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I actually dug in and just bought two new MFT lenses (the Laowa Argus cine lenses, which are fast, relatively light, and should match well with my existing MFT lenses). For me, as a single operator who prefers using manual lenses, small sensors are the most practical choice. Since I'm forced to use wide lenses, I get more depth of field, which means focus is more forgiving when I'm trying to maintain focus on people and other things that move. If I used autofocus I'd go fullframe or APS-C, but based on a few experiences shooting dancers on full-frame with manual lenses I'd rather stick with smaller sensors. I'm using the BMD Super 16 cameras (OG Pocket and BMMCC) for now, and if I ever upgrade it would probably be to the Pocket 4K or possibly the GH7.

Oly/OMDS cameras I've used have an 'MF' function you can assign to a button - it stops C-AF and enables the lens focus ring. After you've done the manual focus, press it again and AF takes over again. When going from MF to AF it doesn't force the AF to re-focus so basically (if C-AF is enabled and the in-focus part of the image is within the AF area) the C-AF will hold your focus. Also in MF mode you can push the AF-ON button to force an S-AF re-focus. On my OM-1 I normally have video AF set to C-AF, then using the MF and AF-ON buttons I can switch between C-AF, MF and MF+S-AF while recording if I want to. (Oly/OMDS cameras don't have an AF-lock function, so the MF function is the next best thing - you just have to be careful not to touch the focus ring accidentally...)

Those examples are just how I described.. PDAF knows where to go and CDAF doesn't.. No new information here 🙂 But you're right, there are a great many things I don't understand... Cameras over 4K that aren't needed for VFX Seeing that high-end movies and TV shows have been softened using filters, vintage lenses, and softened in post, but then pixel peeping the sharpest lenses and highest resolution cameras Trying to compare cameras without discussing what they're being used for Making decisions on the aesthetic of an imaging system without considering the emotional impact it has on the viewer Not understanding that the purpose of an imaging system is having an emotional impact on the viewer People perpetuating myth after myth when each one can be easily proven to be false with a smartphone and an hour of work etc etc... I mean, I also don't understand why people insist on shooting interviews with a 135mm F0.8 lens, then blaming their AF mechanism for not being able to track the subject, but maybe secretly I'm the dull one when they are deliberately going for that "talking head in a sea of blurry confusion and it seems like I've been drugged and the background is growing and shrinking" aesthetic.

Too true. Arri targets the feature film and commercial industry. Those industries have absolutely no incentive to use BM or anything cheaper. The rental cost of an Arri is one of the smallest line items in their budgets. Why would they experiment with something that saves a few bucks on the rental when they have years of experience, trust, rigging etc all geared around their usuals cameras of choice? You technically could shoot a movie with a BM camera or an FX30 or a bunch of other cameras, but why would you unless you need something small for a specific shot? It's like saying your such and such street car can go the same speed on a drag strip as an F1 car so they're going to dominate the F1 industry here pretty soon. Um, no. Why would they?

This is true. The more experimental features of the mirrorless cameras will be the norm in cinema cameras.

The second link is to an in-line attenuator, the opposite of a pre-amp... Another option is to use a decent hand-held recorder with XLR inputs as the mic amp then feed the output of that into the camera. if you use one of the latest Zoom models (e.g. the H4essential) you can have a 32-bit float backup recording as well.

That will takes years and years to happen There will already be proper cinema cameras with this by then. Such as Sony BURANO, and whatever the later generations of it are.

I don't think so at all. iPhones (and phones in general) are obviously very popular, but M43, 1-inch compact cameras, and action cameras have all been on the decline for a long time. Really the whole industry has been, but GoPro for example lost $75 million last year. Their stock has plummeted something like 97%. The action camera market is not doing good, even though DJI and Insta360 have been pretty aggressive in releasing new cameras. They just don't have the burdens GoPro has, since they are Chinese companies and action cameras aren't their only products. Sony put out vlogging cameras in the ZV and RX100 series of cameras, but they didn't really set the world on fire. It sounds like Panasonic is going to release something similar but I have my doubts that it'll be successful. Vlogging just doesn't seem to be nearly as popular as it used to be, with a lot of people transitioning to different content and even before they did that a lot were using APS-C and full frame cameras for YouTube, and many others have transitioned to using phones for the short form content they post to TikTok, Facebook, and IG. M43 will exist as long as OMD and Panasonic want it to, but the GH7 could realistically be either the last stand or it could breath new light into the system. Too early to tell, but it got a lot of praise but whether or not that translates to people actually buying it, who knows? I kind of regret getting completely out of the system, but I'm not entirely sure I wouldn't have ended up having to in a couple years anyway.

IBIS on Panasonic M43 cameras will always be better than the IBIS of their full frame counterparts because of the smaller sensor. Still the IBIS in the original S5 was very good. The S5II cut the IBIS gap, but it still couldn't compete with the GH6, G9 or the GH7. Panasonic full frame IBIS is still head and shoulders above everyone else though.

good for Sundance, good for me.

I agree with pretty much all of this. Honestly we dumb the conversation down when we just talk about PDAF or CDAF, as if each implementation is equal to one another when that simply isn't true. Look at Fuji. It switched to PDAF what, 6 years ago? Yet it still isn't very good. We also ignore that CDAF's hit rate in stills was pretty much on par with PDAF, meaning the issue was largely video related and that issues like pulsing were issues with CDAF in general. Panasonic built on years and years of fine tuning their auto focusing algorithms and technology, which were always pretty solid, and merely switched how the focusing is done. Do I wish they'd done it earlier? Yes, if only because I got sick of people (mostly people that were never going to use their cameras anyway) complaining about it.

I have this in the AFX in differing combinations. You can set four focus points and then transition to them manually with the stick on the controller (or the Tilta wheel if you have connected that to the AFX) or with different transition times including one called "NATURAL" which is based on the difference between your current focus point and the target. The transition times also work when it is in AF-C mode to keep the transitions as smooth or as instant as you prefer. You can also use the first two focus points to set up a ring fenced area between the two where the AF system is only active for targets between the points. And then of course there is the focus recorder function where you can do real time record of up to two minutes of focus movements using any combination of live LIDAR acquisition in AF-S or AF-C, the four focus memory position recalls and manual focus and then play it back as it was recorded. As I say, its the combination of all differing methods that, to me, makes the difference between a type of focus and a focusing system.

serious question, what is your background zlfan? you keep making the same comparison threads and theyre all pointless. if you’re good at making moving images, all you need is a camera with at least a decent codec (10 bit 4:2:2, and ideally with a log profile). Once that threshold is met, you can start thinking about the actual important facets of the job. maybe documentary based dps will go towards newer hybrids for their assisting features, but other ones will probably never care. If you’re shooting in a context where you get to call yourself the dp, the implication is there already: you’re the head of a department. You already have an assistant delegated to getting the focus right. Ibis will never be as good as a dedicated means to have certain camera movements

af, dr of gh7 is as good as fx30. kudos to gh7.

Yes, it's a version of the 'no one gets fired for buying IBM' situation - it's all about minimizing the (large) financial risks in high-end production. A very different situation from a one/few person production company doing filming and post-production in-house with their own relatively low-cost workflow (e.g. using Blackmagic cameras and software).

It depends on what you want to do with them of course. For me personally, the GH5 was kind of the 5d mkii of the photography world. It was the marker when image quality hit the "good enough" metric. For most work, shooting with the GH4 will still be a frustrating experience image wise. Not to say it can't produce good images, it's just very limited compared to modern alternatives. The GH5 was where cameras really hit a "I can get 75% of what a 2024 camera can get most of the time" kind of reality. That being said, if your standard is low and you are just looking for a sharp image and some basically decent color, the GH4 will be fine.

This was true with RED and yet it barely made any penetration into the industry. It almost makes you think that the image coming out of the camera isn't the thing that determines the fate of the brand.....

Like with your GH5 post the other day, almost all cameras made in the last 10 years are capable tools that can produce nice images. It doesn't mean though that you should go out and buy a GH4 in 2024. There are plenty of "quality of life" improvements that have occured since the GH4's release that make it a lot less desirable camera compared to something like the GH5 or S1. We're blessed to be at a point where we could use a 10 year old camera and still get good results if we HAD to, but let's not pretend that the cameras that have come out since aren't significantly better in every way. IBIS alone radically changed the way I film and work.

I checked and I actually applied a Technicolor emulation from RNI on most of my color photos in this shoot (I also did some B&W using Ilford emulations). Straight out of camera with the standard Sony A7s raw profile the colours were very good, but I sometimes experiment with emulations and in this case Technicolor was perfect: it accentuates the reds in a nice warm and soft way. And I did a wee bit of color grading to punch up the blues as I wanted to accentuate the echo of the blue in the shirt that the male dancer in the foreground was wearing with the same blue that was in shirt of one of the dancers farther back. I liked how the pattern of plaids/stripes vs. solids echoed across some of the couples, that was just a happy accident!

Actually I misremembered: this was shot on the OG A7s. But based on my experience and the ISO sensitivity charts I've seen, the A7iii matches the A7s in low-light performance right up until the very highest ISOs, which I never use anyway. I used the A7s because this was a non-critical shoot, I was just shooting for fun and wanted to have a lightweight camera, no IBIS, and just shoot and enjoy myself. I brought two lenses: the MC Rokkor 58/1.2 and the MD Rokkor 28/2.

He was an Olympics champion too if I remember correctly (irrc). People loved the steam engine like powerhouse, the beast from the east, Jan "Ulle" Ullrich. He was like a folk hero. It was the not so common people who exploited the man of the common people. Big middle finger to Telekom and German TV for their hideous conduct.

Well I own precisely zero fast lenses as in primes such as 1.4 or 1.8’s and moved exclusively to zooms recently. I prefer primes, but the reality for my work, is I tried juggling them for far too long but the simple reality was a typical zoom covers at least 3 prime focal lengths with simple rotations. OK, other than a few exotics such as Canon’s RF 28-70 f2 monster, faster than f2.8 zooms do not exist and I am over using any lens above 1kg and most of my zooms are ball park 500g or under. AI could certainly adjust DOF to be even shallower, but you know what? I am also over ultra shallow DOF and f2.8 is just fine thanks!

With this logic, which I'm not arguing against, AI would kill the smartphone market first. Why should I upgrade my $1000 phone when I can update my camera app for $1.9 per month?

Nice find with the FAQ. Maybe it's my misconception about Gerald. I can agree with him about corporate work not being all that interesting enough to share (and often there's no permission for that anyway) and I can see why he wouldn't want to do any more of that when he's got a successful business with the YouTube channel. It's not a personal thing, only an observation, a suggestion that I'd enjoy his channel more if it had visuals, images, photography, short sequences to set the mood and cinematic moments. We are too eager to see the binary Me vs Them, when the point I am making is more about the consumerism and the dubious creative need to switch cameras so often. I watch a YouTube channel about headphones. I ended up with an addiction and 20 pairs of expensive ones. I am also a nerd that also likes playing with cameras as much as I like shooting with them. When EOSHD started the snobby pros were constantly asking searching questions of me - where was my pro work, paid work, client work? All mine was my own creative projects, self funded, I travelled the world under my own steam to make my own stuff and practice the art of cinematography and photography. I was pretty much attacked by the Cinema5D crowd about this all the time - if I wasn't a professional making money from commercial clients - I was nothing. An amateur, a fool, a "tester". I still think there is a Canadian manager though 🙂

All the people you mention seem to be after one thing: our time, which on YouTube means money. Here's my experience: I see a clickbait thumbnail. I click it. I sit through 5 seconds of Adobe slowware, thinking "not that sh*t again" I start watching the video (now they're getting paid by my view), admittedly some nice footage sometimes I watch some BS ad right in the middle of what they're trying to get to in their BS thumbnail. They're selling some BS service that no one needs (yes, they get a cut if you're dumb enough to sign up). I watch to the end. Now, they ask me to like and make a comment (more of my time) about their self-promoting BS video to enrich themselves. "Don't forget to click subscribe and click on the alert bell" so can also get spammed by YouTube. Let's not forget the Amazon affiliate links they so generously added in the description section. Finally, they pinned the the first comment (oh, what a surprise, it's they saying some more BS). Is anyone else tired of this over-produced, time-sucking, self-promoting crap? Is this what google meant when they said "Don't be evil"? At this point, I'm asking myself if I have anything better to do with my limited time on this planet.

You can't take the human factor out of it. The charts, math and science are all entwined with the creative side in filmmaking & photography. Anyway, I feel you misunderstood the gist of my video which is about the circle jerk becoming like a cartel and all quid-pro-quo boosting each other with mentions and it is all intentional and coordinated in my opinion. You are being played by a cartel-like community of online marketeers disguising themselves as camera users or filmmakers. The point I made in the video about Potato Jet hyping up an Alexa one day and then a C200 the next, is about the pure consumerism and marketing aspect of that - people watching who are dazzled by the object of desire on display. What does any of this have to do with filmmaking? Cinematography? Photography, and beautiful images which is why we need cameras in the first place? And does the talent of the person giving the advice matter at all?! To me it does. I would sooner take advise from Roger Deakins than from Peter McCanon. If this hypothetical guitar guru who promises all sorts of wonderful sounds turns out to be unable to play it and it just makes very mediocre sounds in his hands, just seems wrong. Will Gerald ever pick up a GH2 from years back and show us his images with it? I'd love it if he did so. Perhaps there is not enough views or not enough affiliate link money in it? Ask yourself why hasn't he done something like this yet in all these years, or gone into classic gear like vintage lenses? Why has he never been an EOSHD reader or even acknowledged that we exist as a community of 11 years, or that Magic Lantern exist, all that history of the DSLR video revolution he has just kinda glossed over like it never existed. Fucking poor, man. It always seems that the gist of his video is BUY this new thing... and on a very rare occasions, he'll snub something like the Sigma Fp, with the overall message being BUY something else!