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What is that supposed to mean?

I guess it depends on budget, but I've always found that it's better to have as much computer built in as you can afford. More cores are better, particularly for h264 footage, and I'd go with the Vega inside rather than rely on an eGPU system. There are just times where you want to be able to open your laptop to get something done quick without having to plug in the eGPU. If that's not the case, you should just get a desktop which will give you more bang for buck. For reference, I edit 4k h264 material in Resolve on a 2016 Macbook Pro (i7 2.9ghz, Radeon Pro 460, 16gb RAM) and it works great. I don't use Fusion, and I don't grade much beyond basic colour correction (curves mostly, the odd power window and tracking) and I rarely have more than 3 video tracks running (and never simultaneously like editing multicam footage). The system you're speccing should be faster than my MBP, so depending on what you actually edit/grade it should be fine. As an aside I've worked with some 6k RedCode footage in Resolve and my MBP was not handling it well. No problems after transcoding to prores, but it was not handling RedCode well.

There are lots of suggestions for camera mounted external batteries, but why not consider a battery charging solution and use standard LP-E6 batteries? As soon as you rig up any kind of external battery that will last longer than LP-E6 you're adding weight and clunk, which kinda takes away from the point of this kind of camera I think. Whenever I need a portable camera battery charging station I use one of my Hyperjuice batteries [1] with the built in inverter in a small camera bag with a couple of Hahnel proCube [2] dual chargers. It'll charge both batteries at the same time, and takes about an hour and a half to fully charge, with a percentage readout so you can see just how far away it is. Between that an 4-6 LP-E6 batteries and you should get through a full day's shooting. [1] https://www.hypershop.com/collections/battery-pack/products/hyperjuice-ac-battery-pack-100wh-26-000mah [2] https://www.hahnel.com.au/li-ion-battery-chargers/

Awesome, thanks! I had a BMMCC for a while and the battery was completely exposed, so I got used to it :D

Just curious, is there space in the battery door for a cable for a dummy battery? It looks like there is from that pic of the bottom of the camera, but that could be the latch I'm looking at...

I guess it depends where you are, but very few places are completely dark, even at night. Street lights, other house lights, passing cars... even in rural areas moonlight can light a room. I would seriously consider punching a hard light with a CTB gel through a window (as far back from the window as is practical) to mimic that light, exposed at one stop under, and expose for your flashlights maybe a half or a full stop over.

Hahaha, I'm not sure about his methodology and I suspect the results says as much about his audience as about colour science! But he speaks a lot of sense in his takeaways about how important straight-out-of-camera colour actually is, especially if you shoot stills. I started with Nikon and have now moved to Fuji (because I like the way they work) but I've shot with all those systems (along with Phase One and Hasselblad) and frankly they all work fine as long as you stay within their limits. Canon sensors find limits earlier than the others, followed but Fuji, but honestly I think Sony gets a bad rap for colour, I've never had a problem with them.

Yeah they don't hold back! But if you take their recommendations for the Threadripper and substitute for parts that are closer to your budget you can get to a pretty good place. For example the 16 core 1950X is like $1200 AUD but the 12 core 1920X is $600 AUD -- I'd doubt the 16 core is twice as fast as the 12. Plus the guide has pretty good pointers to stop you from overspending on stuff you don't need, like going to 32gb RAM when they only recommend 16 etc. I edit off a 1st Gen TouchBar Macbook Pro 15 and I can handle the 4k from my X-H1 ok. But if you're editing h264 material you need CPU cores -- the more the better. Or you transcode / generate optimised media. My advice would be to buy a balanced system -- don't spend all your money on a super fast GPU and not enough on a CPU, don't spend too much on the compute bits and forget about fast storage. If anything get more storage than you think you need -- you can transcode to wring better performance from slower systems, but if you're out of disk space it's a pain in the arse (and incredibly time consuming) to have to juggle and move things around to accommodate.

Blackmagic puts out an official hardware and configuration guide for every version of Resolve, no better advice than from the people who write the software: https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/DaVinciResolve/20180407-79c607/DaVinci_Resolve_15_Configuration_Guide.pdf

100%. I didn't expect the XT3 to be available so quickly so I went in for an X-H1 a couple of months ago, and really the only thing I'm missing is a really nice looking 120fps mode. Eterna is absolutely perfect for a camera like this, looks 80% finished out of camera so no need to really stress the codec in post. I'd also love to see a dedicated hotshoe audio adaptor like Sony and Panasonic have, and a video centric power grip with more function buttons and rods support. I'm looking forward to the new firmware that apparently will tune the IBIS for smoother movements.

Yeah what is the deal with that guy? The other day he resurrected an old thread just to rip into a young wedding videographer he found on youtube over the most minor and unimportant details, talked up his career, told a few people to kiss his arse and promptly disappeared. I know retirement is boring but surely he has more camera tests he can make in all his spare time?

I’d like to see some of your work from your time as a professional photographer. Maybe some of those car shots with General Motors you talked about. Because I’ve only ever seen you post camera tests, nothing where you operate under pressure. Surely with the kind of career you describe you’ve got 15 shots from an old book to show? I’ll start — here’s my wedding work: https://www.harustudio.com.au/

Excellent, so you can show us some work then? Which I'm sure we won't harshly and unfairly rip into with no thought to context or the conditions you worked under.

I was on set last week watching the camera op pull off beautiful dolly shots with an Amira off an EasyRig. It still takes a practiced hand but you couldn't do that with a lighter camera.

...did we watch the same video? I skipped to the last few minutes just to watch her work and to see her footage, which I thought looked great -- I mean it's a wedding, you don't have the luxury of a gaffer truck and crew. She was confident in her instruction, she knew her gear and moved fast to get the maximum number of shots in a short space of time. There was a couple of shots where the background was a bit hot, but mate who cares about the background?!? Her exposure was on her couple! As it should be! Your criticism makes me wonder if you've ever shot a wedding before, because it's a high pressure environment where you work with people you don't cast and barely know and you're at the mercy of someone else's schedule and the weather. You're on your feet all day and constantly worried about making sure you've covered everything that's happening and with enough variety for the edit, and keeping tabs on battery life and card space and where you've left your camera bag. If I had a second they'd be busy getting a second angle, not holding a reflector. Not entirely sure how you expect to see any diffusion -- to diffuse full sun for two people walking they'd be under a 20' x 12' at least, and then you'd have to worry about shadows on the ground and the wind blowing the damn thing over. As a wedding photographer (who have also shot a few wedding highlight films) I'd be more than happy to work with her on a wedding. Definitely better than some that I've had to work with. My only criticism would be that she's simply not charging enough if she has to work 80 weddings a year, that is an express train to burnout town.

Absolutely -- The CM1 was an idea ahead of its time, from all reports it's a bit clunky and not that nice to use. Though I checked LR Mobile's minimum specs and on paper at least it should run on the CM1. I didn't know about Samsung having a similar model, but a Galaxy 9 / NX1 mashup would probably sell like hotcakes on EOSHD!

errr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panasonic_Lumix_DMC-CM1

I think it looks brilliant, I love how the back flairs back a touch to make a more solid handgrip. I love the idea of having the editing program right on the camera -- it's pretty much how I use my phone to shoot while I'm on holidays. The only downside I can think of is battery life, unless it packs a massive internal battery there's no way that thing will last very long having to run a full frame mirrorless camera AND a tablet to edit the images.

No I hadn't and I'm glad -- if I'd seen that test I might not have bought the X-H1, it looks bloody awful! I couldn't get through all of it, but from the looks of it he's not tweaked any of the settings and it doesn't look much better than the X-T2. Here's a much better test of the X-H1 AF with the 23/1.4: This was also shot on the X-H1 with the 23/1.4, though I don't know if he used AF or not:

Just checking I'm understanding you properly -- are you looking to use the 23/1.4 or 23/2 for video using AF? If so, the only reviews you can base your decision on is if they used an X-H1 or maybe the X-T3. No other Fuji body has consistently smooth and accurate AF for video on any lens. Some lenses work better than others, but until the X-H1 came along they were all pretty rubbish. I don't have the 23, but I do have the 14/2.8, 16/1.4, 18/2, 35/1.4, 35/2, 50/2, and 90/2 -- with the X-Pro2, X-T2 and X-H1. The AF works pretty well with all those lenses for stills until you're pushing 12800 ISO wide open at 1/60 -- in those situations you really have to be careful where you're trying to find focus. You have to find areas of tonal contrast -- dark jacket/light shirt for example, as opposed to skin and hair. In really low light a lot of the contrast we see is actually differences in colour, if you change to black and white you'll see that the tones are really similar. And since AF systems "see" in tones, it struggles mightily in low light. Mind you, Fuji's AF just isn't as good as Nikon or Canon or Sony, and the older lenses like the 23/1.4 and 56/1.2 suffer the worst. Video wise with the X-H1 the AF is pretty good with all the lenses I have. With a bit of tweaking it's about 80% as good as my C100mk2, most of the time. Weirdly I get better video AF performance with the 35/1.4 than the 35/2 -- the 35/2 is noticeably more jerky. I'm sure it can be fixed with a firmware update though. If you're not worried about AF, then the 23/1.4 is the pick of the two because it has the manual focus clutch with hard stops (the 14/2.8 and the 16/1.4 has it as well.) On that note, the X-H1 firmware has a function that switches the fly-by-wire focus ring to linear mode so you can use a follow focus with it. It's magic, and I don't understand why this was never available with any other camera manufacturer. In terms of sharpness I can't speak for the 23, but the my 35/2, 50/2 and 90/2 are beautiful wide open. The 90/2 is a touch softer wide open than at 2.8, and the 35/2 is so, so, so smooth -- really beautiful.

Let's not forget that the sensor in the GFX50s/r made its debut in 2014 in Phase One and Hasselblad backs. Not to mention there's significantly more money and resources in the development of APS-C and Full Frame sensors, since they sell much much more of them. Formats larger than 35mm has always been a niche market. You buy medium format because you like the look and you're willing to give up a lot of practicality for it. Also, less DoF isn't the reason you have a more three dimensional image -- it's the transition between focus and out of focus. It's the way you can get separation between subject and background but not reduce the background to a big blurry smear.

It isn't just shallower DoF, it's the way it transitions from focus to out of focus. The larger the format, the more three dimensional the transition -- if you've ever seen an 8x10 slide it feels like you can reach into the frame. I shoot 4x5 slide film and it feels different to look at compared to 35mm. But having worked with this current generation of APS-C, Full Frame, and both the Hasselblad and Phase One cameras, there's not always a lot in it. You can definitely tell the difference between APS-C to MF, but a D850 with a 50mp Phase XF? Not a lot in it for a lot of applications. But you can tell the difference with a higher megapixel sensor, so I'm very interested in the GXF100s. Larger individual pixel sites gather more light -- not the sensor size itself. Hence the GH5s has a 12mp chip vs the 20mp in the GH5.

That list is for Netflix commissioned productions -- plenty of films shot on different cameras are available on Netflix (like the regular strength Alexa). Their technical requirements stem from their product -- if they offer 4k streaming then they have to capture in at least 4k. And really if you have a project that Netflix is picking up for production they're going to provide you with the budget to hire a camera they need. They might buy an amazing no-budget indie shot on a dslr for distribution (I'm pretty sure Tiny Furniture and Upstream Color are both on Netflix), it's an entirely different thing altogether for a Netflix production.

Thanks mate, I'm going to have a look at this as well -- I've noticed that I'm seeing moire and aliasing at 4k and FHD that I didn't see in the XT2... I wonder if Eterna is doing something weird? Anyway I'll give it a go and see what I find.

Ok, so here's a quick and dirty test with the X-H1 (v1.11) with the 35 f2: https://www.dropbox.com/s/b0t4ek5w9g4pktb/XH1_35f2_VideoAF_Test.mov?dl=0 This was shot handheld wide open with IBIS on at 4k DCI using the Eterna simulation and exported as 1080p (whoops) but you kinda see all the good and the bad of the camera in these two clips. Eterna is beautiful, but the aliasing is pretty bad. It's not that hard to fix in post but the fact you need to is a bit disappointing. The first clip I selected focus using the touch screen -- you can see the AF struggling to lock onto focus and wavering on the dead cat, but it's a smooth transition through to the lens cap. I'm not super concerned because I'd manually pull focus in that kind of scenario anyway. The second clip is more the sort of thing I'd be using AF for, and I think it works far better -- as I pushed in I used the rear thumbstick to move the focus point from the left to the right, and it worked as I expected. Keep in mind I've had the camera for a week and I haven't really tested each different settings yet. And I do remember seeing somewhere that the 35f2 in particular has weird focusing issues. I've yet to try with any or my other lenses, I might get onto that later this week.