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Got back from my trip and the GX85 had arrived! (In fact, it was delivered about 45 minutes after I left, but all good). To greet it, all the trendy MFT gear had a welcome party, including: GH5 GF3 OG BMPCC BMMCC 7.5mm F2 12-35mm F2 12.5mm F1.9 14mm F2.5 14-42mm kit zoom (not really trendy, but came as the BMPCCs +1) 15mm F8 (also not really trendy, but came as the BMPCCs +1) 17.5mm F0.95 42.5mm F0.95 Helios 58mm F2 on M42 0.71x Speedbooster An honourable mention that also couldn't attend is the 28mm F2.8 m42 lens I've just ordered as it's still in the UK, but I'm hoping that combined with the M42 SB it will make a great compliment to the Helios. The FD70-210mm F4 got drunk early, fell over and rolled away - lucky it's tough as nails! All audio equipment declined, being too finicky and claiming it didn't want to be seen with any "vintage" equipment. It mumbled something disdainful about poor quality but all I heard was "8-track". So many great combinations here, but the most notable ones are: Standard travel kit: GH5 + 7.5mm + 17.5mm + 42.5mm (FF - 15mm/35mm/85mm) Combined with the 1080p 10-bit 24fps and 60fps modes and the 2x digital zoom function, this setup can work pretty quickly and in almost any environment (two days ago I was shooting wide open in a cave in torchlight) Low-fi pocket setup: GF3 + 14mm (FF - 28mm) The only video mode is "auto everything" and so it features very short shutters (which stabilises wonderfully in post), softer image quality (which looks very cinematic!), nicer colours that it has any right to have, and with AFS it's easy to use and was, at one time, the fastest (mirrorless?) AF available. It's also shooting with a single prime, so comes with all the artistic integrity that that brings. Most anticipated setup: GX85 + 12.5mm + 28mm/SB + 58mm/SB (FF - 28mm/43mm/90mm) Small and not attention-seeking, but a stabilised set of fast vintage primes with nice 4K which can be cropped into in post if required. It's a very appealing thought to be able to look through the viewfinder and be recording gorgeous, dare I say "cinematic" images, but just look like a happy-snapping touristy dorky-dad. I should buy a sling bag to keep the lenses in and to sell the whole tourist thing. Minimalist "nice" setup: GX85 + 7.5mm + 12-35mm (FF - 17mm/26-77mm) Small and not attention-seeking, the 12-35 will be very fast to work with and can get almost every shot, and the 7.5mm can get those grand wides when required. Setup will also be very small, with just GX85 + 12-35mm + wrist-strap, and only 7.5mm lens and a couple of spare batteries in the pockets. Very streamlined! Potentially I could put my Tiffen BPM 1/8 on the end as well and get a bit of flaring in there too! Thinking of camera and lens combos makes me much more excited that it really should 🙂

We keep waiting for a Mini 3

Hey, so I received my Blackmagic Micro with the Rawlite Oplf. Dang, that beauty puts out a beautiful image! But quirky it is. So here are my questions. How do I get battery status and running time for the SD card? Both won´t show on my blackmagic video assist. By the way, when the battery is empty, the small tally blinks. So how to I get this beauty to show battery and SD card status on the monitor? This camera is easy to grade. But I think the Rawlite Oplf seems an obligation. I graded IR poluted material from the mini 4.6K. Prores 4444 material which was worse to grade than an A7s2 SLOG2 shot at night. I am not kidding! With the OPLF I shot without ND. But colors looked so overwhelmingly beautyful that I assume the OPLF with IR cut was working its wonders, even without testing it with NDs. My S1 seems hard to grade compared to the BMMCC. Though S1 is very impressive in HLG when filmed in lowlight and with lit scenes I must say.

Same for me, G6 with sharpness on -2 had my favorite HD image. GH5 has pixel perfect HD. G7 has even better HD than G6. I own both of the G7 cameras and have filmed a lot with the GH5, so coming from my own experience. I love my GX85. With lit scenes I love Natural a picture profile, also when grading will be considered. For outside and out of the box for every day use I prefer Vivid. I dial saturation and contrast to +3, sharpness and noise reduction all the way down to -5. GX85 with G6 or G7 HD quality with 100mbit would be fantastic enough for all my private filming.

I cant agree more, It got so restrictive now especially with flying over people that < 250g is almost the only way to go.

Yes, the promise of greener grass tempts us all from time to time! What were you filming and what lenses were you using? 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 think it depends on the quality of the in-camera processing. I've compared my GH5 in 5K vs 4K vs 1080p modes across a range of lenses and apertures and found that: In most tests the resolution of the lens (eg, when at wider apertures) or my (unreliable) ability to nail focus was the limiting factor I couldn't tell any difference in resolution between the 5K and 4K when put onto a 4K timeline (it's an unfair test but no-one watches 5K files so it's a real-world advantage) The differences between the 5/4K and the 1080p were only visible by pixel-peeping a single frame where there was no motion, but when viewed full-screen at a sensible viewing distance no differences were apparent, even on the clips where the pixel-peeping revealed differences Addition of almost imperceptible amount of sharpening in post easily overwhelmed any differences in resolution between the modes I'll likely be using the GX85 in the 4K mode to get the higher bitrate so it's a moot point for here, but an interesting technical side-note nonetheless. What are you shooting with it and what lenses are you using? I'm keen to hear how people are using these little cameras. I've been having an ongoing conversation with @mercer about the DSLR revolution and the promise vs reality of what technology has done for film-making. The view that I've come to is that: 35mm film cameras and film stock used to be hugely expensive and impractical, only studios could afford to make films, and the size/weight/loudness of the camera meant that films were managed like production-lines with specialised technicians in every role, and traditional "coverage" became the standard Super-16 film stock became good enough for cinema and cameras light enough to enable filming handheld in available light, which opened up film-making to those outside the studio system, and this spawned the French New Wave and the radical innovation that came with it The DSLR revolution happened, effectively providing the camera and unlimited film stock for free (compared to celluloid). People predicted that this would revolutionise cinema yet again, like the French New Wave had done. This didn't happen. At this point the camera / media had become a minor component of a feature film and it made no appreciable difference to the extraordinary logistics required to produce a quality piece of cinema - writing, production design, locations, art department, hair/makeup, cast, crew, grip, time in post, negotiating the maze of distribution, and challenge of monetising, etc. It did, however, create a revolution in video. Instead of the "Digital New Wave of Artistic Cinema" we got the "Digital Video Explosion", including Wedding Videography, Engagement Videography, Stealth Marriage Proposal Videography (bring your camo and long lenses!), Vlogs, Social Media "stories", memes, viral videos, "Influencer" as a profession, the sharing of a thousand trillion instances of someone saying "this video is sponsored by", and the sharing of one trillion instances of someone saying "burnout". I'm not really sure what the role of something like Dogme 21 would be. Curious to hear your thoughts though! Have you tried shooting slightly wider and stabilising in post? It dissociates the motion blur from the movement in the frame but for shots without much movement it can be quite effective. I've been shooting with my GF3 and 14mm lens. It has a rather soft 17Mbps 1080p image and is auto-everything so in bright light has short exposures and this no motion blur. However, when I stabilise the footage the combination of the wide lens and the low-resolution codec mean that it's indistinguishable from a properly shot clip as any motion blur would have been so small in the frame that it would have been obscured by the resolution anyway. To this end, the lower quality frees me to shoot more rough-and-ready and to process more heavily in post and "get away with it", so my inner camera nerd can just put IQ to one side and the creative parts of my can proceed unaffected. I'm planning on using mine with many of my vintage lenses, so I'm really looking forward to that. I have a strange fascination with vintage primes that I can't quite define, and TBH I don't actually understand. For example, I have a Voigtlander 42.5mm f0.95 lens, which actually has significant vintage-like qualities in vignetting edge softness and softening at wider apertures, BUT I still gravitate to the Helios / SB combination whenever I pass my lens collection. The Helios is inferior in basically every way to the Voigtlander, but there's something there that I can't explain. The entire principle of Go Shoot is that I can pick up the camera and whatever lens(es) I am curious about and go shoot some footage and then edit it up into a little project. I frequently use these opportunities for lens testing or other "research" purposes. I expect that will continue - and maybe even expand! I keep sharing screengrabs with some forum members from my GF3, which was released around the time of the GH2, and the feedback has been universally "that camera is so small/cheap that it almost doesn't deserve to have an image that nice come from it"! There is something enticing about getting great images from a cheap setup.