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So... I was diagnosed with kidney cancer on September 5. I had my right kidney removed on October 13 and am now cancer free (and if my scans show nothing in April I'll be considered cured!). During that entire period though, I didn't do any jobs and just focused on recovering, but had decided to dip my toe back into the water and had a small job planned for a friend this week. As I was just going through my equipment in preparation of getting back into the swing of things my pup Teri knocked over my main S5 and IT BROKE. Now, it doesn't impact my job because I have two extras of the same cameras, but obviously it left me needing to get a new camera. Sooo... I bought the Lumix S5IIX instead of getting another used S5. I swore I'd never buy a camera brand new again, but the used price isn't that much less, and I was able to get a decent deal on it with a lens. With all I've been through (having my kidney removed was, without a doubt, the most painful thing I've ever experienced, just FYI) I figured I'd treat myself. This is a long way to ask a couple questions while I wait for it to arrive tomorrow: 1. how easy is it to match the original S5 straight out of camera or with a little tweaking using the standard or natural color profile? I will use log, but for certain jobs it's just easier to skip that part. 2. why is there no third party battery grip? has anyone heard why? 3. I have a couple third party batteries. Wasabi and Newmowa brands. Has anyone encouraged any problems with third party batteries? I have like six OEM batteries but I've heard the S5II and S5IIX's battery life isn't as good as the S5. 4. what are the best settings? I've seen tons of YouTubers but I'd prefer to hear it from people that do more than film themselves in their spare bedroom/garage and actually are out there getting the most out of their camera. 5. This one is most important: I just want you all to know I love you all. My ordeal has given me a greater appreciation for life, the interactions I have with other human beings, and just everything, really. Thank you @Andrew Reid and everyone else that makes this place special.

Ditto. The source as with any/all info is key, not just ‘some YouTube channel’ of which there are several million. And especially if it’s someone sat at their desk with purple backlighting, baseball cap on backwards, doesn’t have, never has had, nor never will have, said piece of kit, yet has an ‘informed’ opinion. I prefer the freelancers over the brand ambassadors also, for obvious reasons.

Some thoughts on what the Leica Q3 specs mean for Panasonic's next big mirrorless cameras https://www.eoshd.com/news/new-leica-q3-points-to-future-panasonic-s1h-mark-ii-specs-such-as-8k-and-prores/

Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just talking about the way BMD see it. They are known for how good their color science is, and now workflow, especially on their own cameras. I mean most of the best looking images shot on other cameras are still going through Resolve for final color. They made a great codec that works on even the oldest computers. BRAW 12K plays back faster than 4K ProRes even on Mac. Don’t kid yourself that 4K or 2K delivery means you only need 4K acquisition. Because right now you can shoot 12K BRAW for a SIMILAR file size as ProRes 4K. So why bother with a legacy codec. If you are BMD why would you bother supporting a legacy codec anymore. It’s not just KINDA supported. The only KINDA supported is FCP. In everything else BRAW works, especially the big boys like AVID. And until recently the ONLY way to shoot ProRes RAW internally is on a Nikon. I’m not sure that problem has been solved yet either. You’re currently FORCED to use an external recorder to record PRR. And from what I understand, PRR won’t easily support the higher resolutions like 12K because the file size is then massive. It can’t scale up. And before you say I don’t need 12K, again, with BRAW it can be a similar file size to 4K ProRes BUT you get the super sampling advantages. I’m not saying that’s what everyone actually wants, but think about it from BM’s perspective. They made an awesome raw(ish) codec that plays back on any computer often faster than 4K ProRes, in most editorial and finishing systems that can handle and scale to higher resolutions with no real file size cost. It could be implemented by other manufacturers if they wished, but they’d be happy just using it for their own eco system anyway. I think the main reason that people aren’t using BRAW more on other cameras is that they don’t like the recorders that Blackmagic make, not because they don’t want BRAW.

Still not sure why you are choosing between FX9 vs C300 II? Full frame: FX9 vs C500 II vs RED V-Raptor or S35: FX6 vs C300 III (C70) vs RED Komodo X RED and Canon have internal RAW. Sony not. I bet Canon will update beginning of next year the C300 and/or the C500 to move to RF mount as the C70. They just released the cinema primes in RF and now the new RF 24-105 2.8 power zoom so the road is clear. RED already using RF mount. It may or may not a concern for you. Sony is E mount so is all modern and good there. I'm sure you would be happy with any of the camera above. But first you should ask yourself which look you like: super sharp high DR or more soft dreamy? Also do you heavily color grade including big white balance changes etc. or your are looking more to a natural style. A FF 8k/6k RAW camera with a photo lens will produce a sharper and provably a bit more HDR look than a S35 4k with a cinema lens....

On modern HW, Macs >=M1 and Intel >= Gen12 CPUs, h265 4:2:2 10bit is not an issue anymore. I can edit real-time 8k h265 10bit on Intel Gen13 CPU. I don't see a huge difference in speed h265 4k and 8k ALL-I vs IPB. On modern HW no need for proxy especially in 4k timelines. I edit mostly 8k RAW on a high end gaming notebook no proxy needed. For Resolve keys are: - studio version - Intel >= gen12 - GPU with 8 GB RAM

And guess what... you'll be surprised how many productions still shoot in 1080! I think I work on 4K productions more often than "less than 4K" productions (so including 2K for instance here as well). But I'm honestly not sure! 4K might be losing out. (but if 4K isn't in the majority yet, I get the feeling it will be soon. Can just depend on a bit of random chance, what type of productions I've been working on lately) This just gives you an idea of how slowly things can change, it's certainly not 4K+ only and always being used everywhere. And why ProRes is still the most popular choice, and won't be going away any time soon. Things change slower than you think.

@newfoundmass I hope the time until April flies by for you. Bon courage mon ami. Otherwise ‘answers’… 1. Never tried but should not be too difficult? 2. Very weird. The original fits I believe but not quite flush? 3. Zero issues. 4. Impossible to say really… My go to’s are: 6k 25p or 4k 50p for short clips and 4k 25p for longer stuff. My M2 chip MacBook is less keen on the 6k, but to my eye, it does look better. Log or Flat profile. I’ve never shot externally and have the vanilla 5ii so long GOP for me. 5. Well said. Communities will always thrive if enough people actively participate.

The other thing to mention, beyond what @IronFilm said, is that the thing that matters most for editing is if the codec is ALL-I or IPB. To drastically oversimplify, ALL-I codecs store each frame individually, but IPB codecs define most frames as incremental changes to the previous frame, so if you want to know what a frame looks like in an ALL-I codec you just decode that frame, but in an IPB one you have to decode previous frames and then apply the changes to them. In some cases, the software might have to decode dozens or hundreds of previous frames just to render one frame, so the simple task of cutting to frame X in the next clip is a challenge, and playing footage backwards becomes a nightmare. Prores is always ALL-I, but h264 and h265 codecs CAN be ALL-I too, but it's not very common. This is probably the cause of almost all of the performance differences between them.

It's more that I'm disappointed that Sony didn't shoot the video with the A9III exclusively, as they did with the Sony A1 promos. Based on other footage I've seen from the camera, I think the A9III is fully capable. There is even an unsubstantiated but plausible rumor from a Chinese website that the exact same A9III sensor will feature in the FX9II with 6K recording: https://m-weibo-cn.translate.goog/u/2424567755?jumpfrom=weibocom%2Fu%2F2424567755%3Fjumpfrom%3Dweibocom&_x_tr_hist=true&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp#&gid=1&pid=1

I'm sorry to hear that and glad you've recovered and doing well. These things definitely give clarity on what is important in life! Sounds like you definitely deserve a new camera - the S5iiX looks like a killer offering. I've been playing "if I won lotto, what would I buy" recently and the S5iiX is high on that list. Enjoy!! My only piece of advice is to just shoot a bunch of test shots and play with it to really understand how far you can push it etc. Especially shooting highly saturated, high DR scenes, and doing a series of under / over exposures, then trying to pull them all back to a normal exposure again. If you can get everything setup to where you can pull footage down / up to a normal exposure and have it look correct then you're in a good place with normal WB / exposure / saturation / etc adjustments.

No worries! A couple of suggestions beyond learning more about colour management (so that you've got it clear in your head).... Learn to colour manage using Nodes, rather than using the Resolve settings. The reason I suggest this is that there are all sorts of cool little tricks you can do in Resolve by transforming to a different colour space, doing something, and then transforming back. This means that you'll be doing some colour management in the node graph. However, if you're doing that and also using Resolves colour management menus then your colour management configuration is split between nodes and menus etc and so it can become confusing because you can't see the whole pipeline in one place. This might be a good start for getting your head around colour management... This is Cullen Kelly, possibly the most experienced colourist on YT, and this talk is a complete introduction (ie, it's not just a fragment) to the topic: The other thing is to rate the camera like it's an acquisition device, not from the footage. What I mean by this is that each camera you're looking at has greater image quality than you will be able to capture, because they're all high-end cameras, so the limitation will be the footage you are able to capture with it. This comes down to workflow. You need to be able to understand how the camera works and how to get the optimal results from it, how to set the camera up optimally, you'll need to get it prepped, get it to the location, carry it, identify good locations while carrying it, set it up including mounting lenses and filters, turning everything on etc, prep the shot by composing / exposing / focusing, and only then hitting record. This all sounds obvious, but (to make my point a bit more obvious), if the camera was 100kg/lb then you wouldn't be mobile enough to get it to the best compositions, if you are tired you wouldn't even see the best compositions, if there's a great composition that is time-sensitive (like, something is moving - animals in a field - people walking etc) but it takes a minute to setup the shot then the moment will be gone, etc. You can only grade the footage you actually record...

I just got my G9II today. So far, the AF is very good, I only tested the camera with two lenses, but the issues I had on the GH6 (pulsing, and out of focus bug) seem solved. The camera shows 1.0 firwmare, so maybe Panasonic has improved the focus since the beta firmware.

Yeah, that's sort-of the same as not using colour management, as (unless you use the HDR palette to grade with) you're not getting any of the advantages of colour management. Your workflow is basically the same as applying a LUT and then trying to grade in 709, which is essentially ignoring 95% of the power of the tools at your disposal. Without teaching you how to do colour management, as there are much better sources for that than me typing, what you want your pipeline to look like is this: A transformation from the cameras colour space / gamma into a working colour space / gamma Do all your adjustments in the working colour space / gamma Transform from the working colour space / gamma into a display colour space / gamma (e.g. 709) What you have told Resolve to do is to transform the cameras colour space / gamma into rec709, and any adjustments you're making to that using any of the tools will happen in rec709. Some of the tools are designed for rec709 but some are designed for log, and most of them won't really work that well in 709. Only the "old timers" who learned to grade in 709 and won't change still do it this way, everyone else has switched to grading in a log space - some still grade in Arri LogC because that's how they learned, but everyone else grades in ACES or Davinci Intermediate, as these spaces were designed for this. I transform everything into Davinci Intermediate / Davinci Wide Gamma and grade in that as my timeline / working space (these mean the same thing). I can pull in Rec709 footage, LOG footage, RAW footage, etc, and grade them all on the same timeline right next to each other - for example iPhone, GX85 (709), GH5, BMPCC, etc. I can raise and lower exposure, change WB, and do all the cool stuff to all the different clips and they all respond the same and just do what you want. If you've ever graded RAW footage and experienced how you can just push and pull the footage however you want and it just does it, then it's like that, but with all footage from all cameras. Before I adopted this method, colour grading just felt like fighting with the footage, now everything grades like butter.

Well my opinion is that RED rushed their products to the Market. If you look at the image from an Alexa Classic, which came out around 2011 same time as the Scarlet, it's image aside from resolution is pretty much identical to the more recent Alexa LF. If you compare the RED Scarlet to the most recent RED you can't say the same thing. Red has continually put completely different sensors in next gen cameras since the start. The image pipeline from RED has also changed. The older RED cameras are known for being pretty dang accurate in Daylight but not so much tungsten. It improved with the 6K epic dragon sensor. I really think they have nailed it with the Komodo. I compared all three cameras Epic Dragon, Komodo and the Alexa Classic. The Komodo was pretty much identical, the Drgaon looked quite a bit different. I mean that was part of the appeal of REDRAW, you can get any look you want. It was meant to be something you had to fiddle with in post. The ARRI look has been known to be life like, what you see is what you get. Can't say the same for RED, at least in the past. Cameras in general are much more color accurate now though. I was really shocked how easily the Sigma FP matched to the Alexa. The gap is closing in on ARRI. That said older RED cameras definitely have an appeal. The name still stands high in film circles and there are a lot of advantages to a camera designed for cinema use. It pisses me off incredibly that RED has their RAW patent, but you can't get around that 16 bit REDraw is a joy to work with.

Decided to get a proper RAW cine camera. It was between RED and Blackmagic. The RED seems to have more mojo, especially the older EPIC and Scarlet. I am also trying a RAVEN out. The older REDs are not expensive now. Paid £1790 for an EPIC-X, with 5K 120fps RAW. But when building it out, that's when the costs start rising. But for under $3500 you can definitely get a good kit. It's about the dynamic range and RED raw for me. The colour science is also very nice.