kye

My mind keeps coming back to the GX85, and I've realised that (yet again) it's far more capable than I'd given it credit for. To this end, I did some additional testing by shooting some night cinema on Halloween. This batch has my Super-16mm film emulation on them, but there's other grades below. What I've worked out is that there's an incredible synergy between the: The GX85 itself (of course!) paired with small lenses Resolve and the Film Look Creator The 1x, 2x, and 4x in-camera digital zoom function It will come as no surprise to anyone here that the GX85 combined with small lenses provides a very small and light rig, the tilt screen and customisable buttons gives great ergonomics, and the assist features are great too (setting the display to B&W, have coloured focus peaking enabled, exposure meter and the histogram all combine to give a great UI that doesn't need an external monitor). Where the synergy comes in is using the in-camera crop modes combined with the Film Look Creator in Resolve. If you like the look of Super-16mm film, then the 1x and 2x and 4x modes are all usable and give the following FOVs with my tiny lenses: Panasonic 14mm F2.5 AF lens gives 31mm at 1x, 62mm at 2x, and 124mm at 4x Panasonic 25mm F1.7 AF lens gives 55mm / 110mm / 220mm FOVs TTartisans 17mm F1.4 MF lens is faster than the above and gives 37mm / 75mm / 150mm FOVs Risespray 35mm F1.6 MF lens is fast too and gives 77mm / 154mm / 300mm FOVs If you prefer the extra resolution of Super-35mm film then you're still good with the 1x and 2x modes, but the 4x might be a little too soft depending on your tastes. It does depend on the lens though, and lots of stuff shot on S35 in the past was on lenses that weren't as sharp as the GX85 4x mode. Having the combo of a 31mm / 62mm FOVs, or 37mm / 75mm can be incredible for shooting events and street stuff, not to mention travel and general out and about shooting. It's even quicker than using a zoom because you don't even need to re-focus when swapping FOVs! Here's the 1x, 2x and 4x on the 25mm with my custom S16 emulation which also includes a lens emulation too: If those are too retro / soft / degraded, these are with a 35mm grade and without the lens emulation, so should be a bit cleaner: Or you can make it cleaner again by lowering the diffusion a touch and adding a tiny bit of sharpening under the emulation: and here's the 1x / 2x / 4x with that grade: Hell, you could even use the 65mm setting, which when combined with some sharpening looks like this: I'm not sure if it's going to replace my GH7 as my main camera, but in situations when I don't need the extra DR or IBIS modes, it's a real contender for sure. The level of enthusiasm about the new GoPro shows there's interest in smaller camera packages and having used the setup again I'm reminded why - the experience is so freeing. The GoPro has advantages over the GX85 for sure, but for this type of shooting, the GX85 with its IBIS wins hands-down for me. Also, the better at grading I get, the less I miss the OG BMPCC and the more I feel the GX85 does what I want the OG BMPCC to do.

I agree, the Sony looked super digital in that comparison. I don't think it's a sensor size thing, as there are other videos from the GoPro that look more digital than the Sony did in that video, and if it was a sensor size thing then the GoPro would never look that digital. No, but my impression if I'd seen it blind and had to guess would be a modern mirrorless of some kind. It didn't have the magic of some of the older classic cameras, and the older non-classic cameras never get used anymore, so that only leaves modern cameras! Still there are some shots where it looked sharp and the colours rec709-ish enough to look modern (like the slow-moving deep DOF wides from the drone). In my mind the GoPro is now solidly in the territory where you can get almost any look you want from it, provided that you know what you're doing enough. This is great news as the tools available have never been more accessible or easier to use. It really does look like a great option if its particular quirks don't clash with your particular needs.

Maybe the iPhone 19 or 20 will go LOGIC? I'd consider upgrading if that was the case.... but with my 17 Pro I now have Prores and Apple Log, so the images now look like they're from a camera and not from a phone.

I've ordered the Beastgrip 1.55x MK2 lens, and I also found an adapter that I can mount my Neewer 1.55x onto, so that will mean I can test it properly on various lenses. I have no idea which lenses these will work on, but combined with the 2x digital zoom of the GX85 or the continuous digital zoom of the GH7 any coverage issues should be able to be overcome. You'd think that cropping would make the FOV too narrow, but actually it's perfect because with a 1.55x stretch factor it makes lenses far wider, so cropping narrows them back up again, and cropping also lowers the resolution of the final image, but that's fine because we're interested in a flawed and character rendering, not clean soul-less images, so it's potentially an advantage. Given that coverage might be an issue, this might really suit the GoPro ILS as well.

Very clean results. I'm actually looking for a much less clean result, but with more character. In today's anamorphic world large clean sharp anamorphic lenses are becoming common, whereas large vintage anamorphics are mega-dollar collectors items or are being snapped up by rental houses and only available for hire. Dirty and compromised smartphone adapters might be the 'hack' that gets characterful images back into our hands, but in a cheap and compact package (thus this thread...).

Wow.. they're not optically perfect, but in the grand scheme of anamorphic adapters (and especially vintage anamorphic adapters) they're on the clean end of things for sure. I'm now back to contemplating pulling the trigger on the 1.55x....

There are so many trade-offs here it's impossible to actually discuss all of them in any sensible way, that's why I suggest simply trying them yourself, as the proof is in the pudding. The recommendation of 1/200s is 4 times shorter than 1/50, so the recommendation for 13mm and 11mm lenses are vastly different despite the focal lengths being quite similar. I understand this is a generic recommendation, but that only works for generic people, and I have never met any of those before! I'm assuming your statement about the ILS producing more detail in RAW is about still images? That's a whole other thing than video and these tradeoffs all go completely different since the modern standard for getting sharp images seems to require a shutter of 1/5000 or faster, if I go by the fact that people are photographing action sports and seem to want sub-pixel sharpness instead of their images representing the fact that there is any motion involved at all in the scene. Anyway, I'll leave you to your assessments, but I can tell you that if you shoot video on a potato and upload it to YT at 480p with a 180 shutter and compare that to video shot on the BM 17K URSA with a 45 shutter and uploaded at 8K, there will be people who prefer the 180 shutter just because the motion is so important to them. This is perhaps a drastic example, but a more practical one would be why anyone at all still shoots on 16mm. It is completely technically inferior in literally every regard, and yet, people still pay a huge amount of money for the pleasure.

Sigma FP ii... So far it's not even up on Sigmas website, so no idea about codecs, but it does look like it does a 10-bit LOG internally, so at least one of the "gaps" in the OG seems to have been addressed. It's probably not the camera for me, but definitely respect to Sigma for trying something with the FP and continuing support for the concept.

Interesting. I'd imagine that a shoulder mounted rig would be quite stable in most circumstances, especially from the micro-jitters of smaller camera rigs. I've also found that shutter angle is a bit of a strange thing, where in some scenarios you want a larger angle and other scenarios it doesn't matter that much. Often this was related to how large the motion was in frame and how visible it was (e.g. if it was a hard high-contrast edge or softer). The output quality matters too - when I was testing my GF3, which does (IIRC) 1080p at 12Mbps (or similar) the shutter angle on many shots didn't really matter because the motion on a 180 shutter was comparable to the resolving power of the final image (it looks like quite compressed 720p footage) so for lots of stuff it didn't matter at all!

I guess it's a tradeoff: The more your hands shake during filming the blurrier each frame will be (motion blur) and the more stabilisation that happens after that the more that there will be motion blur in the footage without the associated camera shake and it will just look like random blurring (like the lens AF was pulsing, etc) The longer the shutter the more motion blur there will be in each frame The higher the resolution of the final result the more visible the intermittent blurring will be (ie, it will be more visible if you sharpen the footage on a 4K timeline and it will be less visible if you apply lots of image softening and grain) The higher your standards the more sensitive you will be to random blurring and to shorter shutter speeds For some people they're super sensitive to shutter angle, so are very intolerant to that. If they are also sensitive to blur and are going to sharpen the footage and publish in 4K then they will have to hold the camera a lot steadier to meet their requirements. For people that don't care about shutter angle then just have super-short shutters and you'll have great results. For people that want longer shutters but are going to soften the image a lot in post, or will be using much softer lenses, then they can afford to have shakier shooting because the random blurring will be far less visible. For people that don't care about the motion in the image then they can be happy despite the fact that other people would be very unhappy. In this sense it's impossible to know how you'll find something by just listening to other people. Tonnes of people think that some of the modern Sony and Zeiss lenses are "soft" and I think they're completely insane, but that's just different taste. In this case you probably have no idea how shaky your hands are compared to the next person, and there are no metrics that we can use to compare. From my experience of OIS and how I shoot, I'd get FAR FAR sharper images from the GX800 than the ILS, because the amount of camera shake I would have is easily enough to make the frames blurry but less than most OIS lenses can compensate for. In this sense it's not about the camera specs, it's about OIS vs not.

It's stabilisation after the exposure is made, so it will be subject to the same blurring as in the video I posted above. Depending on how much stabilisation is required and what your shutter angle is, it might be visible or might not. I'd highly encourage you do some testing to work out if it will meet your quality requirements.

Great looking images but the EIS isn't a substitute for IBIS or OIS - you can see in this footage the image gets blurry at random times... I think this mostly kills this camera for me at least. If you're hand-holding then either you use short-shutters, or you use 180 shutter but need to stabilise BEFORE the exposure, rather than stabilising AFTER when the frames are already blurry.

You don't like security cameras? No need to be insecure...

Apparently the Metabones SB accepts USB power in, it can be powered by the camera itself, and it can power a lens and has a wheel that can change the aperture of the lens.. and because it has power that means lens OIS will work too! @newfoundmass this isn't a MFT solution but it does allow some electronic lenses to be used - not sure if you have a metabones and other lenses lying around perhaps?

It's great to hear that the people doing real work have taken the time to build a custom look for themselves. Just another reminder than the muppets on social media aren't really representative of how real people use cameras.