DPC

Probably for the camera, certainly for the person. But my experience is that certain things only go wrong on a job ;-).

And another :

Absolutely! But there is something worse : watching your Sony A7R II overheat and stop working as well. Or working for the first time with a sound guy who is rude to the client you have been cultivating for the past year because he thinks they're badly organised... @HelsinkiZim - Don't worry, your frustrations are normal, this is very hard to do alone.

That looks absolutely great! Me too. And I'm convinced that the only lasting skills you can acquire - composition, narration, editing - can be developed without needing expensive kit. I'm particularly interested at the moment in how smartphones are being used by TV stations for news and documentary work. Not just "citizen" images of breaking events but fully structured pieces. I forgot to put this in my quick list, by the way : Oh, and there's a lot to be learned from looking at the videos on Instagram. Like just how much of a story you can tell in 15 seconds or so...

How about a thread of resources pointing to "frugal" films. Finished pieces made with smartphones, consumer camcorders, you get the picture. Not tests. Films. Because that what excites me most at the moment. Here's a few pointers from me. You know how the internet works, I don't have to baby you with links ;-) Google : Ruslan Pelykh Leica, Boat Magazine iPhone, BFM TV Paris iPhone, Filmic Pro's video portfolio (Dark Waves especially), Tangerine (but everybody must have seen that by now), #mojo. My intuition says it's time to look at whats getting finished, broadcast, shared, simply but beautifully and take inspiration from that. Thoughts? Because 72 pages on how to get the best out of the GX80 / 85 just isn't right ;-)

71 pages. Can anyone point to anything looking like a finished film made with the GX80 / 85? I don't remember seeing anything.

Nice review Andrew!

I suggest you start shooting your subject and then decide what extra lenses you need (I bet they will be wide angles - you will need at least some establishing shots). For interiors / architecture 25mm or 50mm lenses etc are only really going to be good for details. And I wouldn't get too hung up on moving from f 1.8 to f 1.4. that's only 2/3 of a stop difference and you'll only be able to take advantage of that if you don't need depth of field. If I had just one lens for MFT it would be the Tokina 11-16 + a Metabones Speedbooster.

Test everything beforehand. Fully exposed high ISOs are not as much of a problem as underexposed lower ones.

Not sure what a "unaltered raw photo" means. As a general rule, the less data your image contains, the nearer you want to be to your final result in camera.

Looking for a (cheap but good) gimbal for a Yi 4K and a smartphone, I'm going round in circles : I want to be able to see the rear screen of the Yi 4K when I'm shooting. Any suggestions? Thanks !

I've sold my EM5 MK II now but there was, in fact, a way to change settings while filming without using the touchscreen. Really.

Sorry, I won't have time to do that. I didn't do systematic before / after recording for all the shots. You should be able to download the original ProRes file from Vimeo to play with.

I was surprised how good a job it did of optimising dynamic range, keeping detail in the highlights and shadows whilst maintaining decent contrast. The biggest problem I have with the "turn everything down" method is that it's really hard to restore decent mid-tone contrast in post (I find). The GX80 is a contrasty camera, even "dialled down". iDynamic seems to mitigate this.

Back testing profiles, and still not happy with my best effort so far which was Natural 0, -5, -3, -3, Highlights -3, Shadows +3 and still too contrasty for my taste, I tried setting iDynamic to Standard rather than Off and was very surprised with the improvement. I'm sharing this because conventional wisdom is to leave this kind of thing off and someone else might like to try it. This is NOT interesting video. Just walking around the block, pointing at "difficult" lighting situations...

Andrew, thank you for explaining why we don't see any commercial work from you here. You don't need to justify your choices and this doesn't make your opinions any less interesting. I'm still a little confused as why anyone who doesn't have to would spend quite so much money on cameras, though. Outside of what I might need for jobs, what excites me most at the moment is what can be done using very simple equipment... My ambition is to own as little as possible. As far as your test goes, it looks to me as if the portraits were made in direct, late in the day, autumn sunlight. In my experience, this kind of light is treacherous : it's attractive to the eye but I've never managed to use it for a flattering picture of a human being. At the least, you would really need to put a big silk between the subject and the light source. Even then, colour correction is hard because the light is so very orange. Whatever camera is used, it would be difficult to make an attractive "normal" image in this situation. When I test cameras, my first concern, before creating any "look" is whether I can get an image that reproduces the scene as I (or my client) have seen it. This is my starting point. I pay careful attention to not losing information in the shadows and highlights because clipping of either does not correspond to normal vision. Being able to film in lower light than I can actually see in doesn't interest me much in most cases ; below a certain level of illumination we just have to accept that we're in the dark. Often I find myself looking from the camera to the scene, asking myself "Does it really look like that?". Similarly, I want a camera that lets me get my picture sharp before I worry about "filmic" shallow depth of field. Once I establish a "normal", baseline image, then I can think about tweaking it towards a particular effect. This is why the images you posted to accompany your article made me react so strongly ; because they weren't the best to show the relative capabilities of the cameras concerned. As an example, wedding videos are generally not very interesting, but they can be informative in the sense that we have critical skin tones, important blacks and whites, low light, some action. You can learn a lot about how a camera behaves from watching them. Holiday movies, less so. Finally, with a budget of 6000 €, I would think (more than) twice about buying just one camera (for my purposes). However good, one camera will only give you one point of view. I would rather have several cheaper cameras with, perhaps, a slightly less good image and have more angles to edit from that one single point of view. My Sonys are useful here because it's easy to match cheaper and more expensive models. As to the projected life of the Canon, I suspect that within the next couple of years we're going to see more and more 4K delivery. This means that the possibility of reframing in post (my main use for 4K) will be reduced. Higher resolution cameras will be introduced and lower prices to compensate for this, limiting somewhat the resale value of 4K cameras. That's just my prediction. But what's really got me thinking this week, far beyond high-end camera tests and choices, was being on a job with Canon and Sony shooters and also a young reporter from a French TV station that has equipped its journalists with iPhones . His broadcast piece was maybe not "filmic" but he could work with a speed and discretion that no one else could match, Canon or Sony...

Richard Bugg, I asked because I'm interested to know who's opinions I'm reading. It's getting a bit weird having so many of them and so little work to show. Apparently Andrew owns the camera and says "What a shame the 1D X Mark II is a pros-only affair." That made me ask. It can't be very hard to answer. It is relevant in that professionals have a skill set that clients are willing to pay for and the most to lose if their judgement turns out to be wrong.

On my very carefully calibrated monitor the embedded holiday video looks bad. I don't think I need to upgrade.

Andrew, do you film professionally? It's just that you speak authoritatively but I don't think I've seen anything other than what you post here. To me the skin tones (especially on the train trip) look pretty awful. No client I have would ever approve that. The blacks are crushed to death and faces are red and over-saturated.

7 years ago. Lumix LX3 and a Zoom H2 recorder. I have since learned to (1) cut faster and (2) make proper subtitles...

Resolve Lite perhaps? Is your 13" MBP Retina really too heavy?Why would the lack of a retina screen on the MBA be a deal breaker? Just curious...

The problem is that we are getting lots of superficial reviews from pretty untalented image makers working far too fast with equipment they don't master in non-professional situations, all, apparently, desperately trying to get views.

Talking of the LX5 / LX7, this is shot with the Leica D-Lux 6 which is a rebranded LX7. Food for thought...

Wow... A low hanging fruit... Time to get some cards printed...

I've already got an A7R II and the lenses. That's why I'm looking at Olympus ;-) To be able to focus in low light, for example.