aldolega

I have a bunch of Lowell stuff I got off eBay for pretty cheap over the years. It's kind of the opposite ethos from cheap plastic LEDs- all metal, good build quality. They do get hot, and they use a lot of power, but the light quality is great and the stuff is heavy-duty and reliable. For LEDs you may want to wait for the next videos in that series, Caleb said he was going to do the same sort of comparison in higher price brackets. Hopefully he finds something decent for $100-200.

I'd be curious to see a GH4 vs. G85 shootout on moire/aliasing, and IQ in 1080p modes (because of the G85's much lower bitrate), especially for shots with lots of motion. The reports of the EM1II being soft in every mode other than C4K has killed my interest in that camera.

I think it all depends on what your desired end product is. If you want to deliver in 4K, at the maximum resolution a 4K file is possibly capable of, you will need an oversampled sensor to get there because of the resolution loss from debayering. So at the minimum, an NX1 or A6300/6500... or more realistically, a FS7, C300II, Red, etc, when you consider how many compromises the NX1 or A6300/6500 have (rolling shutter, overheating, limited DR, slomo is FHD at best, etc). So, still not "affordable" to most people looking to own the camera... even the vast majority of pro shooters, which are not yet (and may never be) at the point of realistically affording a $8-10K camera. For all those shooters, and of course most enthusiasts and hobbyists, I think aiming to deliver a maxed-out 1080p file is more realistic, which is mostly achievable with the current affordable 4K cams. Even if my GH4 is only resolving maybe 3K because of debayering, that's still plenty to deliver maxed-out 1080p, even with a little bit of cropping or stabilizing.

Full manual. I shoot action and moving things, so motion is important. I shoot at a base of 30p (gasp!), and shutter speed stays at 180° most of the time, might go down to 90° in a pinch. For slomo I find that 90° or 120° looks better than 180, once slowed down. Shorter than 90 looks jerky and slower than 180 is way too smeary. Aperture just depends on how much DOF I want/need for the shot, and ISO or ND are applied as necessary to get me there. Since I switched to the Leeming LUT/workflow I generally follow his ETTR recommendations. Set zebras at 100 and expose hot but don't let anything needed blow out.

You don't need a booster/adapter with an aperture, per se- meaning, its own iris. There were adapters like that a few years ago for EF lenses. You just need one with an aperture ring, which interfaces with the aperture lever that sticks out of the back of Nikon lenses (even G lenses). Metabones have these, as does the Lens Turbo II, which is the only decent cheap booster. Personally, I am side-grading from a GH4 to a G85, for the IBIS and better high-ISO performance. Well, I will be once they issue the firmware fix for the IBIS...

Port placement/interference and screen articulation type are two separate issues. Obviously the ports should be placed to not interfere with what the screen type is, this is even an issue on the GH4 for the headphone and HDMI ports. The 80D looks like it got it right, at least for mic and headphone as I recall. Personally I greatly prefer the pivot style (GH's, G85, D5500, 80D etc) to the tilt-only (Sonys). Especially because I prefer a large rubber eyecup for my EVF, which makes the tilt style pretty much useless from above. I think the choice of port location probably has to do with the internal PCB design, and not wanting to add the expense/complexity of moving the ports off the PCB. Doing so probably makes assembly more difficult, and introduces reliability and interference issues to deal with... not that that's a good enough excuse. I'd love to see the mic input on the right side of the "prism" hump, then you could have a super short cord up to the mic.

I find the GH4 1080p to be very good, great even. It's certainly not immaculate- I do occasionally get fine moire- and downscaling the 4K is definitely cleaner and higher-res, so I use that for regular-speed stuff. But I shoot a lot at >30p, probably half of my shots or more, so I use 1080p a lot. The 100mbps is definitely better than the 200mbps, except for extreme motion (deep DOF, subject and camera both moving rapidly), which again is a lot of what I shoot, so I end up using 200mbps quite a bit. But for moderate/normal amounts of motion, the 100mbps is cleaner and higher-res. I agree about the 1080p bitrates being disappointing on the lower-end cams. I want to upgrade/sidegrade my GH4 to a G85, for the better ISO performance and the IBIS, but 28mbps at 1080 is not enough for what I do. So I'm considering adding an external 5" recorder, either a Video Assist or hopefully a Pix-E5. Not entirely sure I want to dick around with HDMI and more batteries, though. The VA is affordable to me, but would only do 1080, which is all I would really need I guess. While the Pix-E5 would be a perfect match framerate/res-wise, but is pretty pricey, and would probably be a bit redundant once I go GH5 next year.

I agree about the waiting game. If they fix the IBIS in the G85 I'll probably be perfectly happy shooting with that, with an external recorder, through the end of the summer. And who knows what Sony will do. If the rumors of the GH5 price being around $3K are true, I think that will put a bit of a dampener on the excitement for it. I think it needs to be no more than $2500. $2000 would be pretty killer. And at any of these prices, IBIS is a must. If Sony does an 8-bit 4K60 A7III, at say $2000, or the A7S/RIII is 8-bit 4K60 at the same price as the current R and S, or goes 10-bit at say $4K, the GH5 may not be as much of a coup as it would have been all by itseld in Q1.

The DEC/DEC Regain moves the focus and aperture in steps, though. No thanks.

They're a long-running sponsor of DVXuser, I believe. I've only read good things about them.

I don't see internal ND happening. The only way internal ND is feasible on a tiny body like the A7 series is if it's fixed in place, and electronically variable. There's just nowhere to move/swing the filter to when you want no ND. So it stays fixed, but then you're stuck with always having whatever the electronic filter's lowest setting is- it's two stops on the FS5 I believe. Even if they got it down to one stop, that's a big hit to take in sensitivity, even for the A7s. Let's say they squeezed one more stop out of the new sensor; that would normally be one of the major specs to sell the new model- but it's now negated by your ND filter. ND also being almost entirely a video feature, with very little photo relevance (other than blurring waterfalls and the like). And even if the A7s line is for all intents and purposes a video camera, I don't see Sony ignoring its photo marketability that much.

Eventually I imagine we'll get tunable IBIS... you'll be able to turn its overall effectiveness up or down, or limit its range of motion or sensitivity. You could even turn certain axes up or down or off completely. For instance a traditional shoulder-mounted camera will give movement in the pitch (tilt) and yaw (pan) axes, but not as much roll (dutching), and very little horizontal (dolly left/right) and vertical (boom up/down) movement. So a handheld (literally handheld) camera's IBIS could be profiled to match those attributes and in theory your result would look more like pro handheld (shoulder mount), and less like typical DSLR earthquake-cam.

Vitaliy at Personal-View has the case package for $599 on his deals right now. http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1029/gear-deals-zhiyun-z1-crane-gimbal#Item_2

Yes, we already established that, but he's looking for a QR plate/adapter, not a whole tripod head.

You could always just use EF-mount lenses, like the Tokina 11-16 f2.8, and whatever 16-50mm type zoom you like (Tamron, Sigma, Canon 17-55). A $100 Commlite or even the Metabones would easily be inside your budget.

AFAIK 10-bit is more about flexibility for grading/fixing mistakes than the image quality straight out of the camera. If you shoot WYSIWYG style then it probably won't make much difference for you. At least in normal gammas. V-log needs 10-bit because it's already using less of the curve, so 10-bit gives more values and avoids banding. OH HAI BEN Yea, that would be cool. Unfortunately I kinda feel like we won't ever see super high datarates in a GH cam, though. Even the 400mbit I mentioned might be more than they're willing to give us. Who knows though? If the video division at Panasonic has no plans for anything below the Varicam LT, maybe the photo division will be allowed to run wild with the GH5 or GH6. Reports were always that the GH4 sold way beyond their expectations, so I would think that would give them some leeway with the bossmen.

Of course they're not native 4K, not even phone screens are 4K in that size yet. Personally I think 1080p is plenty for 4", especially with a loupe, as long as it can accept a 4K signal. Are there even any 4K on-camera monitors in any size yet? It would seem Neway is Ikan's manufacturer. On Personal-View you can get the 5" for $289 and Vitaliy just put up a 5.5" version, with an ugly rubber bumper cover ala the newer Shoguns, for about $400, that has waveform, vector scope, false color etc. I'm actually surprised none of the Chinese brands have come out with an affordable 5" loupe, for the Video Assist, PIX-E5, and these cheaper 5-inchers. I did just express this on P-V and Vitally said they're working on it, though.

IBIS would be really nice but I feel like if it was included, and the rumors were accurate, they definitely would have mentioned it. Maybe 4K60 and 6K30 generates too much heat for the sensor to be floating so it's not possible. If so I would expect the G7 replacement to have it, but be limited to 4K30 like the GX85.

Bit depth and color sampling don't necessitate a huge bitrate, that has more to do with compression. You can still compress the crap out of a 10-bit 4:2:2 image, case in point the FS5's 1080p modes at only 50mbit. Even just scaling that same compression by four for 4K gives us 200mbit, and the GH4 already handles that just fine. That being said I do hope Panasonic give us higher bitrate options (that require UHS-II or V90 or whatever)- even something fairly moderate like 200mbit for 4K30, 400mbit for 4K60. Get the GOP size down. I always liked FlowMotion on the GH2, which was GOP3 I believe.

1DC and 1DX are identical photo-wise, though. Both have mechanical shutters and reflex mirrors, and neither have NDs. And apparently both are nearly identical in all other ways as well- the 1DC just having a larger heatsink and of course the firmware upgrades for all the video stuff. So not really a supporting case for your argument. IF an ND even COULD be shoehorned inside the GH3/4 case, they'd have to charge such a large premium for this (because sales volume would be so small) that the target market would want all the other video features seen at that price point (XLR, dual cards, video ergonomics/form factor, etc). All of which would just completely eliminate the GH3/4 case as an option. This will sound too polarized or black-and-white- the truth is of course more grey- but remember that DSLR/DSLM video rides on the back of photography's popularity. So long as we use a much larger market's products for our own similar-but-different uses, we will be forever subject to that market's demands on its products. Would I like to see a FF mirrorless cam with a rotating C100/FS5-style grip, tilting telescoping 1X-magnification EVF, IBIS, tilt-flip screen, XLR, incredible AF, global shutter not just for video benefit but also reliability and unlimited flash sync in photos, etc etc etc? Of course I would. I'm just not expecting the GH5 to be it.

RX10 and RX100 are 1" sensors with built-in lenses. No bayonet mount and release mechanisms, or electrical contacts to take up space between the optics and sensor. The ND and shutter might be in the middle of the optics/elements for all we know, instead of behind them. Rolling electronic shutter is useless for 90% of serious photography. Once global shutter can be implemented without affecting a sensor's IQ, physical shutters will disappear. But I think that's unfortunately at least a few years out, if not a decade. I doubt it'd be anywhere near feasible to rework the whole inside of the GH body casting just to shoehorn an ND mechanism in, if it would even fit.

...but don't have shutters.

I had a tripod tip over several years ago and my original VideoMic took the brunt of the impact. I emailed Rode to see how much the replacement parts would be, and how to order, and they sent out what I needed, for free, and it got to me in two days! I was very happy, but figured I just caught a CSR in an unusually good mood. Then I broke a foot on one of my VMP's a couple years ago, and they had the same exact response! Really great service, and I've yet to find a 3.5mm on-cam mic that comes close to the VMP. Whenever I get around to going wireless, the RodeLink is at the top of my list.

Those with the camera, how would you rate the 1080p modes vs. the GH4's? I've read conflicting reports, that it's either better or worse than the a6000, which I generally have heard is on par with the GH4's 1080p mode.

The GH4 can record internally while outputting over HDMI, but only in 8bit mode, not 10bit.