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Funnily enough, I actually used the stepper app in anger last year to go through all the profiles in an FZ2500 stepping through -5 to to +2 in contrast with saturation going from -5 to +3, so there were 72 permutations in all per profile. I didn't bother with stepping through the sharpness and NR parameters as it wasn't relevant at the time as I was just looking at colour and contrast. The idea was to see if there is any unconventional wisdom to be had such as using untapped settings such as Portrait with -4 contrast and +2 saturation etc as the end goal was to make a profile that could be used as an out of camera look that would play well on its own or to create one that played well with a particular emulation LUT. I've always had this nagging thing about giving away too much colour and contrast in the capture because thats what everybody does to get a flat image and then has to add it back post capture with all the artefacts that can bring. What I found interesting is that with everything except the two Cine profiles, there were some terrible artefacts happening (particularly in the sky) in some interactions between lower contrast and lower saturation and in fact the only way they cleared was when the saturation was actually boosted to +1 or +2. That made me think that my suspicion about giving up the goods saturation wise potentially being a folly was quite accurate. The two Cinelike profiles don't seem to share these issues but, of the two though, going by trying to retain saturation in the capture, I actually favoured what I saw from the usually less fashionable Cinelike V profile. The net result was that with the stepper app, I ended up with a single video file where it was easy to see all this laid out and whilst the Cinelike V being preferable to my eye than the Cinelike D was a bit of an eyebrow raise, the process quickly let me eliminate the possibility of there being any particularly revolutionary permutations with the other profiles. It saved an absolute shit load of time and as time is money then I used the saving to buy the V-LOG upgrade for the camera 😉

I have a vague memory of someone shooting with a compact camera and Voigtlander MFT primes - was this you? I'm keen to hear more about which lenses you were using and how you were using them? I've done a few doc shoots with the Voigts, but the project listed above it was on the Only 12-40 f2.8, using a variable ND filter. I also used (still use) a vintage Nikkor f1.4 50mm for other footage and interviews.

Anyone have experience with the 2K 60p on the C300 MKII? Wondering how it compares to the 4K 60p on the 1DX MKII? And is there a clear winner between the two?

Yes, we were indeed. I shamelessly lifted our conversation as the basis for that post 🙂 Its OK. Its a bit noisy, of course, so I definitely need to experiment with the exposure to get the most out of it, especially in piercingly bright sunlight like this, but even in this rough test (grabs from 1080/24p recording) it was easy to get it in to ballpark of the sort of style that we were discussing. Yes, it does work on the LX10/LX15 but I haven't done the stepper test. As far as I know, its the same sensor so should be the same but the FZ has a few more controls like master pedestal that could influence it. These are from my hacked LX15 using Cinelike D and an old Sony camcorder Teleconverter attached with a magnetic filter adapter. The top row shows the wide end of the lens, the middle row shows the long end of the lens and the bottom row shows the long end of the lens with the TC attached. For anyone looking for a pocketable travel camera (at a cheaper cost and with a faster lens than the RX100) then the LX10/15 is a good option anyway but is far more versatile with the hack and the TC You are talking to a man who bought the Philips CD-I at launch and declared it to be the future of home entertainment, so lets not be too hasty on the logic front. Yep, the purpose was to come up with something akin to the WYSIWYG nature of reversal film and have the same rigid guideline of it having a fixed ISO (100 in this case) with a simulated push ability of a couple of stops so you can expose at ISO200 or ISO400 if needed. So if you can't make the exposure at ISO400 then you need to light it, accept it as is or stop shooting ! The FZ is suited to this restriction for daylight use, as are similarly equipped cameras, because the internal ND makes the low ISO restriction easier to deal with The other similar approach was to make something akin to negative film with the same restriction ISO wise but with an implicit 'developing' stage LUT/Preset. The approach that I've kind of settled on is a hybrid by using the optional VLOG-L profile and single shot preset of three corrections and a LUT and taking the dogmatic approach of applying it equally and rigidly to every shot, even if an individual shot could be improved by a bit more tweaking. I'm looking to re-instigate the discipline of shooting on Kodachrome back on myself albeit in a suspiciously sado masochistic manner ! I can't think of another camera that does everything it does in one unit but of course I can think of numerous ones that rinse it in terms of image quality. So its always a question of whether the balance of all round functionality and ease of use outweighs the lack of comparative flat out image quality. Obviously that is a question of personal preference and/or the application you're using it for. With regard to the lens by the way, the stabilisation at the long end is borderline witchcraft but the autofocus is not all that. Or even half all that. It gets an handshake back from the camera for every command so it should let you know with a pop-up if something is amiss. To double check, though, set your camera to one of the colour profiles and then use the stepper to go through the Black&White profile as the change from one to the other will be much more noticeable 😉 The simple solution is to knock it down to 1 second intervals so she only has to sit motionless for 4 hours ! What I would do for the first pass is not alter the sharpness and noise reduction so just leave their range to be 0 and 0 and then just use the colour and contrast permutations. Once you are happy with a specific colour and contrast permutation then do another pass with those set as the range (so if colour was 2 then just set the range to be 2 and 2 etc) and then do permutations of the sharpness and NR. Again you can also reduce the permutations of the second pass considerably by clamping the upper limit of sharpness and NR to way below 5 as there is a lot of nastiness at those levels. Having said that, you never know whether some bizarre combination of +4 sharpness and +5 NR might not open up a secret portal into an incredible look !

I remember that test. I believe we were discussing a Dogme95 approach to using these P&S compacts for a more out of box film simulation effect. I've been on the lookout for another FZ2500 ever since, but I can't seem to find one for the right price. How's the vLog on the camera? And I can't remember if we discussed this... Your CineLike hack works with the LX10, right? Did you try your stepper test with that camera, and if so, did you see similar results regarding CineLikeV?

I just learned about this and it's nothing short of brilliant. Did anyone ever post their results?

If we could go back to the "user-friendly" conversation for a moment... One of the reasons I went with the S1 instead of the BMPCC 6K (first version, not the Pro, which wasn't out at the time I got my S1), is because the S1 did look a lot more user friendly to me. Admittedly, the menu system on the BMPCC 6K seems like it is simplified / streamlined for video shooters. I wish the S1-series of cameras had a way to make a more dedicated video menu that was more like the one on the BMPCC 6K And most definitely menu diving on the S1 can be a pain. But the S1 sure has a lot of customizable function buttons. Off the top of my head, I have monitoring LUT, histogram, waveform, zebras, focus peaking, audio levels, and IBIS tied to custom function buttons, while there are already preset buttons for ISO, Exposure compensation and white balance. Then there is the quick menu where I have setup for things like Picture profile, frame rates and resolutions, and the file format because certain frame rate / resolution combos are only available in certain file formats / codecs. (I mean, why do I have to change the container format from MOV to MP4 if I want to shoot in 4K 8-bit instead of 4K 10-bit???) So, personally, I find the S1 to be a really user-friendly camera. I almost never have to do any sort of menu diving (either for video or photography, since you can have separate customizations for both video and photos). Am I missing something here? Most of my shoots are definitely "low-brow" stuff so maybe I just don't know what I am missing???

I was an EVA1 owner for 2 years. The problem with the camera was that it felt unfinished. It wasn't the most reliable and took irritatingly long to change frame rates. It would crash often. The EF mount also made the small and compact body a bit heavy, because of the EF lenses. For handheld use, it would get quite straining after 5-10 minutes. The 120fps + modes were disappointing. Just too soft. The spec was too late and should have been a bit more blockbuster, but the ageing FS7 was still spec'd better in a few departments. An EVA2 would have a huge task now in beating the FX6. It has a lovely image though and is certainly better than the FS7 for that. I enjoyed using it and made some work with it that I'm very proud of. Overall, it was a solid effort but they should have gave it another year of development, under cut the FS7 and knocked it out the park!