jcs

When I first got into professional filmmaking I went on shoots with other professionals to learn how they worked. The shoots that were well planned, with detailed shot lists, storyboards, pre-rehearsals, table-reads, fully blocked and rehearsed, etc., always went much smoother and the crew were much happier, resulting in much better products than shoots that winged it or were otherwise not well prepared.
My day job which funds my film projects is software engineering (I currently only shoot for our own internal projects, currently working full time to develop Cosmic Flow). The same patterns apply to creating software: planning, testing ('rehearsing'), iterating (re-rewriting the script/shots after rehearsing/table-reading/testing) is critical for a smooth production. When working with teams, sometimes folks don't want to do the 'hard/not-very-fun' work of planning, testing, and iterating. My last few projects didn't have as much planning as I would like and the results weren't as good as we need (even live interviews can use good planning). Since I have to operate the camera, handle sound and lighting, and do the editing, I take steps to make my life easier for the final edit. Our current shoots in production are much better planned and the results are also much better.
There's an idea in software called the "lazy programmer". This actually means the opposite of what it says: the programmer spends a great deal of time and effort planning, designing, and iterating so that after the software is developed, their life will be much easier moving forward as it will be more reliable, easier to use, and easier to maintain. Thus the extra up front effort vastly reduces effort and headaches down the line (there is a balance- too much planning is counter-productive). The same pattern applies to any form of product creation, especially film.

With good DPs, ARRI and Red can cut together no problem. When someone goofs somewhere or weather changes rapidly (it happens ;)), ARRI tends to recover better in post. Their totally custom Alev III sensor is still peerless, as is their IP for digital film emulation (from their years of building film scanners). They may hold the lead until there's another breakthrough in sensor design (and probably film emulation too).
I like what Black Magic is doing and some of the footage looks really, really good. For personal or hobby hobby work, it makes sense. For paid work, I'd spend more for something bulletproof in production (they're still going through growing pains, just like Red did (they are now pretty reliable)). Sony is headed in the right direction for skintones and color- I would expect their next camera releases to be closer to Canon (F65 can already produce amazing color- up there with the best, even ARRI; not clear how much work in post that requires though (very few examples showing this kind of color quality (Lucy, Oblivion)).

I've shot with Red and edited the footage. I like the wavelet-based codec- never any block artifacts, ever (compression can only soften the overall image). Red is a technical camera, and loved by technologists and tweakers (hardware ;)). Endless software options and menus, highly configurable hardware and OLPF options etc. Red Dragon skintones can indeed look really nice, the framerate options are excellent, as are the resolution options. Editing the footage is also easy with a modern CPU (multicore) and GPU.
The reason ARRI (digital) is the top pro camera is it's not a technical camera! It has a very simple hardware and software interface, limited GUI options (relative to other cameras), and isn't focused on resolution (Alexa, Amira. ARRI 65 is high res (6560 x 3102)). I'd be wiling to wager a few drinks that the average person cannot see the difference between ARRI "4K" (3.x upscaled)  and Red "4K" (softish 5-6K scaled down) when displayed on the latest HDR 4K TV (showing normal as well as HDR content) or even better, on a 4K projector in a theater. Final real-world resolution is so close it's irrelevant. Where ARRI wins is usable dynamic range, highlight behavior (ARRI is still closest to film: the best), and color rendition, especially skin tones. In a studio environment with very controlled lighting, all the top cameras can do pretty well with a bit of post work. However ARRI's strength is that in the real world with imperfect lighting, skintones and overall color require much less work in post. Production costs are far more than camera rental (or purchase cost for a longer production or owner/operator), so it makes sense that ARRI is #1 in the top tiers of filmmaking. Lucy and Oblivion looked amazing- the F65 is still an interesting option at the very high end (Reds were used for some shots in Lucy (driving etc.)).
For smaller operations, the C300 II with very similar color and quality to ARRI (can use Alexa LUTs), far lower power requirements, and now most importantly, highly useful auto- and assisted-manual focus, makes a lot of sense when a focus puller isn't available or would not be possible (run & gun, gimbal w/o wireless FF, etc.). The 1DX II also does very well for single operator run & gun (also doesn't appear to alias as with the C300 II and fine fabrics). We considered the Alexa Mini, however the lack of autofocus pointed us to the two Canons. Red was not considered due to an overly complex design (the opposite of ARRI and Canon, more like Sony). We just want the simplest camera possible, reliably capturing accurate color and highlights with modest file sizes and a fast post workflow.

I've shot with Red and edited the footage. I like the wavelet-based codec- never any block artifacts, ever (compression can only soften the overall image). Red is a technical camera, and loved by technologists and tweakers (hardware ;)). Endless software options and menus, highly configurable hardware and OLPF options etc. Red Dragon skintones can indeed look really nice, the framerate options are excellent, as are the resolution options. Editing the footage is also easy with a modern CPU (multicore) and GPU.
The reason ARRI (digital) is the top pro camera is it's not a technical camera! It has a very simple hardware and software interface, limited GUI options (relative to other cameras), and isn't focused on resolution (Alexa, Amira. ARRI 65 is high res (6560 x 3102)). I'd be wiling to wager a few drinks that the average person cannot see the difference between ARRI "4K" (3.x upscaled)  and Red "4K" (softish 5-6K scaled down) when displayed on the latest HDR 4K TV (showing normal as well as HDR content) or even better, on a 4K projector in a theater. Final real-world resolution is so close it's irrelevant. Where ARRI wins is usable dynamic range, highlight behavior (ARRI is still closest to film: the best), and color rendition, especially skin tones. In a studio environment with very controlled lighting, all the top cameras can do pretty well with a bit of post work. However ARRI's strength is that in the real world with imperfect lighting, skintones and overall color require much less work in post. Production costs are far more than camera rental (or purchase cost for a longer production or owner/operator), so it makes sense that ARRI is #1 in the top tiers of filmmaking. Lucy and Oblivion looked amazing- the F65 is still an interesting option at the very high end (Reds were used for some shots in Lucy (driving etc.)).
For smaller operations, the C300 II with very similar color and quality to ARRI (can use Alexa LUTs), far lower power requirements, and now most importantly, highly useful auto- and assisted-manual focus, makes a lot of sense when a focus puller isn't available or would not be possible (run & gun, gimbal w/o wireless FF, etc.). The 1DX II also does very well for single operator run & gun (also doesn't appear to alias as with the C300 II and fine fabrics). We considered the Alexa Mini, however the lack of autofocus pointed us to the two Canons. Red was not considered due to an overly complex design (the opposite of ARRI and Canon, more like Sony). We just want the simplest camera possible, reliably capturing accurate color and highlights with modest file sizes and a fast post workflow.

I've shot with Red and edited the footage. I like the wavelet-based codec- never any block artifacts, ever (compression can only soften the overall image). Red is a technical camera, and loved by technologists and tweakers (hardware ;)). Endless software options and menus, highly configurable hardware and OLPF options etc. Red Dragon skintones can indeed look really nice, the framerate options are excellent, as are the resolution options. Editing the footage is also easy with a modern CPU (multicore) and GPU.
The reason ARRI (digital) is the top pro camera is it's not a technical camera! It has a very simple hardware and software interface, limited GUI options (relative to other cameras), and isn't focused on resolution (Alexa, Amira. ARRI 65 is high res (6560 x 3102)). I'd be wiling to wager a few drinks that the average person cannot see the difference between ARRI "4K" (3.x upscaled)  and Red "4K" (softish 5-6K scaled down) when displayed on the latest HDR 4K TV (showing normal as well as HDR content) or even better, on a 4K projector in a theater. Final real-world resolution is so close it's irrelevant. Where ARRI wins is usable dynamic range, highlight behavior (ARRI is still closest to film: the best), and color rendition, especially skin tones. In a studio environment with very controlled lighting, all the top cameras can do pretty well with a bit of post work. However ARRI's strength is that in the real world with imperfect lighting, skintones and overall color require much less work in post. Production costs are far more than camera rental (or purchase cost for a longer production or owner/operator), so it makes sense that ARRI is #1 in the top tiers of filmmaking. Lucy and Oblivion looked amazing- the F65 is still an interesting option at the very high end (Reds were used for some shots in Lucy (driving etc.)).
For smaller operations, the C300 II with very similar color and quality to ARRI (can use Alexa LUTs), far lower power requirements, and now most importantly, highly useful auto- and assisted-manual focus, makes a lot of sense when a focus puller isn't available or would not be possible (run & gun, gimbal w/o wireless FF, etc.). The 1DX II also does very well for single operator run & gun (also doesn't appear to alias as with the C300 II and fine fabrics). We considered the Alexa Mini, however the lack of autofocus pointed us to the two Canons. Red was not considered due to an overly complex design (the opposite of ARRI and Canon, more like Sony). We just want the simplest camera possible, reliably capturing accurate color and highlights with modest file sizes and a fast post workflow.

https://shotonwhat.com/cameras/arri-alexa-series-cameras 489 titles
https://shotonwhat.com/cameras/arri-amira-series-cameras 3 Titles
https://shotonwhat.com/cameras/red-digital-cinema-cameras 416 titles
https://shotonwhat.com/cameras/arri-arriflex-series-cameras 618 titles (film)

Kool-Aid glass...drank.  Complete. 

Kipon has done it, for now only in Leica and Sony mounts:
http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/kipon-announces-worlds-first-medium-format-hasselblad-v-sony-e-mount-focal-length-reducer-adapter/
Looking forward to seeing samples.

For low budget indie, get something with high quality focus tracking and manual focus assist such as the C100 Mark II (we use the C300 II and 1DX II). While the A7S II is great for low light, and we can make skintones look decent, Canon color is still much better for skintones and requires less time in post, which is very valuable. Getting your shots in focus, especially moving shots will save time and money. If you have an experienced focus puller available, this is less of an issue, however your camera rig will be much more complex, and some shots such as gimbal/steadycam benefit greatly from solid autofocus. The C100 II is razor sharp 1080p- the soft wide comment must have been the lens or focus. The files are also very small and easy to edit. Sony is getting better with skintones with each new camera release, and their autofocus is improving as well. I would expect their next release to be very competitive. Until then, the C100 II is a great sweet spot camera for bang-for-buck, reliability, autofocus, low light, and skintones.

For low budget indie, get something with high quality focus tracking and manual focus assist such as the C100 Mark II (we use the C300 II and 1DX II). While the A7S II is great for low light, and we can make skintones look decent, Canon color is still much better for skintones and requires less time in post, which is very valuable. Getting your shots in focus, especially moving shots will save time and money. If you have an experienced focus puller available, this is less of an issue, however your camera rig will be much more complex, and some shots such as gimbal/steadycam benefit greatly from solid autofocus. The C100 II is razor sharp 1080p- the soft wide comment must have been the lens or focus. The files are also very small and easy to edit. Sony is getting better with skintones with each new camera release, and their autofocus is improving as well. I would expect their next release to be very competitive. Until then, the C100 II is a great sweet spot camera for bang-for-buck, reliability, autofocus, low light, and skintones.

Yes. This. x100

Skin tones are great. I would move them out from the wall to create some depth, possibly hide the LAVs or use two booms if that's not possible. 

Wasn't this the same spiel Jones said to people to get them to move to Jonestown?
 
I kid.  Amazing skin tones / gorgeous.

I did a couple of experiments to see how good is the DPAF in the 1Dx II.
Youth girl running in front of me while running with the Ronin M, Face tracking, Canon 50 1.2 at 1.2 (shutter speed was 1/3200 to rule out any motion blur while evaluating frame by frame focus). Screen grab:

Youth girl playing tennis from a tripod using Face tracking AF with a Canon 85mm 1.8 at 1.8 (shutter speed was 1/4000 to rule out any motion blur while evaluating frame by frame focus). Screen grab:

If the face is visible the AF really sticks to it. In both video the face was in focus for during the whole video length. Naturally face tracking does not work well or not at all for lateral shoots.
I will soon test it with an adult athlete but so far I’m quite impressed.
 

@cantsin as a real-time game developer and video/image developer, if I can decode HD video, perform complex GPU effects and multilayer compositing, along with multiple DSP audio effects, and save the result to HD H.264, all in realtime, any desktop app can easily do all those things and more, especially with a GTX 980ti with 6GB of RAM. How do I know? Because in the above example, I can do all those things on an iPhone!
Pretty much everything can be done on the GPU now- 10 or more layers of 4K are easily possible. Note that as nodes are added in Resolve, it doesn't slow down much, as node effects run on GPUs. The bottleneck appears to be video caching and IO, along with audio sync and timing issues (why does everyone have trouble with this? (FCPX does pretty well here)).
In summary, there's no technical limitation to performance for any of these desktop apps. The limitations are from antiquated software design which cannot fully utilize the amazing CPU and GPU power available today. These companies should hire game developers to rewrite their graphics engines.
Pretty surprising that FCPX beats PP CC and Resolve, which both use GPUs, by a long way for basic real-time editing.

Exactly..... it doesn't matter if it is better than X brand's sensor or worse than Y brand's sensor.
It is just better than Canon's other sensors by a measurable amount. Which is good news.

Other manufacturers have had higher DR than Canon for many years already, but it seems like Canon is catching up. This seems like good news for anyone using Canon cameras - as soon as they add this to other cameras down the line.
The sensor for 1DX II has around 2/3-1 EV steps better DR at each ISO, compared to 5dmk3. Click Measurements and Dynamic Range:
http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Compare/Side-by-side/Canon--EOS-1D-X-Mark-II-versus-Canon-EOS-5D-Mark-III___1071_795

Those are indeed visible differences for as 'ideal' a test as is physically possible since a very high quality zoom lens was used on the same camera (cropping in post after changing settings to simulate an APS-C crop). Since the differences are very subtle, the aesthetic quality boost may be lost on the general public, in the same way as fine food and alcohol, can be etc. Were the Hateful 8 and The Revenant better movies being shot on the ARRI 65? Did they make more money because of the large format camera used? (smaller format cameras were also used). The answers to both questions is probably not significantly. With effectively unlimited budgets, why not shoot on the 'best'? The relative cost of the larger format camera is insignificant to the film's budget. However using the pinnacle-best gear makes the directors and DPs happy, and that counts for something.
Using the DOF simulator, I noticed the circle of confusion and other parameters weren't exactly the same between formats. While FOV and DOF will be nearly identical, subtle things as noted such as blur transition region stretching can be analyzed by tracing individual light rays- photons. My crop test was not perfect, however there is a way to study this without worrying about issues of optics or lenses: computer simulation via ray tracing. This could be used to create graphs showing the increase in blur transition regions based on the sensor size. If it's a real effect, the results could be presented to optical designers such as Caldwell to show a possible market for a MF to FF focal reducer. If not by Caldwell, perhaps someone else in HK or CN.
Someone with the desire and free time could explore ray tracing to create renders showing any advantages to larger sensor sizes using Blender (free): https://www.blender.org/features/cycles/ . Since this is a controversial subject, showing these kinds of results could help visually explain effects previously difficult to put into words. I need to get back to working on improving content and storytelling- more important than tech!
 
 

How is that helpful? Copying other's work without fundamentally understanding why something looks good isn't being an artist. Understanding why something looks good from a technical standpoint doesn't eliminate aesthetic sensibility. Rather it helps with original creative works since it's not necessary to mindlessly copy-paste other people's ideas into a new work. Nothing wrong with being inspired by other works, only that original works are better when it's understood why inspirational material is good, and those concepts can be applied in more general and creative ways. Not taking the time to understand the tech behind the art is lazy, and will fundamentally limit creative works.
All art is technical. The greatest artists are also master technicians: Michelangelo, DaVinci, etc. Who was perhaps the biggest camera nerd ever? Stanley Kubrick.
Understanding why something is aesthetically pleasing is technical. If a particular camera and lens combo has a pleasing aesthetic, we understand why using technology.

I agree, I bet there are more professionals using digital medium format for largely marketing/appearances reasons than for real, noticeable, concrete differences in image results.
Because at the high end of a being a photographer, marketing your brand matters even more than quality of result. As by that point everyone is already very good!
Good job at breaking down the pro MF arguments one by one. 
And MF sure is not winning on a cost basis! (no matter how cheap a Pentax digital MF gets!)

If no one is willing to do some work and actually do a test comparing MF to FF in the real world with equivalent settings, then what's the point of debating without any comparative evidence? I'm a cognitive scientist, open-minded and willing to learn new things. That said, a valid scientific test, which is easy to do is all that's needed to make a useful point regarding MF vs. FF.
If the only difference is MF lens design, that's cool, however this debate was MF vs. FF cameras (and again, Caldwell says no advantage for MF lenses anymore; no point in a MF => FF SpeedBooster).
If an MF camera system (body + lens) is truly better than FF, I'd invest in MF. So far there's no comparative evidence showing this to be true (the only scientifically valid way to determine if there's a difference).

This debate is visual- where's the visual proof: correctly set up MF and FF systems for equivalence? I posted a link to the 5DSR compared to the Phase One. The difference is minor, and not enough for a business to invest in MF systems. To learn and help others one must do some work- shoot a correctly set up MF vs. FF test. Shooting with a zoom- that's perfectly valid, the debate is sensor size, not lenses, though now the consensus is it's not sensor size anymore but MF lenses themselves. So a SpeedBooster for FF would make sense if that were true, and thus Brian Caldwell's comment that it's not worth it because the MF lenses aren't better than the top FF lenses. So if true the debate would shift to MF provides a better value due to lower cost. Is that really true?

Tim and Eric go home

Face-aware in PS is cool. Portrait Pro is amazingly useful (can even fix makeup in post): http://www.portraitprofessional.com/
Adobe has never really put much emphasis on performance or stability: feature bloat wins the day in the boardroom. This means that the folks in business and product development have advised engineering to bloat-it-up vs. improve stability and performance. If this is a wrong assumption, then epic fail on the bug fixes! PP CC is now so slow and buggy, it has 'jumped the shark' and is not really usable for 4K material (C300 II, A7S II, and 1DX II footage). On the exact same hardware, FCPX is mostly smooth as butter, and very rarely crashes. So even though the NVidia drivers are buggy too, FCPX seems to be doing a better job working around them (as I have done back when I wrote a lot of Windows audio/video software).
Photoshop, Illustrator, and Audition (and AE for simple effects else way too slow) are useful tools. Acrobat DC doesn't crash, however it's unbelievably slow (hint: turn off font smoothing while editing PDFs). Premiere gets useful new features along with incredibly time-wasteful bugs, and either doesn't get faster or gets slower. At first I thought maybe 2015.3 was slightly faster, however after using it on a medium complexity project, it's much slower and far buggier. I know there's also problems with NVidia GPU drivers, however I haven't changed them, so the extra bugs and slowdowns are Adobe's.
These issues have come and gone, for many years. I thought changing back to a GTX770 would help as perhaps my 980ti has hardware issues, however that doesn't appear to be the case: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/wierd-issues-with-cmp-gtx-980-ti-and-premiere.1966577/. Note that in Windows 10 I haven't gotten any BSODs, however it's slower than OSX (CUDA. OSX lately is faster with OpenCL). Also note that Resolve hasn't done anything weird with GPU accelerated effects or crashed (have only done basic C300 II, 1DX II, and A7S II tests).
PP CC in 2014- same issues- Windows/Mac different GPUs, doesn't matter, clearly PP CC bugs: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1515611
FCPX will need some plugins to get closer to PP CC basic features; I think it's time to bail on PP CC.
EDIT: in order to finish a PP CC project in progress, I installed an older BETA version of the NVidia drivers (first one for 10.11.5 here): http://www.macvidcards.com/drivers.html . The theory is the Adobe developers write their code based on drivers available when they started the bug fixes. They tend to 'lock' code based on said drivers, so that by the time the product finishes QA and is released, it may actually work better on the now older (even BETA) drivers. Surprisingly and thankfully, the older BETA drivers are at least usable with PP CC 2015.3 (still buggy, but can make progress on project). So, to be fair to Adobe, while the glitches and bugs are annoying and hurt creativity, they can usually be worked around and aren't show stoppers. The show-stopping performance bugs are clearly related to the NVidia drivers (Windows and OSX).

YouTube uses ffmpeg- this looks like an ffmpeg bug for videos > 1080p. Something related to bt601 / bt709 / rec2020 etc. I've also noticed this issue- too much saturation and red. The workaround has been to pull saturation and red, re-render, upload and check the results, repeating until it's OK. It might be possible to use ffmpeg locally to rewrap without transcoding and changing the color info (colormatrix etc.). See the options here: http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/16840/ffmpeg-explicitly-tag-h-264-as-bt-601-rather-than-leaving-unspecified. Flags to rewrap audio and video without transcoding: -c:a copy -c:v copy.