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Which is similar in stills photography when folks ‘state’ that film is better than digital. Hmmm, I come back from a typical wedding weekend with around 3500-5000 shots to cull and I am far from the spray & pray approach. Let’s call it 3600 on the low end which is 100 rolls of film. 100 rolls is at least €25 each for purchase and processing, so €2.5k compared with €0 for digital. Ah, but the tools are cheaper! Ah, but you can charge more for film photography! Grow up and enter the real world of business 🤪 So stills or video, I am someone who does not need the latest and greatest just because it is the latest and greatest and that is the purchase decision and I might choose a vintage lens for a certain aesthetic, but a simple reality is that the more modern the tool, the more likely it is to make our (business) lives easier. Whether that be autofocus, stabilisation, DR, or even just things like start up speed. Not every new tool is the best tool, but for business users especially, better tools do make for better work. All other factors being equal. So yes, I’ll take 12 stops of DR over 10 which I’d have taken over 8, every day of the week thanks, just as I appreciate the latest firmware on the S5ii that finally allowed me to ditch the gimbal forever. Some progress actually is good!

I know, they are French, they do it deliberately, but not to put French subtitles on English language movies intended for English speaking audiences because it's highly distracting. They don't put English subtitles on French language movies... Now I don't mind subtitles on TV and watch a lot of foreign language stuff on Netflix such as stuff from Scandinavian countries, Poland, Germany and France because it's unwatchable otherwise, and dubbing, yeah, just no!

Your experience is pretty dead-on for most of the features here in not-rural Minnesota in the US. A bunch of theaters are closing around here because the experience became such shit. A friend of mine owns two theaters and said that a lot of them have been jacking their prices sky-high because the landlords keep increasing the rent. He's apparently been able to avoid the worst of it and keep prices (relatively) reasonable where 2 people could reasonably see a film with drinks/popcorn for about $40-50. At a lot of other theaters in the area, that's a $70-80 night out. Bonkers. Minimum wage here is $15/hour so a night out at the films with a partner for someone earning that is nearly an entire shift's wages after taxes. I spent months at a time abroad, mostly in areas speaking Spanish and Portuguese. My Spanish is passable in conversation, but not nearly enough to watch a dubbed film where mouths aren't aligning with words. My Portuguese is enough to read well, but to be completely lost in anything but the most basic conversation. It's usually a big pain to find films that are subtitled - and in some Latin American countries, one can't even buy movie tickets online without a national ID so you just have to show up to the theater and hope to get decent seats. Anyway. Totally feel the pain of trying to go to the theater in another country. Still feel some magic to seeing things projected big on a shiny screen. 😄

It's kind of liberating sometimes when you set aside all your perfectionism and just have a good time with modest tech. Recently I went on a several day bike trip on Vancouver Island (beautiful place) so I couldn't bring much. I also wanted something I could pull out of a belt pouch with one hand and click while still cycling. I have a Canon G16 (garage sale find for $6) I was first considering which takes beautiful pictures but is kind of bulky then I found in a drawer an old Sony DSC-T100. It's only does JPGs at 8 megapixels. Below my current standards but then these things are a trade off. I was only just going to email a few people some pics when I got home so it's good enough. I liked how small it was on the trip. I also used my phone but it's an older one without a zoom, also it's awkward to use compared to a camera. I had to stop cycling to take a picture with it. With the "real" camera, I could reach down, put the wrist strap on, flip down the front flap to turn it on and click, and put it back, all while still cycling. So it all worked out and I got some amazing pictures within the limits of the situation.

Except for the price... ; ) AF @ 100/120fps and... I don't agree at all when reviewer hints MFT is more flexible as far as glass options when you can put them directly to FX30 via MFT -> E-mount adapter but not the opposite. How many cool manual lenses you can have at your disposal? Unique control along with PZ lenses for tracking shots from several speeds, only to mention a single advantage. Clear Image Zoom another one. When people like this scriba here are used to buy the most spread lens mount option to fit the more number of different cameras as much as possible, this is also something to have in mind such as the Megadap ETZ21 adapter to couple E-mount lenses to diversify the setup towards those new Nikon camera releases without losing AF capability. Other than that, better IBIS, higher resolution 5.7K @50fps and open gate recording are neat GH7 advantages. That said, first contact with this guy. Loved the way he gradually answered my questions at same time I was following his clean input as every reviewer should try the best for. In my bookmarks from now on. - EAG

Digital projection isn't always a bad thing, especially not now. I was so excited to see Hateful 8 on 65mm film projected on an IMAX screen, but I arrived after the film had been at the theater for more than a week and by then, the projectionists who were presumably completely unfamiliar with how to handle film had basically wrecked the print and the whole thing looked like garbage. Same theater, digital prints? Looking great. Same film, watched on my TV later? Looked great. I'm definitely not saying that digital projection looks better than a pristine print on film - but after a few weeks in the cruel hands of teenage theater employees, digital can look a lot better. I'm still in the category of people who find magic in seeing a film reflecting off of an enormous screen in a darkened theater. I just also make sure to only go when the place isn't packed so that the other people around me ruin the experience (also one of the reasons that I went to see Hateful 8 a while after it opened).

They were so focused on the video that they forgot that there is audio and sound engineers 😄

All these things comes back to the same thing…which is a different thing for each individual. I’m not necessarily looking for ‘the best’ but rather what works best for me within certain parameters, the principle one being cost. Not just cost vs return, but actual cost. If the financial side was not part of the equation, like most, not only would I be using different stuff, I’d probably have a different career! It all comes down to need vs compromises we’re willing to make in the end with the wrapper being money.

It is like in the photo world, people with high res cameras are doing printing, because only printing can show the visible difference of the latest high res cams and lenses. also some areas like bus stop standing ads, behind the table photo wall, etc. i think there are some niche areas that still need the latest high res video cams. for web based sharing, the needs are saturated. but the latest video cams, especially the hybrids, have ibis and af, very useful to everyone. in camera raw is also very useful, just for a small sub group of users.

I feel like any of these discussions should include a link to Vincent Laforet's Reverie. He shot that with the 5D II with the early firmware which had all sorts of limitations in video mode. The 5D II's SOOC rec.709 had shit DR compared to a modern camera. Reverie still looks good. A lot of people will use a modern camera with greatly superior features and produce something that doesn't look even nearly as good. But with that said, I suspect that if you offered Mr. Laforet a choice between most modern cameras and the 5D II, he wouldn't hesitate to take the newer camera. Anyway, as far as whether DR matters, that depends entirely on the project and expectations. Are crushed shadows and/or blown-out highlights acceptable? For a lot of people, they are. If so, there's no need to be concerned with it. Will there be time to light the scene to keep things within a range that the camera can capture? Is the footage being delivered as-is or is it being turned over to a colorist? You can go shoot something that looks really nice with a T2i and its kit lens. Will it match what you wanted? Probably not. Will it be what the director/client wanted? Probably not. Will it be enough to put on something like instagram? Probably. Are the "probably nots" made better by using an Alexa? Only maybe. 😃

This is why log exists. We capture a dynamic range the screens can't display, then squeeze it into a rec 709 image that works for the screen and retains the detail we need for the shot

Joking aside, it will get really interesting if (and when) Pana introduces an ARRI-certified LUT in the next S1II or S2.

Another GH7 + LogC and ARRI discussion.. TLDR; Brady used the combo on two narrative projects, they matched up nicely in post (but not perfectly), and he sees it as a great option for a B-cam to an Alexa if you didn't have the budget for two Alexas. There's some side-by-sides in the video, including graded to match and also not.

From the GH6 manual: I see what you mean about 5.7K versus 5.8K. I wonder if the extra image/video processing needed for 5.7K (about twice as many pixels per frame as C4K) is reducing the processing power available for IBIS control, so it can't react as quickly? As an illustration of what I said in words in an earlier post, below is an image circle with 4:3 (yellow), 16:9 (grey) and 17:9 (red) rectangles inside it. Note how the corners of the 16:9 and 17:9 rectangles are further inside the circle than the 4:3 rectangle (the full 5.8K 'open gate' aspect ratio). In reality, the usable image circle is larger than needed to contain a 4:3 rectangle - if it wasn't, sensor-shift stabilisation of 4:3 'open gate' video or stills would be impossible without vignetting.

I decided on the S9 with Sigma 28-70mm f2.8 as my compact ‘compromise’, but the GH7 with the pairing of 10-25 (indoors) and 25-50 (outdoors) would actually be a preference other than for 2 factors. Size & weight of each combo, the M4/3 option being approx 1.5x the size & weight, plus having to carry that option lens and Cost. The S9 I think is €1600 and I already have the lens but 3 M4/3 items, even used for the lenses, would run me pushing €6k. Somewhat reluctantly, I had to say no to that option, but hey ho. Now slightly on the fence whether I should even change my S1H for the S9… The S9 is the smaller & lighter option paired with the Sigma 28-70, but the single card slot is a slight concern. Only ever had one SD card have a problem and that was at least 12+ years, but it’s something every pro needs to consider. The S1H package compared with the GH7 + 10-25 or 25-50 is around the same weight, but not as wide or as long, but flipping to S35 mode takes it up to an equivalent 105mm. The other factor to consider is the S1H is bullet proof, I have 4 batteries for it. And I own it, so costs exactly €0 🤑 But all that said and done, if it wasn’t for the financial part of the equation, O think I’d go for the GH7 and that pair of fast zooms.