Leaderboard

the pocket 4k is probably the best video camera you can buy for the money. however, it is annoying. the pocket 6k is more expensive, with image quality that is about 3% better at most imo, but every annoying bit about the 4k is extra annoying (especially battery life) on the 6k. the 6k pro is more expensive than the 6k, but fixes many faults of the regular 6k with its quality of life upgrades. So imo its not even worth considering the regular 6k. Even though i have really liked using it due to its NDs and bright screen, you are kind of stuck with an annoying mount: canon photo lenses arent particularly pleasant to work with, and cine lens wise you're most likely gonna have to rent, because your selection is pretty small, and Sigmas or Zeiss CPs aren't particularly affordable. If you're looking for a B cam for a more serious cine camera, you could just convert the mount to PL permanently. Lens wise the 4k just rocks, Olympus photo lenses are good for manual focusing, and the MFT cine meikes are insanely good for the price. Since everyone is so convinced that MFT is dying out, this means that they are insanely cheap on the second hand market. I myself hate speedboosters, but you can find some qualitative PL and EF adapters for a bargain occasionally online as well. This means that your selection of viable lenses is basically endless. I can basically live with most of the grievances with this camera, because the footage you can get out if it is so good, and it costs nothing compared to anything else.

CAF doesn't work with the MC21 and EF lenses for the S5. I have heard that somehow it works for the S5II, probably because they mostly ditched DFD. Actually yes it is, with useable CAF I would have had a far higher keeper rate which is why I am now back on the Canon train. I have heard it all, who needs AF, real shooters use MF, Hollywood cinema cameras all use MF etc....but none of that matters to me when I am shooting an event and flying a camera on a gimbal that has no AF or shooting handheld at an event or for a project. If I had a support team and a dedicated focus puller and all of the Hollywood bells and whistles I wouldn't care about AF either; in fact I still use MF quite often even with Canon bodies for many situations such as talking heads, rack focusing, shooting through obstructions such as grass or fences where the AF will pick the wrong subject, when it is too dark, etc; I have no problems manually focusing when the situation calls for it; but having to manually focus for every shot will absolutely yield more throw aways than with a camera with useable CAF unless you have a dedicated focus puller, or something else contributing to your success (wider lens, simpler scenes, more time to prepare, etc.) It is easy to cherry pick specific instances where MF looks fine, and when you have the time to properly block a scene and dial in the focus or repeat a scene then that's all good and well, especially if you are shooting as a hobbyist where no one cares about the footage you didn't get; in fact I have plenty of tack sharp footage in many projects that were shot with MF, but try MF shooting even one of my events and you will encounter a much different story. My typical event has a shotlist that is multiple pages (vendors, VIPs, activities, talking heads, etc.), I am shooting photos and video, going from indoors to outdoors and back, working with the audience or attendees who will only stand still for a few seconds for a picture, and maybe a few seconds more for a quick video clip, and all the while everyone and nearly everything is in motion, and that is all handheld, I haven't even started talking about shooting on a gimbal yet; and yes I did it for years with the GH5 and S5; but at the end of the day it was completely exhausting and limiting to always have to work within the limitations of MF, to never know if a shot was sharp until reviewing it later, etc. So yes, it is my opinion that in 2023 if your keeper rate is low due to lack of useable CAF then it is absolutely the camera's fault. MF is great and even necessary for many scenarios, but when shooting as a OMB so is AF. Both have strengths and weaknesses and there is nothing wrong with having the option to use AF when that particular shot can be better served by AF allowing you to focus on other things (no pun intended).

That's what's also called the smartphone processing approach, apply tons of spatial and temporal filtering and another layer of heavy sharpening to compensate.

The 6K Pro is a vastly better pick-up-and-go camera than the 4K – decent internal battery life, EVF, tilting screen, NDs, better in the hand. So in that way, it's more fun. I gotta say though, I went the opposite way. Blackmagic pocket cams to Sony mirrorless. I'm having way more fun now lol.

I think "fun" is probably better defined as "less annoying" when it comes to these cameras. In that respect, I'd say the 6KPro with the EVF as you then have two ways to address the major annoyance of the monitor screen. The internal ND is obviously a massive boon anyway but particularly as you might be using a mixture of EF and EF-S lenses that have wildly different filter thread sizes.

Another test between the S5II and the S5, this time with the Natural Profile (640 ISO) : I'm not a fan of extreme sharpening but it's not really an issue if it can be dialed down enough, the important thing is to keep details. The S5II uses a lot of sharpening at -5 but it also uses a lot of details filtering (look at the orange background) ,and of course adding sharpness in post can't help to recover details. I think I never seen an imaqe quality so bad from a Panasonic camera of this price (V-Log has less issues but this is not the always the best profile for some situations).