kye

How lenses should be discussed (not really a review at all, at least in the current context).... It would be amazing if cameras could be talked about like this too.

What a great way of putting it. When the image is lesser, it's like a switch flips in my head and I'm able to move on to more important aspects. Shooting becomes so much more fun too.

I thought it was funny.... If this whole YT thing has managed to remove peoples sense of humour then I think some lightening up needs to be done 🙂 I mean, if you want to be pissed at someone, I'd be starting with billionaires getting rich off slave labour in third-world countries, but you know, you do you!

Meanwhile, not all reviews are the same.....

Still loved.

Ouch! I think there's also a difference in approach of what you shoot. One on end of the spectrum there's this idea that you have a camera with many limitations and you either create the shots you want or you look for the shots that work. This is the idea of shooting with only a prime lens. A lot of people who use cameras that are limited have this mentality. You either get what you get but you get enough good shots that it's worth it (like a photography walk) or you change what is there to make sure you get the shots you want (directing a scene). The other end of the spectrum is you shoot what is there. This means the camera has to capture what is there, like wedding shooters have to get certain shots, ENG crews have to capture whatever is happening, etc. For me, my priority is capturing what happens, so I want the camera to fit the scene, rather than the other way around. This aligns very much with the cinema vs video camera priorities, but it's a different way of looking at it. Either way is fine, but the differences are a big source of why people from the first camp give really dismissive and condescending advice to the people in the second camp, like "just use a phone" or "who cares if your image looks like crap".

Here's my manifesto for the humble zoom lens. In my tests the expensive lenses looked vibrant and clean and sharp, which is to be expected. The Helios looked high-resolution but not sharp, and had a softer rendering which people love, and the 14-42mm kit lens looked somewhere in the middle... From my post: "Then, the mighty 14-42 kit lens. It has some of that vintage look going on. It's kind of like somewhere between the Helios and the other two. It raises the shadows a bit, but isn't uncontrollable in direct sun, and the edges are a little softer. A happy medium perhaps? It's also a zoom, has OIS, and if you break it you can just go get another one from a friend or on eBay or for $5 at a market somewhere with a GF2 with a dead battery." ... and yet, the expensive lenses and the Helios are ultra desirable, but I'm probably the only person to ever live that thinks the kit zoom might offer the best of both worlds.

Yeah, size is a consideration for sure. You have to be careful about what constitutes a bad reputation and make sure that 1) the people saying such things aren't idiots, 2) that the weaknesses of whatever it is are things you actually care about, and 3) that you actually understand what you like. High-end cinema lenses are often in demand because they're far from optically perfect, and yet forum fools will gush over the latest movie shot on vintage primes and then in the same breath go back to talking about how 6K RAW is mandatory and that Sigma Art lenses aren't sharp enough. AF might not be the best, but how would it impact you and how you shoot? Maybe the AF isn't so quiet and can be heard with the on-board mics, but is this important to you? and should you be using the in-built mics anyway? Maybe they're not weather sealed, but how many times do you actually need that? and if you buy one that is weather sealed, are you going to pay more than simply being willing to break and re-buy the cheap lens in the very unlikely event it dies. etc..

Yeah, it really does need that 18-40mm lens. That 28-60 Sony lens is so much smaller than practically any other zoom in their lineup. The gap I don't think they'll potentially ever close is a super-zoom. For MFT, you have the 12-35mm F2.8, 12-60mm F2.8-4 and the 14-140mm F3.5-5.6 which are all roughly the same size. This makes sense, as the 12-60mm gets extra reach without getting larger by having a slower aperture, and the 14-140mm does the same trick again. Unfortunately, the FF systems can only get this kind of size by starting with a short AND slow zoom, so there's nothing to trade-off, and so the existing super-zooms don't trade anything off and are just enormous by comparison. Unless they trade off the same amount of aperture on top of an already slow lens and make something like a 24-240mm F5.6-11, but I can't see anyone being willing to admit such a lens would even deserve to exist, let alone be desirable. This is the gap that I don't think will get closed between MFT and FF.

Sooooo... Does it have a 2X crop mode, and can you adapt MFT lenses to it? 😉

Yeah. I have spent time in tech startups, app design, user experience circles, and "proper" cameras are basically dinosaurs, and the thinking from the manufacturers is pre-historic as well. It's not getting better that quickly either, because there's this background mentality that "it works for the pros". In practically any camera forum you see it with discussions that go like this: Hi, I'd like a small and convenient camera with great image quality.. what do you recommend? Use your phone Actually, I'd like great image quality too, that's important to me Oh well then, you'll need this 5kg rig that is manual everything and needs lighting and external audio Actually, I need it to be small and convenient too Use your phone ........ Actually BOTH are really what I need <mumble mumble...> so you know better than the pros do you? well.... hey everyone, this guy is shitting on Deakins!! It totally is!!!

Yeah, I really think of it in terms of the priority. Cinema cameras are divas - the things in front of the camera are changed to suit the camera. You need lighting to suit native ISO, you have to wait for the camera to be ready, you have to start/stop if there's an issue with focus etc, they need external stabilisation. Hybrid / mirrorless / video cameras aren't divas - they adapt to the things in front of the camera. They are designed to operate at non-native ISOs and often have dual-native ISOs, they turn on quickly, they try to keep up with the scene with AF and AE etc, and they often have stabilisation built-in to reduce need for external rigging or tripods etc. Obviously this isn't a perfect description, but in general terms I feel like these are the "stereotypes" of each genre perhaps. Over the last 10 years both camps have started integrating the features and benefits of the other camp, with cinema cameras getting better ISO performance and now AF and IBIS, and video cameras basically getting a nicer image. If you shoot in relatively controlled environments I think it's easy to think that everything is mixed up now, but I shoot my friends and family during travel in available light with no direction and no retakes. Often I will see a moment about to occur and I have 2s to start recording and by the 4s mark the moment is over. I miss lots of these because the camera is in my hand by my waist and I can't get it turned on and in focus in 2s. Lots of my clips have the first 5 frames of the clip being the nice moment and then the smiles fade as people turn away etc. My situation is obviously extreme, and I'm 100% aware of this and that almost no-one is operating like this, however it throws the situation into very clear focus for me, because: 1) my iPhone can operate under these situations just fine and can turn on and do AF and AE before I've composed the frame properly, and apart from delays in getting the camera app started from the Lock Screen, it's basically faster than I am 2) my GX85 is almost as fast as my iPhone, being easier to turn on, but AF and AE are a tiny bit slower 3) BMPCC / BMMCC..... good freaking luck with that!! By the time you turn them on (and the monitor of the BMMCC), get the ND adjusted, get focus, start rolling, then frame, the moment is all but a memory. and these don't have a 60s turn on time! Yes, I could walk around with the camera turned on, but I remember the day my wife and I went to Pompeii - we walked around looking at this and that for 3 hours, had lunch, then went for another few hours again. Carrying a cinema camera around with batteries large enough to last that long simply wouldn't have worked. I carried the GH5, F0.95 prime, and Rode Videomic Pro in one hand that day, and my arm was sore for a couple of days afterwards. From this perspective, a C70 might be a camera I could work with, but a Komodo would simply not be anywhere near flexible enough for me. Thus, I am very aware of the differences in general approach, and thus thus, these "I just bought a RED!!!!" and then "Why I'm selling my RED" aren't surprising at all 🙂

Good summary and thanks for re-evaluating. People who are able to fact-check or re-evaluate their position, by keeping an open mind and updating their previous conclusions, are in my most respected category. My impressions of the 5D with ML setup is that it stands in the current market like many other cameras: as having significant weak points but also significant strengths. Rather than being an all-rounder like many other offerings, I feel it has a very strong image if that's the kind of look you're going for, but also strong negatives, like people have mentioned. This is in contrast to most other cameras from that time that have aged significantly and are mostly negatives compared with the current crop. This setup is definitely not for everyone, but neither is any other camera and it's up to each of us to match the strengths and weaknesses of each product against our own individual highest and lowest priorities.

I don't know about the Komodo-X, so maybe some of these considerations are different, but the sorts of things I was thinking about were: Long startup times Poor non-native ISO performance Lower resolution outputs crop into the sensor, so if you want to shoot in anything less than 871K then all of a sudden your whole lens collection has shifted FOVs, and your 6K RAW files are ridiculous if you're shooting for socials which are 1080p max and people are watching on their phones Higher frame rates are only available in lower resolutions, so a FPS change is now a lens change, which is a DOF change, and might be an exposure change, which combined with poor-non-native ISO performance is a lighting change...... These probably aren't a big deal for anyone who already use cinema cameras, but lots of these folks saving up for years to finally buy a RED came from the high-end cameras of the time like GH5, C70, 1DXii, etc, which are completely different beasts to use. So it's really a cinema-camera vs video-camera type of thing, and lots of people aren't shooting in controlled situations either so the struggle is real.

Man - I recently watched my BMMCC footage I shot with the 14mm handheld and it was too shaky so well done on hand-holding a 25mm lens! The images certainly grade like refined butter.... just incredible compared to any h26x footage.

Actually, @mercer has recently become acquainted with a camcorder that has rather captured his attention....

I think most of us are kind of hacks - it's like Richard Hammond once said while tearing around the test track in some hypercar "this car is so much faster than me!". I've come to realise that almost all of the magic in a final edit gets there by flowing from the people through the tools to the footage. This is why I don't feel creatively limited by my GX85. I'd say that for 50% (or 80% or 95%) of the people on the planet if they were shooting on a GX85 then the limitation on the creativity would still be on the operator and not on the camera.

I'm not really that surprised about people switching away from RED in seemingly odd situations because I think that RED holds this strange place for many as a "fantasy camera". There is a little bit of "one day I'll save up and buy an Alexa" on YT, and maybe a little bit for the higher end Sony cameras, but "one day I'll own a RED camera!!!" is a big theme on YT. Then they get the darn thing and realise: 1) pure cinema isn't magically channelled onto the media card, and 2) it's a PITA to use. I'm slightly susceptible to this "RED fever" myself - I'll think of the images coming off the Komodo and how stunning they were, and start thinking about how maybe I could use it, and then I remember that literally almost everything about it is completely wrong for me..... but part of me still wants one! Hi Dave! I'm assuming that most creators cover the costs of the trip via the sponsorships from the usual suspects like Audiio and Squarespace and BetterHelp etc, and also assuming that you have a general idea about what other people get paid for such things.. is it true that this covers the trip costs? if so, is it better for them to attend a trip and make 1 or 2 or more videos about the camera than it would have been to stay home and make different videos about other things that didn't involve a trip? if not, do they take a financial loss and view it as a partly-subsidised holiday? I'm guessing that there's more interest (and therefore more views and higher sponsorship payments) for videos around a new camera rather than the old "My 5 favourite vintage lenses" or "7 tips for shooting with a wide angle" videos which don't depend on access to new equipment. I'm also aware of the YT formula of making searchable tech videos to get reach and attract new subscribers, and making regular content with more personality that caters to existing subscribers and builds your personal brand, so even if someone takes a loss on the videos from the trip it might pay out in getting more subs, growing the channel, and therefore increasing the viewership and sponsorship fees for all future videos.

One thing I think is useful to keep in mind is that anything published to YT is a part of the entertainment industry. That's why everything is about views & subscribers (the ratings system for free online content) and ad breaks and sponsored videos etc. The business model is the same - the owner pays to make content that will attract viewers and then sells that attention to advertisers. YT didn't call them 'channels' and have a TV as its icon by accident - everyone is running a TV station now. Some are trying to be community stations, attracting patrons of the arts rather than selling out, etc, but the game is the same. If camera reviews were part of science then there would be peer-review and the general goal would be to be well-respected and get funding through that mechanism. Sure, there are lots of corruptions to science with research funding politics and publishing etc but it's still a long way from being in the territory that the entertainment industry is. Only you can decide if a TV show / YT video is an informercial, a talk show, a documentary, or a public broadcast, but you should be making that decision when you watch.

I'm not really sure what criticisms you're making. When I watch a Gerald video, the things I'm seeing are things like: What is the DR that he measured What features aren't available in which modes (ie, what the manufacturer won't tell you) What else did he notice about it, like if it overheated, or took 20s to turn on, or got corrupted clips, etc He's mentioned before that he has a standard checklist of things to test and does that for all his reviews, so assuming that's true then it's a semi-rounded take on the camera Maybe I'm missing all the times when he made comments that were outside his knowledge and experience? If he did then I don't remember him making them. The territory that gets tricky is when a reviewer is commenting on how good a camera it is overall (because that's subjective and not objective), or when things are outside their experience. I can read whatever I want about an Alexa 35 but I'd be talking out my backside if I told you that it was a good camera for a cinematographer to shoot a feature film on, because I have no experience of that. Perhaps the biggest criticism of that Gerald that I am aware of is omission of relevant facts. Is there some gotcha about the camera that wasn't in one of his reviews? Probably in every one of them. Are they deliberately withheld, and if so then why? or did he just not find them? Who knows, but it's worth noting that Gerald takes the most time to menu dive out of all the YT reviewers, and is obviously much more systematic in his approach, so whatever extent he's guilty of it then everyone else is guilty of it 10X or 50X more. Most YT 'reviewers' seem to just read out the marketing brochure, turn the camera on and wave it around enough to film a video long enough for a sponsor segment, and if they find a weakness then might mention it and might not... then proceed to tell you that it's a good fit for doing a bunch of things that they have no experience with at all. We can throw shade at Gerald, and no-one is perfect of course, but if we're going to get specific then perhaps we should refocus our attention to the worst offenders. Lots of reviewers making only positive reviews about a brand and then a "why I'm switching to X" video which mentions a dozen or so criticisms of their previous brand that somehow never made it into the original videos but would have been obvious from day one. Of course, if we're going to re-direct our attention, then maybe we should focus on those who actively oppose any genuine criticism of a brand, like the R5 incident which was easily verifiable by anyone who had one or had access to someone who did... Not being a critical reviewer is one thing, but voluntarily participating in a cover up is something else entirely.

Very interesting... The 12-35mm F2.8 and 14-140mm F3.5-5.6 are basically the same size, and when combined with the GX85 are about 120mm deep, so 140.1 mm deep is perfectly acceptable for a body + 7X zoom lens setup. An 18-40mm lens would be a very useful one as well, especially if it's shorter. I'm a big fan of having an ultra-wide, and although I've got 16mm and 15mm equivalent primes for my MFT cameras, 18mm is likely just wide enough for almost everything I have come across. Having some smaller lenses still, other than the prime just released would be the final piece of that puzzle I'd say. Maybe the lenses to back up such a small camera body will actually arrive with it. Very encouraging.

I think this is a key point - colour grading is a daunting and time-consuming thing that most won't want to do (or learn to do). I disagree that this isn't for content creators, I think that's exactly who it's for, but the point stands. I got into video around 2016 and at the time the people here were all about LUTs and profiles, CineD in Panasonic cameras, the Leeming LUT etc. At that time I didn't see anyone talking about colour management, and although Resolve was the same price then as it is now, it was a very different tool back then. It had only recently had the Edit page added, and round-tripping from PP/FCPX to Resolve and back isn't for the faint-of-heart. There are still lots of people who don't want to colour grade, for a variety of reasons, but now it's not a choice between a few profiles or a few LUTs, or spending the time and effort to learn colour grading.

Of course... duh! *slaps own forehead* 🙂 Interesting about the cage manufacturers doing the leaking. I guess they'd be the ones with the most detailed knowledge of the cameras too - considering that they'd be required to receive accurate dimensions and potentially would also get the size requirements of the lenses too so they'd be able to figure out the lens configuration and sensor size. I think it's a straight up content creators camera. Gerald said he thinks that it was Panasonic trying to get some of that Fuji money after the success of the X100 selling out, and that the inclusion of all the more advanced features was simply a case of taking the S5ii package and not paying engineers to disable features when they can just release the new camera with those features and not pay anyone to remove them. Millennials and GenZ are running around with vintage point-and-shoot cameras and want film presets now, despite their smartphone being technically better in practically every way. The fact that us crotchety old camera nerds don't know what the hell they want isn't surprising, especially considering I'm pretty sure they don't know what they want either! Anyone who has ever looked at the fashion industry will know that nothing makes sense, lots of things look completely stupid, yet there is a rabid market for it and you can make squillions of dollars if you can get it right.

Yeah, exactly like the G9. Making the S9 into a GX line camera would literally be the same - taking a FF body and putting an MFT sensor / mount into it. If they did this, it would make sense. Have a few standard body shapes where you can get economies of scale for manufacture, and just change the sensor and lens mounts etc for different models. BM has been doing this with the BMPCC lineup. I'd be inclined to say that this is what they're doing, but who knows... anything designed by committee is inherently unpredictable unless you're in the room with the committee, and even then, lots of corporate folks get chewed up and spat out by office politics even when they are in the room! In terms of the potential overheating, Gerald said something in the livestream to the effect that Panasonic test their cameras at 40C / 104F and that these record time limits would be a guarantee that the camera would record for that long under those conditions. It was just a reference in passing of course, so don't quote me on that. I also heard a comment in one of the reviews (Cams IIRC) where someone said that someone tested the camera by just hitting record over and over again, and it being fine recording for something like an hour, and there was talk with Panasonic about removing the time limits via firmware, but obviously who knows what will happen. I suspect a bunch of people will be happy. Dave said in the steam that he mentioned the controversy about the release to one of the creators who was there and they didn't know what he was talking about because his audience, who are all iPhone / vlogging folks, didn't have any negative comments about it at all. When I was shooting with primes, the 2X function on the GH5 and GX85 were really important to me. They literally changed the lenses that I bought and my approach to how I shot. For most people this feature was of zero importance. Why do I say this? For most people who buy these cameras, this whole conversation and controversy is the equivalent of me talking about the 2X feature - they don't know about this stuff, wouldn't understand it if they came across it, and if we explained it to them they simply wouldn't care.

Sure, but if I brand bananas as bananas, it doesn't make them less of a banana. I'm talking about structure. He's a technician who tests cameras. If a technician tells me the DR is 12.7 stops then I'd be inclined to believe them, but if they tell me its a good camera for shooting sunsets in Belize then I would raise an eyebrow.