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Some people prefer a 24mm prime, but I think that's mainly as a prime for narrative work, and to be complimented by a 50mm or so. Also, when cinematographers talk about a 24mm prime, they're often talking about it on S35, so it's around 35mm FF equivalent. In terms of my lenses, I use the 35 as the default lens, and maybe 60% of final images are 35mm equivalent, maybe 25% of final images are 85mm equivalent, and the remaining 15% are the 16mm equivalent. If there was a fast enough 16-35 equivalent zoom then I'd be glad to use it, but not even close. I find 35mm the right FOV for getting environmental portraits, taken from a normal distance away from the person for a social situation, and lots of flexibility in taking a step forwards or backwards to "zoom". The 16mm wide, is as you say, WIDE and that's exactly what you want for those WOW shots like landscapes and buildings etc. Then 85mm is great for sniping little moments while the kids don't notice me etc. It's a powerful combination of focal lengths because it perfectly matches the types of shots that you want to take, at a focal length that you want to use. If you use a lens that's wide and get too close to someone you alter their face shape and it feels "too close" and uncomfortable, and if you use a lens that's long and stand a long way from the subject then it will enlarge the background and make the shot feel distant (at best) or voyeuristic (at worst). Far from it being a lack of ability to "think outside the box" - it's actually a sensible lens choice for the style of video you want to make.

@SRV1981 Another couple of points that @IronFilms post also reminds me of are: The particular colour peculiarities you will get with a camera will take years to truly understand, so having a single system will be much much better than having to learn how to colour correct and troubleshoot different cameras. The more you know, the less the equipment matters. All through my journey of learning to make videos the biggest limitation was me, and knowing what I know now, I can get pretty decent results from almost any camera. At the moment I'm having heaps of fun with my Panasonic GF3 from 2011 and the 14mm f2.5 lens that it came with when I bought it. I love this combo because it's small and light enough to take wherever I want and no-one bats an eyelid at it, and it's good enough (combined with my ability to process the footage in sophisticated ways in Resolve) to get results I think are usable but isn't too good which makes me think too much about the technical aspects of the image and lets my perfectionism get in the way of content and story.

You're thinking about colour all wrong. I don't blame you for it - I think most of the internet thinks about colour wrong and you'd be forgiven for adopting that kind of thinking. I did at first, and now several years later, have come out the other side and now understand what things are truly like. @Mark Romero 2 was 100% right when he said: So, how long will it take? It will take a few hours, and it will take many years. Let me explain - there's good news and bad news. The good news: When you shoot with anything other than rec709, you're going to need to convert from whatever colour space and gamma you shot in to rec 709. This could be via a conversion, or a LUT, or some combination of both. The level of sophistication that goes into creating these things is absolutely huge (when done by people who know WTF they're doing - which is almost no-one on the internet by the way) and so your job is just to work out which conversion or LUT you will use. From that point on you just apply that to all your footage and that's it - you've learned to colour grade. If you find a conversion that gets great colours from Sony, which will be out there I can assure you, then job done. The bad news: The above method will only work on maybe 10% of shots, if you're lucky. The reality of shooting events and travel and other uncontrolled situations is that the vast majority of your shots will look like garbage straight out of the camera. This will be true regardless of what camera you have, and will completely overwhelm whatever advantages one brand has over another. This is because the real world doesn't use lighting with matching colour temperatures, and even worse, with remotely acceptable CRI performance. Colours will be *awful*. An example. Last week my wife and I went to get some food from some food trucks and I took a tiny camera to shoot a little test video with a very vintage soviet lens. Let's look at some of the shots as they came out of the camera. All of these are on auto-WB so the camera will have been trying to adjust as best as it could. Notice how the sky looks normal, the people in the foreground look brown/purple, and the various trucks look different in the background. Too orange for the camera to compensate using auto-WB: Interior of the truck is fine, and the outside is quite green: BUT, you say, that's a cheap camera! OK, here's a few shots from the XC10 - a Canon Cinema Camera shooting in C-LOG. Background is fine, foreground is muddy purple: A small statue that no-one has ever heard of - colour temp of interior lighting vs natural lighting coming from the skylight: So far so good. Let's look at some event photography. The pub that hosted this bull-ride decided to buy a mixture of purple and green floodlights. Take note that to the naked eye this was COMPLETELY INVISIBLE. This shot is ungraded HLG too, if you convert to 709 then you've got a circus on your hands. It was because of things like this that I have taken years to be able to get colour I'm happy with from my footage. I've been shooting family trips and outings for years and the footage has been piling up waiting for my skill in colour grading to be good enough to colour grade the material I've captured to a standard that I can even live with, let alone love. So, why aren't people talking about this? It's simple. Professionals mostly have control of their lighting and make sure it's done right, documentary shooters will hire a colourist to troubleshoot difficult sections they can't colour grade themselves, and amateurs who can't control the lighting and can't troubleshoot their own footage simply don't post their shitty footage to YouTube. You, however, will be looking at the critical shot of whatever it was that happened, and wondering what the hell you do with it to make it even usable. Screw the difference between Canon and Sony colours, your shot will look like your camera was broken and needs to be repaired. Another example. Recently my daughter graduated high-school. I took my GH5 and 12-35/2.8 as I thought it would be long enough, would mean I could quickly take a wide or mid-shot if required, would have AF for quick compositions, and I thought I'd value the stabilisation from the camera and lens. I contemplated taking my Voigtlander 42.5/0.95 prime, but decided against it. Turned out that for the critical moment of her walking across the stage and receiving her certificate, the 12-35 at 35mm wasn't long enough so I cropped in 2X (which the GH5 can do without a loss of quality). This is fine, but at 2.8, which was needed as it was indoor and stage lights aren't that bright, the lens is quite soft. I should have taken the Voigtlander, which is sharp as hell when stopped down a couple of stops to f2, and would have been longer. Oh well, I got what I got and content is king right? This is the real world. Almost all cameras can get great colour, but none will look good in difficult conditions and all will require some skill in post to colour grade. Also, if you're colour corrected still photos before, but not video, then this is where having RAW makes a huge difference. If you have WB challenges with mixed lighting or clips that need more correction and you've shot anything other than RAW or Prores, you will adjust the sliders and what you expect to happen (and happens on RAW / Prores footage) will not happen, instead you will be greeted with bizarre mush and strange tints and all manner of other challenges.

@herein2020 raises an excellent point about shooting with a potential crop mode in your camera to gain a new focal length. Does the R6 have such a mode? In terms of the wide end, how experienced are you with using a 24mm prime? The reason I ask is that 24mm has a certain look that you would effectively be stuck with unless you changed to the 70-200 which is much much longer and huge and conspicuous. If you've filmed many different events with just a 24mm then you'll know what you're getting into and that's fine, but I'd be cautious about that. In my own personal work I use a 35mm equivalent lens as the default walk-around one on the camera, which combined with a 2X digital zoom feature (which doesn't lose resolution or quality) gives pretty good flexibility, and I don't have to change lenses much. However, I also carry a 15mm equivalent for landscapes/vistas/interiors, and an 85mm equivalent for portraits and details, which suits the travel work that I normally do. I'd suggest that keeping your options open on the wide end might be a good idea, for example leaving enough budget to add a 35mm or 50mm prime later on if you find that the 24mm is too wide. Certainly, I find it too wide for people shots because as soon as you want a shot tighter than a mid-shot and step forward to reframe then the width of the lens starts dominating the image. Have you filmed entire events on your phone? it's an easy way to trial having a single 24mm (or 28mm) prime. Considering the price difference between a 70-200/2.8 and 70-200/4 I'd suggest @SRV1981 confirms that the extra stop is required under the typical lighting. I'd make sure to include tests about raising the ISO and using noise-reduction in post too, which can have more of an impact than you'd think. This is actually a really significant point - cinema cameras are often very noisy, even at their base ISO, and professional colourists often have NR as their first node in the colour correction. It's regarded as normal and a base-level skill in post for professional cinema and TV, yet amateurs act like noise will escape from their images and kill their family, so seem to spend thousands of dollars buying cameras that can see in the dark and lenses that look like mechanical owls, and cart around huge cases of equipment in order to avoid the slightest noise which could be eliminated in post for free in 2 minutes. Dropping a stop on the zoom, would save a huge amount of money and free up more funds for more compact primes at the wider end. It's definitely worth confirming that you *really* need that 2.8 aperture.

Traditional logic is that you can have gaps in your lens lineup without issues, and in-fact, you should because it gives you greater range from the lenses you do carry. The traditional question is 24-70 + 70-200, and the answer is 16-35 + 70-200 or 24-70 + 100-400 and you can crop a bit in post if you need to cover that gap. That was about stills images, and now is true for video too as cropping in-post for video is now completely fine (add a bit of sharpening to match the look). In terms of primes vs zoom, think about the total experience. You've answered the speed consideration, but do you need to get shots that are in-between 16 and 35? A normal prime set would include a 24 in there to cover that space. Also think about apertures - primes can obviously be faster and that's great, but think about how much aperture you DON'T need. For example, if you aren't shooting in low light, then maybe 2.8 is fast enough (not a lot of bokeh at the wider focal lengths normally anyway), and that would mean that for the same financial cost and weight cost, you might be able to get 16, 24 and 35 f2.8 primes rather than the 16-35/2.8 or 16/1.4 + 35/1.4 primes. The key thing is really understanding what you shoot. I have gaps in my focal lengths and my "everyday" lens collection mixes primes with zooms based on what and how I like to shoot.

Don't forget that there are tradeoffs with switching lenses as well. A 24-105 or other zoom lens might not be the "best" in a direct comparison (not the sharpest, not the lightest, not the fastest, not the nicest bokeh, etc etc), but if you're shooting an event and have just taken a portrait and something suddenly happens that requires a wide, the zoom will give you an average quality benign wide shot and a dedicated portrait lens won't give you any usable shot at all, and a photo from an average lens beats no photo from the best lens every single time.

Just curious.. what are the purposes of these three bodies? ie, why do you need three? Getting specific might help people understand - the devil is in the detail after all.

I fundamentally disagree with the entire premise of having one body for stills and one for video. Instead, I suggest you have two bodies, that are each good for both video and stills, and use complimentary lenses on them to give you better coverage. This has the advantages of: having shared support and accessories, such as only having a single type of battery to charge, and all accessories will be compatible having only one set of lenses required each body can act as the backup for the other one, or if you want a backup to keep two bodies at all times (even after a failure) then you can have a single backup body, rather than requiring two media is guaranteed to be interchangeable colour science and post-processing is all interchangeable and compatible There's a reason that stills shooters have two bodies with different lenses and why video shooters also often have two bodies, this combines those real-world factors. Ultimately, who easy and fast and streamlined you work will make a much greater impact into how good your results are than having a stills camera with slightly better photo resolution and a video camera with slightly better codec or whatever.

I think the smart money is on Rokkor glass. If I could be bothered I'd snap a bunch of As New lenses up now, before they do what FD lenses did over the last few years, and CZ before them. One of the big vintage lens YouTubers I watch reviewed his first Rokkors and the comment was that the build quality made FD lenses seem (IIRC he said "light" but something indicating the Rokkors might be more solid than the FDs). I also saw someone show off their set of Hexanons earlier today, which wasn't something I'd thought people made sets of. The comment about the 40/1.8 (which wasn't in their set) was "creamy". I have two copies of that lens and I found it too soft on MFT wide-open, but if you're using the whole image circle and looking for a dreamy look or will stop down some then yeah, I can imagine a set of those being in a similar territory to USSR lenses and their (desirable) imperfections. Lots of other brands out there for collecting still.

Interesting comparison, but to be cinematic instead of blurring part of the image they should have taken the 4K image and blurred all of it to soften the jagged edges and make it look less like low-bitrate highly-compressed 8-bit 709 footage. I look at the image on the left and think it looks low-resolution and low-quality and the image on the right and think it looks high-resolution and like someone added an emboss filter over the top set to 15% opacity.

Yes, and in the vintage lens FB groups I'm in there seem to be a lot of complete sets changing hands, so it's a route that can save a lot of time and hassle. Of course, it's interesting for me to watch as you see a listing and a few lines of text and maybe part of a photo, click on it as you're curious, and.... WOW $50,000 ono! With that many zeroes it's like the prices jump out from behind a tree at you!

What connectivity options are there from the tape player you're looking at? Probably easier to start with the player and work downstream I'd imagine, as then it's just a case of buying an appropriate interface. Also, it might be easier to have someone else do the transfer? Analog tape machines really benefit from being high-end devices that are regularly maintained and aligned etc, which is what a (good) media facility should be able to offer.

I'd love to see 4444 or XQ implemented on more cameras (well, Prores in general too) as they have 12-bit and so with their higher bitrates become a real competitor to RAW formats, but offer the ability to downscale in-camera which RAW typically doesn't offer. If resolution choice changes the crop factor of your camera and therefore throws your entire lens setup into chaos then it's a PITA, so better to have a codec that's good enough to offer the flexibility of RAW in post but doesn't screw up your kit.

Interesting comparison, that it arrives at a similar total price. I completely agree that it's the modularity that will be the key - as @IronFilm said that if you can just take the camera module from an A-Cam style setup and put it on the D4 for a gimbal+Z setup and then onto a drone then it would be a pretty smooth workflow. Good points about having to offer an A-Cam option, and the various points around the total experience including reliability and servicing etc. DJI is becoming quite mature in terms of being a hardware / software tech company so that's in their favour, but having a large and professional-grade service network is a different kettle of fish. I do wonder if they have one for their high-end drones. DJI have items that approach the $10K mark in B&H, although there are two other manufacturers that go up to $30K so maybe DJI haven't yet had to setup a first-class service network. They do have a new drone listed there, it has no price but it's in the list between the $10K and $12K items (sorted by price) and it lists "Compatible with Zenmuse Cameras" so I think that model might be the drone platform for this line of cameras. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1560814-REG/dji_matrice_300_commercial_quadcopter.html In terms of not crippling their products, like Canon do, I think the 4D is a pretty big statement that they're not doing that! There are many subtle differences between cinema cameras and video cameras. These typically stem from the fundamental assumptions that when shooting cinema, you will alter the environment to suit the camera, whereas when shooting video, the camera must be able to work with a given environment. ie, controlled vs uncontrolled sets. Some examples: Cinema cameras typically don't have in-built stabilisation as it's assumed they will be rigged out, which is reasonable because you're likely to have complete control over the set. Video cameras are out there in the world, dealing with whatever comes, so frequently offer stabilised sensors and work with stabilised lenses. Cinema cameras typically aren't designed to have good performance at a wide ISO range. This is because the environment can be lit to suit the ISO of the camera. The exception to this is when shooting outside in-build NDs are often used. Cinema cameras very rarely have fast shutter speeds. Video cameras are expected to fit in with the outside world, which means handling low light situations with good high-ISO performance. Internal NDs aren't as common as many video shooters don't care about shutter speed and so video cameras are designed with fast shutters to be able to properly expose with a wide aperture in full-sun. Cinema cameras typically aren't designed to be all-in-one, they are designed to be rigged, and to be modular. This is because the size and weight and appearance of the camera isn't of much concern on a controlled set. As such, cinema cameras often don't use internal batteries (or if they do they are only designed to keep the camera powered up during battery changes on the external power source), often don't record audio natively (or do via a sound module that will accept XLRs and provide phantom power), and often don't have an articulating screen, or any screen at all. Video cameras are designed to be all-in-one, they are designed to function independently and aren't typically designed to accept many modular elements. As such, they use internal batteries and may not even be able to be powered externally, will always record audio (some only support in-built microphones and others offer 3.5mm audio jacks, with only a few offering XLR or pro connections), will have a screen or EVF or both (of varying standard of articulation). There are other differences, but these are the main ones that come to mind. Yes, you can use a video camera on a controlled set to make something that ends up in the cinema. Yes, you can take a cinema camera and use it out in the uncontrolled world. However, there are limits... Video cameras can't always be made to do everything that a cinema camera can do, and image quality is often sacrificed for ease-of-use, whereas a cinema camera is all about the image because the camera is sometimes little more than a sensor in a box. Cinema cameras can probably be made to do everything that a video camera can do, but they can't do it quickly, conveniently, easily, practically, or simply. Therefore, there are situations that can't practically be filmed because they happen too fast. Situations that can't be practically filmed because the camera is too much of an imposition on the environment, being too large, conspicuous, require too much management and too many people. This is why when the Blackmagic Pocket CINEMA Camera was released, the video shooters complained about it lacking a bright screen, longer battery life, good internal audio quality, etc. That's why when the Blackmagic Pocket CINEMA Camera 4K was released, the video shooters complained about the same things again, only they also complained it wasn't pocketable anymore. Same with BMPCC 6K and 6K Pro. This is why I had real trouble getting good images from my XC10 in run-n-gun situations. I treated it like a video camera expecting it to cater to my needs, whereas it expected me to cater to its needs. Thus, I was greeted with poor image quality. This is why when I changed from XC10 to the GH5, my results improved drastically. It's not that the XC10 was a worse camera, but that I expected a CINEMA camera to work well in a VIDEO situation, and surprise surprise, it didn't.

I guess what I'm saying is, it's a CINEMA camera. Therefore, VIDEO shooters will fail to understand what it's for, why it's so expensive, and that it wasn't designed for them. ....Just like every other cinema camera released that was either the size or cost of a DSLR 😂😂😂

Well, mostly for shooters who stabilise the location of the camera, which a gimbal doesn't do, and people who like to move the camera and shoot with only a gimbal for stabilisation also don't do. ie, it's much more for Hollywood style controlled sets than event or documentary style shooters, although they could certainly benefit from using it. It's a bit pricey though - the base package is over $7K on B&H, putting it out of the reach of most gimbal-only shooters.

I think you nailed it by calling it 'elegant'. So simple, especially colouring the face-detect with green, but very powerful. I can imagine future updates having another colour for the other faces detected in the scene and showing them as well, which would be great for focus pulls during dialogue scenes. What do you think of the ergonomics and image? Do you think that there would be people willing to use this on a set that could afford a cine camera and a gimbal / steadicam? I have no idea how DJI is regarded at the ARRI level of film-making. I'm assuming that if you wanted to fly an Alexa Mini or Komodo you'd be using one of the high-end DJI drones?

I think we're mostly talking about the same things, but the terminology is letting us down. Sadly, I find that the level of knowledge out there about cameras is woefully inadequate, which means that things are actually named incorrectly (or at least misleadingly), which then gets in the way of even knowledgeable people talking. The "bounce" I'm talking about isn't when the IBIS hits its limits, its when the person can't do the ninja walk and the vertical height of the camera goes up and down. Anyway, this isn't a camera aimed at people who shoot handheld relying on IBIS, this is a camera for people who shoot with a gimbal attached to a z-axis stabiliser.

Canon: we've released dozens of cinema cameras over the decades, with hundreds of firmware updates - we're really innovative! DJI: releases first cinema camera ever, and first version of the firmware includes LiDAR Waveform, including colour coding the points identified as a face.... Comatose. The rest of the industry is comatose.

Embargo has lifted so heaps of reviews all now on YT..... I have 10 reviews of it in my subscriber feed lol.

You didn't get my point. The problem with IBIS and any stabilised footage is parallax error. This is where the IBIS stabilises the rotation of the camera but not the position. This gives the 'gimbal bounce' when walking, but also means that any time you have something in the foreground it will bounce around while the background is completely stable. This camera has a Z-axis stabiliser built-in, which would be a huge upgrade to anyone using just a normal gimbal. The more I think about it, the more that stabilised rotation and unstabilised location is the Achilles heel of the amateur. Of course, I see it a lot in YouTuber content, but you could argue that professional you tubers are professional entertainers rather than professional film-makers.

I was thinking about the GH6 last week. End of the day a GH6 is a relatively small prosumer camera which, although it produces a wonderful image from a small package was designed for people who don't have much money and with a MFT mount is losing ground now. I use a GH5 and it's pretty good, and the GH6 is unlikely to offer an enormous upgrade for what I do. So TBH I think the GH6 should completely violate the laws of supply and demand and be released at $299.

Here in Australia the top M1Max 16" is about two-thirds the price of the cheapest brand new car. I deliberately bought an Intel MBP in 2020 because I didn't want to beta-test the new M1 and everyones first software releases for a new chipset, and now it looks like things are right on schedule for when I upgrade in ~2022/23 for the tech to be solid and the applications to be ironed out. At that point the prices will have calmed down a little too. I wonder how often they'll be upgrading the chipset.. ie when the M2 will be out.

I completely disagree. Unless it's got poor IQ (which we haven't seen yet) or you're talking about brand anxiety and status on set, it's actually a superior option in many cases, because its competitor is not a shoulder rig, it's competition is a ronin / easyrig combo because it has a z-axis stabiliser: or perhaps even a ronin / steadicam, depending on how easy it is to do big vertical moves: Amusingly, Hollywood seems to be voting against you, as the default approach for high-end cinema appears to be stabilised unless otherwise required, rather than the other way around, which seems to be your preference. I find that one of the fastest ways to make footage look amateur is to have the cameras location (not rotation) shake. ie, IBIS and gimbals stabilise the cameras rotation so the image doesn't move around, but the cameras position often shakes giving that terrible effect of having the background stay stable and the items in the foreground shake due to the parallax error. Hollywood doesn't do parallax shake because the camera is on sticks / crane / slider which controls the cameras location, or on the shoulder of someone standing still which provides more rotational movement than location movement, or on a steadicam where the cameras location is very fluidly controlled. The only exception is when "hand held" was in the brief, in which case it's appropriate. I film exclusively hand-held for all my projects using IBIS, which is appropriate to their aesthetic, but I try and avoid moving the camera at all while filming to avoid the shaky parallax error. Tragically, this level of innovation is not remarkable. In any other tech sector, this would be normal. The only reason this stands out is because the rest of the industry is lazy and complacent. I include companies like Panasonic in this comment. The industry has lowered our expectations dramatically to the point where the only ones we actually complain about (eg, Canon) are, when compared to other tech sectors, positively comatose. Imagine an app developer coming out with a big release - "here's version 48 or our app - it's got 25% more resolution than v47 but as usual the 16 most significant issues are unchanged, just like every other release since the first version of our app over a decade ago". The camera industry will get eaten by tech companies eventually, and it can't happen soon enough TBH!

Have you shot these things, or other things, before? If so, what did you shoot, what gear did you use and how did it work for you?