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Yeah, small unassuming kit and crew can be much more productive than the opposite when doing doc production. I can bear witness to this. Anyone else willing to testify? As for me, if someone told me a GH2 was all I had to make something, I'd shrug and do fine with it. I've done it before. Moreover, it would be fun and nimble. Okay by me. Yeah, I'm kind of done with fretting about perfect colors and resolution when it's much more important to get decent well shot coverage. I swear to god, I wish I had footage off a GH-ONE in the hands of a competent shooter for this current doc edit I'm doing --rather than the piles of sloppy handheld crap from an ARRI "cinematographer" that I'm trying to stitch together. Oooooooo, your pile of shit footage in my edit bins has more dynamic range? You got to play with a bunch of neat-o gear in the field for a year? Hooray, you used a jib. You had a portable video village? A PA? You broke out the steady cam? Your prime lens package cost more than my car? La dee daa. All your footage sucks and doesn't cut together. Great. (just spent the day in the editing room)

I am beginning to develop an allergy and even hatred toward everything I see on YouTube. What a bullshit title. People who have never filmed shit other than cats or begonias in the backyard. I, with my GH5, am delighted with its performance underwater and on land.

Having owned both, the S5ii is much more reliable. But the AF "issues" with Panasonic cameras were always overblown in most instances and easy to manage. The biggest damage the dfd system did was to their reputation. I still use two S5s to film pro-wrestling, a pretty unpredictable endeavor, and the AF is fine, which if you'd only seen unpractical AF tests from Youtubers you'd never believe was possible It IS though almost absolutely unusable for small objects and animals in video

What should not surprise me in these boards is the fact people come here to comment the personal taste or choice of this or that shooter -- usually non-professional users (I mean the people publishing videos on YT, not exactly who addresses or writes here about it). This has little to no sense to me. I'd understand it when aethetics is the topic. But sincerely, along these pages? When the reason to be here is the thread of this or that particular capture device? The purpose is the discussion of the features and potentiality of a given tool, not the way one or another individual took it in or for this or that stated situation. On this specific piece of technology: 1) Is its sharpness outcome anything you'll be unable to overcome to begin with? 2) Is its tiny sensor size and form factor a limitation of its own as far as IQ concerns? 3) Is its temporal and spatial noise acceptable for the aim of its use, i.e., how it looks when exposed or/and how about its much desired low light performance too for people using it exclusively with available light? 4) How compares with its predecessors and current competitors? 5) What kind of integration is possible to extend with other add-ons, filter accessories, stabilization helpers, the case of a gimbal built-in here, how many other camera suppliers offer the same?? ; ) This is what matters in the end. All the rest is pure noise with apparently no fix to me ;- ) - EAG :- )

That was the sum of it for me and many others. And for my work, I need reliability above all else because even an average result is infinitely better than no result at all.

Hilarious. The horse & cart is not that far behind the motor car. OK, the S5 is not quite as bad as some make out but the single biggest issue between these two and tests is as follows. The S5 and the S1/S1H/S1R, are finicky bastards when it comes to video as in there is a combination of settings and tweaks that need to be made to achieve the optimal AF within their capabilities. Then there are circumstances to add into the mix. And then lens choices as in real native as in Lumix, or L Mount native such as Sigma. Then differences between zooms and primes. Flip to the S5ii and 90% of these issues cease to exist. Of course, same as with any camera, AF can be optimised and optimised for certain specific scenarios, but the S5ii is way ahead of the S5 regardless of what some random YouTuber has to say. And that is not to denigrate this particular YouTuber as I have no idea who he is and nor have I watched the video, - just speaking from experience. I have not tweaked a single setting since moving to S5ii's from S5.

From what I know, Canon C70 should be image quality champ for under 4000 Euro by a larger margin, A7S3 is unpredictable under lower light conditions when it comes to mush. S1H looking a bit dull under average daylight without dedicated grading efforts despite its awesome processing pipeline. The humble og BMPCC looks beautiful with basic grading skills under same conditions. So I figure that colour science is still making a difference in my use cases for video. Knowing the limits and strengths of chosen cameras narrows the differences in colour quality under certain light conditions regarding quality and quantity.

*aesthetics (but yes, it is or sounds an ethical trouble no less LOL ; )

Remember that "phase detect AF" systems are also using contrast detect in combination with their phase system. So really the comparison is phase+contrast vs. contrast only. My S1 was always significantly better in 60p than slower framerates, which makes sense, more samples per second, more chances to check and compare focus. And when it worked the performance was pretty good! But the inconsistency/unpredictability, when it would wander off on its own seemingly at random, was more frustrating than any slight performance deficiency it had when it did work. My S5iiX is night and day better, still not perfect of course. I don't think any AF system will ever be perfect, no matter how much processing power and AI they throw at it, at least not without some form of input or guidance from the user.

If you have good taste and know how to process the image in post, there are many trade-offs that can be made. For example, 4K 10-bit 422 could be matched by 6K 8-bit 420 if the camera was used with the right ISO settings to generate enough noise in the file so that in post the downsample to 4K would re-create the intermediate values that are inaccessible by the 8-bit. Art does this with stippling. Soon, AI will be able to resurrect your SD MiniDV tapes into 3D 8K 444 glory with only minimal error. The ever-deepening naval gazing will create the ouroboros, assuming it hasn't already.

None taken, none given, - this is all just chat/opinion!

The scenarios can be very different. If I have the camera on a gimbal I have always tried to be hyperfocal, never attempted to use CAF with the cameras I have had (all contrast based). There is always a moment when you can lose focus and you are screwed. Maybe with PDAF it's different and you can be safe. In other more static scenarios I have always used single AF and then worked manually with focus peaking. If you then have a manual lens with a nice soft dial, it's fun and just takes a bit of practice. In fact I hate Lumix lenses with focus by wire. Only in the latest lumix cameras and only with some lumix lenses you can set up linear rotation otherwise it's a nightmare. Underwater you work hyperfocal as much as possible or in manual via focus peaking. But the cases in which it is possible to do this are very few. Only cinema cameras and cinema housings allow you to work with manual focus reliably, but we are talking about kits that exceed 20K euros. Normally the focus ring on the housing demultiplies the revolutions of the lens focus ring. You turn the focus ring three times and the lens moves the focus by 1 cm. impossible to use it outside macro shooting.

I think that in the scenarios of complicated movements by many people in low light, phase detection af may be more reliable. for many common shooting conditions, the contrast based af may be ok. phase detection af uses pixels for focusing, so the image quality is actually a little bit lower than contrast based af. each technology platform has its own pros and cons. just prioritize the needs then choose the right technology platform.

Absolutely. It's like people have forgotten what the images in the cinema actually looked like, or that they were 35mm film. I say that because people who apply a "filmic" or "cinematic" look seem to apply a film emulation at about 284% of what is realistic. This is a scan of (IIRC) Kodak 200T (source) : The video above is: too sharp too heavy split-tone very heavy-handed diffusion ridiculous halation etc It's like they got a film emulation plugin and put some sliders to 0% emulation, and others to 350%. In colour, "if it looks good then it is good" definitely applies, but it doesn't seem to have a look of its own, it's just got a bad film emulation on it.

The most of the look is given by the black mist filter - people love to use very heavy "misting" with this camera. Personally, I thnk that it gives too much "halation" in the highlights, look like a very detailed scene of the 1st Unreal game. 🙂 A weaker one could take away a good bit of the "digital edges" of the image (which is desirable, Pocket 3 image is VERY sharp, even with the sharpness all turned down) without looking as a meth trip.

I don’t think that for 99% of us, 99% of the time, we would know what anything has been shot on without being told. And 99.9% could not care less. The movie and TV industry has been built on big cameras, initially because they just had to be a certain size. Today, they do not and are arguably the least important part of the entire puzzle. And that image of big camera = professional camera filters all the way down to us lowly wedding hacks. Well, the lower down the food chain, the less important a ‘Big Camera’ is, but it wasn’t until the last decade really that even at weddings, videographers did not have bigger shoulder mounted cameras. In the movie industry though, unless you are a Greig Fraser and can ‘get away’ with using FX3’s, the issue is mainly how you would be perceived. OK, he wasn’t using $250 kit lenses but you know what I mean. But it’s changing isn’t it and even larger studios using smaller more ‘regular’ cameras is becoming more common. I think there is still a ton of snobbery though of cameras. But back to the S1H specifically, mine is now on borrowed time… Despite it having better image quality than my S5ii’s, I turned it from it’s static role of the last year or so, back into my primary run & gun unit for the first part of a 2 day job, yesterday. This morning, first thing I did was put it back into the static role and reset one of my S5ii’s into the run & gun role. Why? It’s just too slow compared with the S5ii and ultimate image quality aside, some things are more important and the top of that list is getting the shot. If I was shooting a movie though, S1H hands down.

I never use tracking mode on either my S5, S1, GH5 and GH6. I always use 1 area with relatively small square. When using this setting with my GH5 with speed at +5 (sensitivity depends of the lens used), the AF is very fast most of the time, by exemple with the 12-60mm PL or 10-25mm, the focus is sometimes faster and more accurate than my old A7III. The only issue is with low contrast scenes. However even with 1 area, my S5 and S1 have sometimes an hard time to find focus if my subject is moving a lot, even more if the contrast is low or the DOF shallow.

Also, certain lenses with the native zooms having the best Af performance. Sigma etc lenses less so… Best practice for me with that system was to use Af to acquire focus and then flip to manual on the lens. These cameras are utter trash for tracking forward motion a lot of the time. Closing down the aperture (such as shooting f8 instead of f2.8 for instance) helps as doing being in S35 mode which offers better Af than full frame modes. Jeez, it’s coming back to me now how much pissing about there was with the OG S5 😂

LOL Annoying before to getting fine, isn't it? It's living with or leave it! : ) What is unique is this combo to give that characteristic touch/look by its own: There's no simply competitor at this such small camera segment level, useless to look for anything else.

Nope. The screenplay seemed wooden and amateurish, the character development was poor, and it was a mishmash of overused sci-fi themes better done in other movies.