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There were a lot of ups and downs. I launched my own pro-wrestling company in May. It has been very successful so far. I've continued my freelance video work and it has gone well. I'm pretty content where I'm at gear wise. I'll probably upgrade my B and C cams to S5IIs but overall I'm quite happy with the L-mount and feel pretty good about its future. I was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Had my right kidney removed. No more cancer. If my scans look good in April I'll be officially considered cured. Flooding ravaged my community twice. It is still recovering. So 2023 brought some real big highs and some real low lows. If it weren't for the election I'd almost be looking forward to 2024! Happy New Year to all of you!

8-bit rec709 profiles are much more flexible in post than you might think. I'm not saying they're as good as an Alexa or whatever, but they're a million miles better than people give them credit for. Here's a latitude and WB torture test of the GX85, in the standard profile (8-bit rec709) customised to have reduced contrast but normal saturation. For each of the below, the left image is the properly exposed reference image, the middle one is the graded image, and the one on the right is the image SOOC. Exposure latitude test - +3 stops: Exposure latitude test - +2 stops: Exposure latitude test - +1 stops: Exposure latitude test - -1 stops: Exposure latitude test - -2 stops: Exposure latitude test - -3 stops: Exposure latitude test - -4 stops: Exposure latitude test - warm: Exposure latitude test - cool: Exposure latitude test - magenta: Exposure latitude test - green (as far as it would go!): Notes on the testing method: GX85 shot in manual mode on cloudy day Exposure varied by changing lens aperture WB varied by changing colour temp and tint Tools used in Resolve were mostly Lift/Gamma/Gain, saturation, and some had a bit of Shadows/Mids/Highlights Notes on the results: If it's clipped then it's clipped, there's no getting around that If you've shot a whole sequence in the wrong WB then shoot a test chart replicating the error, spend some time on the correction, then apply to all the shots... a bit of work but worth it to rescue a days shooting If you've shot on auto-exposure / auto-WB and want to correct the small errors then this is easily possible - it won't have gotten it nearly as wrong as what I have shown above Most cameras shooting in rec709 will do funky stuff to colours depending on their luma value as part of the look of the profile, so when you over/under expose and then pull things back the hues and saturation levels will have shifted around in odd ways compared to a normal exposure, but if it's a real shoot then you most likely won't have many dominant hues in the image and you only have to correct the ones that are in the frame and distracting, so the above is far more work than normal shooting would be The days of needing RAW or even LOG to change exposure or WB in post are gone, and although the rec709 profiles often have lower DR than log profiles, they're much better than you think. If anyone wants me to post full-sized versions with titles so you can flick back and forth then just let me know. Happy shooting!

It is going to be subject dependant to what can be recovered or not and how that recovery looks and test charts are always going to be easy to bring back from the brink, as you only have 24 values of colour represented. As you stretch and squash things out to try and recover information, then there are gaps or data being lost, but you will not see this loss with a limited colour palate on a test chart. For example there are only 4 shades of grey, so you aren't going to notice that you've lost 100+ shades of grey due to having to grade it so heavily or due to under or over exposure. Having a grey scale and a gradient of colours on a test chart will show up this loss.

2024 is upon us and I have decided to look back before looking forward. How did everyone else's year turn out? Work 2023 has been the busiest year I have ever had, I have shot an even wider variety of events than before as well as small projects such as photoshoots, social media content for clients, etc. This year even logging into this site was a luxury I rarely had. Next year looks like it will be the same as I continue to build a repeat client base across a wider spectrum of project types. Gear Each year my goal is to buy nothing and of course it did not work out that way for me. My biggest purchase this year was to build a new editing workstation. I was having real problems editing the H.265 10bit 422 footage that the R7 and R5 produce and time is money as they say; with so many jobs my workstation became the limiting factor. I ended up building a custom workstation with a Core i9 CPU, 24 cores, 128GB of memory, NVME drives, and RTX 4080 GPU. Most importantly I made sure that the CPU I selected supported QuickSync which can hardware accelerate H.265 10bit 422 footage. This setup with Davinci Resolve finally fixed my Fusion and footage lags once and for all. I also now have access to AV1 with the new CPU which produces almost lossless footage quality. I thought it was going to be a great new codec to use; until I found out Vimeo does not support it even though they say they do (my first AV1 upload to Vimeo stuttered horribly and was unwatchable), and on YouTube the user has to specifically enable it in their profile to enable AV1 playback. I will still probably always upload to my personal YT channel using AV1 but for clients I will need to stick with H.265 or H.264. As many of you already know, my setup is now 100% Canon; R7 (Photo/Video), R5 (Photos), C70(Video) and I use them in that order from a frequency standpoint. The R7 has exceeded my expectations in every way (battery life, Image Quality, reliability, photos, video, rigging options). The R5 is a bit of a disappointment, 95% photos, sometimes a B cam for the R7, or a C cam for the R7 and C70. I probably would be better off with two R7's and the C70 but it is too late now. C70 The C70 is great when locked down on a tripod and especially for long form with XLR audio as an A cam. I am far from a pixel peeper, but for me when looking at the footage after a shoot, its always a bit of a disappointment. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it always seems flatter and duller than the R7 or R5 even though they are all set to CLOG3. I personally think it is a combination of the Canon speedbooster and the Canon EF 24-105 F4 lens that lives on it as well as the fact that I have little or no control over the lighting for most of the events that I shoot. The 24-105mm is underwhelming in all areas, but I just can't seem to find a better lens for the C70; something like the Tamron 35-150mm F2-2.8 I think would be a better lens for the C70 but that's not an option in EF mount. I think the 24-105mm combined with the speedbooster does something to the contrast and saturation that is hard to recover in post. Also, the slightest bit of direct light and the image washes out very quickly due to the speedbooster; and when I say direct light I don't mean direct sunlight, I'm talking even shooting concerts and music videos the image washes out terribly from DJ or music video lights. Needless to say, my setup is not doing the C70 any favors, but as a OMB my setup times are already long as it is. I am thinking about switching to a native RF lens for the C70 but that would be an expensive endeavor. The Canon RF 24-105mm F2.8 is $3K....insanity, it would probably greatly improve the C70's IQ but do nothing for its reach. R5 The 30min recording limit pretty much kills it for anything long form which eliminates it as ever being an A cam even if overheating weren't a concern (which it still is to me). I do shoot b roll clips in a pinch with it or go with the C70 and R7 locked down and shoot the R5 handheld but its rare that I need all 3. The EVF has so much latency that I still miss my 5D4 for photography action shots. Other than the EVF lag, it is great for photography. R7 I've said enough praises about it, but I do find myself thinking a lot about FF equivalency these days when picking up the R7 (more on that in a moment). To my eyes; the IQ out of the R7 and R5 are identical until the R5's second native ISO kicks in, but if the ISO needs to be that high I am in trouble anyway. These days I use an F7 panel light and pretty much never have to go above ISO800 with the R7 combined with the Sigma 18-35 F1.8 EF-S lens. Stability I shoot almost exclusively handheld now. Many projects I don't even bring the gimbal and the few times that I do, I hate everything about it and either don't use it or only use it for one or two shots (long form speedramps mostly). The R7's IS is great, and I no longer try to emulate fancy YT camera movements, I let the action do the moving and just slightly follow it with the camera work. For very short walks (backwards or forwards) I am stable enough combined with IS and sometimes DR warp stabilization that I can pull it off, but needing to walk really isn't as common as you would think for the projects that I shoot. vND Meike Adapter My favorite accessory of all time for the R7 and pretty much any camera I have ever owned has become the vND Meike adapter. No more fiddling with lens ND filters, it is nothing short of amazing. It does add a slight green cast to the footage but it is an even cast, no dreaded X pattern or variable cast. In post I just add 20 to the magenta slider in Davinci Resolve and its fixed. Sometimes the green is complimentary, and IMO gives it a higher end look so depending on the situation I will leave it. My only complaint with the filter is it does not go to zero stops of ND so if you are running back and forth from inside to outside for an event you have to accommodate the 2 stops when you are indoors by raising the ISO. It is also very easy to bump the little wheel and there are no numbers or steps on it to set it precisely to where it was before. FF Equivalency Over the course of this past year I have spent more time than I would like thinking about FF equivalency but not in the way most people do. I personally think the FF "look" is a myth, I have no clue when looking at a shot if it was a FF sensor or not. When I personally think about FF equivalency it is from a lighting perspective. Before arriving at a new venue for a project I always worry that there won't be enough light available and all of my F2.8 FF lenses are no longer F2.8 on the R7 and the Sigma 18-35 F1.8 usually isn't long enough for back of the room type of long form content (dance recitals, corporate events, holiday shows, etc.) so I usually use the RF 70-200mm F2.8 on the R7 for B cam work. The R7 also does not have a second native ISO so it gets noisy pretty quickly after 1600ISO. Those situations and the fact that 60FPS is line skipped (in both the R7 and the R5) sometimes makes me wonder if the R6 II would be as good of a fit for me as the R7. So far the R7 has delivered on every project and my concerns about lighting were overblown, but I feel like its the one thing that adds stress to my day when arriving at a new venue for a new project where I have no control over the lighting. 2024 Demo Reel I also created a new Demo Reel for 2024. This was shot across many years, projects, and camera eco systems. No matter how busy you are, you still need to keep those new customers coming in so I decided to start off the year with a demo reel. Below are all of the cameras that I think I used for the footage in this video. I also uploaded this video using AV1 to YT. Cameras - Canon R7, R5, C70, S5, GH5, C200, R6, GoPro 8 Drones: DJI P4, Mavic Pro, Autel EVO II

That bit pretty much sums up about any hobby. People that buy 20 guitars but can only play three chords. A dude that has a 40 year old Cessna airplane. The grandma that does scrapbooking. Model trains. Race cars. Dirt biking. Jet skis. Bowling. It's all 1st world luxury that even affords us the ability to "waste" our income. Beyond that, I make a living (somehow) doing this stuff for corporate so I guess I could be considered a pro at it in a way, but I still feel as if I'm a dilettante within it's sphere. The technology and techniques always outpaces my understanding. And the fascinating thing to me about making movies is that the people that truly excel in the business don't really chase the tech, they focus on the storytelling --and they let the technology specialists dig most of the rabbit holes. Wanna talk about "fundamentals" with all this motion picture stuff? Perhaps it's best to consider the notion of Art vs. Craft. Have any of y'all ever taken art classes during undergraduate studies? In my experience there was that there was always a person that's a marvel at drawing incredibly realistically...but sucks at making that work interesting or engaging beyond "oh, that looks real." Then there were people that could do one brush stroke on a canvas and somehow make it mesmerizing. Then the exceptional creatives do both. My issue with any kind of fundamentalist in a discipline is a narrow perspective that curbs imagination. It gets in the way to create something surprising. Like a Robert Kincaid, y'know?

Actually, for these I didn't use Colour Management (I know this will shock people!) and it was a bit of a surprise to me too, but the LLG controls just worked better. The fact they're designed for rec709 might have something to do with that, perhaps, maybe... ? 😆😆😆 I normally make my adjustments in real projects using Colour Management, and they're fine because they're not a torture test like this with huge adjustments, but maybe I'll keep this in mind and if I get difficult shots then maybe I'll change to rec709 for one node and do the adjustments in that. Cool, I'll work out the best way to post them. TBH I don't know what "more latitude" really means. For example it might be the amount you can shift something before clipping occurs, or before some level of visible undesirable aesthetic effect occurs, but this would be situation dependent and also user dependent. If you can think of a way to test this then I'd be happy to have a look. From memory, I think I set the blue image to a colour temp in the 6000s and the warm one to 3200, and neutral was in the middle somewhere. The magenta and green images were setting the in-camera adjustment to the maximum it would go in those directions. So, from that, these are very large WB errors to recover from, and (hopefully!!) much more than you'd ever encounter in real life.

It went OK… I ended up doing 21 jobs instead of the previous years 33, but the 2022 year workload was insane and a necessity after 2 terrible Covid ‘work’ years (ha, 6 jobs in 2 years). 2024 I have revised it down slightly even further to 15-20 and I already have 4 jobs locked in for 2025. Volume-wise, I have no concerns. Client-wise, as in the type, ditto. I have always been quite picky because otherwise… Kit-wise, struggled again all year long. As a solo, multi-day, hybrid destination wedding shooter, I have some very specific needs. It’s been an evolving process over many years based on the available tech each year combined with my ever-evolving approach and needs. By the close of my 2023 season, I finally cracked it regarding kit with the final conclusion that a 2, 3 or 4 body kit could work equally as well, but glass was the key. L Mount does not give me it so it has been a case of either ditch it totally, or split my photo and video needs into 2 different systems. For 2024, I decided to do just that and then we will see how that goes. My ‘perfect’ set up is with Canon, based around a pair of R3’s, IMO, the ultimate current hybrid body, but I can’t afford so… L Mount for video and Nikon/adapted Tamron for stills: Static video = S1H + battery grip + 70-200mm f4 Roaming video = S5ii + Sigma 28-70mm f2.8 Candid photo = Nikon Zf + 40mm f2 All other photo = Nikon ‘X’ + Tamron 20-40mm f2.8 plus Tamron 70-180mm f2.8 The ‘X’ being either; Z8, Z9, new Z6iii if it is available in time, or even another Zf. Other than that final piece of kit, I’m sorted and happy with all my set up, cameras, lenses, lights, audio etc and I’m well set up also with my motorhome/RV as a home away from home and mobile office. Bring it on ‘24!

This is interesting, @kye, thanks for putting 8-bit back out there. Nice to be reminded that there is more latitude than I've perhaps remembered. I've shot log almost exclusively for the past five years or so except for under-lit situations. I found 10bit vlog so easy to work with that I came not to question the extra bit of workflow vs the headache of getting anything in 8bit wrong.

I'd agree with the others that you've already found the best ILC solution. Personally I don't expect any new very compact ILCs to appear (warmed over stuff like the G100D excepted) - I think that market segment is largely catered for now by small RX100/ZV-1 size 1" sensor compacts plus larger sensor phones. I think it's not that camera manufacturers couldn't do it, more about if there would be enough customers willing to pay a high price for something like a G9 ii sensor and processing sqeezed into a sub-GX80/GX9 size body, with the inevitable limitations on recording times and battery life. Re. IBIS - I've now sold all my older cameras without it, because I much prefer doing most shooting handheld. I don't like an obvious 'handheld' look (overused sometimes in films and TV), so like Kye I rely on IBIS plus stabilisation in post if necessary. It's mostly why I live with video quality limitations in exchange for IBIS performance on the E-M1 iii and OM-1 (the OG G9 IBIS gets close, has worse AF and better video quality - swings and roundabouts...). The ZV-1 in 'active' SteadyShot mode (OIS + EIS) is quite decent but IMHO not up to E-M1 iii/OM-1 standard - but it is pocket sized after all...

Those are good points. I would argue 10bit to 8bit comparisons almost never look like the 10bit file is 4x better. When shot properly, the 8bit file often indistinguishable to the 10bit file. The real question is: “Exactly how much can you screw 8bit up and still fix it?”

2023 was pretty good for me in regards to photography and cinematography. One of my jobs ended and it was nice to have more time for my own art projects before some other work comes up. My skills with the D16 Bolex has really improved in the past year. How to expose, which settings to use, the post production process, made LUTs for it, its limitations, camera movements that work well and movements to avoid, etc. When it's not the best camera for the job and when it is. Started a feature length experimental film. (In the "city symphony" genre.) It's going very well. I've made a small kit that I can take anywhere easily without help from others. A case with the camera all assembled and a small carbon fibre tripod that fits in a backpack. This means that when I have a couple of hours I can go out and shoot some footage and not need to arrange a time with anyone else's schedule. I'm pleased that I've managed to average at least one shoot a week. I hope to finish this spring and (and for the first time ever hold a test audience screening.) The past few years I've been having my old raw footage video tapes digitized and I've been remastering my old productions. An experimental-narrative art video I did in the 1980s got a screening after all these years and that was really nice. One actor was there (the other I found out has passed away.) This was the project that back then led me in the direction of film and video (and away from some other interests I had.) My newest film after having no screenings, finally got a screening at a small festival and the response was very good. I went to the festival and the experience was useful for me to feel like what I'm doing matters to others somehow and not just something for me to pass the time. Didn't buy any new gear and concentrated on using what gear I already have. I gave an old HD camcorder away to a friend who is of low income but wanting to produce something. It was a good exercise for me in learning that I don't need so much stuff and won't miss some of it if I no longer have it. I hope he makes something interesting with it. I've been learning how to make LUTs. I'm still not fully happy with what I've made but each one version I make I get closer to what I want. (I want to be able to see in my outboard monitor precisely what I'll get in post. Almost there.) Shot some music videos for friends.

I downloaded all of them. My conclusion (as I thought): stay away from overexposure. Underexposure is scary, but noise can be dealt with. Overexposure results in lost colors and a strange halo softening that you don't have with underexposure.

Link to files. The reference image is repeated so you can just go back and forth to compare. Enjoy! https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/vj7wthlzjc9ocqtphvclt/h?rlkey=ivcvcj3hmdrow1q0zsof0wc1p&dl=0

Skin-tones are always the trickiest because we are much more sensitive to this area of the colour cube than any other. If I make a cameo then you'll get to enjoy the full range of tones - from pasty to gaunt and all the way to magenta and red. Lucky you! In terms of working with skin-tones "given 8-bit limitations" I don't think there are limitations, at least if we're working with 8-bit rec709 images. In broad terms, the danger of "breaking" the image comes from areas where the bits are too far apart and the associated artefacts become visible. The bits are broadly as far apart in 8-bit 709 as they are in 10-bit LOG as they are in 12-bit RAW. The difference that most people experience between those is likely to be the compression, considering that 8-bit 709 will mostly be 10-100Mbps, 10-bit log will mostly be 50-400Mbps, and 12-bit RAW will be uncompressed. Perhaps the worst combination is 8-bit log, which TBH, is so bad it should be against the Geneva convention on human rights. This is the worst combination because the bits in the final image are spread apart the most. This is why I shoot rec709 with normal amounts of saturation - it gives more information for colours than if you reduce the saturation in-camera and then boost it in post. It's also why the iPhone HDR implementation is so good - it is 10-bit but the levels of saturation in the files is close to 709 levels, so you have a really large amount of colour fidelity still retained in the files.

Would love to see skin tones! I need to learn how to work with them given 8-bit limitations. That indeed always tends to be the trickiest for me to work on.

Also, if anyone can think of any other tests I should do then I'm all ears. Perhaps the one that might be useful is including skintones, so maybe I'll have to make a cameo in the test images. Realistically, the ability to recover skintones is probably the most important thing, and perhaps the most fragile.

I've come to the same conclusions. IBIS and rolling shutter at the clear problems with the GX850, but any sort of tripod fixes that. I have a steadycam or kit lens for the rest, but really prefer the locked down shots right now. I've grown a little tired of the IBIS look but fully admit its practicality.

Great work, @kye! I'd be interested at looking at the full resolution images if possible. After doing the WB tests, do you think there's more latitude in slightly blue, magenta, or green version. I remember that Gerald Undone did a test some time ago and found more latitude in a warmer WB than a bluer WB.

Love this! I am coming to the same conclusion as I shoot in 8-bit rec709 more and more. And I find that having a color managed workflow helps a lot; the image is quite flexible when conformed to Davinci Wide Gamut; responds a lot like LOG does. And if my exposure and white balance aren't too off, the grading experience is great.

Just created a new thread showing that the rec709 profiles in these cameras are more flexible in post than most people think: Posting this here for easy reference, and because these small cameras likely only have 8-bit rec709, but I think this isn't nearly the barrier to getting good images than most people believe it is. It's also why I shoot in auto-exposure and auto-WB.. making small changes to every shot is a very simple operation and a much better outcome than me setting this stuff manually and then forgetting to adjust it later and getting some shots horribly wrong! For those who think that adjusting exposure and WB in post is a sign of bad film-making, every colourist I've seen allows for making small exposure and WB changes as a first step in their grade and I've heard several say that it's something they apply routinely, even on professionally shot productions. Same as NR, which is routinely applied, completely contrary to YT wisdom which suggests that visible noise means the camera is defective. I hope this test will encourage people to look beyond the forum/YT "wisdom" and be free to get the most from their equipment.

What do you really need for stills? Could you just get a Sony a6000 on eBay for next to nothing? They'll then be each the back up stills/video camera for the other one!

Holy crap. You made my day! 😂 @Emanuel I got two FS700, two LX10, two Bmmcc, an S1 and S1H, to name the twin cameras, not mentioning the single lonely units. 🙂 I can explain. I bought both of the LX10 cameras from a youtuber for an impossibly super low price 1.5 years ago, my second Bmmcc barebones in 2022 for 250, second FS700 in 2020 for 500, S1 december 2020 for a very low price back then. BUT, it all sums up to lotta money and I have a hard time to keep my kits nice and tidy and to even use em. I will HAVE to sell my S1 and one of the FS700 cams, maybe both. Lenses? Let´s not even start!

@John Matthews That would mean 20mm and F2 for M43, in S16 terms a 14mm F1.4, in 2/3" a 10mm F1. M43 is the only one fitting the bill for your goal of a 28ish F2.8 S35 equivalent and being light and pocketable, so your GX850 with the Olympus 17mm F1.8 or Panny 20mm F1.7 pancake would be the lightest kit, with slightly larger aperature compensating for the additional 4K crop. No ibis nor ois though. LX100 would deliver F4 equivalent and LX15 F5.6 in S35 terms. LX100 with its slightly cropped m43 sensor (2.2 crop compared to FF) performs like this according to slashcam: 16.82mm focal length with F2.4 giving in photo mode an equivalent of 37mm full frame with F5.28. In 4K video mode that translates into 40.36mm and F5.76 full frame equivlaent due to the additional crop, giving you 28mm with F4 equivalent in S35 terms in 4K video mode.

I dunno... I've just invested on a couple of NX500 units bought for US $200 each, my most recent camera purchase ;- )

Good idea to reflect on the year! My highlights of the year: Bought a Thunderbolt hub and radically changed my home setup I use my MBP laptop for everything, and now have the following setup. When I dock it at home I plug in a USB-C hub which connects it to power, my speaker system, the Resolve dongle, and a few peripherals. When I want to use it "normally" I plug in a Thunderbolt-to-mini-DisplayPort cable that goes to my UHD panel, and the MBP switches to using the UHD panel as the main UI. I can run Resolve in this mode, but it's not the best setup. If I want to run Resolve properly I remove the cable for the display and plug in my new Thunderbolt hub. The TB hub then connects a second 1080p panel I have on my right as the UI and connects the BM UltraStudio Monitor 3G, which is connected to the HDMI input of my UHD panel. When I run Resolve in this setup the UI is to my left, and the UHD panel will be a pure monitor feed set to the correct resolution and frame rate (up to 1080p, which is my timeline resolution). My big purchase was that I did a course on using alternative colour spaces in Resolve with Hector Berrebi It was pretty niche, but really solidified a bunch of concepts that I'd seen in passing or had some familiarity with. There's another course from him coming up in Feb to do with skintones and beauty grading and retouching that I'm really curious about. I bought zero cameras and zero lenses I did two post-pandemic trips, one to Melbourne and the other to South Korea The best investment in my film-making is putting interesting things in front of the camera, and this was definitely that. Discovered how to grade iPhone and GX85 footage to match with GH5 In preparation for the Melbourne trip I did a comparison between the iPhone, GX85 and GH5. It was mostly to rule out the iPhone as a serious camera option. I proved myself wrong and discovered the iPhone is actually incredibly good and useful in post. I worked out a power grade to convert it to Davinci Intermediate and was able to colour grade it just as easily as LOG or RAW. I also discovered that the GX85 is practically as malleable as the GH5 when it comes to small adjustments. Really nailed down my understanding of Colour Management in Resolve This is what enabled me to grade the iPhone and GX85 so well. If you're not using Colour Management then you're basically fumbling around in the dark with boxing gloves on, you've got no hope of doing anything except accidentally discovering a few tricks that seem to work. Discovered I prefer the GX85 over the GH5 The GX85 suits my shooting more than the GH5 because it's smaller, the tilt screen is so much faster/easier to use in busy public places than the flippy screen, and now that I can grade the files just as easily the image is just as good unless I hit the limits of the image (e.g. DR) Switched from MF primes to an AF zoom This was a revolution. I used to shoot with fast manual primes, but in Korea I discovered that the 14mm F2.5 was fast enough for having a natural amount of DoF and had good low-light, and the speed of the AF-S was a real upgrade to my shooting. I have since switched to the 12-35/2.8 and will see how that goes on future trips. Learned a bunch of things about editing I have a huge backlog of previous trips that I haven't edited yet. In fact, the small percentage that have a "final" video edit, I am still quite unhappy with. Overall I have felt like I didn't know what I was doing in the editing, or the colour grade. This feeling isn't completely gone, but I have had a number of realisations about various editing challenges and I feel like I'm almost knowledgeable enough to edit something in a passable way. If I had to sum up, I feel like I'm almost good enough at editing and colour grading to understand what I'm doing in post, and I almost understand enough about post to know what equipment I need in prod.

Don't need to buy anything this year, I have more cameras than talent. Unless of course Blackmagic or Panasonic release an L mount 8K. That will help take my lack of talent to whole new levels and will be more clearly defined.

Happy New Year, dear friends! My year was ambivalent and full of lessons. Film bizz in Germany is very rough and ungrateful if you are trying to enter the field of large narrative projects. I had an accident, a branch falling on my head. They immediately looked for a substitute for the rest of the whole gig and they still have not paid me yet due to some mushy accounting routines. Canceled jobs due to reasons intransparent to me. Got taken advantage by an upcoming director, working for free in advance of a contract. 😂 But I am happy about the things I learned and my passion for video and film is bigger than ever.