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Yeah, I posted the full strength ones as the poster wasn't sure what halation was, so going with a subtle example might not have been as useful. I tend to apply such things in post, but even so, you have to be careful otherwise it starts to get into the "is this a dream sequence? or an 80's video clip?" territory

Just looked at the first clips I shot with the 7.5mm Laowa and there's no visual traces of distortion at all - it's straight lines all around with this one. Definitely worthy of additional testing

Getting setup to do a bunch of lens tests, but not entirely sure how to test very wide angled lenses. For everything longer than 35mm (FF equiv) I'd do the person sitting with xmas lights in the background, but at what point is a lens so wide that this style of test doesn't apply? I have lenses that are 15mm and 16mm equivalent, so not sure what to test - people? landscapes? sharpness? People talk about the classic Hollywood close-up with a wide-angle and a shallow DoF, should I do that?

I just took delivery of the 7.5mm F2 Laowa, so will be comparing it with the SLR Magic 8mm F4 soon.. first impressions are pretty good though

They look lovely though!!

An amusing test.... I just took a few shots in my backyard as a comparison. Setup one: GH5 shooting HLG in 4K, kit lens, amateur point-and-click composition, deliberately bad / basic grade.... Setup two: GF3 shooting rec709 in 1080p, "fancy" lens, a medium level of effort put into the composition and the grade (but still not expert level).. Which looks more filmic? Which makes you feel something? In this case the "fancy" lens wasn't even that fancy - it was a Helios 58mm F2 on an m42 SB. I thought it was overkill to put on one of my Voigtlander f0.95 primes, BUT having said that it would be overkill, the Voigtlanders cost less than a GH5 body, so it's comparable. Even if you say that buying a camera body "upgrades" all your lenses but buying one lens only upgrades that focal length, then sure, you're right. In that case, buy a really nice zoom lens (12-35 F2.8 or a Sigma 18-35 and a SB) or go the whole hog and go the Russian Primes and buy a whole set. Part of the organic look of the above is that the Helios is so imperfect. I'm happy to talk about how to shoot uncontrolled situations in natural light with fully-manual primes - I do it and it works great. Think about what you want to achieve, then invest in what will get you closer to that outcome.

Nice images - I particularly like the compositions In terms of how the lens resolves on 4K cameras, it's too old for online tests but you can shoot a few RAW stills and get a sense of what the resolution is. Just find something with fine detail and sharp edges in the house and use a fast shutter speed and then pixel peep, that should tell you what resolution the lens is. Ken Rockwell said very nice things about it, including that it was sharp, so the limitation in whatever setup you end up with will likely be something else - the sensor / codec / anamorphic element / etc....

My tests with the GH5 4K vs 1080 they looked the same when exported on a 1080 timeline, it was only when exported on a 4K timeline that the 4K had an edge. Also, RS doesn't matter much to me in how I shoot. I shoot hand-held because I mostly shoot in places where tripods and 'professional' filming isn't allowed, but my shots are typically either stationary shots or slow pan/tilts, and I'm not shooting action that much either (except sports which I shoot in 120p) so RS doesn't come into play that much.

With Resolve and its multi-level proxy workflow you can edit 4K content on just about anything.....

I'll second the above comments about seeing a medical professional just as a precaution, but if you're up for googling then maybe look up what nurses wear, not necessarily as fashion advice but I'm sure they're talking about being comfortable on their feet all day on hard floors but wanting budget options, or at least talking about why it's a thing and what can be done easily about it. Plus they have easy access to doctors so might actually know stuff about what causes it etc..

No worries. I'll follow that up with more advice that you probably don't want to hear (lol)... I'm also a hobbyist who shoots for fun and I've also missed shots due to camera stability (plus I hate the jittery hand-held look when there's no stabilisation so that's an aesthetic choice). I shoot GH5 hand-held with fully-manual lenses and therefore rely on the IBIS a lot. It's spectacular, but has its limits. Here's the advice you probably don't want to hear, unless you absolutely have to, don't shoot hand-held. If you can shoot with a tripod or monopod, do that. Can't do those? Shoot with a shoulder rig or one of those grips that work like the stock of a rifle that you brace against your shoulder (or rest it on your belt). Can't do those? Get a loupe and press the camera against your face for stabilisation. Can't do those? Take @Anaconda_'s advice and learn to stabilise with a camera strap as the third point of contact. ONLY after you've done those things should you go to shooting hand-held and relying on IBIS. I shoot hand-held but I can make a decent argument about all of the above, and have shot something like a dozen camera tests and half-a-dozen finished videos without any form of IS just to see if it was possible but even though I developed the skill it still didn't give me the look I wanted. Cameras are awesome to talk about and fun to play with but you'd have to be pretty freaking good for a new camera to improve your videos more than taking the time you're spending talking about it and putting that into developing your technique, and putting the money you'd spend on equipment into unpaid leave from work and (you guessed it) developing your skills. Some of the best videos online are shot with very modest equipment, or are uploaded in 720p to Vimeo from back in the day and are glorious despite not even being 1080. Here's one: Everything about this is glorious except the image quality, which your G7 would absolutely annihilate, but it's still better than anything I will ever make. Most people are probably the same. OK, lecture over. Talking about modes on the GH5, I did some tests for myself between the 6K 200Mbps 4:3 10-bit h265 mode, the 4K 150Mbps 10-bit h264 mode, the 4K 50p 150Mbps 8-bit mode, and the 1080p50 10-bit ALL-I mode and concluded that the 6K mode wasn't worth the extra effort in post, and in 50p it was more useful having 4K than 10-bit. Therefore, the modes I use are: 4K 150Mbps h264 10-bit 25p (this is by default - I only shoot slow-motion if I know I will want it in post) 4K 50p (if I want the dreamy but almost-reality look) 1080p125 (for sports, or if I want something to be a shot that screams LOOK AT ME I'M IN SLOW MOTION ISN'T THIS AWESOME) For sports, the advice I got was to shoot ~120p unless you know you're going to want sound for that shot, in which case shoot normal speed, eg for huddles or pre-post-game interactions. This was from @Mako Sports and makes a whole lot of sense and makes it really easy to know what modes to use when you're out shooting. I also didn't want to pay for UHS-II cards, so am limited to the above bit-rates, but YT is only something like 25Mbps in 4K, and much less in 1080, so the difference between 150Mbps and 400 is probably inconsequential unless you've got a distribution deal of some kind. Plus, if you must spend money, read this thread first...... I think there should be some kind of rule, like every lens should cost at least half of what your camera body costs......

+1 for considering lenses and lighting as @Shell64 suggests. Really, it's about doing what you do, figuring out where the issues and problems and bottlenecks are, then working out what the most effective ways to address them are, typically starting with things that are free and quick and working your way up to the things that cost a lot of money. Skill is often the limiting factor in a persons whole situation (it definitely is in mine!) because it takes huge effort, lots of time, and potentially also money, so it's not what people reach for first. Although if you've got lots of time but little money and are highly motivated then you can work hard and that can really build your capacity quickly.

Looking at options is great, but you end up trying to compare if IBIS is better than having an extra 1.35 stops of DR, and you get no-where. My advice is to: Understand the offerings in terms of what features they offer Review how you work and what features on offer actually matter Review if there are any limitations in how you work that would be eliminated (eg, IBIS makes going hand-held an option for some people) Evaluate the tech against your requirements and how you work No point buying a camera because it works better for someone else and gets great reviews for doing things that you don't do. And remember that when you're reading reviews most people who write reviews are review writers and may not actually do anything else except make reviews. Which is why vloggers only review cameras as vlogging cameras....

IIRC there was a difference if the shutter was 180 degrees or slightly less, at least on an earlier version of the firmware, so that might be worth a try? I remember a video with someone setting the shutter to 180 and it not doing so well, then setting it to 179 and it was much better.

Ah yes, the old 'hit it with a hammer' test. From memory, most lenses do quite poorly with that one...

Indeed. I'm not that great a fan of reading, but I got given a book of his that was reviews of other things (books, films, can't remember) but the reviews were spectacular. They simultaneously made me want to read the things he was reviewing, and also not want to read them as they would have inevitably been far less interesting than the reviews he wrote of them.

It's definitely a great time to be a film-maker.. One test that I think it useful is the "If I knew then what I know now" test, as it shows how much knowledge and skill count vs the other factors. In film-making, yes, going back a decade (or two!) we would all make much better films (well, those of us who have made lots of films in the last decade!) but we'd have been doing so with far inferior equipment choices, and apart from memorising the lottery numbers before we went back in time, pretty much nothing we could have done about it. Of course going back in time we'd have looked at the camera options and decided to spend the money on lighting and other things, which is still great advice, but tech is tech and (capable) cameras per year that someone can afford when adjusted against minimum / median wage is an equation that has tipped radically.

It's when the bright parts of the image create a kind of localised haze over the image. The Black Pro Mist filters are a form of halation: You can simulate it (sort of) in post by taking the image, blurring it, then putting it over the top of the image at a very low opacity.

Canon 24-70 2.8 on sale... https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/843008-USA/Canon_5175B002_EF_24_70mm_f_2_8L_II.html

I guess this whole thing boils down to how much hype impacts camera sales, and if the hype that is out there is from the people who actually buy cine cameras. To both of those points, I'd suggest we really don't know. I am reminded though that the UMP has a really gorgeous image. If only it was, like, 10 times smaller!

It's possible with nano-coatings, but I suspect that that's not what they're doing. I've said above that I suspect there's two factors, resolution and halation, and I suspect that the skin smoothing is halation. If you take a sharp image and apply a small amount of halation then it will seemingly smooth out much more subtle contrast areas more than higher contrast areas. I suspect that this happens because we're much more attuned to contrast on skin than we are on clothing, just like we're much more attuned to the colour of skin, as such things told us who was sick, who was angry, and who might be romantically interested in us! We don't have the same kind of tonal interest in the subtle variation of clothing or other non-human elements. Applying a certain level of smoothing means things when its done to skin - people photographing fashion are interested in contrast on clothing but not on skin. It's a different thing.

I agree. It's an interesting parallel between cameras and clothing/fashion where hype is well and truly a force. Another hype/first-mover parallel in the camera industry is GoPro. Their entire advantage was marketing (which they did very well) but essentially just reselling technology already developed and available in China with a brand-name markup. Eventually technology semi-caught up and the other players also caught up, but hype is still alive and well, and GoPro still has brand awareness and market share despite companies like Yi having relatively comparable products. GoPro is floundering in recent years, but that's more due to the Karma PR disaster and the action camera market being pretty well saturated now. In terms of what this means for RED, who knows. But I still hold that good marketing will sell units (how many units is unknown, and of course if it's a great product then that's will definitely help) and I doubt that the $2-5k RAW cinema camera market is flooded, so that's unlikely to be a factor.

They don't, that's absolutely true. You're also right about Sony probably being able to eat REDs lunch if they wanted to. All your points are valid and will apply to a level-headed purchaser, and that's definitely an ingredient in product and market success, but that's not quite the whole picture. The other part is the marketing game, and for that RED have a reputation that Sony don't. You don't even have to go to YT where people are making "I bought a RED" "I spent $15,000 on a camera" clickbait videos about RED cameras but there's scarcely a mention of UMP or Sony anywhere, even in this thread there have been a few people saying that their interest in the Komodo (at least partly) includes the name. For this reason I think there might be some success by having an entry-level product, even if it might get killed by Sony products in every other way possible (which is probably debatable as different people have different criteria).

I'm not sure that I understand your post, but in terms of what I was suggesting, I think they're perfectly capable of creating a low-cost lower-functionality product that will be suitable for lower and mid tier film-makers and will compete for film-makers who are progressing up the ladder as they build their businesses. RED have lots of hype, that's for sure, but in todays world that counts for a lot. They've also taken a number of products through the complete product development cycle and deliver very nice images, so they've proven they can make cameras. The rest is debatable, of course..

Not sure exactly what you meant but I'd suggest that the OP match the second camera to the C100 instead of the other way around. There are two reasons for this, firstly the second camera will likely have a less fragile codec (the C100 has a very low bitrate) and the second is that the C100 is probably closer to the look required anyway as it looks so good to start with. Of course, pushing the second camera to match Canon CS might require some sophisticated pushing and pulling, depending on how good a match is required, how heavy a grade will go over the whole thing, and how sophisticated grading tools are available. @tomastancredi what colour grading software are you using?