overcome shortcomings like dynamic range, with computational photography. They have never been able to beat a medium format camera, massive 44x33mm sensor with 100 megapixel before. The Huawei is the first to do this.

Another option is try bringing in more light, setting your ISO around 3200 and shooting as stopped down as possible, also manually focus at the midway point to how close you think you will bring objects to the camera and use a wider lens. If you can bring in enough light to shoot at F8.0 while keeping the ISO from going above 3200 and shoot with a 12mm MFT lens you may be able to get your setup to work for you. Not ideal, but I would try that before getting a whole new camera and lens. Also, if you output your videos at 1080P, you can shoot in 4K and zoom in up to 2x without losing resolution. The goal is to have your entire workspace to be in focus by using the deepest Depth of Field (DOF) as possible and to move the objects only half as close to the camera as you need to while punching in up to 2x to get closer shots when needed without losing resolution. I know that's a lot of tech talk for someone who's not a camera person so I'll try to simplify.... 0 - Mount a MFT lens that goes as wide as 12mm (like the 12mm-35mm Panasonic MFT lens) 1 - Set the F stop to F8.0 2 - Set the ISO to ISO 3200 3 - Set the shutter speed to 1/30 (I know this isn't 2x the frame rate but since this isn't fast moving action cheating a bit here won't be noticeable) 4 - Set the resolution and frame rate to 4K 29.97FPS LongGOP 5 - Mount the camera to whatever overhead position it will be mounted in 6 - Add as much light as needed until the exposure meter is in the middle (properly exposed) 7 - Sit a static object in the frame and flip the lens focus switch to MF. Adjust the focus until the static object is sharp. The object should be about 50% less close to the camera as the closest point to where you plan on bringing objects to the camera 8 - Film your video 9 - When editing the video use a 1080P timeline and whenever you need a closeup punch in up to 100%. That's how I would film something like this with the GH5 so that I didn't need AF. Of course this won't work if you are trying to be cinematic or have bokeh (a blurry background) or razor thin DOF (i.e F1.4).

Before you invest in a Sony or Canon (which is recommended for better autofocus) it's worth trying a couple of things with the GH5 to see if the autofocus behaviour improves: 1. Update to the latest firmware as AF behaviour has been improved, slightly 2. Shoot at 60 or 50 frames per second (60p or 50p) instead of 30p or 25p 3. Experiment with AF speed and sensitivity in the AF menu 4. Make sure focus mode is set to "continuous" You might need to consult the manual to figure out how to do some or all of these things.

At this current pandemic it's kinda dumb to invest huge money for wedding business

Marla - is the problem that it doesn't re-focus at all, or that it doesn't focus on what you want it to? How close to the lens is the subject, when you bring it closer?

The GH5 does have continuous AF it just sucks. So if you're willing to put up with it, it can work ok for unpaid work. It's a bit unreliable and pulses a lot, but if you already have the camera and have no budget it still "works".

If you need continuous autoffocus then I agree with @Thpriest that you would do better with either Sony or with Canon. If you go with Canon make sure it is a model that has Dual Pixel autofocus in video. My understanding (and I could be wrong so do some research) is that some Canon cameras that claim to have dual pixel autofocus might only have it at certain resolutions.

Hola Marla, whilst the GH5 is a fantastic camera it's biggest weak spot is autofocus in video mode. If continuous autofocus in video is the number 1 necessity for you then I'd look to Sony or Canon cameras (each have their weak spots as well but autofocus isn't one of them!).

I use FastStone for batch operations, it can extract the JPG file from the RAW file, but I'm not sure if it can actually convert the RAW file to a JPG (there is a difference). Also, there is a new version of codecs for Windows 10, you have to get it from the Windows Store, after installing this codec I am able to view 5DIV, T6S, and S5 RAW files in Windows Explorer: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/raw-image-extension/9nctdw2w1bh8?activetab=pivot:overviewtab Also, not sure if you are aware...but just straight RAW to JPG conversion will usually not yield the greatest results since RAW files are usually generated to be further manually processed. Personally if I wanted the flexibility of processing the RAW files but also wanted the full resolution JPGs I would just set the camera to save each image as RAW+JPG....that will save you processing time later and will probably yield the best results if you don't plan on further processing the RAW files.

This is one of my biggest mistakes of the production to be completely honest. I shot most of the scenes with Canon FD 28mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.4 and 35-105 f/3.5. Beautiful glass, but you need to stop down a stop or two to get it really sharp. I lit all the scenes with LED Fresnel lights and panel lights, but sometimes that wasn't enough unless the lenses were wide open, so some shots are way too soft for my liking, like the black guy with the white guy in the car scene. I was away from power, so couldn't use my A.C. powered lights. 😥 When I rented the GH5 for some scenes, I also rented the Sigma 18-35 f/1.8 and Speedbooster. This is the lens that is shooting the scene with the guy and girl in the bar (shout out to my fine ass wife 💞). In other scenes, I even used the Panasonic 42.5mm, 25mm and 20mm f/1.7 primes. That was just stupid of me. I even used the 14-45mm 3.5-5.6 in a scene because I needed a much wider shot indoors. The guy looking out the window at night was shot with this. The one other thing I wish I had was an electronic gimbal. I had a vest with spring arm and mechanical stabilizer, but I really wasn't good at it at all. It would have been better for me to go into more debt to add better motion shots, as many were killed and just shot on sticks. I went with the GH4 and GH5 because it was the camera I had. I made certain to always shoot out to a Ninja 2 and at the time I was using DNxHD as a codec. All in all, I'm very pleased with the quality. You may be surprised, but low light shooting wasn't really an issue! Every single scene was lit, so I didn't go over ISO-1600 for any shot. This is why I really can't understand cameras like the A7S line (even though I eventually bought the GH5S myself) when it comes to filmmaking. For docu work, yeah, that's a perfect camera, for weddings it makes life super easy. But when you are trying to sculpt a look with light placement, when shooting a film in available light, you relinquish all control of the visual medium. Now you could use negative fills to great effect (never seen it done once on an indie set) or fly large diffusion panels and scrims, but what indie production can afford to do that? The biggest problem for this project is, well, life. Everyone in the film has jobs, businesses and careers. Getting the moons to align was quite the difficult task. Many a time it was a shoot day, and someone had to be at work early the next morning and couldn't make it. At that point, I just needed bodies for grip just to not loose another day. I even hired my handyman that does home repairs for me to do grip work! Almost all shooting was done exclusively at night by design, but that worked out in my favor. The budget went to craft services, location rentals and gear. I also paid a talent agency to wrangle extras for me for two scenes. At least these people had an interest in the business, as you really can't have just any Joe or Jane do this because more often than not, they will fuck up your shot by looking into your camera or talking when they aren't supposed to, etc. I hope this helps!