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Yep. It is not that the camera type does not matter, but there are literally dozens and dozens of options. I would simply A. set a budget and B. set out a list of 'must haves' and see what matches up. As a LUMIX user, I could just say go and get a used S5II off MPB and a couple of different focal length f1.8 primes and you are done, but other options exist. For between 2500-3000 you'd be golden. I don't shoot travel docs, 'just' weddings and for me it's just unbeatable all factors considered; cost, size, weight, performance, near gimbal like IBIS settings, higher end AF. Pretty much all some folks complain about is not having full-frame 4k 60p but how many really NEED that? I've considered Canon several times but would want to go down the RF lens route and it then falls apart for me. I've considered Sony and it just doesn't have some of the features I like that LUMIX does. I've considered Nikon and other than pushing the budget up to Z8 levels, doesn't work for me. M4/3? Could work but I've never really been able to go back to that after tasting full-frame. But as above, A + B and go from there.

I was also about to post about Chimp Empire which I watched after that recommendation! Also, I haven't seen all of King Coal yet, but the trailer and various clips that I've seen from it looked great. The C70 is also pretty affordable nowadays, as things go. Is it the sharpest camera on the market? Nope. You can always rent it, though, to see if it meets your needs. As far as lenses for the C70, instead of buying the latest shiny RF glass, you could also consider permanently affixing Canon's 0.71x focal reducer and using EF glass which is plentiful on the used market and very good. If you're focused on Canon, you could also look at the original R5 which is now available used for about $2,000 and has a nice 8k raw image. I'd also say that, had you not already said you're using the DJI Pocket 3, it would have been my first suggestion... or maybe my second suggestion after an iPhone 16 Pro (or whatever the latest fancy Android phone with a great camera is, probably a Samsung something-or-others). The iPhone can put out some really nice-looking ProRes log footage and it's one of the few cameras out there which will work well in every scenario you mentioned - whereas the C70 is not fantastic in low light and unless you buy a housing costing as much as the camera, won't work well after you submerge it in the water. Working on technique and editing/storytelling is going to do a lot more for your overlanding vlogs than buying $10,000 in gear... venture4wd, one of the most popular overlanding YouTubers uses a combination of action cameras and a Panasonic - I think an S5 II? And he didn't upgrade to the Panasonic until his channel was already big.

The point I was making, is that if a production runs into even merely just thirty minutes of overtime, or/and has a very slight increase to post production costs, then those additional costs to production would totally wipe out any "savings" they might get from renting a cheaper camera than an ARRI/Sony/RED/Varicam. I love this feature as a Boom Op and Sound Mixer!! (nothing to do with an actor entering the frame though, I mean for our purposes) Huge time savings having an ARRI on set vs "random Camera X" that nobody has ever worked with before. A great analogy. (to carry on this analogy: you'd save time using a F1 over a Camry at the race track, but you'd lose time if you used the F1 for a shopping trip. Ditto cameras, it could be "fast" or "slow" to use, depending on the type of set it's being used on) Now excuse me while I go do this week's grocery shopping in a F1....

In a lot that I've seen, they conclude in the end that the Alexa's picture is nicer, but not 20x nicer (or whatever the price multiple is). They're completely correct. If you're an owner-operator shooting corporate talking heads or weddings or short films with a budget of about $1k, you'd be crazy to buy an Alexa for it. On the other hand, if you're shooting a feature film with a budget of 200 million dollars and the cost for several Alexas is about 0.2% of your budget (as IronFilm pointed out), you're probably not thinking in terms of value, but about the "best" tool to create the image. Similarly, you'd be crazy to buy a 12-18 million dollar F1 racecar to commute to work. It's a terrible value compared to like, a Toyota Camry. But if you show up on the track at Interlagos on race day driving a Camry...

I am equally as confident that my camera is capable of burning in my LUT saving me hours and hours of grading per job and no client ever has, or ever will ask for me to do anything further with the end result. But then I am the opposite end of making movies and just a hack wedding vidiot. It will not stop them asking me however if I have any footage of random Aunt Jane who flew in from Canada chatting with uni friend Sandeep with Uncle Herbert in the background chatting with my mum. Nor is there any more footage of your empty dance floor. I once had a bride list 3 things I had not captured: 1. Blossom on a particular tree outside. 2. A chandelier that was in the entrance hall. 3. A brown leather sofa. But I digress…

I just checked eBay. Yes, you can get an original Arri Alexa for less than CAN$5000 including the viewfinder. We live in the golden age of cameras, Kids. Go make your movie!

So true. I assistant edited on a feature shot with a 2K Alexa and they (for some reason) recorded to ProResHQ. I found the files to be some of the nicest, easiest footage to prepare for the editor. The show had a colour grader at the end but before that point, one of my tasks was to colour grade test reels and rough edits and it was so easy and fast to do as the image that it had, even in ProRes was amazing. The image is really nice and easy and quick to make it look good in post. This has budget advantages. Another thing the DOP told me he liked about the Alexa is that the viewfinder shows you beyond the recorded image. This way you could anticipate, say, an actor about to enter the frame. This was something he had missed from the film days. Film cameras' viewfinders would show more of the image than you're getting and would have a frame guide to show you what you would get but you could see more on the sides than that. He also said the menu on the side panel was fast and easy to navigate. Another time saving on set.

As others have said, for the most part, proper lighting and grading is often more important than the image straight out of the camera. Though with that said, Alexa is still the most flexible image that you'll find coming out of a camera, That's followed by Burano and V-Raptor and most recently, apparently, Ursa Cine (still needs more time for user tests to confirm/deny, but the tests on paper are impressive. If you're shooting a film with a big budget, your A camera is almost definitely Alexa. Why? Because it's the most flexible image. Because your high-end gaffer will automatically know how to light well for it. Because your high-end editor and colorist will instantly know how to push the footage around and probably have pre-defined workflows for working with it. Is it still the best image? Arguable. If you're shooting a decent budget indie flick, you're more likely to find Burano/Venice or V-Raptor? Why? Similar things to the above, but you're paying less than Alexa. If you're shooting lower budget than that, it's a complete crapshoot. It'll probably involve the letters F, X, and 6, but if it's a run and gun documentary, it might involve C300 and/or C70. From what I've seen, if you want to penetrate the bigger productions, you're better off not trying to compete with Alexa for A camera, but to aim to make secondary cameras that fit in places where it doesn't. Civil War, for example, famously used the Ronin 4D for a bunch of the handheld stuff because it's a quick/easy gimbal camera with decent autofocus. I hear they're making inroads on other productions too for similar reasons - and on other stuff because, like, the 4d flex is great for tight spaces and/or car-to-car shots. The most recent Mission Impossible and the upcoming one use Z Cam E2-F6 as crash cameras because they're cheap (for Hollywood), make a great image, and are reliable (no overheating, you can basically hammer nails with the body all day and then go record some video at night). That footage of Tom Cruise flying off a cliff on a motorcycle? Nearly all Z-Cam. Anyway, the point is that the image SOOC on high-end cameras should look good. Should it look THAT much better than a mirrorless camera in the hands of a proficient operator? Nope. Just a few weeks ago, Kye posted some stuff that he shot in Korea using, if I remember right, the original BM micro studio camera from like a hundred years ago. Looked great. You could project it in a cinema as part of a feature and the audience would be none the wiser to the camera used.

hey guise ive got my friends R6m2 for a couple weeks while hes out of town, just started trynna figure out clog3 exposure/best practices... your thoughts??? iso range/clean ISOs? best exposure techniques? etc?? help!! please and thank you!!!

That's interesting! Though at the top I did mention that I could opt for a Nikon Z6III which would allow me to use my current lens lineup and still have unlimited record time, AF + Tracking, and a few other bits I think as I have two really nice DSLR's already I am not sure I want to go for another one even if it has "V" in the name.... We'll see as I'm in no rush for this and I want to be sure that I have researched enough in order to be satisfied that I have made the right decision at the end....

Canon R50 is a cheap option. No Clog but HDR PQ is usable and you get Zebras for exposure control. I think it's got a 1 hour record limit and overheating is an issue - BUT if you've got some DIY spirit and are willing to add the thermal pads like this guy did you should be ok. I was actually gna pick one of these up for a trip but just figured I'd save some $$ and go with my stripped down R5C instead.

Its like 18-55mm kit lens situation. Everybody thinks its a junk lens, because they've seen photos taken by that kind of lens, and most of them are not impressive; so they thought its a lens problem. But in reality, the proportion of amateur photographers who were still trying to learn and explore, in total users of that lens, was very high (because it was a kit and shipped with their first DSLR), so what others were seeing wasn't the lens problem, it was users' skill problem. The small group of people who use $30,000 camera, are the same people who know how to extract as much as much as possible from their gear, know how to get perfect lighting, and how to color grade. So when you see a Alexa footage, there is big chance you're seeing a team of elites performance. You see a discipline among elite groups, and its that when they find a winning formula, like the combination of attributes we call "Arri look", they stick with it. Thats how they made us addicted to it; as we were seeing that formula over and over again in many different movies, to the point that we collectively call it "cinematic", like any other formula is either inferior or not legit.

If anyone is interested, there is a new LUT pack for the S5IIX: https://colorizer.net/index.php?op=s5iix Be prepared to watch my very tired face for another 1.5 mins.

If I was planning this the last thing I'd worry about was the actual camera. I'd be more concerned about battery types. The more gear which can take adapters to use a single battery type (and therefore a single charger) is important. Personally I try to adapt everything to Hawk Woods (Sony) NP-F970 albeit the BM6k uses the smaller capacity ones (same charger). (albeit the iPhone, drone and gimbals throw a spanner in the theory...) I suppose the same could be said for the recording medium.

I hate those videos that try and compare a $1000 camera to an Alexa with a stupid thumbnail that suggests you'll be surprised by the results. Inevitably, you learn that the operator wasn't as good at using cameras as he was at making thumbnails, or they intentionally cripple the Alexa by shooting in ways to highlight the $1000 camera. That said, I agree that probably 9 out of 10 times, nobody will realize what camera you shot your movie with as long as the story is good and engaging, but I do think that a couple of those people may feel like something was off without knowing why. An Alexa costs 50K+ for a reason. And although I believe craft and resources lend to the final look of the film, the sensor, the Arri color science and its thick files are a piece of the puzzle. A long time ago, I got hooked on my Canon 5Diii with ML Raw because it was the first time I had shot something where I looked at it and thought... man that almost looks like a real movie. So there are some "intangibles" involved because I am not that talented, nor that skilled. I have shot with a bunch of cameras since... GH5, GH6, Sigma FP, S5iiX, Canon R7, etc... and although the FP comes close, but even its 4K raw image is no match to my trusty, old 5D3 in gross old 1080p raw.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should and I understand why the big production houses do what they do, but if the camera type was undisclosed, no one other than the folks who worked on the production would ever know! 99.9999999999999% of the consumer population do not peak behind the curtain because they have zero interest what is behind the curtain. (It's a little old man in a green jacket playing an ARRI organ. Or could be an S5II/FX3/iPhone 17 organ).

I think I'm out. If Panny had brought out or at least announced an S1Hii late last year I probably would have sprung for it, but recently my willingness to drop 3-4K on a new body, and to schlep around 15lbs/$8k of FF gear has mostly dried up. Gonna sell off my S5iiX and L-mount lenses and fall back to ol' reliable m4/3. The DR and ISO performance on the G9ii look to be good enough for my needs, I'll be gaining 4K120, and I'll be able to move from a Pelican to a medium-sized backpack.

Back in the 1080p days, we had line skipping and it wasn't really 1080p in a lot of cases, so a full pixel readout was needed and that's why 4K was so attractive as it would overcome the binning, downsample to whatever resolution you wanted and looked great at 1080p in most cases. Now we have a similar situation with 8K vs 4K because a lot of 4K is pixel binned from a higher resolution sensor, and 8K is a way to get that coveted full pixel readout again. Funny how history repeats itself. Just like with fascism. Anyway where was I... The current debate around specs leaves out the creative side, and that's fine... as the two can be talked about independently and are relevant to the art of cinema. What bothers me about the current state of play though is social media influencers passing off the grading or camera matching work as somehow relevant to what the camera is doing, when actually RAW can be any look you like. I also see a problem with overkill. A lot of people obsess over resolution and then go out and shoot some boring advert for Instagram. There's a lack of critical thinking there, and maybe a bit of ego.

I reckon Sony / Leica pair-up does have a nice ring to it doesn't it? It's a Sony sensor they are using anyway so may as well cut out the middle man. It's most likely more cost effective to do this as well? Sony could build a very nice Leica Q, as they already have done similar cameras with the RX1 series. Sony would not cannibalise Leica's L-mount lenses with their own range either. It would be bad for Panasonic. But then Panasonic are more committed to green energy like batteries and digging up all the lithium for them in epic quantities. Truly a planet saving initiative.

The little girl looks like how I look at the camera shop windows. From basket-case to basket manufacturer, that suits Panasonic. I think with all the Tesla batteries, they'll be ok without TVs and cameras. Unless somehow the cameras justify their reduced presence by being relevant to other divisions... like AI imaging tech, and as a way to keep hold of their imaging engineers. Panasonic could still turn things around this year by... Higher-end S9, with built in EVF and new sensor, no crop 4K/60, and a nifty fast readout to make it more usable without a mechanical shutter for stills. S1H Mark II with stacked sensor, 8K, but as small as a Sony a1. S1 Mark II which sits above the S5 Mark II, but actually has a soul and looks like a proper camera or a Fuji. But we all know none of this is going to happen at this point 🙂 If it was, it would have already!

There are rumours that Leica are unhappy with Panasonic and might scope out a deal with Sony in future. Leica own the rights to L-mount so they can keep that and still go Sony, they don't have to take E-mount as well. Panasonic of all the camera companies aside from OM Shit and Ricohdear are most in danger of being really on the rocks. Like I say just one activist shareholder away from being less of a sentimental business. Less of an enthusiast enterprise, more of a topic of euthanasia.