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Cinema camera's what? Jeez. Guy can't even write English.

Time to give up and go home, anyway

Dammit. I was just heading down the bookies to put a quick tenner on this and...too late, the results have already been announced 🤑

You will struggle to get anything that looks 'great', so I would suggest a three-pronged approach: Content. If ever there was a time to make the grade support the content rather than be a spectacle in itself, this is it. One trick that often works is to go carefully shot by shot and ensure that the viewers attention is on the right thing / person, and that is often done by raising the luma of the area so it stands out. Typically this is large and very soft oval power-windows the way that you'd simulate a vignette, and is often a combination of inside-outside effects where the subject is pulled up a bit and the outside is pulled down a bit. If you do it softly enough then it should be imperceptible, but will put the focus on where it needs to be, distracting from the grade entirely. As there's no chance of making a 'great' grade, make one that is the least offensive. Do this by working out the weakness of the footage and then compensating for that. For example, in low DR 8-bit footage, often the mid-tones are stretched apart, so you could try lowering the overall contrast and essentially pulling the bits closer together. This will raise the shadows, and maybe this will give a nice vintage look, but maybe not, and maybe you'd be better off actually pulling the levels down a bit and compressing the blacks (and whatever compression nasties are there). You'd have to play with the footage to see where the issues are. It's worth experimenting with reducing saturation, which makes all footage look higher end, but may not be the aesthetic you're looking for. Degrade the footage to hide its sins. I've shot lots of very low quality footage over the years, including SD, bad codec stuff, and have had a lot of mileage from upscaling it, blurring it and adding grain. Upscaling it gives you more pixels to work with, and your timeline should absolutely be higher resolution than the original footage. Blurring at very small radius' is designed to soften the jagged compression artefacts. Blurring at slightly larger radius' will smooth gradients, and much larger blurs (essentially adding diffusion in post) will smooth over the image the same way as diffusion filters do. I'd suggest the smallest blur be at 100%, and the larger ones be semi-transparent over the image. Adding grain will disguise the fact you've blurred the footage, and will give an analog feel, which is far more preferable than having an early-digital feel. For this step I'd encourage you to grade at a standard viewing distance rather than close-up / pixel-peeping as the effects are easy to over-do. If you're going to upload it, do a version specifically that takes into account the compression that will be applied, and you'll have to add lots more grain (for example) and probably experiment with multiple uploads to fine-tune it. Here's an example of my previous attempts at making the best of low quality footage. Final: Original: Best of luck - editing old footage can be fun and a trip down memory lane. Enjoy the process!

Ah yes, MiniDV! The bane of my existence for 12 years! A lot will come down to how you capture it (are you doing a standard firewire capture to DV or are you capturing it via capture card to a different codec?), how well it was filmed (is the exposure and white balance OK?) and what camera was used (a lot of low end camcorders just had horrible, muddy colors unless used in bright, bright lighting). You'll want to avoid using one of the cheaper capture cards that will record it to h.264. I've never had good results capturing SD video to that codec and editing it, so I think it's better to capture to DV if you have the ability to. ProRes will also work if you have a way to capture it that way! If the footage is decent-ish you should be able to do a bit of color correction and get relatively close to what you'd get using a similar modern consumer camera, but you're not gonna be able to get away with heavy grades or anything. The process overall though wasn't radically different to how I worked with HD camcorder footage once I upgraded, so assuming it's decent footage you should be OK doing what you normally would just with tempered expectations. If it's not very good footage though you'll have more issues than you would if it were HD. Denoising never really worked that well since it removed way too much detail for a lower resolution image. Maybe that has gotten better thanks to better denoising tools? But muddy and noisy footage is where you'll have your problems; there isn't a ton you can do with that. Even basic color correction is a pain in the ass.

Yeah 4K isn't noticeable unless its showing on a giant screen. Great footage, always wanted to get this camera but it won't really matcha as a Bcam to my current A cams.

Come on. Rolex ad above the header'd look luvverly!

No.

Have you ever considered pro-actively going after non-industry advertisers to pull in some relatively easy cash? You have high page impressions, a large number of regular registered users and an audience mainly composed of solvent men with relatively high disposable incomes - there are a lot of companies who would definitely like to get in front of such a bunch.

Last summer I managed to salvage old tapes before they went too bad. Didn't try to make the footage look pro or have any special "look", but to make new HD masters to save for the future (=pure sentimental reasons). I tried AI scaling, but was very unsatisfied, look horrible. This thread is amazing and I went with this workflow: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=109259&sid=eb50d17426119095ce9038dba8e7c6a6 Good upscaling without artifacts or false details. Also the best (software) de-interlacer I've ever tried (I tried almost everyone there is), so many hidden details and perceived resolution that would disappear with other solutions. So with a better codec, in standard HD resolutions (with square pixel aspect ratio) I retouched corrupt frames and did gentle colour and contrast balancing. My favourite tool in Resolve is "Midtone detail" with a negative value of -25 to -50, really helps with the harshness of the format. No need to work on the sharpness or the contrast for my needs for a soft retro-ish presentation.

Having just acquired a Panasonic S1 (with which I have immediately fallen in love) I'm actually quite happy to hear that the AF isn't so good as it means I don't have any urgent reason to buy any of their very expensive native lenses!

Seems like a job for Topaz Labs's Video Enhance AI after capture. https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai

Oh yeah, and a nice highlight rolloff can hide clipped highlights, and if the footage is 30p you can slow it down to 24p and get a bit of slow-motion for free, which I also did on the above footage.

Assuming you have a way to properly capture the footage in your computer, maybe try an upscaling software afterwards? I’ve had very good results with Topaz VEAI, their new model Proteus is amazing.

I would phrase it differently. I know a few people who do real research before making large purchases, and I think it's more like being able to read through the reviews to see the truth. In that sense, we practically cover everything in salt rather than just a small amount of seasoning... Basically, you want to know the strengths and weaknesses of the product. The approach seems to be: If a review is emotional, either good or bad, ignore them. They obviously either have an axe to grind, or are euphoric, in either case they're not solely focused on seeing the truth, so although they might believe what they say, they won't be seeing clearly. Look for known reference points. If someone has reviewed something you don't like positively, then that's a warning, or vice-versa. It might be an issue with their bias, or a lack of intelligence, lack of thoroughness, or simply a misalignment of what they value compared to what you value. Taste comes in here. I look for music reviewers who share common taste - if you don't like the taste of whiskey then it doesn't matter if it's the best whiskey in the world, you still won't like it. Look for meaningful criticisms. No product is perfect (you can't please all the people all the time), look for criticisms in a review, and only accept real ones, rather than token or BS ones. If a review is level-headed and detailed, maybe you can take the criticisms as true, otherwise, get more opinions. Look for patterns. If lots of reviewers, who all make it through the above criteria, say similar things about the products weaknesses then they're probably true. Smell out marketing. If you're looking for the benefits or strengths of something and you've seen a pattern of positive comments from level-headed people who also made criticisms, then look for specificity. If the pros of something are generic then it's more likely to be marketing talking-points, but if they're specific then that's more likely to be true. Also, look for how people say things, and if there are patterns in the phrasing, or if they seem natural. Even unconscious positive bias (be it to the brand, product, or just an agreeable personality) will be influenced by marketing, so a manufacturer can shape the way you think about something with their PR statements and framing, so that when you get the real product you 'see' it in those terms, regardless of how objective you actually want to be. It's a tricky thing. I think that's why people like Gerald Undone are so useful. He's level-headed, speaks in specific terms rather than marketing fluff, and mentions things that others don't. Does he have huge film-making pedigree? Probably not. But if he says that I can't film in 10-bit 4K at more than 30p then I am inclined to believe him. It's also why I unsubscribed to Chris and Jordan. After watching their savage review of the XC10, which was a flawed product to be sure, I realised something - they don't understand film-making. Sure, they mentioned the weaknesses of that camera, which I had verified with other sources and the specs, but they also ripped into aspects of the camera that weren't weaknesses at all. When I watched their review I was completely puzzled, because I was simultaneously watching videos on how people use cine cameras, which was saying the completely opposite to what they were saying and it was then that I realised that they might understand video, but not film-making. Reviewing a cine camera and criticising aspects that all cine cameras share is just silly. Unsub. Having said all that, the whole thing is fraught with peril as I have ended up on many occasions with products that were poorly reviewed and yet worked great for me for years of real use, and also with products that I did the research on and were terrible in ways that no-one mentioned at all. I think of a small part of my budget as R&D purely for writing off stuff that doesn't work out, or for buying things that seem ok but I can't be sure of. Sometimes things work out and other times they don't, but thinking about it like that makes me feel better about it. Certainty is an illusion after all.

I feel that the Panasonic Varicam LT is one of the most underrated cinema cameras of the recent era. Just the timing and market was bad for it. Varicam S35 before it wasn't too successful (too expensive, and too heavy? And late-ish to market), thus even though the Varicam LT was 98% of the Varicam S35 but at a cheaper price and a lower size (addressing the two biggest issues of the Varicam S35), there wasn't the strong success of the Varicam S35 to build upon. Plus by the time Varicam LT arrived, it was already too late, ARRI had their claws solidly into the higher end market, and the Varicam LT was still too expensive when the likes of the Sony FS7 / Canon C300mk2 did the job well enough for the low/mid budget and were massively cheaper. The Varicam LT just couldn't find a large enough niche to be a huge hit with.

Hard to verify news if you never post source.

As long as you don’t expect it to be a replacement for a gimbal, it’s superb. The IBIS on my S5 is good. I like to shoot subjects pretty statically ie, rarely track, pan, zoom or anything but allow my subject to provide any and all movement. On the S1H, it’s fantastic. If I use an OIS lens, it’s not far off a tripod and unless you cock it up, you just don’t notice any movement. In fact you don’t even without an OIS lens. I was previously an XT3 and freestanding monopod user. I am now handheld (other than long static stuff that needs a tripod obviously) and I am so much faster and have so much more flexibility to just shoot and not faff trying to get the height and the angle and the level or even to get the thing standing up by itself on an uneven surface. Gamechanger is an overused term. For me, in this instance, it isn’t. It is 100% a gamechanger.

Nice. And really stable - is the IBIS really that good? I plan to use it mainly with my Super Taks and with a couple of EF zooms. Waiting for the postman!

The world is full of people telling other people what to do. Don't be one of them.

These guys pretend they don't get "paid" by Sony. But they get all the gear they want from them, newly released gear to review, lenses to test/sample, in exchange for positive reviews. They might not be told to write a positive review, but good luck getting more gear if you trash them. Sony knows who to send gear to, because they know these youtubers are desperate to continue to receive gear to review. Sony gear videos get higher views on youtube so its the brand they want to continue to pimp. So yes they might not be "paid" by sony, but by getting all this gear to test and review from sony for free, it saves the reviewers thousands of dollars. Youtubers are the new age used car salesman.