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I knew it. I went to Perth WA for an entire week once and it was just too quiet. You could pull up for instance and park right outside a restaurant on a Friday evening without a problem. There was a big movie being filmed around the same time elsewhere and they needed a lot of extras, so it makes sense now why the artificial city of Perth was so quiet. My brother lives there now. Says he does but now I realise that is a lie. My own family lie to me. What is this world coming to? Must dash, I have Aslan and Mr Tumnus coming round for breakfast shortly. Conspiracy theorists 🤣

My OCD prefers round numbers based on 10 so 20/40/80/160mm would be my preference so zoom lenses; 20-40, 40-80 and 80-160. Then f stops as: 1,2,4,8,16 so being realistic, f2 for my 20-40, f2 for my 40-80 and f4 for my 80-160. Plus all filter sizes the same while I’m at it. Under 500g, around 750g and no more than 1000 for the big boy. This is my open letter to Sigma 😉

Hey all - Back in my 20s I was very much into video. I was living in Japan and traveling around Asia and would make videos/music videos with all my travel footage. I had a Sony handycam with a Carl Zeiss lens that I bought for... prob $600. I feel like I definitely got the most I could out of that camera at the time. After my travels, I came home and started a career, and 15ish years passed just like that. I have really neglected the creative side of my life, and now I want to get back to it. I really loved creating videos. I do have 3 youtube channels at the moment, nothing crazy in terms of size, around 500-600 subscribers on each account. I just use an iPhone and a HD logitech cam because it's mainly talking head stuff. But I really want to expand and get back into making fun videos. Additionally, I do "walking tours" where I visit cities/parks/hikes and do 1-2 hrs of straight shooting with me walking around the location, sometimes with commentary (DJI mic). I currently do this on an iPhone 13 with a gimbal. I really want to upgrade at this point. So after researching quite a bit, I've narrowed it down to either the fx3 or the fx30. I have a lucrative career (planning to retire in my early 40s lucrative), so the budget is flexible. This makes me want to just go for the fx3, because I have the money, but I know very little about videography at this point. No experience using RAW or log.. or even know what to do with the footage once I have it. I have done color correcting on my previous videos but very amateur. So basically I'd be learning from the ground up. So the fact that I have very little experience makes me lean more toward the fx30. But a lot of my walking videos are at sunset, so having spectacular low-light performance is important. I've watched a ton of youtube videos on fx30 vs. fx3.. and a lot of the fx30 footage looks amazing.. but something in me just wants to go big and get the fx3.. I think having the money is part of it but I also really want the best end product possible in that budget range (not looking to upgrade above the fx3). So.. I'm at a bit of inflection point on what to do. Here's an example of what I was doing around 2007ish.

Thanks! This was a Kodak 500T lut a DP friend of mine made using Dehancer.

Oh great! I missed that. Definitely a deal there. I’ve seen several projections of $1995 so this is a welcome surprise

1,398 USD

Looks like an absolute beast. He doesn't list a price here, but he says it's "significantly less money" than the FX30. I may need to pick one up as a C cam.

For hobby/amateur/travel use I’d forget both those pro options and just go with the new ZV-E1: you get the same great A7S3/FX3/FX6 full frame sensor and image quality plus easy framing and AF thanks to AI chip.. for half the price of an FX3. With the money saved you can invest in quality lenses. If you like Carl Zeiss, I recommend the Batis range.

It's WAY more than what I need! I would have probably purchased a G9 hadn't it been for the ridiculously low price, new, with 3 year warranty for a flagship product. I have absolutely no need for it other than creativity. I'm going to watch the Lumix live stream tomorrow as I think they'll say something. Still, the bigger feature for me is the high frame rates on an external SSD.

You're working on the new Narnia films? https://www.indiewire.com/news/breaking-news/greta-gerwig-chronicles-of-narnia-netflix-1234880911/ I was a huge fan of the books as a kid, read all of them multiple times over. But I'm afraid these new Netflix films will be completely ruining them. Oh well. But no NDs for the S5mk2? How are you dealing with that? Quick clip on magnetic filters?

As "full frame" is what is being discussed, I'm naturally referring to what's commonly normal standard focal lengths for photographer. Of course for sets of cinema lenses then what is normal is completely different. 750gm?? Are you crazy??? My OCD will accept 700gm or 800gm as being acceptable, but 750gm is a totally unacceptable weight for a camera.

Hello end times...

Also, paranoia seems to be setting in..... https://petapixel.com/2023/07/11/real-photo-disqualified-from-photography-contest-for-being-ai/ The judges looked at the metadata (it was taken with an iPhone) but couldn't work out if it was real or not, so disqualified the image because they weren't sure.

This one is incredible. I'm not sure how available it is for users though - I saw this video posted by the developer who is sharing their work on the liftgammagain forums just this morning.

Not a user, but having RAW 5.7K60 and C4K120 and 4.4K anamorphic seems a lot like it's now in cinema camera territory. Things like the ability of RED cameras to have RAW at high frame rates was one of the things that I thought separated them from the usual prosumer cameras that mere mortals like I could afford. Maybe I'm just behind the times, but if you were shooting something serious like high-end music videos / high-end docs / low-budget features and had the ability for 5.7K up to 60p (for those emotional/surreal moments) and also C4K 120p for any special effects shots (like if shooting an emotional sports doco) then it makes it a serious camera for those tasks.

Wow - that looks really good! I shoot with my phone regularly so I see a reasonable amount of iPhone footage and I agree that the iPhone doesn't look that good. To my eyes it's clearly RAW. Despite the low bitrates that YT uses to compress things, if you give it something shot on RAW then the quality of the YT stream goes up significantly - things like the falling snow and fine detail gives this away. Here's an example of a very high-quality RAW capture, but this is from 2015 and only uploaded in 1080p: It has the same look to me. Definitely agree with this. I would go further and suggest that the lesser phones (any phone shooting a compressed codec) are modern Super 8 emulations. I say this because: they get used for home videos like 8mm used to be and are the perfect tool for shooting for fun and not thinking about the quality of the work by the time you process the footage so the compression isn't visible they're not as sharp as RAW 4K they're likely using SS to expose there's enough hand-held motion shown in the frames that it's a different look to a S16 film camera I have to resist the temptation to turn random iPhone shots in my projects into 8mm film emulation 🙂

For those who are interested in using smartphones as video cameras, check motioncam and Sebastian Merca's youtube channels. There are some great examples and also comparisons with BMPCC 4K and Panasonic S1H. And you can download source file too ! I downloaded one clip shot by Sebastian Merca at night (challenging lighting) on Samsung S22 Ultra main camera and applied some fine grain, film emulsion and blooming with Dehancer plugin. Total 15 min. of work. Here is the result (file in the link will stay for few weeks, then it will be gone): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15blxv9w_8nsOdTWgZbLKsCwTkVi9f1Bm?usp=sharing and here is the original with download link to a much bigger Prores source file https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1_TSYpYFBU For me picture quality is better than iPhone 13/14. I would say much better. Also shot few clips at 18 fps on my Samsung S10+. I am impressed ! This year some flagship Android phones from Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo are with 1 inch main camera sensor size and the other cameras are with bigger sensors too. According to some initial reports and reviews on Vivo X90 + all 4 cameras are available to motioncam application and can shoot at 60fps with just few dropped frames. Same for Xiaomi 13 Ultra and Pro although on main camera 60fps are only at 4K DCI aspect ratio. At 24 and 30 fps you can shoot at 4:3 or so called open gate. Keep in mind this is not my personal experience, just what I read in forums and what people testing those devices report on youtube. Those smartphones for me are the Super 16 digital cameras of the year not EOS M in crop mode. Downside are tiny lenses and 23mm equivalent focal length on main camera. One solution would be to crop in post 4000:1.5=2666 to get to 35mm which is much better focal length. Still decent resolution and with Davinci Resolve Super Scale to 4K picture will look very good IMHO. For smartphones where cameras are in circular block like Xiaomi 13 Ultra and Vivo X90+ there are special cases where filter can be attached (screwed), similar to the Xiaomi 13 Ultra photo case which takes 67mm filters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UVQ5jK-Ygw For all other phones look at third parties solution like smallrig. They have universal cages where in similar fashion you can use regular circular ND or VariND filters on top of the camera block. Like this one: https://www.smallrig.com/SmallRig-MagEase-Magnetic-1-4-Effect-Black-Mist-Filter-Kit-52mm-4217.html

Thanks. Shot 4k log, Dehancer did most of the heavy lifting. Lens was a Sigma 18-35 with a 1/8 promist, mostly at 35mm. That lens actually ‘covers’ 16:9 full frame from around 25mm onwards, I really like the little abberations and falloff you get around the edges. So you basically end up with a nice, very sharp 25-35 1.8 with a lot of character.

Well the lens has arrived already, but no test this week or shoot this weekend as the CY to EF adapter has been delayed until Saturday 😏 I have the Fotodiox built in VND EF-L already but this little project will have to wait until next week now… The lens looks good for an old-timer. Excellent condition, relatively small and chunky and about the same size as the Sigma 28-70 which is good as that is what it’s going to be mainly paired with: S1H + Sigma 28-70 f2.8 stills, option Lumix 70-200 f4 S5ii + CZ 40+80 f3.5 video 6k 30p MF S5ii + Sigma 18-50 (27-75) f2.8 video 4k 60p AF, option Sigma 16-28 (24-42) If all goes to plan…

Just to share a little personal story - the S5 II really restored my fun in shooting little personal video's. I shoot almost daily for work and I always swore by large cinema camera's. I'm one of those crazy people that thinks an Ursa mini is the perfect body shape. (part of this is copied from a Reddit comment I made earlier but I thought it would be interesting to share here). For the longest time I was really torn up between having a kit that is able to capture what I consider to be professional quality and something that I actually would WANT to bring with me on a walk or a day out. I carried a little Pocket 4k (GREAT camera) with me, but by the time you rig that out to shoot comfortably with a monitor/filter holder/NDs/mic, you’re still carrying something that takes up most of your bag and it just sucked the fun out of it for me. On a job, no problem, for home video’s it just wasn’t worth it for me. I was really looking for something I could just pull out of a bag pack and shoot. So then I bought a Canon R6, and honestly that camera’s video quality was such a massive step back from even the Pocket 4k that it just wasn’t worth it for me (esp. dynamic range but also the out of camera colors). Also just awful awful video assist tools on that camera. The S5 II kinda hits all the marks for me: very small, good enough dynamic range, good colors, good monitoring tools and good AF (better than the R6 in my opinion) on my EF lenses. That last thing (combined with it being newer, so longer firmware support) pushed me over the edge when compared to the S1H by the way. I don’t mind pulling manual focus at all, but if I’m shooting on a 3 inch screen, the AF is really nice to have. Never felt like I could really trust it with the R6 but the S5 II has really really good autofocus. Here's somethign small I shot with it:

I mean, ok. I said it could shoot C4K, which it can, I just chose a different aspect ratio for this particular video. It can shoot raw up to 60fps, I choose 24fps, I don't consider either a low frame rate. The face is blown out I guess at some point, I need to go back to find it, but likely user error, I overexposed. I also owned the EOS M to use the magic lantern hack, and that DID suck, bc you didn't get a realtime preview, or if you did it was insanely cropped, and the Dr sucked. This looks much better than that, we can agree to disagree, and it has optical stabilization, focus peaking, realtime preview, 4K, 60p. I'm not claiming this is somehow better than a modern mirrorless, but very few modern mirrorless shoot raw, hell most are just now getting to 10bit. This looks better than the videos I get when using the stock video app. And I'm fucking poor and can't afford a modern mirrorless, so yeah, I have this (relatively cheap) phone that all of a sudden can shoot raw, I'm going to enjoy it.

Australia doesn't exist. That's why it confused @MrSMWthat someone could be posting from that timezone.

Well there is always 3rd party fan to help extend the time a bit. But definitely won't be as good as proper body build with heat dissipation in mind. Or add umbrella on top 😆