fuzzynormal

I can testify to this. The ibis is not as "aggressive" as the Olympus. Meaning, the floating seasor doesn't compensate-shift as suddenly. The Pany tends to "feather" the sensor adjustments. In my hands, this means the Oly works slightly better stabilizing while handheld, but on the flip side, it'll behave weird at the end of a tripod pan/tilt as the stabilizer tries to figure out why the body is static all of a sudden.

Another very competent and impressive hybrid camera. The x-pro2 was a pleasant surprise and now the xt... "Serious" cameras, not serious cameras, who's to say? When every photo and film enthusiast has a great tool in their hand, what comes next, really? More than past time to be thinking about a post-technical reality in this bizness. The xpro2 is a really fun camera. Fuji has a good handle at making appealing gear.

Add into it the tendency to evangelize and thus rationalize one's camera purchase... which is a pretty big inclination among enthusiast (and even pros) and you get opinions that are clouded with so much subjective attitude they're sort of worthless. Bottom line, if it works for you, have at it.

By all means, if you finish the thing and are proud of it, and it doesn't interfere with your film fest ambitions, go out of your way to arrange a screening at a local theater. You can't replicate the cinema experience any other way. It's a bit of work but always a lot of fun since you'll probably pack the place with friends and family. BTW, some theaters that knows attendance will be high and will often embrace a one-off showing of a local film. I made an absolutely horrible horror film years ago. The biggest redeeming thing about the whole process was the ridiculous opening night!

Any camera, really.

You can do that, and I have. Just be aware that under their revenue sharing agreement you'd have to move a lot of units to make decent money. If you have a broad entertainment film with the necessary metrics to accomplish a bunch of spontaneous general sales then it's a huge market to tap into and may make sense. If you're more of a niche player and you need to lead specialists viewers to your film, then a place like Vimeo might be a better option.

Yeah, this camera is leading right now in value/performance as far as I'm concerned. It is sort of amazing what can be accomplished with this stuff now-a-days.

I like the GX85. I'd recommend it with the reservations I mentioned. Depends on what you wanna do. ...And when you want to do it. I'm shooting right now for a project --so I can't really wait for "what's next" knowhtimean? And, really, that IQ of the GX85 is impressive. Yes, if Oly release a 5-axis camera with acceptable 4K, I'll be very interested -- as I find a good hi-res EVF a very helpful filming tool. Also, the reverse swivel LCD shouldn't be ignored. Combine that with a super comfortable battery grip that adds in-camera audio recording with monitoring, it's a productive little hybrid. It's my favorite stills camera that shoots video, without questions. The big issue is that the IQ of what Oly delivers comes up short. It's not a bad image, and it offers nice colors too -- it's just that Panasonic offers an image that is so much better I really feel I HAVE to use it.

Having a decent script is awesome. It's always a challenge to make a great movie, regardless of a strong written foundation. Hope you can pull it off! Regarding Vimeo: my wife and I made a very very modest documentary that we put on Vimeo, and we see a trickle of income from it. We've never bothered to promote it, but it's a topic that has a niche so orders keep floating in. If you hook into a supporting community, they will prop you up a little bit, which is certainly nice. If you think your film is good enough for the upper echelon film festivals, then yeah, give it a shot. As an active member of a small SoCal film fest I can tell you, we're desperate for films with a creative POV, from filmmakers that have an actual voice. There's plenty of decently crafted films that we see, (because of the democratization of production gear) but not a heck of a lot that are truly accomplished with compelling and creative cinematic storytelling. I'll be completely honest here (so don't tell anyone I wrote this) --it's personally a bit frustrating to screen some of the films we screen. But ultimately that's cool. That's all part of it. My tastes in film doesn't exactly jibe with the rest of our selection committee's POV. To put it diplomatically: We're "diverse." To state it realistically: We put average films in the festival. 1. because we need the programming. 2. particular topics, rather than cinematic creativity, will appeal to our selection committee. (This is not necessarily a bad thing, I'm just acknowledging a typical situation of film fests) As it happens, almost all good films that get submitted to our festival will get into our festival. (there's some ideological politics involved as well that go into the submission decisions --that's the nature of a committee) But, be that as it may, we're a film festival that's incredibly embraced by our community. Every single screening during our 5 day festival sees attendance of 150-200 people...and this is in a proper theatre venue that officially seats 185. So, if you ever get accepted to film festival be wise and do your research regarding what sort of event they present. It's a bit much to travel across the nation to attend, go to your screening, and then it's you the filmmaker and only 4 other people in a sunlit conference room with a LCD projector... Experience that firsthand and you'll get a rude awakening of the sad state of some so-called film "festivals" these days. This doesn't even take into account the festivals that exist solely to generate submission income and then dole out laurels and empty awards, while never even holding physical screenings. Our festival may be small, but at least it's legit. At any rate, PM if you're interested. I'd like to hear what you got going. Also: Good luck in general!

Yes. And typical with doc footage.

I clock sync all devices before recording. This allows me to manually reference basic shots and audio relativity. Then, I build sequences of shots/audio to scenarios I need sync'ed. After that, plural eyes to connect tracks. If some "miss" I can usually line them up by eye. ...and when I'm 30 feet from my subject at a loud crowded venue, the internal mic is not recording useful audio of my subject's voice. So it requires doing it manually. It's all a very annoying step of production that would be pleasant to avoid.

Not really. It allows me to find focus of the actual shot, but because the evf image is so soft (and slightly distorted as well), my eye is always straining to comfortably focus on the image. This is is not an issue with my Olympus EM5II Hard to empathize, I know, unless you've got old person eyesight. Which, btw, seems to happen within a few months. Beginning of the year you have good vision, by the end of the year you need bi-focals.

I'm using these little cams for a modest project, and after a few weeks run n' gunning with the gx85, thought I'd give a quick critique. First of all. Great cam. Wonderful IQ for such a small price. So, there's that and it's a really big deal. Now for the big "but." Outboard audio: I knew it was going to be a pain buying into the gx85 insomuch as the post side of outboard audio sync'ing was going to be a hassle. Now that's it's on the NLE in front of me and being unwieldy, there's a level of regret that's certainly frustrating. Until one is actually dealing with hours of unsync'ed audio, (again) it might be hard to empathize, but believe me, it's not fun. Sync'ing interviews? Not a problem. Trying to sync each and every b-roll clip when your 2 cameras are wandering to various distances from the subject? Not an enjoyable experience to clean up in post while the clock is ticking on the deadline. Big compromise there when deciding to use the gx85. The EVF. Just not good enough for me. And this is important. I'm an older guy. My eyes suck. Trying to focus on that crappy EVF for a few hours can literally make me queasy and leave me with eyesight issues after using the cam for awhile. Compared to the ease of using the EVF on our Fuji/Oly cams, it's like Panasonic is foisting some cruel joke on it's consumers. It's really quite bad. You can just never tell if your image is in focus on the damn thing, and the eye strain that mushy image generates is very much a big issue. I'm attempting a work around with various loupe set-ups, but those things are awkward to use AND make the camera look like some sort of filming device; both things I'm trying to avoid. Otherwise, the camera delivers as advertised. On gear like this, it's all a compromise, and I think we know that. Shooting a semi-pro doc with consumer gear is do-able, it's just not as elegant as it could be...maybe at this point in consumer camera development it's fair to even say it's not as elegant as it SHOULD be. Now...if the EM5II video was just a tiny bit better I probably would have stuck with my Olympus for this assignment. But, IQ tends to trump all else. Anyway, if you're a hobbyist, you're probably going to love the value of this camera. Having that stabilizer for most people who are awful at doing handheld will be worth it alone. -- But for doing actual work? It's can be a slog in the documentary style of production. All that said, my wife and I completed a doc last year (https://vimeo.com/140524680) using the GM1 and GX7, so we knew what we were getting into going into the production, it's just that our newer Fuji/Oly cams have kind of spoiled us in the interim, as the Oly allows on board audio recording --and the EFV's are actually an asset rather than a liability.

Focal length is focal length. So, your answer is 20mm and 50mm.

Can't find a simple wrist strap stateside. Anyone know where I might be able to order one online??

I'd suggest a system reset to all default. Assuming that doesn't work, maybe run a firmware update and see what happens.

I'll give it a shot later in the week. I've been attempting to settle on a good post production work flow as I try to get into Resolve... but if Premiere will let me efficiently edit h.264 4K source files on my i7 4790k / Gtx1080 PC, it's certainly worth looking into. Sadly, haven't had much luck yet with Resolve and it's Optimized-Media-work-around. And it absolutely chokes on source h.264 files. Not to mention that Resolve can only display on two monitors and I'm using three. Hmmm, Adobe is suddenly looking more interesting. https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/now-live-the-latest-update-of-premiere-pro-cc/

I like this exercise in filmmaking as it really illustrates how the craft is so much more than the narrative and plot...something a lot of people don't understand or appreciate when it comes to cinematic storytelling.

Man, I'm just grateful I can get my hands on cool equipment. Whether it be cheap mirrorless "toys" to do stuff with --or high end rentals. I love that it's all rather easily accessed these days.

If you want manual motion picture shooting when you move the dial to "C", then you'll have to build the camera state that you want. For instance, under menu 2 of the motion picture settings, I'd put "Exposure Mode" to "M" for manual, set all the other camera settings of my preference, then save the state of the camera in the menu: Custom (the wrench icon with a C next to it) --> Custom Set Mem.--> C1. After that, whenever I go to "C" on the dial, I'd have that camera state ready to go under the C1 option.

I got 2 GX85's for a specific project, so I can attest to the brand loyalty thing. I've used Panasonic cameras for a long time and brand comfort makes the choice to buy-in to a new camera for this gig a bit easier. Plus, the dang things are ridiculously cheap. That said, I still think the 5-axis in the Oly EM5II is just a touch better than what Panasonic is offering; industry leading. However, there's a caveat: that's only when using non-OIS lenses. If you have a Pany OIS lens paired with the Panasonic sensor stabilizer, it's really good. I'm also really loathe to turn away from the ergos of my EM5II. I'm surprised that I connected so much to the EM5II, to be honest, but I do love how it just works. If only Oly had better motion picture IQ...

You have to pixel peep, but, yeah, it's a bit better at smoothing out edges. I wouldn't bother using it for 4K footage that's delivered 1080.

Don't disagree, but I'll add that re-scaling is certainly useful when shooting a documentary. Run'nGun shooting is all about circumstances and compromise. I can be happy with 95% of my shots, but if I can make a shot better with a bit of judicious cropping I'll do it. I ain't proud. Give me a technique I can exploit, I'll exploit it. I'm not shooting with a 4K camera because I want to re-frame all my documentary shots, I'm shooting 4K because it offers options if need be. --And then there's this whole thing, as if this thread needs to go more sideways: http://www.eoshd.com/2014/02/discovery-4k-8bit-420-panasonic-gh4-converts-1080p-10bit-444/

That's "pan-and-scan" not a dolly move. No parallax effect=no dolly shot.

GX85 reference source files. 4K 30p: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ind5m3i55ref68n/AADuWTubn7qDQpSeTaRi7r_Ia?dl=0