Shirozina

F2.8 zoom lenses with speedbooster become F2 lenses which are F4 equivalence on M43. This is plenty of subject background separation plus enough DOF for focus accuracy. A speedbooster on M43 is not far off S35 or the classic cinema 35mm frame size so if you can't get 'cinematic' footage with this you should be looking elsewhere for it. If peoples idea of cinematic derives from film shot on 60/70mm film then yes the M43 system may not be a good starting point....

In that case I'd use fixed ND filter + a VND and as long as they are all good quality multicoated glass you shouldn't see any image degradation.

IME Multi-coating is essential when you are adding 4 glass-air surfaces infront of your lens. The B+W nano VND has hard stops and a 5 stop range but you can split the 2 halves and remove the pin and you have a couple of extra stops range but you need to take care you don't hit the X limit.

VLC plays the 400mbps codec ok on my laptop.

When shooting M43 I like to shoot as wide open as possible and don't have the latitude in the sensor to 'ride' the ISO so variable ND's are essential. Shooting with my full frame sony kit I have more latitude to ride the aperture and ISO without changing the look of the image too much so I could get away fixed ND filters.

How do you know when the distortion correction is done - post or pre downsampling?

Sounds like a lot of £££ to buy a full set of optically corrected lenses.

So you don't loose resolution when it's done in-camera?

Distortion and CA can be corrected by importing footage into Photoshop as a smart object and then applying lens correction tools. Resolve Studio has basic lens distortion correction tools.

Do you absolutely need a fluid head ? The friction devices in cheap, small heads are vastly inferior to the ones in proper video heads to such an extent that getting a convincingly smooth pan or tilt motion is very difficult. I just use my Gitzo for quick framing and if I need a smooth pan or tilt I will have to use my much more expensive and heavier Satchler FSB4.

Also unless you have a monitor where the calibration device and software changes the monitors internal hardware LUT you will effectively be applying another LUT to an existing one which can have all sorts of unwanted consequences like banding and highlight color shifts.

I've given up with cheap screen calibrators and that includes the better ones like the i1 display. You are better off buying a good screen designed for AV work and using one of the factory settings. Even the best calibration device won't make a poor screen into a reference monitor and the devices the manufacturers use to calibrate are far better than these. Back in the day when screens shipped in such bad shape these things were obviously necessary but these days a proper screen designed for AV should be good to go out of the box.

I like the Gitzo series 1 video head for when I need to go small and light.

That won't work as the adaptor body is not the same thickness as the non speedbooster adapter. With speedboosters the adjustment if you are short of infinity is to wind the optical group towards the sensor.

We are living in a post-truth / alternative facts world now so while it may be factually provable by optical calculations and various laws of physics that the only thing that determines perspective is the subject to object distance it is also equally valid to say a 'wide angle' lens has a certain 'look' that is independent of the format and personal belief in this or any other similar notion is just as valid. Indeed there is evidence to be had that there is a vast conspiracy involving all the camera manufacturers and scientists in the world to promote the idea of 'perspective' to sell more cameras and lenses. For many years now we have all been ready to accept the scientists opinion that the world is round but thanks to a growing number of brave and pioneering individuals and groups around the world the truth is finally emerging that the world is infact flat. Only just recently was I able to satisfy myself that this was indeed the case when I took my old school ruler down to the sea and held it up to the horizon - no so-called expert can argue with that can they!

Please explain in detail your methodology - Sounds like I could sell my external recorder if your theory is better than my eyes....

Tell me - what actual experience do you have shooting a Sony A7s or r MK2 to an external recorder in Log and grading it?

If you want to guarantee a banding free image then shoot slog-2 as it uses most of the 8bit space. Correctly exposed and WB’d slog-2 to an ext recorder is a very robust image that will only fall apart with major abuse in the grade unlike the internal codec that is so compressed it already broken before you grade it...... No doubt some will jump in and say the ext hdmi out is only 8bit so it can’t be any good......

Panasonic was going to release the GH5s yesterday but after reading this thread they realised it would never live up to expectations and cancelled the whole project.

I set a custom WB before every take using a grey card or expodisk. This includes when changing lenses as these can have different color casts and same applies when I use a VND. There are several reasons you want to nail WB during capture and not leave it to post; 1, Unless you have a very good codec you will potentially loose image quality when correcting in post - this applies to low bitrate 4.2.0 8bit highly compressed internal codecs. 2, If you are using ETTR as an exposure method and you don't have WB set perfectly you can be clipping in a blue or red channel and not know it as most if not all zebra systems use the green channel and unless this is aligned with red and blue ( ie correctly WB'd) it won't show clipping in blue or red. 3 How will you know 100% from your footage what had the VND on and what had it off - extra hassle and time in post.

It would be ironic if this new GH5 was a more 'stills' oriented camera with a higher MP count and reduced video capability.

Shot on a phone, viewed on a phone - get over it.

People are shooting vertical because the majority of people will watch them vertically.

Strange that when the GH5 came out a few months ago it was hailed as an amazing camera that fulfilled may people's dreams of a near perfect camera for very little money. Now there seems to be hysterical expectation for a new one that will promise to fix a suddenly important list of faults and deficiencies.......