Emanuel

This is turning into quite an interesting rabbit hole, good call starting this thread : ) Well, at least we have one thing in common this time ; ) the GX85 is in my arsenal too! ... That also makes the format issue particularly relevant. Since the GX85 records video in 16:9 rather than genuine 4:3 open gate, a 1.55x adapter would produce a rather extreme 2.75:1 image. The more practical 2.07:1 combination would require an open-gate body such as the GH7. A potentially more practical option might also be one of the smartphone anamorphics with a standard 37mm rear mount, such as the Beastgrip 1.33x or 1.55x MK2. These could be attached to lenses such as the Panasonic 14mm or TTArtisan 17mm with ordinary step rings, making mounting and alignment considerably simpler than with the 17mm-threaded Neewer.

Nobody said they are equally important. Not even close : ) What has emerged from several contributions here, including yours, is simply that their practical value depends on the shot, purpose and workflow. Extra DR matters in both controlled and uncontrolled high-contrast scenes, perhaps even more so in the latter. Fair enough. In other cases, reach, reframing, stabilisation, VFX or high-resolution frame grabs may matter too. Those are real-world uses as well. So saying that none of this relates to anything anyone here actually does is rather sweeping, especially when a third member had just contributed a balanced view, explaining several practical uses for higher-resolution capture while also acknowledging its limits. Nor is this only about one camera. More will come, including the Pocket 4 Pro with those extra stops, and naturally we will discuss where such advances matter and where their limits begin. This is a camera forum : ) It is the right place for disagreement about cameras, specs, footage and real-world use. Not for theatrics, personal point-scoring, showing off or ego contests. “More useful for one workflow” is not the same as “practically irrelevant to everyone else”. Either way, life goes on, and so does this thread. Your contribution has been useful, as have those of others. We do not need to agree. You are one of my fav contributors here, and clearly one of many people’s favourites too. That gives your words more weight, but also more responsibility. Being a valuable contributor does not give any of us the right to be unpleasant to others. And that last reply was unpleasant. And unbalanced. Prima donna behaviour is no more attractive on a forum than on a professional set. In my work, I simply cross prima donnas off the list. I have neither the time nor the patience for them. That is worth remembering for all of us. You, me, everyone. And there is no drama here. This is only a disagreement about cameras. You were the one who announced you were “done”, as though an ordinary disagreement had become rather more serious than it really is. Perhaps you are simply in a bad mood today. It happens to all of us. But other people should not have to pick up the bill for it : ) No hard feelings anyway :- )

Mike Vogel’s riding high with this new series : ) Good to see him doing so well — a true pioneer and one of the indie AI filmmakers producing some of the most interesting work across YouTube and related digital platforms today. It also proves that solid project development remains fundamental to filmmaking, whether old-school or cutting-edge: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pixverse_a-luxury-mars-resort-no-return-shuttle-activity-7469342407965241344-G5Of

That is precisely the point about limits, already laid out rather extensively in my post on the previous page... although I may have to start charging royalties if we keep returning to it ; ) No way : ) This discussion is precisely about how measurable advantages translate, or sometimes fail to translate, into real-world use. Additional dynamic range matters when the contrast of an actual scene demands it. Additional resolution matters when a workflow requires cropping, reframing, stabilisation, VFX work, digital reach or high-resolution frame grabs. None of those are imaginary specification-sheet exercises. They are perfectly ordinary practical uses. You may not need any of them in your own work, which is perfectly fair. But that is quite different from saying that 8K offers no valid practical advantage over 4K at all. Reality is precisely where those limits are established ;- )

Fair enough, and I think “it really comes down to your perspective” is already much closer to what I have been saying from the beginning : ) I would only question “completely irrelevant”, 'cause and when you immediately acknowledge the principal practical justification for an 8K sensor: Cropping twice into a 4K image ; ) That is precisely where the additional detail becomes visible in the comparisons posted above, particularly with the tele shots and whenever the image is cropped and magnified. 8K is also useful for extracting high-resolution frame grabs : P So yes, I concur that the Pocket’s additional latitude may be much more valuable in a wide, uncontrolled, high-contrast exterior scene. The Pocket 4 Pro remains high on my wish list, of course : ) But in a shot requiring additional reach, reframing or magnification or yet, genuine DSMC use ; ) the Luna’s resolution may be the advantage that actually matters too : ) Which brings us back to perspective, purpose and the particular shot, rather than to any single universal verdict on the two cameras. Let alone the POV Head Tracker, detachable screen, internal 32-bit float stereo audio (all game-changers) and the rest of the Luna’s modular shooting concept ; ) E. :- )

No, @kye I do not think they are lying. Where exactly did I write such a thing?! : ) The reference to Andrew’s forum rules was precisely what I called it: a slightly amusing, good-natured bit of irony meant entirely in a friendly spirit! Nothing more than that : ) BTW, one small correction: the result is 16 stops at SNR=2 and 17.2 at SNR=1, not the other way around. The Luna’s supposed 13-stop result is not really a valid 13-stop measurement either. CineD explicitly says that the aggressive NR prevented IMATEST from distinguishing the different patches correctly, thereby invalidating the result. They will not even include those figures in their database. So yes, their test demonstrates very clearly that the current I-Log implementation is seriously problematic. No disagreement there. But charts and real-world footage are two very different things. A chart isolates one particular variable under one very particular set of conditions. It does not shoot a street, a face, movement, changing available light, colour, texture, skin, foliage, fine detail or an actual scene. This is precisely why the comparative footage posted above matters. Objective measurements are useful, of course. But only for as long as they help us evaluate an image rather than begin evaluating it on our behalf. There are limits to everything, including measurable advantages and human perception. Someone worth $1.6 billion is sixteen times richer than someone worth $100 million. A huge objective difference, no doubt. Yet if both go out to buy a pizza, chances are they will end up buying exactly the same pizza ; ) The extra wealth only begins to matter when what they want to do actually requires it. What about someone worth $160 million vs $10 million...? The same : P And so on ; ) Likewise, an 8K image contains roughly sixteen times as many pixels as a 2K image. Another enormous and objectively measurable difference. Yet once both are projected onto a cinema screen and viewed from a normal seating distance, many people may struggle to tell them apart at all. The additional resolution only becomes meaningful when the screen size, viewing distance and image content actually allow us to see it. And @kye this is especially worth remembering in your case! LOL ; ) Considering how often you have quite rightly defended 1080p as being more than sufficient in the real world : ) Which is precisely why you know that a measurable advantage does not automatically become a meaningful real-world one. Probably better than most camera lovers : ) More is more. It is not automatically more relevant forever. Four additional stops can obviously be extremely valuable when a particular scene actually requires them. I have never denied that (take a look up there! ; ) But a four-stop advantage on a latitude chart does not mean that the resulting image will look four stops better, or even necessarily better at all, in every real-world shot. And this particular latitude comparison was not even entirely like-for-like. The Luna was tested in 8K25 I-Log at around 120 Mbps, while the Pocket’s headline result came from 4K25 D-Log2. CineD did see the same aggressive NR in the Luna’s 4K wide modes, correct, but they did not repeat the complete latitude test in 4K. Nor did they test the standard profiles, which they themselves suggest may currently be the better choice. It is also worth remembering that D-Log2 is only available on the Pocket’s 20mm wide camera. The 60mm module falls back to regular D-Log, where CineD measured 11.6 stops at SNR=2 and 8 stops of exposure latitude. By comparison, the Luna’s tele camera in its valid 8K25 I-Log mode measured 9.7 stops at SNR=2 and 5 stops of exposure latitude. So the gap there is about two stops in measured dynamic range and three stops in latitude. Still a clear win for DJI, certainly, but rather less apocalyptic than the headline comparison between the two wide cameras ; ) The digitally extended 120mm view naturally derives from that same 60mm camera too, so the Pocket’s spectacular D-Log2 figures cannot be extrapolated across its complete 20mm to 120mm shooting range. So the honest conclusion is still that DJI’s 20mm D-Log2 implementation completely and utterly defeats Luna’s current I-Log implementation in this particular lab test. That is not the same as saying that one complete camera system completely and utterly defeats the other. Sometimes all the technical blah blah blah is extremely useful. Other times it is worth close to zero and can even contaminate the evaluation, especially once people have already been told which image is supposed to win before they look at the actual footage. At that point, the chart is no longer informing the eye. It is replacing it ; ) Take another look at the real-world comparisons above. The difference is certainly not “complete and utter” there. In fact, the Luna’s 8K image often appears to resolve visibly more fine detail than the Pocket’s 4K, particularly in the comparisons of tele shots or whenever the image is cropped and magnified. That may not be attributable to pixel count alone, since lens performance, sharpening, noise reduction and the complete processing pipeline all play their part. Even so, whatever the precise combination behind it, the visible result is there, and in some of those shots the result may even go the other way, depending on what each of us values in an image. In these comparisons, the Luna’s additional resolution is not merely a spec on paper. So I think we are not very far apart on the measurements themselves. We simply disagree about the amount of territory those measurements allow “completely and utterly” to occupy ; ) E. :- )

Unfortunately, not everyone cares. - EAG :- )

Have you actually shot with it? Sharpening, noise reduction and the other image-processing settings can obviously be set to the minimum ;- )

I think “completely and utterly” may be doing a little too much work there @kye : P There is also a slightly amusing irony in relying on CineD here, given that Andrew’s forum rules have historically discouraged linking to the site whenever possible, although, of course, he also made clear that such links would not be censored. That aside, the DJI result is undeniably impressive. The 20mm LOFIC camera in D-Log2 seems to be in a different league when it comes to measured dynamic range and exposure latitude. I’m just not sure that this particular test supports such a definitive verdict on the two complete camera systems. Those spectacular figures apply specifically to the 20mm camera in D-Log2. The 60mm camera does not offer D-Log2 and produces considerably more conventional results. On the Luna side, the CineD test seems mainly to reveal that its current I-Log processing is seriously problematic, particularly because of the aggressive internal noise reduction. They did not test the standard profiles, which they themselves suggest may currently be the better option. So, to me, the fair conclusion is that DJI’s best sensor and profile comprehensively outperform Luna’s present I-Log implementation in these specific laboratory tests. That is still a major win for DJI. Just not necessarily a complete and utter defeat of the Luna in every respect. In these comparative tests [A | B] though ; ) the result is rather less one-sided : ) Now compare the Luna’s 8K with the Pocket’s 4K [1 + 2 already posted up there or directly here] and judge for yourself ; ) Lab tests are extremely useful because they isolate specific variables and give us repeatable measurements, but they are not the same thing as real-world shooting. They cannot fully account for colour, detail rendering, motion, sharpening, texture, highlight roll-off, subject separation or simply which image looks more convincing in an actual scene. As these comparisons and the footage itself demonstrate, a camera that appears decisively superior on a chart does not necessarily produce the preferable image once we step outside the lab bubble and look at the actual footage. LU I | LU II | LU III | 4P I | 4P II | 4P III Part of it has already been posted, among others, for instance right there. Both are irresistible to me. Whichever one comes out ahead in any particular test, I think both cameras are genuinely worthy of the OOAK label. The Pocket 4P is unique in what it achieves with its 20mm LOFIC sensor and D-Log2 in such a small body, while the Luna Ultra is equally singular in its modular design, detachable remote screen, internal 32-bit float stereo audio and overall shooting concept, particularly with its innovative POV Head Tracker. They are not merely two versions of the same product competing on a laboratory chart; each offers something that currently exists nowhere else.

No worries : ) On a slightly different note, this new generation of pocket cameras, such as the Insta360 Luna Ultra and DJI Pocket 4 Pro, may well point in another direction altogether... They offer impeccable stabilisation ; ) Granted, it is not exactly the handheld look you seem to favour, but that is precisely the kind of character Sony’s less effective IBIS can give you, especially when paired with a lens without optical stabilisation ; )) And very strong low-light performance too: LU1 | LU2 | LU3 | LU4 on a film set | LU5 + LU6 shot in exactly that kind of venue by someone who, like you, says he had never been particularly keen on using pocket or action cameras. Well, until this one came along... & 4P1 | 4P2 | 4P3 There is far less need to worry about professional lighting rigs today. To put it very simply, both have changed the whole game IMHO : )) especially at such an affordable price range nowadays : X What a time to be alive and kickin'! :- )

Actually, I was making exactly the opposite point from the one you made it sound as though I was making : D when I mentioned Lumix alongside the Oly case ; ) The other point is simply that one lens isn’t necessarily the same as another ; )) While much also depends on the way the operator handles the camera, a lens with optical stabilisation can make a night-and-day difference... speaking as someone who uses glass with and without it every day on the FX series :- )

The lens can also play a relevant role in order to reach the result you intend or need : ) even though, Oly or Panasonic may overcome it indeed :- )

Luna Ultra firmware update... v1.0.283: I-Log monitoring, zoom and general operation have improved a lot, while the POV Head Tracker (one of my favs, as you already know ; ) now also works with the camera mounted upside down, with better control accuracy and standby power consumption on the detachable display has also been reduced : )

@newfoundmass@MrSMWFX30's stabilization is not necessarily bad at all... it requires a proper operator! : P Maybe @kye is serious up there, maybe not ; ) I am :- )