Tim Sewell

Having just acquired a Panasonic S1 (with which I have immediately fallen in love) I'm actually quite happy to hear that the AF isn't so good as it means I don't have any urgent reason to buy any of their very expensive native lenses!

Unfortunately that's not the aim of many content creators in this space. To be honest, if I were a marketing exec at Canikon etc, there's no way I'd send a pre-release camera to Andrew Reid. I'd have a budget for the launch and I wouldn't want to spend a penny of it sending units to people who might post a review video saying 'this is shit'. That, obviously, is because my budget is purposed for maximising sales at launch. It's exactly the same as producing a trailer for a movie and stuffing it with all the best bits from the film - you want to get as many bums on seats for that opening weekend as you possibly can (especially if the film's a duffer - get as much cash in as you can before word of mouth gets out). So there will always be a ready supply of shills, ready to receive pre-launch gear (often in the agreeable climes of some high-end tropical resort) and give a thumbs up, grinning broadly. The opportunity for honest reviews comes later, once the equipment in question is available to rent or buy; but of course those reviews will never get the view counts of the pre-launch encomiums because interest wanes amongst consumers, as opposed to users.

If your aim was to provide honest advice delivered with integrity, that would be the way forward. If that's not your aim, it seems like much harder work than just taking the free stuff, TBH.

The colourist in question was probably referring more to chroma noise, which I think we can all agree is pretty ugly and 'video' looking. I've seen a couple of videos showing how drastically improved even quite clean-looking clips can be once it's removed.

Nice. And really stable - is the IBIS really that good? I plan to use it mainly with my Super Taks and with a couple of EF zooms. Waiting for the postman!

Just picked one up for GBP1025 including VL upgrade, so have read this whole thread. Looking forward to getting my hands on it. Anyone want to buy a FS5 Mk1 with RAW upgrade?

I'm quite a fan of Potato Jet - he's clearly a nice guy and also a working commercial videographer (although he readily admits that his YT activities take up more and more of his time). His really strong kit recommendations tend to be for items he finds useful for his commercial work (and the Arri Alexa thing was fairly jokey - although he still has the beast standing on a tripod in his studio). Similar to him are the guys at Epic Light Media, who intersperse gear videos with lighting tutorials and flights of preposterous fancy. A YouTuber who is much more focused on actual film making is, of course, Rob Ellis, whose videos about lighting, composition and colour are excellent. Personally I find Gerald dry as dust and twice as boring.

Yum

IKR? At first I thought my monitor frequency had been changed or that the camera must have 1950s level stabilisation. But no - it was just really badly (in the context of stabilisation) shot. A shame.

https://lmgtfy.app/?q=which+gopros+have+4k

By far your best bet here would be to keep an eye out on eBay for used GoPros. I recently picked up a Hero 3 for £50 and I've seen various 4s under £100. It might take a little while, but something good will appear in the end and will be much better than any brand new sub-100 model.

You spelled 'to be given lifetime sinecures in the House of Lords' incorrectly.

Well I LOLled at it, which is rare - but each to their own where humour is concerned.

I thought it caught a particularly Hollywood-style boosterism and ignorance rather well.

They very much wouldn't like you to keep using them. They'd like you to get out there and replace them with new stuff, preferably on a monthly basis!

I mean, this looks like a great deal...

You can get a Neewer knock-off battery grip for a shade over GBP30, which solves the battery issue somewhat: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B073XLBKKG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've got one of these. I bought it 'spares'n'repairs' and found that the only reason it wasn't working was that the power winder contacts had corroded. A spot of tinfoil sorted that, but I also picked up a new standard battery grip. Total cost (for what was Canon's flagship)? £100.

Much to my wife's chagrin, the point I make when I compare my expenditure to that of friends who are into boats, motorbikes, vintage cars etc etc is unarguable. If one buys one's equipment in a thoughtful way, favours secondhand and doesn't always chase the very latest thing, cinematography/film-making is by no means an extravagant pastime. Another mate of mine is into breeding rare prawns - I kid you not - where a breeding pair, or whatever they call them, of some species fetch over £500 a pop. When he adds up that ongoing cost (prawns, like humans, are not, sadly, immortal) to his other costs of tanks, filters, electronic gizmos etc he's got an at least Komodo-sized annual habit.

Whilst you're correct in the main with your advice, I don't really think it's up to you to dictate who should or shouldn't buy a particular camera. Plenty of people might want an item like this for artistic or hobby purposes, without necessarily being a 'rich playboy'. I have a FS5, an A7R2 and heaps of lighting, sound and grip stuff because I'm a crazed enthusiast and would-be artist, no playboys here. My mate does up old cars as a hobby and he probably spends three or four times my camera-related costs each year and, guess what, he's not a rich playboy either.

That sequence was graded slog3. He mentioned that later in the video.

Having had and used both the Mki and Mkii C100, the latter is definitely a huge improvement in terms of usage. The DPAF is excellent and the EVF is actually usable! The only unfortunate hangover from the Mki is the codec. If you're planning to mainly use SOOC footage with minimal grading then yes, for the use case you've described it's almost a no-brainer. However, if you plan to grade to any extent you'll find the low bitrate 8bit files frustratingly thin.

It's been confirmed on DVXUser that the flap covers a port, so it does have HDMI pass-through. No word on the USB-C though.

It looks like a mini HDMI slots into the camera, but if you look at the photo, on the rear face of the unit there's a 'HDMI cover', which looks to me like it's covering a full-size HDMI out socket. I wonder, if we could see the other side, if there's a USB-C out as well.