Phil A

Heard about that stuff yesterday and I'm very positive, it could be really big for hobbyists and travel/vlogging kinda stuff. I have personally two scenarios with the stuff I do: a) I want to create something nice, will sink quite some time into editing, colouring, etc. and the result is a few minutes long and will go to YouTube b) I want something for Instagram/Facebook and it will be 15 or 30 seconds long, might go into the InstagramStory and be gone within 24 hours For a) I have a custom workstation with an I/O card, multiple monitors, etc. where I use DavinciResolve and am happy. But Resolve is imho not ideal for laptops when travelling. My laptop runs it okish when having simple edits + ProRes converted source media (but my laptopt is a 15.6" gaming laptop and weighs 3kg + charger), on my girlfriends MacBook Pro 13" it's just ugh. For scenario b), this will be perfect. Because of the weight/clumsiness of the laptops we have transitioned to LumaFusion on an iPad Pro because you can hack together the material, you can use *.cube LUTs to grade it (you can generate a custom LUT in DavinciResolve so you get really close into the ballpark of your "usual look" with a click, you can even stack multiple LUTs in LumaFusion and adjust their intensity), add your music (Soundstripe can directly put the track I pick into my Dropbox and LumaFusion can directly retrieve it from there). With that you have top notch social media content compared to most channels who shoot video with their iPhone directly in the Instagram app with maybe like 5 or 10 minutes of extra effort. Adobe Lightroom CC Mobile is great for this when it comes to pictures, so I'm really looking forward to see what this will bring for video. I just hope they won't make you get the 720€/year Premiere Pro subscription just so you can use the Rush mobile app.

The Ronin-S is really humongously big. I'll pass after initial interest.

Another alternative to using fixed NDs as screw ins (maybe with the overpriced Xume adapters) is to use a filter system like landscape photographers use (e.g. Formatt HiTech, Lee, etc.). You put the adapter ring on the lens and then the filter holder gets just put on and locked with a screw. The holder can, depending on type, hold multiple square resin/glass filters. You can just slide them in and out and you can combine anything, e.g. NDs, Graduated NDs, BlackProMist, etc. It's a bit bigger but again you only buy the filters and filter-holder once and then get fitting adapter rings for your different lenses.

I have the SmallHD 501 which is not exactly cheap but pretty much amazing. The used price went down quite a bit since the SmallHD Focus is on the market. Between the two, the choice is 1080p screen vs daylight viewable and to be honest I'm not sure what's the better option. There's a sunhood for the 5series but it's rather big and I think 70$ is a silly price for something that should have been included with a monitor in this price range. As you want a monitor and not a recorder, I think there won't be big real-world improvements in the foreseeable future so I would rather save up a bit and try to get a used SmallHD over one of the cheap options.

Did exactly what cantsin said. Bought a cheap Spyder when there was a sale on Amazon and use DisplayCal / ArgyllCMS for free. Have used it to generate profiles for my monitor as well as a LUT for DavinciResolve outputting via a Intensity Pro 4k to a TV. I re-calibrate once a year. You need good screens tho and different technologies give different results. I tried to use a screen I got for free at work and it was always rubbish, no way to properly calibrate it. Calibration can't fix clouding from bad backlighting or the fact that OLED/Plasma has way deeper blacks than IPS. If a screen only does 90% sRGB, you won't get proper sRGB/Rec709 calibration.

I'd be concerned about latency with some of these recorders, the cheap ones can be pretty bad. No help for pulling focus if it's lagging too much. Clearly an important point for research before buying.

It actually might be the combination with the speed booster. Did you try to adjust the optical element to fix it? http://www.metabones.com/article/of/infinity-adjustment-speed-booster-only I also heard that with some focal reducer brand/model + lens combinations, there are issues that it's not possible to get perfect infinity focus.

The marketing material says it can control Panasonic cameras but I couldn't find a single early review video where someone was using it with a GH5 and show if/how the focus wheel works. I saw a bazillion videos with plain A7-something setups (small-ish lens, no cage, etc.) that would have worked with any other one-hand gimbal in the past. Can anyone point me to one?

I absolutely disagree about this. Most of us here are shooting video with photo cameras. I would think 9 out of 10 people buy these cameras for pictures and want the IBIS for shooting handheld in low light (slower shutter speed, lower ISO), no one will buy a gimbal stabilizer to shoot photos. Even nearly all mobile phones implemented optical image stabilization by now. People shooting video with DSLR/MILC are a minority and out of this group, also not everyone uses a gimbal. Enthusiast forums are never representative of the real world.

https://www.mysterybox.us/blog/2017/12/18/studio-grading-in-hdr-on-the-smallhd-p3x-and-atomos-sumo-19 This was interesting about HDR grading in my opinion, I don't know how the panel in the smaller recorders stacks up against the Sumo though. I follow the DaVinci Resolve user group on Facebook. While most of the professionals there have probably higher quality standards than people producing for the web, the general opinion on using the Atomos products was "totally not". But if one produces for consumption on phones and tablets, the benchmark is a lot lower in my opinion.

This is the real deal breaker with most setups. If I put my GH5 into a cage and add a quick release plate, it's impossible to balance on the Crane v1. It's within the weight limits but it simply doesn't allow to adjust the arms far enough to balance it. Therefore most "will it balance?" questions in the Facebook groups are not properly answered because people just only look at the weight of the setup, not how this weight distributes for the balance (front heavy, too high, etc).

I would think the Ronin-S competes with the Zhiyun Crane 2, not the smaller gimbals (Crane v2, Crane Plus, Moza Air, Moza Aircross, ...) for light cameras. Looking forward to seeing comparison videos between the two. I'm really interested in the possibility to mount a GH5 in a cage via a quick release (no go with the Crane v1).

I guess it's not about having more weight balanced by the gimbal (the Crane 2 is strong), it's about holding all of that with only one hand. I would hate to hold 3-4kg in a single hand (considering the bad leverage when you tilt the gimbal in that hand), we're reaching levels where a two-handed gimbal would make more sense for usability.

I'd get a field monitor such as the SmallHD Focus or the soon coming Atomos Ninja V, it'll be better for manual focus than either EVF or LCD.

The LCD screen has worse resolution than the EVF. I tried another loupe but it was quite a bit worse for manual focusing than using the viewfinder.

I hope for Resolve 15 to improve on the titling(titles, lower thirds, etc). That's super weak compared to most other features and doing it in Fusion is total overkill for what I need. I really hoped for a new camera sized between BMPCC and BMCC but after getting so spoiled with IBIS (and seeing the related backlash for the GH5S) I wonder how much of a market there is still left for such a bare bones smallish cinema camera if the prices would end up 2 to 3k-ish (between a rock [UMP 4.6K, EVA1, C200] and a hard place [GH5, A7 III series]). The people who complain about SD cards for the GH5 won't like the media for a 4k raw small form camera.

Unfortunately I don't know, wondered myself originally. But with some google search, you can find examples of the lens on the Canon 1D III or IV, which had APS-H sensors. Looks ok to me and gives an idea how it might be, but obviously no definitive answer. It's ok for me but I'm not a pixel peeper. I can maybe compare Viltrox EF-M2 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 Zhongyi LensTurbo II + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 (only wide open, no electronic aperture control) Voigtländer 17.5mm f/0.95 Panasonic Leica 25mm f/1.4 if that's relevant. I'm just slightly busy because yesterday our GX85 died and we fly to a long vacation next Friday (Murphy's law).

Playing devils advocate, is just converting the footage to ProRes LT in post an option? The codec doesn't say much about what's really in it.

@ThomHaig Sigma 30mm f/1.4 ART on the cheap Viltrox EF-M2 speed booster. It has a lot of play so not good for manual focus but great for photography (roughly equivalent to the look of 45mm f/2 on Fullframe) or if you anyway don't pull focus during recording. Weight is really close to the Voigtländer 17.5mm f/0.95.

Thank you @jonpais . You've helped me remember why I normally don't share videos or pictures or anything on internet forums anymore. I'll take the criticism to heart and consider it.

Shot in 4k in V-Log L, just fixed it roughly with FilmConvert and some tweaking... but I shot in Aperture priority because I forgot my NDs and that was just the export for IG in super low bitrate (Instagram always turns it into mush anyway). I think the Voigtländer lenses are plenty sharp enough, even though everyone and his dog says they're soft when wide open.

People in the professional color grading world think the screens of the Atomos stuff are rubbish for actual grading and it's just a marketing gimmick with the HDR. e.g. http://liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php?threads/atomos-sumo-19-hdr-recorder-monitor.8947/ I was quite interested in the monitor-only Sumo but the specs are really not that interesting. It's not really 10bit but 8+2 FRC, and it only does Rec709 according to the the specs sheet. It's an IPS panel with up to 1200 nit so I guess you can expect the blacks to be grays when it shows the max brightness in the frame (couldn't quickly find any data about contrast). It even says "Brightness 1200nit (+/- 10% @ center)" so I wouldn't expect great uniformity. So I'd say it's still better to get a used FSI or get a LG OLED. Unrelated: my only HDR capable device is a Samsung Galaxy S8+ and I hate how colorful the demo videos are I watched so far. Didn't help my taste that they were in 1080p60.

Lately all I'm using is the Voigtländer 17.5mm ... wish the WiFi Remote had a better resolution so it would be easier to judge sharpness when wide open. Wish there was a lens like that with autofocus. Played around with it on one of the last warm days we had. It's only super short clip because it's for the girlfriend's IG. Password: smucho GH5 with the Voigtländer 17.5mm 0.95 (pretty much all f/0.95 - 1.4) with Tiffen Warm Black Pro Mist 1/8 filter, all handheld. Total sloppy hack job. Just liked the combination of rendering and setting sun's light.

From a photography point of view, this sounds theoretically amazing, looking forward to the reviews. I'm not in the market for it but it seems the MSRP didn't increase from the II, so maybe there will be great used deals on the leaving generation to be had.

Where is "in here"? In Germany a used A7r II will run you upwards of 2000€ and the A7s II is never to be seen on the used market. You'll still pay 2999 € for a new one, considering it came out over 2 years ago. Price development roughly comparable with the Canon 5D III I think. The times where the Sony prices plummeted like nothing and a new model came every year are obviously over (which is good and bad, depending on perspective). I'd expect a new A7s III to MSRP around 4000€ in Germany.