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I'll chime in with my usual advice about colour grading. The simple fact is that colour grading has a much more significant role in getting great looking images than the camera does. I'll also re-enforce the points above that what you point the camera at is more important than anything else. When we look at something shot on ARRI or RED or the high end Sony cameras, the reason they look great are 70% the scene, 25% the colour grading and 5% the camera. I know this is a bold statement, but I stand by it. Colour grading is the elephant in the room of all online discussions about cameras. Everyone is looking at sample videos and going "wow, this looks great - I want to get that look without doing any colour grading or work in post at all!" and it's just not true. If you need more convincing, here are a few things to look at: The BMPCC 4K can match the Alexa almost perfectly... So, why don't all P4K videos look as good as Netflix shows? It's not the camera! The image from the GX85 is more flexible in post than you think... @John Matthews I haven't forgotten about doing a follow-up with skin-tones in it. Simple colour grading > Camera colour science... I compare a few examples of the 709 version of some professional grade images with the final colour graded image, and it's pretty obvious that the 709 version looks quite plain - a lot like the images we get when us mere mortals shoot The best film-making advice I ever got was to do with colour grading, but it helped me improve my shooting, editing, sound design, etc etc, the whole lot. Here are a bunch of GX85 shots SOOC that I took in Korea last year.. this just goes to show you that not only is the GX85 a very capable camera, but that it's the subject that you put in front of it that really makes the difference. Of course, colour grading will elevate these beyond that level. High-end TV shows and movies look nothing like the standard images out of a camera... In this thread I compare some standard images from ARRI with real images from TV shows and movies and it's pretty obvious that not only are the colours significantly changed, the real images aren't sharp and clean like the videos that camera YT seems to idolise. The goal isn't technical purity, the goal is creativity, and this means taking your sharp and clean images and giving them some character. I could go on (many will wholeheartedly agree on this!) but long story short... the camera is a minor part of the journey that the image takes from finding / creating something cool to point it at, to all the work done in post. Also, learn to edit. Well edited bad-quality clips are better than boring high-quality images every time.

@kye Great. Thank you for adding that note. I'm quite protective of highlights generally at the point of capture (as long as I'm not compromising skin tones) as I find that clipping is the greatest remaining "digital tell" that can usually be avoided. But this is always good to keep in mind. @Attila Bakos I've never approached LUTs as a "click and done" solution, particularly wanting to preserve options for the further application of tone curves. Since moving on from (and now partially back to) Fujifilm, I have missed Eterna as a baseline for further work. To date, my best, neutral LUT for V-Log has been a 2021 LUT by Gamut applied at 80% - even then the shadows would generally be more crushed that I'd prefer for further grading. Your Eterna LC LUT! It's marvelous for how I like to work! I am now editing a piece that I filmed primarily last year. Replacing the Gamut with this low-contrast LUT - I really like the color interpretation (even in some challenging mixed-lighting) and a whole world of shadows is available to further work with, rather than to try and pull back in some fashion. Just so, so nice.

I recently asked for book recommendations to learn about human vision and was given a link to a free PDF. It is incredible. I'm only a quarter of the way through, but I'm absolutely blown away. The human vision system looks like it was designed by committee and then re-imagined by Dali and Picasso, while on drugs. It is a wonder we can see anything at all! Did you know that the rods and cones (which detect light) are BEHIND a bunch of nerves and nerve cells and blood vessels, so the light has to go through a bunch of crap before you even sense it? The book is actually a mix of how the human vision system works and also what we have done with the tech to try and align to it, so it's a nice blend of biology and tech. It's also very readable and tries to be as non-technical as possible. This is a rare find compared to other books that are hugely tech heavy. Take the red pill with me... download it here: https://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/support/documents/colourbook/colourbook.php (download it by clicking on the box next to the file size).

Indeed. It's a pity that reality doesn't fit in a sound-byte.

The reason here is a bit different though. V-Log L clips at 80 IRE so my LUTs in the V-Log L LUT pack will push that to white. V-Log on the S1 clips at 88 IRE if I remember correctly so any information between 80-88 IRE will be lost, even if the interpretation of the clip is correct (full vs video range).

You can adapt pretty much adapt anything and everything to Z Mount except L Mount and even convert what are otherwise manual focus Leica lenses to become AF lenses. OK, regarding the latter, it's not amazing AF, but at least something...though not something that especially interests me and I prefer the native manual focus options for Z that were previously primarily L Mount only, from Voigtlander. E Mount lenses on Z bodies with an ultra thin adapter is great though! Nikon have a range of 'native' lenses that are essentially rebranded older gen Tamron E Mount lenses, but I prefer the newer gen myself.

I think it's because Z-mount has the shortest flange to sensor distance of the common mirrorless mounts. So it's possible to make a (2mm thick!) E-mount to Z-mount adaptor e.g. the Megadap one, but not the other way round.

It's worth noting that this highlight clipping behaviour is a limitation with all LUTs, not just in this case. Increasingly, cameras are supporting "super-whites" which are values above 100%. My GX85 is one of them, and in my standard node tree I just have a curve with the white-point dropped down a bit to bring values back into range prior to all the subsequent adjustments, so I don't forget or accidentally clip anything that was available in the file SOOC.

Thank you all for your advice and your time. I'm going to decide between the K&F Concept Nano-X Filter 82mm ND8-128 and the Neewer 82mm ND8-128.

They have a corrosive culture that comes from him as a founder. Having him return after doing some token penalty time is farcical. What has changed since he left? Nothing. Meanwhile their stock is still not trading because of serious (criminal?) accounting issues where they lied about sales volumes. The whistleblower was fired for raising it and that case is still going. They are awful

I don't know what's going on in your world, but I can tell you it doesn't matter how you fiddle the menu on a camera that leads to good shots. All the real work that happens with a good shot starts outside of the camera. The camera is honestly one of the LAST things you should fret about. I swear to God, you can be a better shooter by visiting a museum full of Romanticism Artistic movement paintings. Study how light affects a scene, and you'll become a more sophisticated videograper that way. If you can't train yourself to "see light" you're always gonna struggle. I'm not being flippant here. It's the cheat-code. Skip all the tech BS and learn light. Take a classic art appreciation class. Learn composition skills. These are the things that actually make a difference. Train your eye to be a shooter and a person that can paint with light. Sure, you can be a pixel nerd, but that has a low ceiling of accomplishment and, honestly, advanced tech makes those acomplishments not a big deal to begin with. And look, when you study art, you'll learn more about the human condition along the way, maybe even some philosophy. Win-win.

Would Nikon go to such a small niche market like this, that is PL mount lens. I personally think they envision a Sony like lineup from red in the future. Option one would be to start just above the z9 price bracket with a new Komodo directly in competition with the Sony FX6. A 6k global shutter camera with a video camera form factor with XLR input, timecode etc. but this time it would include Nikon super good autofocus, Stabilization, CFexpress memory, Z mount and if possible internal ND. I don't know if their is enough space for the later. This type of camera, will be the type of high volume camera, that Nikon can use to make with little change some Cine like Z mount lens, because lets not forget, while the Z mount are the most adaptable lens mount, the Z lens are the least because of this.

I have known for ages literally everyone is running around completely blind on this planet. Deaf as well, by the way.

There’s talk in the camera industry of introducing a subscription model for firmware updates, with Sony being one of the companies believed to be considering this as an option for larger updates in the future. Currently, Sony is planning an A7S III update in the coming weeks with DCI 4K and content authenticity ID, but major updates have been few and far between for a camera released nearly 4 years ago. https://www.eoshd.com/news/firmware-updates-could-become-subscription-model-under-new-plans/