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...and if they had picked one up and shot with it, they might like or dislike it for reasons unrelated to the video it can produce (like where the buttons are, how the menus work, battery life, monitoring options etc.).

Don't take forum discussions and comments quite so seriously - Kye discusses equipment too. I think this forum has always been biased towards that side of things. But the equipment is used as creative tools, so both it and the creativity are very much linked together. But if you're mainly interested in the equipment that's fine as far as I'm concerned - probably most of the threads on the forum are related to equipment and tools.

I agree. I often apply an S shaped contrast curve, compressing the highs downwards and lows upwards and expanding the mid-range to increase contrast. Balancing the compression and expansion (and the inflection points) to get it look nice is the tricky part of course.... And then there's the accuracy or otherwise of the Rec 2020 to Rec. 709 colour conversion - I think every HLG to Rec 709 conversion LUT I've tried has a different take on this...

Not at all surprised - doing that is far more complex and creative than the simple documentary stuff I normally produce.

Based on my own experience of putting together 10-20 minute YT videos, I'd agree with that. I don't usually do the whole editing process in one go - more often it's broken into 1-2 hour sessions and from start to finish it spans a week or more. My usual process to create something for YT is: Decide on the topic/subject for the movie (based on what content I've already got, usually from an event or place I've visited, recently or in the past). Choose the clips that might be included. Decide on a 'flow' for the movie - is it going to be basically chronological or geographical? Put the clips that might fit into the flow into the editor media bin. Put the clips onto the timeline in the right order. There might be 30 or more. Do a very rough cut and play it. Delete or trim the clips to improve the flow and get the overall length within the target (it's almost always too long to start with). Repeat the cut & trim cycle until happy. Go through the timeline and adjust brightness/contrast/saturation/colour as necessary (this can be very time consuming!). If a clip is proving really awkward to adjust, decide if it's essential to the flow. If not, could it be discarded or replaced with different one? Do a similar adjustment process for the audio content (equally or more important as the picture content). For the wobbly clips (which for old content will be quite a lot of them!) try to stabilise them - another time consuming activity! Add titles to tell the viewer more about what they're looking at. This often involves some research to find the information. Add timeline markers and generate a list of YouTube chapter points from them. Render out the movie and play it through to review it. Fix the issues found (there will be some...). Render it out again and upload it to YT as a 'private' video. Add a description, the chapter list, a suitable thumbnail and the 'end screen' stuff in the YT 'Studio'. Check it plays and looks OK on YT. Make it 'public' on YT and hope al least a few people watch it for more than 10 seconds... The above also needs cups of coffee and maybe wine too 😉 SRV1981 - next time you watch something on YT, just think about how much creative work and time has probably gone into it.

Below is an approximate comparison of transfer curve for various Log and Sony's three versions of HLG. From the Bolex PDF above: The three versions of HLG that Sony cameras support (from https://xtremestuff.net/sony-and-hybrid-log-gamma-hlg/ ) - HLG3 (upper curve) is the closest to the Rec. 2100 standard : A chart of various Log formats from https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64243940 (note the 3 EV spread in the high EV limit between the various curves). The highest DR curves look to be C-Log2, S-Log3 and V-Log - but of course they do that by being flatter in the important mid-range area i.e. fewer levels per EV, increasing the chance of banding if pushed too far in post. Note this chart is -10 to +10 EV vs. IRE 0 to 110%, the other two are -8 to +8 EV vs. 10-bit digital code values.

But how much of that is due to relatively small differences in brightness, contrast and saturation (all of which can be adjusted in post and usually in-camera by tweaking the picture profiles)? We are all used to colours changing due to natural lighting variation, and most people are drawn to bright, colourful, vibrant scenes - which is why the 'standard' profile on cameras is often relatively high in contrast and saturation to produce 'punchy' looking stills and video. When comparing cameras (if I'm thinking about buying one), I'm much more concerned about unnatural image distortions, like aliasing, moire (especially the false-colour variety), compression artefacts (e.g. banding and blockiness) and noise - because those can be distracting and not as easily dealt with later.

I should have qualified my comment to say that it only related to my personal preference using 10-bit HLG and OMLog400 from the OM-1 - I've never used HLG or Log from other cameras. I'd actually prefer to shoot in a modified version of one of the standard picture profiles on the OM-1, but they are not available in 10-bit mode - HLG or Log are the only choices. It's interesting how different the log transfer curves can be on different brands and cameras (scroll down the pages to the step chart images) e.g. OM-1 - https://www.optyczne.pl/59.3-Inne_testy-OM_System_OM-1_-_test_trybu_filmowego_Użytkowanie.html GH6 - https://www.optyczne.pl/62.3-Inne_testy-Panasonic_Lumix_GH6_-_test_trybu_filmowego_Użytkowanie.html A6700 - https://www.optyczne.pl/79.3-Inne_testy-Sony_A6700_-_test_trybu_filmowego_Użytkowanie.html FX3 - https://www.optyczne.pl/46.3-Inne_testy-Sony_FX3_-_test_trybu_filmowego_Użytkowanie.html R7 - https://www.optyczne.pl/65.3-Inne_testy-Canon_EOS_R7_-_test_trybu_filmowego_Użytkowanie.html C70 - https://www.optyczne.pl/48.3-Inne_testy-Canon_EOS_C70_-_test_kamery_Użytkowanie.html S5ii - https://www.optyczne.pl/70.3-Inne_testy-Panasonic_Lumix_S5_II_-_test_trybu_filmowego_Użytkowanie.html XH2 - https://www.optyczne.pl/66.3-Inne_testy-Fujifilm_X-H2_-_test_trybu_filmowego_Użytkowanie.html

...or you could just create your own flat/pseudo log transfer characteristic in-camera by adjusting a standard picture profile (e.g. contrast, saturation, highlight/shadow curves) to give you a compromise SOOC/gradable format that fits your needs?

If you want useable SOOC video that looks reasonable when played directly, but which has high DR for grading if you want to, you could try shooting in 10-bit HLG? It's a compromise format that is designed to provide decent looking video on non-HDR displays, and full HDR on HDR-capable displays - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_log–gamma . Note it uses Rec. 2020 colour space/gamut, so the colours will be distorted to some extent on a Rec. 709 display. KnightsFan said: ...and I've also tried grading HLG (from my OM-1) and found it OK. I think Log is better for grading (than HLG), but Log is not very usable as SOOC video (unless you really like watching low-contrast/saturation video!).

But what kind of 'non narrative stuff'? To try and help, we need an idea of what you often film and hence what sort of colours are the important ones to get right. For example, if it's landscapes or wildlife then human skin tones are almost irrelevant, but correctly reproducing the range of greens, blues, browns, yellows and highly saturated, bright, flower colours etc. is important (and it isn't always easy to get a good overall colour balance/compromise in that situation).

I agree - especially the last point. SRV1981 - 'Content is King'. Without decent, interesting content your audience is not going to care about image quality differences because they've stopped watching the movie. If the content is good, they won't be noticing the quality differences because they're engrossed in the story instead. As an example, I recently posted a video on my (niche, railfan orientated) YT channel using content I recorded 20-25 years ago on 720x576, 50i DV tape-based camcorders. The picture quality is terrible by today's standards (it's noisy, low resolution, has bad colour bleed, poor DR etc.). But the historical content, getting the most out of the ambient sound and keeping the editing reasonably fast-paced seems to have been popular and it's had over 500 views in 4 weeks. Which is pretty good for my channel. I've got other videos on the channel that I thought looked pretty good and were shot in 4k but have only had 60 views in a year... Below is a still from the editor timeline - note the burnt-out sky, the purple fringing along edge of the canopy, the over-saturated orange patch turning into red, the jaggies on the diagonals and the lack of resolution (and typical western Ireland wet weather!). No pixel-peeping needed to spot the technical defects 🙂

A film-making version of the 'No-one ever got fired for buying IBM' (computers) situation 🙂 I do wonder if some of that is driven by fear of jobs disappearing (despite the availability of much lower cost tools - e.g. cameras and editing software - having hugely expanded the overall 'moving image' production market).

Yes (and in the ZV-1 series), but it's only 8-bit S-Log2/S-Log3/HLG, not the 10-bit version available in the newer and higher end cameras. I think from a branding perspective, Nikon might use the RED name in the way Panasonic uses Leica and Sony uses Zeiss branding to 'elevate' the higher-end products a bit. And of course DJI have apparently owned the majority of Hasselblad for some years (but don't seem to have made much use of the branding potential of it).

There's some statistics up to 2019 here - https://stephenfollows.com/digital-vs-film-on-hollywood-movies/

Me too - big companies rarely buy much smaller ones and then leave them alone, especially one that's been losing market share to it's competitors.

Jannard (now 74) retired from RED five years ago - https://h4vuser.net/t/everything-changes/10600 - so I very much doubt he'd want an executive role anyway. I suspect that Nikon saying that Jannard and Land are now 'close advisors' is mostly about trying to reassure RED users that the RED philosophy isn't going to change overnight.

I've never acted myself, but I used to be heavily involved doing backstage work for amateur drama groups (lighting, sound, scenery building etc.) so I've seen a lot of amateur acting go both well and badly. I think acting to an inanimate camera is probably quite difficult - the interaction and extra adrenalin provided by an audience often really helps. I've been at dress rehearsals where at the end you think 'Oh dear...it's miles off being ready', but the first night performance with an audience is 200% better. People seeing the performance/movie for the first time don't know the script or the movements, so as long as you stay 'in character' when things go wrong you can often ad-lib your way out of mistakes. But dropping out of character immediately says 'I've messed up'. I've worked on shows where sizeable chunks of the script have been skipped by an actor but the cast have held it together and got away with it. Remind yourself you're doing it for fun (I assume), so relax - it'll come out better if you're not worrying about every detail while you're performing.

If you prefer the 'look' from a particular camera, then I guess you should buy that one... But as soon as you take it outdoors under a broken cloudy sky and press the record button, the angle, intensity and colour of the ambient light will be constantly changing, giving you an ever changing palette of 'looks' that you didn't ask for... which as Kye suggested above you'll have to adjust for in post anyway to get a cohesive 'look'. (I was once on the top of a mountain pass, looking down a wide valley, in the aftermath of a storm the day before. The fast moving thick clouds meant it would change from bright sunshine to deep shadow every few seconds. It produced very dramatic lighting - and some nice stills and video - but setting camera exposure settings was almost a lottery...)

Something that people tend to forget is that products will have a performance tolerance range (nothing is perfect) so if you tested say 100 nominally identical cameras there would be performance and 'calibration' differences between them. I suspect that at the low-price end of things, per-unit testing doesn't go much beyond functional tests with a few basic performance tests and adjustments, with more detailed performance testing only done on a random sample basis (to check/ensure ongoing production quality). As chip datasheets often say about some spec parameters - 'performance guaranteed by design' i.e. we don't production test this performance parameter, or 'not 100% tested' i.e. we only do random sample testing of this. The 'analog' performance of image sensors, in terms of things like noise levels will vary - so you might be lucky and get a camera with a better than average sensor or unlucky and get a worse one - but most will be close to average. Consumer/Prosumer cameras are not intended to be calibrated scientific instruments (and supplied with 'traceable' calibration certificates as a consequence), so it doesn't surprise me that the same nominal exposure settings can produce different results on different cameras (especially between brands). Lenses can also have noticeable performance differences between samples of the same lens (de-centering is a common problem) - Lensrentals have highlighted this in some of the articles on their website.

As an electronics design engineer who has spent a large a proportion of my career designing video processing and transmission equipment, I find it almost unbelievable how bad the video image processing can be in some hybrid cameras sometimes. For example, look at the amount of false colour and aliasing there is in the FHD from the Sony A6600 versus the (four year older) Pana GX8 in the image below (grabbed from this DPReview video test chart ) Sony has much improved the false colour situation in the recent A6700, but aliasing is still an issue (full test chart ) : I well understand the issues of heat and power consumption in small battery powered devices, but e.g. Fuji and Panasonic can do it much better than Sony in comparable size cameras...

I agree with the comments from Kye and bjohn. I think you're getting a bit obsessive about small differences in DR, which in real world usage are unlikely to be significant (or that you'd notice after editing the footage). The two cameras are a bit chalk vs cheese anyway - one is hybrid-targeted, with a higher res sensor, mechanical shutter, a viewfinder, and more control wheels. The other is much more a dedicated video camera with (in theory) better on-board audio, fewer control dials, no viewfinder etc. When you are using a camera, I think things like how comfortable is to hold, how easy it is to operate the controls, how good the stabilisation is, can you customise the operation of the buttons and dials to suit your way of doing things etc., are far more important than small differences in performance. As an example, I held an A6700 in my hands a few days ago, and found it quite awkward to reach the 'record' button without moving my right hand from (for me) it's natural position on the grip. On my G9 and OM-1 I have the record function programmed to one of the front custom buttons (between the grip and the lens mount), which are under my fingertips when I've got my right hand around the grip. If you're at the stage where you are seriously considering buying the A6700, FX30 or ZV-E1, either try and get to a store where you can hold them in your hands, or make sure you buy from a place where you can return it without a problem - you might really like it when it arrives, or the opposite....

If you are really worried about that, buy it and stress-test it quickly so that you can return ASAP it if you're not happy. But if long recording times in hot environments are important to you, then you should be looking at a camera with a fan anyway (so you don't get distracted from the enjoyable creative stuff by worrying about overheating). Otherwise avoid leaving the camera out in hot direct sun/put a sunshade over it/put a white or reflective cloth over it. And turn it off when not using it, so it's not already hot before you press the record button.

If you want to minimise the risk buying used, buy the body from a major dealer who will provide a decent length warranty and allow you to return it if you're not happy with it e.g. in the UK, Wex offer a 45-day return period and provide 12-month warranties on used gear. MPB offer 6-month used warranties, as do some of the other major UK dealers. If you want long warranties, buy new and then buy an extended warranty from the manufacturer, or wait until the manufacturer offers a free extended warranty as a sales promotion on new bodies.

Yes, very much agree - it's why I don't own any huge/heavy long telephoto lenses even though I shoot some wildlife stills and video. 300mm on micro43 is close to the usable limit for handheld/leaning-on-something video even with Oly/OMDS levels of stabilisation, and you can get that with a relatively modest size and weight lens e.g. the Pana 100-300 F4-F5.6 is only 520g and 126mm long.