kye

Yes, that's the kind of work I do and yes, I watch many many YT channels including StudioBinder. The real challenge is that film tends to attract people who are visually acute and can learn things by just watching other people's work. Unfortunately I am not at that level of understanding yet. When I watch something that I like I know I like it but I don't know why. I can't even break it down because for me to really notice a scene they must have done a bunch of things I like so it's not just one thing I can see and pay attention to. (I am aware of what it's like to be able to do that as I am able to do that in a different field, one that I have been doing for more than 25 years, so am a lot more developed and experienced in than film.) I've watched enough interviews with the best performing DoPs and Directors etc to know that they all just learned by watching, so I suspect that the information that I'm chasing may not actually be written down in any organised way - it might simply be that if you've got the eye then with practice you can do great things and if you don't have it then you'll learn over time but won't attain that level of performance. I also suspect that there is a reasonable amount of knowledge just floating around that isn't written down. After all, the people who know the most are probably out there doing it rather than trying to work out how to teach it. If I was more affluent then I'd probably just hire someone to mentor me.

Actually, to elaborate on this a bit more, I only get one chance to shoot something. So it's the shot I got, or nothing. In a way this means that I need to be more knowledgeable than a "competent" DP. On a narrative shoot you can just get coverage and sort it out in the edit later, so a DP just shooting coverage doesn't have to know which will be the best angle, they just have to know how to film a range of them. Obviously as time and budget reduce, so does the ability to shoot full coverage and therefore choices need to be made about which angles will be kept and which will be cut from the production schedule, so there's definite judgement in that. Also, as I am shooting my work essentially in POV, I also have less options that are possible, but also less that make sense for what I am trying to achieve, so I'm not having to be everything to everyone in every genre, but I still have one chance to get it right and know how to make these decisions. I also have no notice, much of the time, although my street photography experience of anticipating moments definitely comes in handy here. If anyone knows of resources that talk about the whole end-to-end and talk specifics then I'm super interested in that. You can't learn to bake bread by learning how to grind flour, how to make an oven, how to raise chickens and cows, how to make crockery and cutlery, how to self-publish a cookbook, and how to design a menu for a modestly-priced restaurant. All of these are specialities, no doubt, but when you add them up you're missing the bit in the middle that actually makes the bread.

Well, "on set" is basically me with a camera in hand and a few lenses and spare batteries in a backpack, and happens when I'm out doing something interesting pretty much from the moment I put my shoes on till I take them off at night. The challenge is that I am completely responsible for the film that gets made, from choosing when to film, what to film, how to film it, how to edit it, how to colour it, how to do sound design, and how to ship it (and if I will ship it at all). I'm not responsible for what happens, as I'm videoing what happens on our adventures, but the film part is all me. So there's no anything that isn't me. Which is why I want to understand the whole, which seems to be much more than the sum of the parts. The challenge is in the tangible things that make up the intangible. When I choose to shoot and when I don't has huge impacts to my options in the edit. How I compose a shot will have aesthetic consequences - the use of movement or not and what type and what speed and in what direction will all have an impact on the final edit. How do you hold a camera in a way that says "happy"? How do you move a camera to create serenity? How do you compose in a way that shows chaos? I have some ideas about these questions, but really, I need the answers to about 1000 combinations of these things. There are resources that discuss concepts like this "The Filmmaker's Eye: The Language of the Lens: The Power of Lenses and the Expressive Cinematic Image" by Gustavo Mercado is one such book, literally showing frames from movies under headings such as "Vastness" "Awkwardness" "Suspense" "Shock" "Impairment" "Anxiety" "Wistfulness" etc. But it's a book about lenses and composition, not movement, nor timing, nor editing, nor coverage, nor sound design, etc etc... https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/0415821312/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Luckily I'm not the writer! Life is the writer, and my wife (and the kids to a lesser extent) is the director as she is normally the one that chooses what we'll do and what we'll see. I therefore don't have many issues with writing, continuity, story structure, or other such things, as those are taken care of by reality.

Haha.. nice one. Another one I like is "more plate than steak" 🙂 I completely agree - hold my attention and make me feel something. One challenge I've been having as a one-person shooter is finding information about the overall process, considering that the knowledge is split up between lots of roles on a "real" set and so not only do you have to learn everyones job, but you have to put together information that is presented in pieces, and wade through all the "working with the X" content that is simply dripping with "this person comes from a completely parallel universe and wants different things and you're going to have to fight with them and treat them like a toddler because they don't know the first thing about anything despite the fact that you're all trying to make a thing". Also, sadly, lots of the content is simply people pointing fingers at each other. Take shot composition and coverage for example - lots of cinematography content says that you just do what the director says and then lots of director content says that you take advice from the cinematographer. It's like walking into a room full of kids and when you ask who broke the cup they all just point at each other and no-one is responsible for anything. Maybe a film set is just people hanging around while some mysterious force unknown to science is the actual thing that makes the movie lol. My latest strategy is to start at the end, with the editor, and binge that content trying to glean their insights into the what the upstream people do. After all, the editor is the one who is the final editor of the script, final arbiter of coverage, creator of timing and pace, etc. Walter Murch has lots of talks on YT, so that's my current source of "binge huge amounts and digest over time".

Indeed. One advantage that budget Chinese lens manufacturers have is that they're not tooled up to do the radically sophisticated optical formulas and coatings of the latest optically perfect Zeiss / Canon L etc, which means that automatically they're making lenses with more vintage optical formulas and coatings. There market seems to be separating into two aesthetics: videographers are merging with stills photographers and want the highest resolution and sharpest lenses to sell hyper-realistic images directly to an amateur crowd (direct to consumer) and the cinematographers who are being forced by studios and VFX processing houses to shoot as high a resolution as possible and want softer feeling lenses with character to create emotion and to serve the narrative. For these softer rendering lenses they're driving the price of vintage lenses through the roof - the very vintage lenses that the budget Chinese manufacturers are using in their new lenses. They may as well be modern third-party re-issues of classic lenses. This gives us, as budget consumers, the biggest advantage - we get lenses with the right level of sharpness from vintage lenses but with all the benefits of modern mass manufacture and globalised price competition.

I missed Tokina having a small bump - also interesting. The Angenieux EZ series is pretty interesting. B&H have them listed for USD$14K each. 15-40mm T2 and 30-90mm T2 seem pretty on the money, and 4.7lb 2.2kg each is very reasonable. Apparently this was shot on them.. A quick look through the B&H PL cinema zooms listing shows that Tokina have a bunch of price-competitive offerings, and also that the EZ zooms are faster and cheaper than the Zeiss CZ.2 series which are 28-80mm T2.9 and 70-200mm T2.9 at USD$22K and 15-30mm T2.9 at USD$26K. I'd imagine they'll be very popular. A set of these and a Komodo would be an impeccable image for a very modest price.

What kinds of situations would you use this dual-camera setup?

Looks like they might have released a new range of lenses.... https://ymcinema.com/2021/12/27/cinema-lenses-angenieux-ultra-compact-ultra-zooms-and-primes/ They're suggesting the EZ range is good for going handheld: https://blog.angenieux.com/angénieux-ez-lenses-a-definite-choice-for-handheld That seems to be a reasonable suggestion... at least, moreso than with the Optimo range!

According to this chart, Canon and Angenieux are the only brands to increase their share of the rental market... I wonder what Angenieux are doing to swim upstream (even if it's just slightly)?

And to elaborate on the earlier points I was making about what can be done in post, here's a test I did earlier today where I very quickly did some basic adjustments to the 12-35mm in trying to match it to the Cosmicar, Yashica, and Helios. Things to note: the sun was in and out of clouds, so the lighting was changing all the time. this doesn't make it a "proper" lens test, but in real life lenses change between apertures (as you'll see from below) and besides, you never shoot the same subject from the same angle with two different lenses and then cut them together, so as long as the adjustments are within the natural variation of shots, then it's fine. the 12-35 actually required sharpening to match the Cosmicar at F1.9. Whoever said that vintage lenses couldn't be sharp wide open doesn't know anything. Besides, I find the 12-35mm F2.8 to be soft wide-open anyway - yet another reason to be disappointed at a lens that is the FF equivalent of the 24-70mm F5.6 😕 the Cosmicar is really difficult to match due to its barrel distortion and vignetting characteristics one of these shots shows the differences between the 12-35mm with and without the Tiffen BPM 1/8 filter on it - but the light changed between shooting those shots so I had to play with levels in post. This is naturally a difficult thing to do as a diffusion filter lowers local contrast, but grading footage also changes contrast, so you know, whatever... 🙂 "Matching" 12-35 to Cosmicar: "Matching" 12-35 to Yashica: The Yashica sharpens right up between f2.8 and f3.3 (half a stop) and doesn't really lose much DoF in the change, which is how I shoot with it. That's why I'm matching the 12-35 to the Yashica at F3.3. No filter vs Tiffen BPM 1/8: "Matching" 12-35 to Helios (44M): I foolishly forgot to shoot the Helios at F5.6, which would be the same DoF as the 12-35mm at F2.8, so here I put it next to the F4 shot. Obviously the ability to open up the Helios past F5.6 and get more background separation is a huge advantage, and is where the lens itself really starts revealing its lovely characteristics. Fun fun.

I just realised I didn't include my Industar 50mm F3.5.... I did include it in yet another test though, so here you go:

Ignore the colours and exposures, these were likely set to auto. This is the test where I established that: with sharp lenses (like the 12-35mm) that the GF3 is still usable, for my purposes anyway the Mir 37mm isn't sharp enough for me, regardless of codec (it's also slow and has a terrible minimum focus distance!) I prefer the softer lenses on the GX85, but that with a bit of processing (not shown) that I could soften them up in post sufficiently if required

One thing that I alluded to above, but is worth elaborating on, is the match of cameras to lenses. In particular, codecs vs lenses. My GF3 has a 14Mbps 1080p codec, and zero controls in movie mode. However, it's small and I don't mind losing it so it's the perfect form-factor for shooting with abandon. If I lost it I'd probably replace it. My GX85, however, has a 100Mbps 4K codec, and is larger and more expensive. So the question of optimum sharpness needs to be tested, which I did*..... (* because hard work makes the dream work)

Perhaps the thing to keep in mind is that she says in the description "Selections of visuals from an upcoming feature project". So, in a sense, this is B-roll, and in a sense, this edit is a camera test for YT. I need to up my game with camera tests!

I've been digesting these images for a while now, and in previous tests it's always been the Cosmicar (Pentax) and the Helios that stood out the most, but I must admit that the Meyer 50/1.8 has really attracted my eye. It's very new (to me!) and this is the first test I've included it in and I must say it really holds its own.. I also like the Tokina RMC zoom. Of course, it has a couple of stops of advantage over the F2 lenses, but I bought it as a walk-around lens for the GX85 (44-100mm equivalent) and I'm really happy with it for this purpose. I'm yet to use it for real, but the images from it are great. The Takumar 55/1.8 is a funny lens. I've owned it a long time and tested it before and it has a particular rendering.. I wouldn't call it "painterly" but it's definitely *something*... but it's 2D as hell. Despite the fast aperture and blurring the backgrounds well, the images just lack depth. I found that in previous tests with all my Takumars. Great to see you back! 🙂 I must say that I thought the Voigts were too soft wide open for me, but I've since developed and explored my tastes, and found that this isn't really the case any more. What I haven't shown here is that you can sharpen them up a bit and adjust the magenta hue and the wide-open images fit much better with those stopped down. Lenses are a funny thing, and I definitely agree that it's up to us to enhance or minimise their character as we choose. That's definitely how cinematographers think of them - as spices to compliment the specifics of a project. What is interesting to me is that some of the things that cinematographers rely on lenses to do can easily be done in post, some other things can be done in post but require extreme effort, and other things are impossible in post. I once caused a borderline-argument between a guy from ILM and a senior colourist over this very topic - I asked what could be done in post to emulate a vintage lens look (just a generic one - nothing accurate) and the colourists were saying "nothing" and the ILM guy said that they do it all the time with compositing. I think the point of friction was the colourists (quite rightly) not wanting every client to read that and then expect miracles for free on every job. Fincher even shot Mindhunter on modern-looking lenses and added in the vintage effects in post: https://thefincheranalyst.com/2018/08/29/color-grading-netflixs-mindhunter/ There's a video somewhere of the colourist Eric Weidt stepping through his node trees in Baselight that was fascinating. You're right about the Aperture DoF equivalents... I forgot that the DoF emulations take into account the camera you select and I'd omitted that in my comparisons. I had seen that discrepancy some time ago in other setting but hadn't explored further until now. The table should be: The red indicates that there isn't an 11mm FF rectilinear lens (or one that I could afford anyway!) so I'd keep the Laowa 7.5mm F2 lens on MFT until I went to FF. I actually stopped using it because it wasn't sharp - wide-open at least. I have two copies and neither is good wide open. Here are the 2X crops - you'll see that it doesn't compare well with other lenses. Maybe stopped down it's sharp, but what's the point of buying a fast lens if you can't use the first few stops? Not as sharp as...... The Konica has a reputation online as being one of the sharpest lenses ever made. I'm not sure where that comes from really. Nope.. both are "Super-Takumar". I haven't compared the various coatings of different Takumars, but I suspect that it's like all things on the internet where there will be a few percent difference between them and the best ones sell for 5x the price, despite only being 4% better...

Courtesy of Panasonic.com https://www.panasonic.com/global/consumer/lumix/g/gh6.html?fbclid=IwAR0WjdgqpEcUl__FSRVUzNYceDUJT4jBZeOmAyOr4ib8Oc0nZ3lXKUuG0s8 Seemed this slipped by without much fuss, but it looks like they're still on the case despite pandemic and chip shortages. If things weren't going well then I doubt they'd publish an update at all...

I'm still digesting the images but thought I'd share some background to this test, and my lenses in general. I shoot a few different scenarios, short outings with family (eg, a walk on the beach), events with friends and family (eg, state fair or other kind of event), holidays with family (domestic and international), and the kids playing sports. The aesthetic of what I shoot is quite specific as it's about what happens, which means: The camera represents me and my POV most of the time, so how I hand-hold it and compose images, what I focus on and how fast I do so (manual focus), is part of the videos I make. I have one aesthetic - sentimental. I don't film when my wife is tired, we get lost, the kids are grumpy, someone is getting yelled at for misbehaving, etc. These are the videos of memory, the people who we are, where we went, what we did, the experiences we had. It doesn't have to be rosy, but it's either near the neutral point or on the positive side of the spectrum. I have one subject - family and friends interacting with each other and the situation. Environmental portraits really. I have four fields of view. These correspond to (FF equivalents): 35mm which gives environmental portraits from the distance I normally find myself when travelling with friends/family, which lines up nicely with the subject/location interaction. This is most of my shots. 16mm which gives those WOW shots for architecture and large vistas. 85mm which is the perspective of seeing little moments that other people are sharing that I'm not part of (eg, my wife interacting with the kids while they don't know I'm watching / filming). telephoto (150mm+) which is the experience of looking at animals at zoos or safaris, people playing sports, or detail shots of large panoramas (eg, lookouts over cities etc). I shoot what happens, I don't direct, I get no second chances. We experience life first, shooting comes second, always. This also means I want to attract the least attention, because being surrounded by people who are looking at the camera isn't my idea of a great holiday. I am moving from representing what happened to how the experience felt. This is a fundamental shift and pushes me in the direction of softer renderings, playing with time, elements of non-linear editing, more creative colour grades, and essentially going the exact opposite of the video look. A pretty good compass is that if someone with a P4K or P6K and Sigma 18-35mm says I should do something, I should do the opposite! I don't yet know what lenses will best give this aesthetic, but I do know that I don't want to shoot RAW as my shooting ratio is high and file sizes become ridiculous, and due to compressed files always being sharpened I don't want overly sharp lenses. I find myself in so many different scenarios that trying to separate things out in this way doesn't quite work, so I'll start with the equipment and work backwards. I have three main cameras, and these naturally pair with certain lenses, and suggest suitability for different things: GF3, which has good colour but poor 1080p codec, so really needs to be paired with super-sharp lenses. It also lacks IBIS and any control in video mode at all, but has pretty good AF. GF3 + 15mm F8 'lenscap' lens - truly pocketable, fixed focus, has the 30mm FOV, but rubbish low-light so it's day only GF3 + 14mm F2.5 - still pocketable (just), but can do low(ish) light GF3 + 12-35mm f2.8 - not pocketable, has OIS, flexible zoom range GX85, which has good colour, good codec, IBIS, but is quite sharp (even on a 1080p timeline). Best paired with vintage lenses to avoid the video look. GX85 + 12.5mm F1.9 - ~35mm FOV, sensor coverage isn't 100% even with EIS enabled, so composition trips me up sometimes. GX85 + 28mm F2.8 + SB - 44mm FOV (not too far away from 35mm) and shallower DoF than the 12.5mm (even at F4) GX85 + 28-70mm + SB - 44-110mm FOV, potentially a great walk-around combo GX85 + Helios + SB - 90mm FOV, lovely images GH5, which is great at almost everything, but is large and doesn't have great low-light. This is almost always paired with primes. I currently shoot MFT, obviously, but may eventually go FF. This lead me down a line of thinking where I realised that a FF F1.4 lens is only one stop slower than my F0.95 Voigtlanders, and if I put them on a SB then I can get the same exposure into the GH5 (which doesn't have great low-light). Also, because the DoF is so much shallower on FF lenses, if I matched the DoF to get the same amount of background defocus as I have now (which is useful for subject separation in the very busy environments I shoot in), then I'd only need to sacrifice one stop of light, which would be fine in most situations. This leads to the following: So, I would need: 15mm F8 (or faster) 24mm F2 (or faster)* 35mm F4 (or faster) 60mm F2 (or faster)* 85mm F4 (or faster) * = lenses to be used with SB on MFT prior to moving to FF. One massive con to the whole thing is that I'd be throwing away the huge advantage that MFT has had over FF until very recently, which is the ability to gather a huge amount of light but not pair it with unusably shallow DoF. MFT has a two-stop exposure advantage over FF for the same FoV/DoF, which I really need with the poor ISO performance of the GH5. I suspect that this advantage will become nullified in future due to Dual-ISO, and there's no way I would buy a FF camera without that - trying to focus an 85mm at F1.4 when that exposure-level is required would be ridiculous and not show enough subject and environment so is basically a non-starter for me. I realise that I have significant demands on my equipment that many others don't have, but I compensate for it by working really hard (as these forums give a taste of - I shoot lots of stuff no-one here sees, except maybe @mercer) and I temper my expectations too. Also, and this is a big one, I don't expect 4K. Many many things become easier when you're publishing in 1080p rather than 4K. Resolution hurts in ways that people are't willing to discuss because those that have bought into the idea don't want to hear the alternative views, despite the fact they don't jump on anyone who wants to buy a 2K Alexa... All testing I do is "what is visible on a 1080p timeline?". If the Alexa looks great on a 1080p timeline then why would I want more? It's ridiculous to even contemplate, but people do. Anyway. Some thoughts.... @Emanuel even asked for them! To provide some context for people that haven't seen these images already, here are some samples of the kinds of things I'm shooting. Most of these are basically ungraded, so don't judge my colour grading 🙂

Fair enough. Perhaps my reaction was to your rather polarised stance on a few of these issues. I'm not against AF at all and I do agree that when you have one face in a static shot that it's a mechanical task and not an artistic one. However, I find that AF picks the wrong thing to focus on when given multiple subjects, and I also find that the speed of AF is an artistic attribute, at least in some situations. Maybe not for the content you're creating though. I was also suggesting that there might be a depth of field that was somewhere between F4 and camcorder/smartphone. For reference, the DoF of a 70mm lens at F4 at 10ft is 1.47ft, which I can understand a subject *might* move out of. The 70mm equivalent on a 1-inch camcorder (a larger size camcorder sensor, as I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here) is a 23mm lens, which at f2.8 (once again, benefit of the doubt) at 10ft gives a DoF of 12.7ft. So you said you wanted a DoF deeper than 1.47ft, and when I suggested that you could stop down slightly, you leapt to the assertion that I was suggesting 12.7ft. In my book there's a reasonable range between 1.47ft and 12.7ft. Especially if you're willing to recompose, or try some other tricks, like maybe going to a wider lens, having the subject sit slightly closer, and therefore increasing the blur on the background. I am also familiar with forums, and sadly that means that almost every question has a faulty premise, usually due to lack of knowledge on behalf of the OP who is almost always asking how they can buy their way out of their poor results, and frequently using shallow DoF to cover up for poor quality content. I didn't immediately assume that you were in this situation, but as your statements also lacked nuance (eg, anything larger than 1.47 is at least 12) and didn't mention that you needed shallow DoF to cover up poor content that you weren't in control over, so that was what caused me to question your approach. Anyway, now I realise that you're in the unenviable position to be trying to sell video production to people who want videos to be great despite being dull as dishwater and who have swallowed the latest marketing hook-line-and-sinker with the usual "more resolution / sharper footage / shallower DoF". All the best with your search for great AF, great colour science, great codecs, small form factor, modest price - we're all waiting for the perfect camera too, come join the queue 🙂

I think you missed the point that @Xavier Plagaro Mussard was making about AF not being necessary for interviews - which means you shouldn't use it. I'd suggest that you use MF and a deep enough DoF so that if the speaker is animated they don't move out of the acceptable focus plane. I mean, unless you're filming people in a cupboard against a rude/proprietary wallpaper, there's no need for razor thin DoF anyway, other than it being a fad. I'm reminded of that saying about continuity... "if people notice your continuity mistakes, your film is crap". I'd suggest that if you're needing a shallow DoF to the point that normal movement of someone seated is pushing them out of the focus plane, then maybe you should work on making your interviews more interesting 🙂

and here are the 2x ones....

Yet more: Then the Voigtlanders. I tested these at F2 as well as wide open and f5.6 because they're so much faster than the ~F2 vintage lenses.

More:

Images: (Note, the Cosmicar needed to be cropped to 1.3x as it doesn't cover the full MFT sensor - no other lenses needed this cropping)

I'm contemplating investing in a vintage lens set, maybe FDs, maybe Rokkors, maybe something else, but figured I'd take stock of what I have and see what I can see. First I'll post the images in case they're of interest to anyone, then digest them in future posts. Test was GH5 in 400Mbps 4K ALL-I mode, Cine-D, Daylight WB, put onto a 1080p timeline. I tested all lenses wide open (typically around F2) and at F5.6 (all lenses were closed down some by then). I also did a 2X punch-in for each lens, because I like to use the 2X digital zoom function to grab quick shots, which also functions as a proxy for shooting 4K (although that doesn't matter so much unless you're doing VFX). Test setup had some depth, some glare, some sharp detail in the background, but nothing too outrageous.. Lenses..

I had a friend who loved engineering and the possibility of things... he'd always be talking about the "potential" of things. I am the opposite, I want potential that is realised. Partly by design, and partly by coincidence, all my cameras have been bought through necessity - the necessity of getting the results I wanted in the conditions that I shoot in. My first camera was a disposable film camera I bought on a trip once, and when some friends asked for copies of several of the shots, I realised I wasn't completely terrible at it. My second camera was a $100 P&S digital camera I bought for my first overseas trip. I knew I would take a lot of photos and so bought that as it would be cheaper than disposable film cameras. ie, the upgrade was based on the situation and previous results. I took lots of great photos with that, and after taking about 30,000 stills all up before I switched to video, a few from it are still in my top 40. But it didn't go wide enough for WOW shots, and sucked in low light. I realised I needed to learn how to stitch images together for the wides, but for low-light I needed a fast lens. My third camera was the GF3, which shot RAW and came with the kit lens and the 14mm f2.5 which helped greatly in low light, and was *just* pocketable. I took it through Europe and the US and Dubai and on full-auto took some spectacular shots, but the colours just didn't pop the way that full-frame cameras do. My fourth camera was going to be a Nikon APSC camera, but ended up being the Canon 700D because my dad had a previous model and gifted me the two kit lenses which he no longer used. This camera was great to use and took wonderful pictures that had the nice canon colours and was much closer to the creaminess of the FF cameras I was chasing. Then came video. Video from the 700D was spectacularly soft, which I realised was not due to the sensor or lenses, and so I learned about scaling and compression and bitrates. Being a well-read stills photographer, I knew two things - you needed Canon colours, and you needed images to be SHARP. They had to CUT YOUR EYES. So, image stabilisation, 4K, Canon colours, and HIGH BITRATES were all requirements, So the XC10 became camera number 5. It was a dream to shoot with, but I realised I didn't love the images. At the time I found the deep DOF to not be to my liking, and I found the colours to be difficult to work with when you treat it like a video camera and put it on auto-everything. I also found the images to be very soft, this is because I was shooting with too little light and it was doing heaps of NR, or too much light and because it couldn't do fast shutter speeds like a hybrid, it would close the aperture down well into diffraction territory. I shortlisted the A73 and the GH5. The A73 had poor codecs and the GH5 had unreliable AF. So I challenged myself and I tried Magic Lantern and the Sigma 18-35, which had the shallow DoF I was chasing, but considering that the setup didn't have any image stabilisation and was terrible in low-light, I knew I needed buy something else. What I did learn though, was that I could manually focus ok. Camera #6 was the GH5. The 10-bit files were night and day nicer to grade than the XC10, and the footage reminded me of watching a professional colourist play with cinema camera footage, it felt the same. I shot bunch of trips on the GH5 and it's still my main camera. Camera #7 was the Sony X3000 - the 4K upgrade to my GoPro Hero 3, which was letting the side down. When travelling I wanted a second camera with a wide angle for POV shots and quick shooting when on the move. I found that I would arrive somewhere, often having driven, and in the process of getting out of the vehicle, wrangling kids if they were with us, getting tickets and getting into a venue, I wouldn't take out my camera until I was inside wherever we were going to see. This means no establishing shots. The X3000 is the shot-getter that I can quickly use to get the transition sequences that glue an edit together. The challenge with the GH5 trying to get great colour. It's good, but not great. But, with a good enough capture, which I believe the GH5 is, any look is a few adjustments away. So I bought the BMMCC for testing purposes (#8). It has spectacular colour, and was affordable. I started filming side-by-side tests with the BMMCC and GH5 and bought a colour checker. Learning to colour grade, and colour grade the GH5 in particular, is an upgrade in retrospective - it upgrades all your previous footage, not just the stuff you're yet to shoot. Around this time, COVID happened and the biggest year of travel yet was gradually cancelled. I started my Go Shoot project, which was about shooting trips around the place, just to keep shooting, and to learn more. It resulted in me butchering my GoPro Hero 3 trying to fit a D-mount lens to it for a vintage look, and then buying the SJ4000 and fitting it with M12 lenses (camera #9). I shot videos on the GF3 again. I loved the look of the BMMCC, but it was too big. Camera #10 was the OG BMPCC, which was meant to be my Go Shoot camera. The form factor was great and I shot a few outings, but it was too slow to work with, and worse, the screen is black when I wear my sunglasses, which in Australia are not optional, so it's a PITA. Camera #11 is the GX85. It has IBIS, shoots 100Mbps 4K, is pocketable with the right lens, and can take vintage lenses. Plus, it's small and makes me look like a happy snapper and nothing more. Every purchase was earned, by studying what happened before, how it went, what I was shooting next, what situations that would be in, and then making my next move. I've shot dozens of trips, totalling hundreds of days, and maybe crossed over to four-figures in terms of locations. More if you count the tests I do, and shooting my kids sports events, which is the other main use for my setups. Lenses is a story for another day, but I could tell a similar story about using what I had 'in battle' before buying new things. My underlying principle is work out what is needed, try and bridge the gap with skill and by putting in the work, and only then, if nothing else works, buy the solution. It's not for everyone, but it works for me.