Oliver Daniel

The A7RII isnt out yet, so how are you so certain this will be better than what Canon may imminently offer? A lot of people dismissed the XC10, but the image capabilities are excellent. Superior organic feel, natural sharpness and colour compared to the competition. I'm no Canon fanboy, I dont own a single EF lens or camera from them. Mostly use Sony and Panasonic, just because I need HFR's. Specs don't mean anything until it's in the hands of filmmakers. In the case of the A7RII - for all we know it could be a horrible, oversharpened brittle image with weird colours and a 30 min battery life. Full pixel readout means nothing otherwise.

I agree with Rich to some extent. I see the camera/lens as a "character", and I certainly think in-camera stabilisation looks very, very artificial. I only see it useful for a standard static shot here and there. I personally use non-IS lenses. I shoot 98% of my work handheld and that added organic sort of energy from the handheld look adds a lot of character and style. Always have the camera supported, rather loosely. I experiment with canon-IS lenses for a rock video and ditched them straight away, because the image was just too static and boring! That said, there has to be a reason for your choices. IS lenses are very useful for run and gun, live stuff, weddings. Just depends what you are shooting, your personal tastes, style, clients etc. Some A7S owners think they don't have to light. Some lens owners would shoot an earthquake scene with IS on, just because 5 axis IBIS is so cool! Some of us know what we are doing and shoot with flaws on purpose. The latter are usually the much better filmmakers

The Nebula 4000 is a decent offering, but I've heard balancing is tricky. This one is probably better and very budget friendly: http://www.supamods.com/product/mini-3-axis-gimbal-sony-a7s-gh4-bmpcc/ I'm selling my BeSteady One Plus Advanced (now called The Plus) for £850 (retails for around £1600 new): http://www.acr-sys.com/acr-the-plus/. UK buyers only though.

Buy a 3-axis gimbal instead. Getting cheaper and takes about 5 minutes to balance. It's worth it

Thanks for sharing. I think the bulk of that relies on reviewers with a lot of time on their hands/sponsor paid to share their thoughts. A camera company would never go into such detail, as this will highlight weaknesses to potential buyers. The best way with any new technology is to test it yourself and see what works for you. I see you mentioned the RX10 II vs the Canon XC10. Many people laughed at the Canon release....although the RX10 II has a far more spectacular looking spec sheet, the image quality looks inferior to that of the XC10 (from what I've seen so far), and that's where the Canon camera has it's value and higher price tag. Still, I'd probs buy the RX10 II because it has features that fit my clients better. To be honest, I don't get too worked up about these technical things. I just shoot. No amount of things like shadow noise will prevent that, althought it's useful to know

​I shoot music videos every week and know what works for me. (www.videoink.co.uk) I would highly consider Sony as a camera choice for music videos. Not only do you get S-Log recording, but they are very good at making use of high frame rates (which for music videos is by far the biggest request I get). The new Sony RX10 II seems to be a low budget music video makers dream. 4k, 24-200m lens and high frame rates, decent quality up to 240fps. Another camera would be the A7S, as low budget music video swings with low light locations quite often! Of course, don't be foolish and forget your lighting requirements. Lighting is far more important than your camera, you have my word!

I'm seeing something different with XC10 footage (not this example). It has a superior mojo that other cameras don't have in this price range. Shame about the lens, but the camera is better than everyone thinks and is worth the money.

​ You views and my views are very, very similar. I personally don't buy into what cameras people are using, it's a lot more about the shooter and the content. This kind of thing is plainly obvious to most professionals, but at amateur level - gear is usually God. 4k is here and it's all good, but you won't find much difference in the final image quality if you don't work on your ideas, lighting and composition first. I'd like to see more of this stuff on EOSHD but hey, it's not my house. I've owned my GH3 for the smaller jobs (and even some of the bigger ones) for 2 and a half years, and not a single person has questioned my choice of camera. They don't care. Granted, I'm now eager to replace my GH3 because I see some of the new technology as a creative benefit. One thing though... corporate clients like to attend shoots. They feel comfortable when your camera looks the business. They may feel uncomfortable if you turn up with a GX7 and think you are not professional. Sad fact. So if you go small, it's very beneficial to have bells and whistles just for show.

Every camera is as relevant as you make it.

​ Fair enough! If you're doing it on a professional basis like me, everything needs to be tried before the buy. That said, I'm 95% sold on the RX10 II for a powerful shot grabber and quickie productions (in place of the GH3), just need a play first. At the higher end, I've got my eyes on a certain disruptive Australian camera company and their new line....

DvxUser is a terrible site to use. The forum design is way past it. Member temperament is a bit iffy. Info on there isn't too bad though. In 2015 your website has to be responsive. I'm making the new version of my company's website and it's mainly designed for tablets and smartphones, while still doing the business on bigger screens. Well done to EOSHD for keeping up to date!

​I would actually test the camera before buying it. Also there is a certain Canon 5D Mk IV announcement expected this year. Not expecting much from it, but who knows eh?

​The 120fps is 720p... but then the Canon C100 doesn't do that either. Product segmentation. Have you seen this? ...Great short!! (nice footage too). https://www.youtube.com/embed/mhw_LGfvigc

I was passing through town today, went into the camera shop and played with the original RX10. Loved it, especially the lens. Then I spoke to a friend who does admin for Playstation Network. He said he could get me a 39% discount on the A7R II and Sony RX10 II, but not the FS7! Worst distraction of daily thoughts ever.

The footage from this camera (from the pro stuff I've seen) is very organic and superb quality. It's a shame the lens isn't a constant f2.8 and the slow motion is 720p. Canon can be very frustrating... but the image quality is always outstanding, I'll give them that. I think the camera is worth the money though. If you can't make money from this camera then I'd find something else to do!

There is no mention of the soundtrack credit in the description. What is it?

That's a lovely video. Well done

Agree totally Ed (or Banned User). We had a meeting based on gear today. Overall we strongly agreed that lighting was our key investment. The idea was to make most of our lights operational by battery power, using some Lupolux LED flood/spotlights, Scorpion Lights and good ol' reflectors. The purpose of this is so we can light anywhere we want, not lose precious time over spiderwebs of cables and boost creative possibilities. Technology is here and we can do it. If I didn't think it would boost creativity I wouldn't bother. The Blackmagic URSA Mini cropped up too. The Director mentioned he wants to reduce the "video look" to minimal amounts in all videos we produce, and was really enthusiastic about "organic film" looks. He said "Clients want that edgy, grounded vibe these days... I want to soak our style in pure cinema aesthetics going forward". Of course, the URSA Mini (on paper) would be an ideal tool to get closer to this creative decision. It would be a lot harder to make that possible on a GH3/4. Not impossible, but much more challenging. But we will still try and accomplish this even if the Blackmagic Ursa Mini didn't exist and we downgraded to 550ds. Sod moire, might as well give it a go! I'm an ideas man really. I pickup whatever tool I have in the bag and do my absolute best with it. I'm also patient with technology. Certainly not a GAS patient. But if I see something that I really think will compliment the style and ideas of future projects (like the BM Ursa Mini and battery powered lights) I'll click pre-order and live on cheap instant noodles for a month or two.

I had a brief period of time with the RED Epic, and used it on a few shoots. It came from the rental house at large discount. It was offered, so I thought, why not? The crew was tiny, so a lot of time and focus was going into operation the RED Epic effectively. Some were under the illusion these would be the best videos ever, given our Hollywood package. The finished results were pretty good. Image quality was a lot better than usual. But the videos were a little boring, and missing that fluidity, experimentation and energy of previous videos. Creativity was right down, but image quality was high! In a nutshell, the GH3 videos were much better overall. Just less perfect looking. With a lot more time and budget, of course we could learn the RED Epic and have enough confidence to give creativity its fair share. Point being... ultimately... What really is the point of shooting on the "Big New" if you don't put ideas + creativity first? Is it best to invest in every new camera/gadget that gets released, or is it better to invest that time and money into your skills and craft? Obviously to me it would be the latter, although you could argue the two can go together. I recently shot a music video that absolutely relied heavily on the FS7's capabilities. Without it, the video would have suffered. The FS7 was a creative choice to deliver an idea. We shot in 1080p XAVC-L. In this instance, the 4k didn't matter at all. We'd just have too much data to handle, take time away from being creative and miss the deadline.

This isn't intended as a "Content Is King" debate. I'm more interested in how purchasing a camera affects a persons creative decisions. It affects mine certainly. If anything has to be said though, it's better to have an idea and no camera, than actually have a camera with no idea at all.

On today's shoot, one of the band members in the music video pointed out the GH3's we were using. He said "If you had GH4's instead, what impact would that have on the shoot?" I'm a firm believer in spending time and investing with other tools more than the camera, such as lighting. Lighting and camera composition/movement are much more powerful & creative tools than the newest, jazziest camera with an amazing spec sheet. Such the issue with the enthusiast market is that those who want to shoot forget the craft past the flashy cameras. Thoughts arose when discussing today how the shoot would be affected creatively if we had 2 A7R II's instead of the GH3's. Would we potentially do better and make a more effective video, not even having tried the camera? Possibly. Possibly not. The reason for these thoughts is because we are upgrading all areas of my business in effort to keep up to date, but most importantly - have the tools to inspire better creative decisions with more reliability, quality, speed and impact. All to charge a higher price for a steadily improving end product. As said earlier, I'm more prone to investing into lighting, post and camera movement stuff. We do want to change the smaller cameras now, so we can deliver more diverse creative options in the image aesthetic. I do have quite enough lighting now to make an iPhone video look quite dazzling and "get away with it". ;) Some of us out there will actually buy every little camera (and very little to no lighting) with internal 4k, and wonder later what that purpose is for - since technically it's a similar tool in a different body than all the others. Having more cameras doesn't do anything for your creativity, it bamboozles it. Or maybe you have a richer, more diverse palette. More options. A camera should be a palette of your creativity, and delivers your ideas for others to see on the most effective way possible. So apart from being technical about it, I've been thinking how buying a new camera, in any shape of form will influence me creativily and thus help deliver my goals of improving overall craft and making a higher profit, for higher value art. For instance, if I never rented the FS7 regularly and instead filmed the sequences intended for slow motion in 1080p 50fps on the GH3... would I be a less attractive proposition for clients? How much impact does the camera have on actual ideas and quality of the craft, thus effecting your professional worth? I don't want this topic to be about me. These are just a small part of my general daily thoughts in order to spark some interesting conversation between members on this colourful forum about the topic. Does a new camera affect your creativity? If so, how? If not, why not? And what is it worth?

Sigma ART lenses built into a cinema housing, electronic and manual aperture. Made by Sigma and not a third party to keep costs down (like GL Optics). "Party Trick" lens collection, built from the ground-up to include internal special FX. Distortions, strange bokeh, light leaks, bending, tilt-shift, lens whacking, other weird stuff. Has AF for photography.

I don't own the FS7, it's pretty much the rental A-cam of choice and gets quite a bit of use. If it didn't do slow motion we wouldn't bother with it. (Major request in my kind of work is 100fps +). I've only shot in 4k twice on the FS7 and every other time in "bog standard" XAVC-L in 1080p. Because of storage space and slow motion. It's a system which works very well. Not shooting in pristine 4k doesn't stop the flow I haven't replaced the GH3 because internal 4k isn't very useful to me if I'm filming mostly at 1080p 50fps. Because 4k and other stuff exists doesn't make my GH3 any less of a tool for making an income. Nobody cares what camera I use, they just trust I know what I'm doing. I have interest in the A7RII because I get unwanted micro jitters when operating handheld on the GH3 (with shoulder rig). Curious about the 5 axis. But again, I'll be "stuck" with 1080p at 50fps. 4k will be just a nice little extra. May be worth it, just need to try first! Probs best spending the money on a future camera though!

The A7RII isnt even out yet, and for some reason this makes the GH4 (which is now over a year old and a third of the price) insignificant? Do brand new camera releases suddenly mean the previous awesome camera (GH4) isn't awesome enough to film with? I haven't bought a GH4, A7S, NX1, FZ100, LX100, G7.. (or any other 4k mirrorless). Still using my GH3 as the small camera. It does fine, still makes money. Doesnt have V Log or 4k and is just as good as when I bought it 2 and a half years ago. All on cheapo FD lenses. Firmware is a simple equation. Either crippled for product segmentation or promising the world (whilst delivering poorly in other key areas such as battery life!). Let's just buy ALL the cameras and we can have all the firmware we want! I do agree firmware is very important though. Poor firmware affects my creativity. The slow, sluggy speed of the FS7 menus means I have less time to work on the shot. The Monitor LUT dissapears. WHY!? The 1DC (official cinema DSLR champion) doesn't have peaking. And this camera launched for $634,000,345 as a Cinema EOS whatever thingy. "Modern" firmware is the way forward. Samsung has ideas and Blackmagic really seem to be onto a really simple, inutitive, elegant system. Sexy.

There is no denying that this looks like an impressive camera, but I'm going nowhere near the pre-order button until I've actually tried it on a professional shoot. I do that with all new cameras, throw them into the deep end straight away and start shooting a paid project. The 4k, 5-axis, Slog2 etc means nothing until it's been put through it's paces.