Mark Romero 2

Did you shoot in V-LOG?

Thanks for the reply! Darn, if the Sigma 28-70 f/2.8 only had lens stabilization, it would be a no-brainer for me. Partly because, in the USA at least, Sigma will replace lens mounts free of charge, so if I decided to move from Panasonic to Sony at some point, then it would be an easy swap.

How well does the Sigma 28-70 f/2.8 work with the S5 II? Panasonic has a crazy deal with the S5 II / X with the 20-60mm, and the 50mm f/1.8, AND the 85mm f/1.8. I would be tempted to sell those lenses and get the Sigma 28-75 f/2.8 instead. (I already have a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM on the MC-21 so I think I would be covered for a normal fast prime, plus I have far too many manual focus lenses in the 50mm to 58mm range, too).

This!!!

I would add that - and this is just personal - if you could live with the wonky autofocus, then I would probably go for an original G9 over the E-M1 II. I really like 10-bit video, and 4K 60p is nice. Also, I find the menus on the E-M1 MK II a bit baffling. But that's just me.

I haven't used the G-series of cameras from panasonic, so I can't compare directly. But I do have an E-M1 MK II with a version 3.0 firmware on it (which allows for phase-detect AF in video mode). It is pretty good. Handling is nice. IBIS is great and rather simple to use. I basically loan it to my son for his school video projects and he often has another student (who has never used a real camera before) use it to film him, and they are able to generate in-focus, steady footage (despite the fact that they have little to no technical training, nor any artistic training). For being an 8-bit m43 camera in 2024, it is pretty good. I've used it as a C Camera with my Panasonic full frame S1 and S5 cameras, and while it is hard to match the Oly to the Panasonics, it is pretty easy to match the Panasnics to the Olyumpus (as long as you are shooting in 10-bit V-LOG on the Panasonic bodies). Hope this helps.

Thanks for the input. Yeah, I think that the MAIN reason i never used HLG was because there wasn't a simple LUT available for it (as far as I knew at the time), and I was told that IF I ever wanted to uses ACES in resolve, then it could be problamtic. Is that an old wives tale? Don't know. Just didn't want to experiement with it because I was pretty happy with V-LOG and the Ground Control LUT (I think that is the one I am using... will double check. I just know it was free, because, I am cheap). But will certainly give it a go now, although I admit that sometimes when using a CST node in Resolve, I then don't know what to set some of the other "ancilliary" settings to (like the tone mapping and such). And reading through the Resolve manual makes my brain hurt.

Curious as to how you are then converting from HLG to a Rec.709 image? (or maybe you are just monitoring / delivering in HLG???). I haven't tried HLG yet because not sure if there is a "right" way to get it in to Rec 709. (Maybe there is a CST for it in Resolve??? Or a Third-Party LUT???) I am pretty happy with V-LOG, despite my neophyte grading skills. I usually grade in Resolve DaVinci Wide Gamut / intermediate and use the Ground Control to Rec.709 LUT. Most of my Luma and Primary corrections are done BEFORE the LUT, in the HDR panels, and for me I find it important to set the Color Space (and gamut) in the drop down menu of the HDR panel to V-LOG / V-Gamut. (NOTE: I used to use Sony 8-bit S-LOG from aps-c sensors, so it wasn't hard to see an improvement in 10-bit V-LOG from Panasonic full frame.) I don't normally add a film look, or get too complicated with my node tree, since my graphics card only has 8GB of video memory (RTX 2060 Super... I can easily afford something like the 4060 TI Super or whatever with 16GB video memory, but the performance on those is still so bad because of the memory bandwidth, I refuse to do it). Again, I am "happy" with it, and my clients seem to be fine with it, but I don't think anyone in Hollywood is gonna ring me up asking to become a Colorist forthem any time soon.

That is one camera I am looking forward to.

That makes sense. Unfortunately for me, my brain un-friended logic a long time ago. Uhhh... that's not good. I don't know if this will help, but I have heard people say something about using a monochrome (preview) lut or using a monochrome picture profile (for jpg shooting, at least) to get better peaking... I am still a bit ignorant about Fuji cameras in general, so would love to hear your thoughts on the X-H2s compared to the S5 (origianal) you are selling.

Thanks for the great tips and the easy to follow guide to upgrading. I was looking at the Deity Theos, but... Due to patent restrictions, APPARENTLY in the old US of A, the Theos isn't allowed to both transmit wirelessly AND record internally at the same time. I could be wrong about that but I watched Curtis Judd and someone else (TL;DR???) and they said you can't transmit and record in the US, as best I can remember. There is another (non transmitting) recorder from Deity coming out called the PR-2, which appears to be pretty similar to the Tascam DR-10L, but will sync timecode with the Deity TC-1 (and, i am assuming, you can adjust setting through the Sidus app instead of having to bear hug the talent in order to adjust gain). Nowadays, it seems like for no-budget shoots, people are just slapping the Rode Go or DJI wireless transmitters WITHOUT a lav mic on to the talent and leaving it at that. You also asked why not use the Tascam DR-10L mics and recorder, and in fact, I DID, but... The talent and the campaing manager didn't want to use a teleprompter (which I brought and set up), as it made the talent really "tense and robotic." So he kept the script in his hands. He marked out on the script what he had to recite facing the camera, and there were parts of the script marked out that he could look at the paper, as there would be a cut to B Roll in those parts. Problem was, he would often crank his head down, or raise his arm up quickly while talking, so a lot of the Lav audio had rustling clothing sounds. Or he would clip when pointing his face straight down to read the script. We actually shot 7 videos that day, and we ended up with 48 takes total. If it wasn't the DJ and the cheerleaders, it was the gardners next door cranking up the power mower, or the construction crews hammering away down the block. Or sometimes the talent would just bring the script up or start tilting his head down too early. There was a lot of audio spliced together from different takes. Hence, my renewed interest in timecode... The irony is, if he is directly talking to you about political issues, he is a GREAT presenter and VERY articulate. I guess this would have been one of those shoots that uses the dual teleprompter setup (can't remember what it is called but there is a pretty famour North American Documentary shooter who uses it), where the talent looks in to a teleprompter which is projecting the image of the interviewer, and the interviewer is looking at the live feed of the talent in a teleprompter, too.

Here's an example. I did the A Roll / audio for this with the Samson C02 boomed overhead the talent in to the Tascam DR-60-D II. There is a LOT of work done on the audio (I basically had to run it through Adobe Podcaster as well as some EQ and other things in Resolve... don't remember exactly what. The only B Roll I contributed was the parts where Marin County was NOT on fire or under water. Aside from the (slight) wind noise (don't have a dead cat / blimp for these mics), we were about a block away from the local high school, and halfway through the shoot they had cheer leading practice, and so a dji was blasting music for them to practice to. Here's a BTS shot that shows (more or less) the setup. Because my 300 Watt Godox light wasn't adding anything, I just changed out the softbox and light on camera left to a DIY scrim (just draped some translucent cloth over a background stand on camera left, then a white reflector for fill on camera right). Note that the boom stand was a LOT closer to the talent at the time of shooting (probably around 18 inches or half-a-meter away for thsoe who don't speak Freedom Units). The talent requested this BTS photo after I had already moved the c-stand with the boom further away from the talent in order to strike the set. On the tascam, I set the gain to medium (in the menu) and then crank the physical dial up, which seems to have slightly less noise than setting the gain to high (in the menu) and turning the phsyical dial down. Let's not talk about the apple boxes :(

Ohhh... maybe that's something to fix first! Before changing your recorder. But the Samson's are CHEAP, and so am I :(

Sorry if I am confused about your situation, but... I think that you need to use the multiport for timecode IN to the FX30 for recording timecode metadata. So that would basically tie up your multiport. The Sony VMC-BNCM1 plugs in to the multiport, if I am not mistaken. I am not sure if you can "jam" timecode on the FX30 / FX3 cameras. By jamming, that would mean plug in the tentacle sync to the multiport first, get the FX30 to read the timecode value from the Tentacle sync, and then unplug the tentacle sync while the FX30 timecode remains in sync, thus freeing up the multiport. There is a page that lists three options of getting timecode with the tentacle sync and the FX30 / FX3 here: https://tentaclesync.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403308580241-How-can-I-sync-my-Sony-FX3-FX30-camera There is this note at the bottom of the page: Please keep any timecode generator connected to the camera at all times. Without the continuous connection, the camera's timecode will drift within less than 30 minutes. So to me, that sounds like 1) you possibly COULD jam sync timecode to the FX30, thus freeing up the multiport, and 2) you should NOT do that as it will drift out of sync relatively quickly. Hope this helps.

One downside is I think that you will be spending $700 on a modification for a camera that you would be lucky to re-sell for about US $800. (I got a trade-in quote from MPB for like $535 or something like that. Gonna pass on that. Thanks.) I don't think getting the OLPF mod would help with resale value (might even hurt) as anyone shooting photos would probably balk at the idea of buying a camera with a third-party OLPF installed. Of course, not a problem if you plan on holding on to the S1 long term. But with the second-gen S1 / S1H / S1R "likely" to come out this year, it might not be a great idea. All this is just my long and convuluted way of saying that the 1/8th Black Pro Mist filter doesn't seem like that bad of a solution.

Ahhh... I remember the Samsons C02, it was awful, yet I did all of my first feature film with it for anything indoors. Out of curiosity, do you have any thoughts on whether a used first gen MixPre 3 would be noticeably better than the Tascam DR-60D MK II that I currently own? I think I would lose one channel, but the MixPre 3 has timecode in (not sure if it generates TC as well or not), and if the levels / balistics are easier to read and don't have to do as much menu diving as on the DR-60D MK II, might be a worthwhile investment. (Again, looking at this as a one-man-band operation, using my heinous Samson C02 mics.)

In a perfect world, I think the autofocus would be the CDAF / DFD autofocus that Panasonic always PROMISED us it would be, but never delivered. It's too bad, because when my S1 or (original) S5 actually DOES nail focus, it looks REALLY nice and smooth. It almost has an "ease in" quality to it where it slows down just enough before landing in focus. Of course, those times are few and far between. Some of my old Sony aps-c cameras had that same kind of feature when focusing on subjects not in the center of the frame (and I think that made the AF system revert back to CDAF, but don't want to swear by that). Going on a rant here: I think one thing that bugs me about (contemporary) Sony cameras is that the autofocus is SOOOO good, a lot of people don't bother to slow down the AF speed, which I think it might make it smoother / more natural. Combine that with the focus breathing and it's something that kind of just irks me. Rant over. I would be interested to know what it is that still bothers you about the S5IIX though. Is it just mostly the moire? How do you find the image quality overall? Lament: I know I should be moving toward Sony, but since I still do majority photos (with flash), the best camera for me is probably the a7S III, which isn't a bad camera, just that the FX3 or even the FX30 might make more sense in some video situations.

Since your background is (basically) visual storytelling, how about marketing? (or social media marketing or buzzword-du-jour marketing???) The other questions is, what does your heart WANT to do?

Well... it definitely has time code support of some kind, but I think it is more similar to the S5 (original, and possibly the S5 II / X are similar). I can't confirm either way about getting timecode though the flash sync port since I didn't get a BNC-to-flash-port adapter :( However, with firmware 2.1 on my S1, there is no "External Timecode Settings" menu available (while the S1H has that option), so there is no way to set a TC Syncronization, as far as I can tell, through the menu. I'll try looking in to it a bit more later on. But I think that we just are stuck recording audio timecode to the left channel and then converting to metadata in Resolve. (Suck it, Premiere Pro users!!!) Unrelated Rant: Wish there was an easy way to store those flash sync port covers when you remove them.

I am not 100% sure that the regular S1 will accept time code via the Flash Sync port. I have to finish up my quarterly taxes today, but will test it out with my S1 and my Deity TC-1 unit this evening just to confirm later on. But my gut feeling was that only the S1H and the GH5S are the only hybrid bodies that would accept time code through the flash port, and that for the other bodies (including the S1) you would have to dedicate an audio channel to recording time code (and then use a feature like Resolve's convert audio timecode to metadata timecode, or whatever it is called. If I am wrong and the S1 actually DOES accept time code through the flash port, I will be a happy boy. (I do have the $200 Cinema / V-LOG firmware installed.)

I am thinking about an NVME which is hard-wired to the camera's internal board. The write speeds would - as far as I understand - be potentially higher than an external SSD. The one downside would probably be expense though, because faster speeds would mean bigger files, which would mean a bigger drive, which would mean more expensive (I guess, but I ain't no engineer).

It would be nice to get Cinema DNG natively, however, at least one can get ProRes RAW and then convert it to Cinema DNG on the computer. Hopefully soem sort of licensing deal will be worked out to allow the native recording in Cinema DNG, if that is even possible. Better yet would be a large amount of INTERNAL storage that would allow people to capture at a much higher bitrate.

I actually have a tough time lifting things. I have broken each collar bone at least twice due to motorcycle accidents and playing ice hockey. Operating a camera on a gimbal can be a challenge. I might end up with an easy rig at some point, which I am sure would look pretty stupid at a wedding...

Hmmm... didn't think of it that way. I just naturally ASSUMED that supersizing the least amount possible would be best... as opposed to supersizing it larger than needed, then cropping in. I guess now that BMD knew what they were doing when they limited the supersizing to fixed values...

Thanks for the thorough reply and sharing your experience about your equipment "ladder" as you slowly got more - and better - equipment. Gotta ask why you went with the Sony wireless instead fo the G2s / G3s? I've heard a couple of people mention going the Sony route over Senheiser for their wireless packs, but they never really went in to detail why. My current audio gear, by the way, is still a disaster: Two of Tascam DR-10L, a Tascam DR-60D II, and two of Samson CO2 cardioid mics. One "legit" boom pole (well, it can be mounted in a c-stand grip head but if you tried to hand hold the thing, you would hear nothing but squeaking metal the whole shot). Oh, and the Ubiquitos Zoom h1n and a TAKSTAR SGC-598 shotgun mic. Anyway, at least I have progressed past the point of leaving the shotgun mic in the hotshoe while standing 15-feet / 5-meters away from the talent, so there is still hope... And... I got the Deity TC-1 for timecode generation, but none of my cameras or audio gear has time code in / jamming, so I basically have to use an audio channel for that.