Lintelfilm

Ah. I see. Not true of Panasonic, or Sony, or Canon though. None of these manufacturers have offered 1080p "pixel quality" anywhere close to Blackmagic. Blackmagic are the exception. Panasonic have gone 4K across the board, even in the lowly G7 and no doubt will continue down - because they want to proliforate 4K to sell 4K TV's. Which is undoubtedly a major reason they are going 8K too. Japan has an 8K roadmap for broadcast TV. If these companies want video shooters to buy 8K cameras, they are not going to offer them a 4K camera with otherwise superior specs for less money.

Absolutely not the case. I have a GH4 and BMPCC - 4K 8bit H264 vs 1080p 10bit Prores. I choose the Pocket image 90% of the time. There are no 4K 8-bit cameras that rival the HD Blackmagic image for me. Possibly the XC10 but that's 422 with a huge bit rate. I'm done with 8 bit and I'm done with high compression. It's junk. The A7SII, GH4 - colours look like junk. NX1 is slightly better but not if you actually want to do anything at all creative with the image.

Yeah I've watched that wedding one a couple of times. Stunning image. This one is really nice too: https://vimeo.com/106428907

The future is black ... for me anyway. Blackmagic! The phrase "quality not quantity" springs to mind. I want colour depth, robust codec, fast readout speed (or global shutter), low light performance. This news makes me pretty much certain I'll be phasing Panasonic out of my life over the next year or so. In 18 months I may be exclusively Blackmagic - editing in Resolve and shooting on a Micro CC and/or URSA 4K. The big question for me is will the MFT mount remain relevant to me. Will Blackmagic continue to use it in the next generation of cameras? Will Panasonic's 8K sensor be MFT? Sorry but I see this 8K stuff as really bad news for anyone who cares about quality of information over quantity of pixels ...

I'm just finishing editing a project shot at night over the course of a light festival. As usual I shot it with a BMPCC and a GH4, both speed boosted (0.58x and 0.71x). I used them both about equally but in the edit I'm choosing 90% BMPCC shots. It's not just significantly better in low light (my subjective opinion when all things are considered - including dynamic range, highlight rolloff, shadow detail, colour and grain structure). Yes the speed booster is faster but it's not just that - it's just a beautiful image to push around. It's not perfect - aliasing artefacts can be nasty, but only show up occasionally (far worse in RAW than ProRes btw - I rarely shoot in raw). I have a good kit now that makes it very useable - Viewfactor cage, 0.58x SB, SmallRig top handle with Ansso battery adapter attached neatly to the back (I'll post a picture of this if anyone's interested) and Zacuto BMPCC Z-Finder. The only thing that really annoys me is the menu structure, which is ridiculous when you need to change ISO and WB on the fly. It's a great camera. My favourite Blackmagic image is reserved for the 4K sensor though. Yes it's not very versatile but it's f*&@ing gorgeous. I'm not too taken with the 4.6K footage I've seen. 4K ursa footage in the right conditions is personally for me the nicest digital image I know. Even considering the 12 stops DR.

The 14mm Samyang is junk. Distortion hell. The 11-16 is way better.

I use my 11-16 with my BMPCC (which is my favourite camera btw) and yes it's a really great lens but its not without issues.

Which 14mm lens at f2.8 rivals which 24mm lens at f5.6? There are a number of full frame 24mm lenses that can rival the very best lenses at that kind of aperture. I don't know of any 14mm lens that can claim to do that at f2.8.

Editing has improved massively. Try it.

Why not Resolve 12?

Also this one from Mr CheesyCam (not settings or grade noted): And another random one from Vimeo (again no settings noted): Can't tell a lot from these two but the image looks "fuller" to my eye than internal footage. The golf course video showed some nasty artefacts in the shadows at times, but by the look of it I'd guess he didn't upload a very big file so hard to say what's causing it.

The resolution on YouTube says "1080p60" so I suspect this is not down-converted 4K footage. YouTube compression also makes real pixel peeping impossible, but it's interesting nonetheless. Noise is certainly better looking and colours are clearly punchier. Zacuto aren't going to make a 5" loupe for this thing are they? That would be silly. Wouldn't it?

Cine V with sharpness and contrast all the way down and highlight curve at -5. You need mid tones for skin tone contrast so Cine D and V Log are no good. If you have a diffusion filter like Tiffen HDVFX or Ultra Contrast use it. Makes faces look much nicer in 4K.

My package with Photoguard includes public liability and professional indemnity insurance, on top of the £10,000 equipment cover (including iMac and all other housebound stuff, which again may not be covered if you're using it for work). That was £300 for the year. Top tip is itemise and tally up every single video related piece of kit you own - and get covered for it. Otherwise things get complicated with payout (apparently).

Having owned both the D5300 and GH4 for an equal amount of time (overlapping briefly before I sold the D5300), I'm certain that the GH4 is not superior to the D5300. In 4K I would say it's about equal all things considered. The GH4 really lives up to its reputation as an awful low light performer. In 4K at 1600 the noise makes detail look like 720p, and colour goes out of the window. The D5300 I was a little happier taking to 1600 but compression artefacts are much worse and the noise is ugly, so I'd call it a draw personally. True the BMPCC only goes up to 1600, but even in ProRes HQ you can lift by about one stop footage that has been unavoidably exposed far to the right and get pretty decent results. The codec means that neat video works wonders too. The other thing I don't see talked about much is the importance of dynamic range for a lot of low light situations. I'm going to be shooting a light festival on Thursday night and when I first took the job on, I was really panicking about the cameras I have and was seriously considering renting a C100 or A7S. But after tests I'm actually glad I have a BMPCC. Because if there are lights in the shot (as there very often are in low light situations), good dynamic range, strong codec and highlight rolloff is vital. With the GH4, such scenes are split into crushed areas and/or blown areas, whereas the Pocket can reveal detail in the shadows (yes it's noisy but the grain is fine and detail is in there) and highlights of a night scene. Also if you know how to extract it you can get bold colours from low light scenes with the BMPCC. This. This is what I've been thinking all along and it relates to what I said above. So yeah the D5300/5500 or alternatively a Panny G7. If you watch The Camera Store's video review of the G7, they show plain as day that it's noticeably superior to the GH4 in low light (making it definitely equal to the D5300 IMO). 4K means your friend can both crop in if lens options are limited, and apply noise reduction if necessary. My lens suggestion would be a Chinese (Turbo or whatever) speed booster and the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 Mark I (the non-VC version). Though autofocus is obviously off the table with that. The Leica 25mm f/1.4 (which I got for about $300 new on eBay) could be a good choice considering the crop of 4K and the ability to zoom in post. That would give autofocus too. Go to HD for a "normal" 50mm equiv. field of view. In fact the more I think about it the better I think G7 + Leica 25mm 1.4 would work.

BMPCC - definitively better than D5300 (I've done a low light side by side and the Pocket trounced the Nikon). A speed booster and fast lens helps too of course. Also if you shoot RAW you can lift the shadows a few ISO and clean up very dark footage. It all depends if your friend wants an easy life or not though ...

Oh I thought it was a new set of LUTs. Yes I have them ...

It has a nice look. I used to have the 35mm version which is very nice. I bought my wife a GM1 recently - I'm going to get her the 35mm so maybe I'll get the 25mm too. Anyone here tried the 50mm Fujian? I'm going to try your LUT when I get a chance. Don't suppose you fancy starting a thread about how you like the C100 MkII? I'd be very interested ...

I thought that would vignette on the GX7 (more I mean)?

I tried using V-Log (internal) when shooting some B-roll yesterday. Shot half with Cine-V and half with V-Log. Tried grading them this morning and I've had to reject all the V-log shots. Just mush. It's a very wide shot with loads of detail (a cathedral and massive bottle sculpture). Yesterday's Cine-V shots in the teaser below: I've just rediscovered my Tiffen Ultra Contrast and HDTV/FX filters and - as many found a while ago on this forum with the GX7 etc - they really do work wonders. I highly recommend getting one to accompany your GH4. They lift shadows, take the digital edge off the detail (without sacrificing detail) and improve highlight rolloff very nicely IMO. They make bokeh look cool too

What lens for the What lens for the shot of the girl wearing hat?

If you're using a camera for work and it gets stolen, it's unlikely personal belongings insurance will cover it. I did a lot of research on this a few months ago and went with Photoguard. I recommend giving them a call to chat about your situation - they're very helpful. Based in Yorkshire or the north west somewhere I think.

We'll all be chasing the Alexa 65 and Red Weapon Vista Vision look soon enough. Perhaps if we throw enough money at him Richard Gale will build a VV adapter for the A7S ...

I think it's partly because it took so long for Panasonic to get it out, and then the mess-up with the "free" workaround, and then the complete silliness of having to buy a code in a box to activate something that is already in the camera (and the fact that as far as I can figure out it's still not possible to buy it here in the UK - I'm still rockin the freebie), and then the realisation by users that if used with internal recording it's not really that great - I think these things just deflated all the anticipation. There was way more buzz about it before it was released than there has been since. I shoot with Cine-V most of the time, and also like Natural - both with the Highlight curve at -5. I find that you can lift the blacks quite a bit in post, which I do rather than in camera to preserve midtone contrast. I'm waiting for the Blackmagic video assist to arrive (I don't need 4K). I really hope Aaron is right and the prores files are significantly better. I'm currently shooting a job with my GH4 (Cine-V) and BMPCC and I'm just so much more in love with the Pocket's image. I did a multicam for the interview and for this quick teaser/appeal spot I only used one GH4 shot (at 0:33 sec) - all the others are BMPCC. Bear in mind it's just a rushed job so grading etc isn't great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doyiaX4ebQY Having said that, I've been enjoying shooting 1080p 100mbps IPB (50p and 60fps) on the GH4 recently. Obviously it's "softer" but I don't really mind unless I'm shooting wide. Rolling shutter is noticeably better than 4k and the high bitrate makes for a very robust HD image - these things combined with the wider FOV (2X crop) and high frame rate means it's a great option for shooting handheld.