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There is absolutely a difference of looks between the formats, but it doesn't mean lens equivalency is false. Lens equivalency says that "all else being equal, a 28/2.8 will look the same on FF as a 14/1.4 on MFT" but the thing is, actually making a 28mm F2.8 lens and a 14mm F1.4 lens would end up with subtle differences in how you would do that. The "look" is really a combination of the subtle differences in lens design. The MF look is probably just as much an artefact of history and would incorporate the lens design quirks of the time. A modern MF camera with optically pristine lenses wouldn't have as much of the look as an MF film camera with vintage MF glass. A FF camera with a super-fast lens that has the same design flaws as the common MF lenses would have a lot of the MF look. Lenses aren't perfect, and much of the "look" is due to the imperfections. Reducing the discussion down to FOV and DOF is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Laowa have announced a range of T1 cine lenses in FF, APS-C and, yes, MFT format today that will narrow the gap for GH7 owners looking to emulate the “hang on, is any of this in focus?” look of the larger formats. Well, not exactly a full range when it comes to MFT as it currently only includes 18 and 25mm and not the wide option of the others. Full details here https://laowacine.com/product/laowa-argus-t1-cine-series-mft/

Exactly. I use L mount and don’t own a single native lens. I shoot mostly cinematic video though so no need for autofocus most times. The new Kipon L mount to EF speedbooster gives you autofocus though if you need it and lets you use some of the canon pancake lenses with a slim profile. That or a small nifty 50 and you’re golden. Personally, I can’t wait to try my Konica Hexanon 40mm f/1.8 pancake on the S9, it’s tiny even with the adapter/focal reducer.

I gotta chime in here and say that there most definitely is at least a large format look. You have control of both the lens and the film/sensor planes independently. You can apply any number of adjustments to the axis -- and achieve images that a tilt-shift lens + fixed sensor (ignoring IBIS as not applicable in way I am describing) cannot. And I'm sorry, but M43 cannot achieve as shallow depth of field (at comparable fov) that my 4x5 cameras can. These formats have all been developed for a reason and equating them all in this way is bogus.

I still feel the main advantage to L mount is the ability to adapt almost anything to it, like you can with MFT, E-mount, Z-mount, etc. If I got an L mount camera the first thing I'd do is buy adapters so I can use my tiny rangefinder lenses, or my Minolta Rokkor lenses, or my Nikon F-mount lenses. I almost never buy native lenses, although I would if I used autofocus.

it’s a trick to understand optics and basic math? jesus fucking christ man if any of you gave as much shit about making, or working on interesting art on here and sharing it instead of jacking off your lil dingdongs over new gear, resolutions, different starting point looks of shitty fucking sensors, or being mentally insane about 24 fps this place could actually have interesting discussions. I fucking hate gear. i fucking hate lenses, cameras, shitty lights, cables, rigs etc. Sadly its necessary to understand at least some of it, as it is a means to an end to create what i actually want to create. i suggest others to view it same way. Or learn color grading, like kye said. That has generated a bit of income for me from time to time.

you are an open mind man. I think you are very good to work with in a team, which is a critical factor for a successful dp career.

The BrightinStar 28mm pancake is actually better in terms of image quality on full-frame thick-stack sensors, and it's a fraction of the price. The MS Optics has a focusing tab and I actually love those for manual focus. You develop a sense of where you are in terms of focal range by the position of the tab; this is how street shooters do zone focus, by the feel of where the tab is. Quite a few rangefinder lenses have that tab; some people hate it but as a focusing aid I love it and it's very fast.

Maybe true for an SLR pancake but my pancake lens is an MS Optics Apoqualia M-mount lens; with the adapter it's so small I can literally slip a Sony APS-C camera in a pocket.

I think it's simply a matter of who can see the differences and who can't. When I first started out in video I couldn't tell the difference between 24p and 60p video. Not even a little. Now it's 6 years later and I can even tell the difference between 30p and 24p, and I REALLY don't like 30p. There are enormous differences in what people can and cannot see in images. Lots of things that are debated.... motion cadence 14-bit RAW vs 12-bit vs 10-bit 24p vs 30p vs 60p shutter angles Sony sensors vs others CMOS vs CCD I suspect much of the debate is that people simply can't see the differences, or can and just have different taste.

There are no definitions of looks. You can't assess if something has the medium format look with a checklist. Ask different people what the look is and you'll get different answers, because people notice different things. There are commonalities, sure, but it's not a precise thing. Also, not all lenses have the same character. Your Noctilux 50mm F1.0 lens might have completely different optical aberrations than the average vintage MF lens, so the feel of it would be very different. It's like cooking. If two people make cakes with the same ratios of flour and water and sugar and eggs, and then all add "flavouring" then will they taste the same? Of course not. The "flavouring" matters, and can vary hugely. Imagine comparing 8mm film and iPhone 4 video. We could go through every category of image assessment and rate them and maybe we'd conclude they both had video quality at 5/10. Do they look the same? Of course not, because the individual characteristics that make up the "8mm look" and the "iPhone 4 look" are very different, despite the fact they've both got a similar amount of imperfections / character / aberrations / etc. It's like if you're making a horror film vs a rom-com. In the horror film you don't just use "horror lenses" or "horror angles" or "horror lighting" or "horror music" or "horror dialogue" or "horror sound design" or "horror colour grading" etc. The horror in the film comes from using all of them. Hopefully the rom-com uses completely different elements in all departments too.. the "look" or "feel" of the final film comes from the combination of many subtle elements combined together. Same with images. People that are into lenses look at sample images and can read them like a book. Some people can even tell what optical formula the lens uses from looking at a single image. The clues are very subtle, but they're all there.

It's wrong to assume that just because a person is famous that they're immune to "big = better" hype. Larger sized film stock was an easier way to get better technical performance, they didn't have 6400 ISO cameras back then

Why?

Also, when 5d2 and 7d just came out in 2009, I spent nights and nights watching almost all of the videos on vimeo shot by these two cameras. I can tell you that they are different, even with the same crappy in stock codec. 5d2 footage just shows some magic eye-catching things there, the color, the gradation, that magic touch that 7d2 footage is lacking. 7D2 footage looks dry whereas 5d2 footage looks juicy. In other words, full frame vv look exists.

Just plain wrong. Yedlin: Because he wanted to Tarantino: Because he wanted to, and also is far from an expert in optics/imaging 60's films: Resolution and marketing Nope. It's no problem. Your comments are already more than dumb enough. No need to dumb them down further. Why produce different-sized sensors? Different use cases, history, any number of other reasons. Why pay $10k for a camera when the exact same image comes from a $2k camera? Any number of reasons including ergonomics, personal preference, and the fact that the exact same image won't come from both cameras. By your reasoning, anybody would be a complete moron to buy an Alexa with a S35 sensor for $20-40k when they could just go buy a used GFX 100 and get full-width 16:9 4K video for $3k used - since the GFX, with its 44mm wide sensor, will magically produce an amazing image that a person can just walk into, unlike the shitty Alexa with its puny 28mm wide sensor. The GFX will produce huge sweeping images that you can just walk right into where the Alexa will produce a poor image with no depth, usable only by complete amateurs.

Probably not. But you probably don't want uncompressed RAW because the file sizes are astronomical. There are compression schemes which are very close to be visually lossless, which are almost as good, and save a significant amount of storage. Depending on your needs, you're likely willing to sacrifice some image quality for some space savings. For example, you might accept a 1% loss in quality for a 50%+ reduction in file size, etc. BRAW has compression ratios between 3:1 and 12:1, even on their top cameras, so the artefacts from huge compression ratios can't be that bad, and you can get a lot of compression before people can even notice.