austinchimp

low/no budget referred to the production value of the review itself, not to the type of productions it would be used on. As in - this review has been shot with a very low budget. They obviously don't use a big crew or have a gaffer with them, or even a proper DP. It's a run and gun review. With that knowledge, I don't expect too much. I just want to see simple demonstrations to illustrate what they're talking about. Maybe your expectations are different, which is fine. Maybe if you post some examples of your work we can see what kind of level you're expecting? Not trying to provoke, only to understand where you're coming from.

Now I haven't watched the review itself, but aren't we being a bit harsh here? I find this a useful - if basic - demonstration of the DR and a quick and dirty grade. It's an ugly shot, sure. It's not a Hollywood level production, but if I'm being honest this is the kind of shot I end up with in my edits frequently, and the kind of shot you want to know you can salvage something 'usable'. Not spectacular or perfect, but usable, and in that case this is a good demonstration. If you're expecting world-class images from both a technical and artistic standpoint then go see Dune in the cinema or watch any number of big-budget movies. This is a low/no budget camera review. As a content maker myself I can see what he was trying to do, and it was adequate in my view. I don't like this attitude of piling on on somebody for one shot that you personally might have done different. Or perhaps all of our work is beyond reproach with every shot a masterpiece?

Have you tried the GHa luts for the S1? I can tell you that they work great and elevate the colour completely. The S1 files have enough data and latitude that you can match to the Alexa pretty well. Here's another lut pack that does the same thing -

Beautiful. Videos like this are the counterargument to the technical assertion that "every camera is the same, you just need to know how to process the images correctly". Yes, maybe that is technically true, but how much work and how many hours would you need to put into a Sony A7s or a GH5 to get it to have this emotional weight and texture? Something about these old Blackmagic sensors is just magical, it feels like memories. Lovely for you to have captured precious moments like this.

Can't comment on Nikons but the A7rii is a pretty stunning photo camera with one of the best sensors I've ever used. I'm still stunned by the quality of the images today. It's also a pretty decent video camera as long as you don't need high frame rates. I was using the A7rii for sports shooting and my only real complaint was the small and slow buffer, so when I'd fire off a few frames of something cool happening, the buffer would get full and basically freeze the camera for a few seconds until the buffer had cleared. For portraits and slower work where you don't need to fire off 100 full res shots in quick succession then it's great.

It would be interesting to see some detailed technical analysis of why images from different cameras look so different - for example the GH5 and the Arri Alexa. We know they do look different, and even if you took both images and outputted them to the exact same compressed h264 file format, there would still be a massive difference between them. Even discounting the obvious colour and dynamic range differences it seems to be there is a massive difference in the texture of the image and motion itself. But what exactly is happening in the pipeline of a GH5, or A7SIII that makes it different? Then we could start to work out which specific process was to blame, and maybe how to undo it or ask for manufacturers to change it. I guess without one of the manufacturers opening up their secret recipe, we'll never know. All I know is fairly vague terms like 'noise reduction' and 'sharpening'. I do agree with @kye that sharpening+processing+compression is likely an irreversible destructive process.

I have a theory that the new Sony sensors have a lot of inbuilt processing done on the chip itself or in the accompanying electronics, which you can see in the new BMPCC4k cameras. It feels a lot more sharpened and as if there's processing or noise reduction in there. The newer BM pocket 4k and 6k cameras look very similar to the GH5s and Z-Cam cameras for me. A nice image, but not with the same magic or feel. Some have speculated that it's about the jump up to 4k, but I feel like there's something else going on there.

Yeah I'm really conflicted about log profiles on consumer cameras. I honestly don't like the way most footage is graded these days, and the popular style of 'cinematic grading' which to me usually looks flat and weird when done by amateurs. The worst casualty has been skin tones, with rich vibrant alive tones replaced by green grey yellow orange stylised skin in 90% of videos on Youtube. Whether that's to do with Sony sensors or just Log profiles is a difficult question. I do know however that I have rarely seen skin tones out of any Sony camera below the FX9 that I've liked. One of the things I'm struck by when I watch old movies shot on film - from the 70s through to the 90s - is how natural and beautiful everything looks, before every shadow had to be dark blue and every skin tone had to be sunburnt orange or desaturated grey.

Wow Panasonic really nailed colour back then. When I look at this and the colour from the 5Dmkii I have to wonder what the hell happened since then? Maybe my negative perception of colour in consumer cams 2014-2020ish mostly comes from Sony dominance and the pandora's box of giving S-Log to the masses.

Not sure if it's placebo or something in the compression used by consumer cameras these days but I definitely perceive a certain flatness and lack of colour density in many hybrid cameras and camcorders these days, and the common factor in most of them is Sony sensors. Out of all the consumer brands, Canon seems to stand out as being an exception in that regard. They seem to be capable of producing more rich tones straight out of the camera. I was also never that into the colour from the BMPCC4k with it's Sony sensor, compared to the Ursa image. It's been said many times on this forum, but I do wish manufacturers would focus less on 8k and more on getting colour right, after all Arri has been showing how to do it right for a decade now!

Yeah I think the skintone is much better with the S1a lut. It's from a hike near Benidorm in Spain.

I purchased the S1 set, and I see what you mean about the colour deviation between the GHa and S1a Luts. I was quite happy with GHa on my S1 footage, but the S1 High Scale Lut looks more vibrant and cleaner to me compared to the GHa Linear conversion. Better colour separation and fidelity. Thanks for your hard work, this is a really valuable tool and a pleasure to use! Footage is 1080p 10 bit from the S1, basic corrections with the luts applied on top, ungraded. Top is S1a, bottom is GHa.

Is that Alicante port? I work nearby.

@Sage Is there a discount for Emotive Color packages if you've previously bought the LUTs for another camera? I got the GH5 set and am considering the S1 set.

Don't think this has been posted before - I saw this example from the Emotive Color site, and I genuinely can't believe how good this looks. It must be my favourite example of GH5 footage. Stunning filmlike color. I'd love to know more about how he graded it.

Very excited about your S1 LUTs. I've been using the GH5 luts on my S1 so far and seems to work great. Are the GH5 and S1 luts very different? Do you have any samples of the Lut on the S1 or S1H? I looked on the Emotive Color site and couldn't find any. Thanks for your work and for being a presence on here.

You'd be better off buying that lens, which is 90% of the look of that video. Global shutter probably helps too, but I bet you could get a similar look from the Zcam E2, A7SIII, S1H etc if you had the same glass.

Beautiful work. Can I also ask what sharpening you did and how you exported it? Some of the shots are so sharp and crisp, particularly of the woman near the fire at the end. Looks fantastic. I always struggle to get crisp exports, even when the original footage has very high fidelity. I feel like h264 footage comes out much worse on Vimeo/YT compared to footage recorded in raw or prores for some reason.

It's easy to get FOMO and be distracted by the latest cameras from Canon and Sony (which for me both look fantastic as a run & gun event shooter) but the S1 has a beautiful image which I have yet to fully exploit. Also a far better stills camera than the A7Siii, which is essential for me. I do hope we're getting to a post-camera landscape where all the cameras are so fantastic that we can just stick with what we've got and concentrate on the work. We've probably been there for a few years already, but with the new cameras around right now I certainly have much less envy of Red and Arri users. In most situations, with the right glass, you'd struggle to tell the difference.

I know Andrew isn't always a fan of people just posting Youtube links, but after a while it's nice to see some (what I would consider) cinematic samples of the camera coming out these days. Good to remember with the new Canon announcements that the ceiling for this cam remains incredibly high.

That's exactly what I did. I kept the X-T3 as it's a lovely camera to use and compact, but the S1 beats it in photo and video quality in every way (except autofocus...)

My first impression of your travel video is that you uploaded it in an extremely low bitrate, which does it a big disservice. Could you upload it at 20,000 - 40-000 kbps? I downloaded the ungraded still of the man playing the violin and it also looks like 720p, which again doesn't help. To me, the color space transformed shot looks about right for the lighting, the violinist is obviously very much in the shade, which you've exposed to keep the highlights. I think there's just too much dynamic range in this shot for the camera to expose the skin tones nicely, as they're firmly in the shadows. The good news is that I don't think it looks terrible! If those were the lighting conditions then that's what it was, and the way you exposed it avoids any nasty highlight clipping. If the man was standing in the shade, then it's ok for him to look like he's in the shade. He doesn't have to look like he has a fill light. Maybe try playing with the curves a little to bring up the skin tones if possible, while keeping some blacks.

This is great!

Yes GHa works very well on my S1 and S1H files using Premiere. I haven't seen a real difference between the two cameras in terms of colour. If I were using Resolve I'd probably go with a color transform node and get it into Arri space or something, but I prefer Premiere so I just drop the Lut over my footage. Generally I need to reduce the exposure on the footage to get the Lut looking good. I tried loading the monitoring LUT into the camera, but it looked awful - probably because the S1 is a different camera to the GH5 obviously. I also tried the native Panasonic LUTs on the footage, but GHa looks a million times better. I like the Linear version personally, then grade from there. Of course I'd love a proper S1 version of GHa too! I think that would be phenomenal... Looking forward to a monitoring lut that works with the S1