kye

+1 for compatibility. I have a Spyder and an extended colour 99% Adobe RGB monitor but can't calibrate it in anything but sRGB, despite both products claiming compatibility with the standard. Buy the monitor (or at least choose the monitor) and buy the calibration device they have "partnered" with.

Yeah, that's more than a first impression. Great footage though!

Do you think it's a matter of getting used to the FS5 though? Each camera has its challenges that we have to work out how to overcome, so maybe it's just the devil you know...?

It depends on the cave wouldn't it? If it was a tourist cave then that stuff would already be managed, etc, and you'd be renting it out essentially, or using it on a day that it wasn't in use.

There's probably never been a better time to do it, because now you can get almost every piece of equipment to run on batteries. @tupp was right about gases and stuff, which is a really huge deal if you're trying to run a generator down there, but hello 2019 and its cheap LED lights and affordable high-ISO see-in-the-dark cameras! That leaves dealing with the authorities and working out what they will or won't do. It might be a good idea to ask around who has done such things before, as it's possible that they really don't like people making scary cave movies because they think it will scare tourists away, or maybe they like scary cave movies because scary movies are popular and people will come to the caves for excitement or whatever, you never know. I saw a great film once about homeless people living in a subway station and they got permission from (IIRC) the polish rail department to film there with the criteria that the final film must begin with a statement from the rail people, so it did. The first 3 minutes of the film was a portly gentleman from the rail department reading a statement about how the rail department wants to reassure the public that homeless people don't live in the subway and that it's clean and everyone should use it and that they are proud to support the arts, all while looking like he's completely terrified to be on camera. It was great! Can't remember the name of the film, but it was a first feature and it was really good, so if someone can remember then please let us know

I always shoot with the expectation I'll grade later, so I never really consider what things look like SOOC, but considering the combination of 10-bit modes with things like Cine-D etc, it's probably a great camera for that too. Especially if your grading in post can extend to putting a slight adjustment over the whole timeline to tweak things to your taste.

Considering how small it is and how many matt-black technical things are in a camera bag, maybe it should be orange Great stuff!

There is an absolute truckload of videos and blog posts and tutorials about how to get the best out of it, so there's no shortage of info. Just google it if something isn't immediately obvious

Yeah, sports at night is a tough gig technically, and I realised when I got there that I should have brought a lens in-between the 17.5mm and the 135mm. Ideally it would have been the 85mm F2 lens that I have thought about buying but can't justify, lol. Even the Helios 58mm F2 would have been useful as the longest lens I have less than the 135mm. [Edit: anyway, it's all a learning experience..]

Resolve is radically under-priced is the better way to look at it. Here's a history of Resolve I prepared earlier..... Having said all of that though, I still think you'd have to be doing hours of editing / grading per day to justify a control interface, or one that costs more than $50 anyway

I've heard wedding shooters talk before about insisting that the PA mic for the reception is put on a stand (even if it's wireless) so that it forces the people speaking to speak from that location. I think the rationale was that it provides an excellent place to put an external recorder / mic combo (on the stand), but also if you're a single shooter then it means you can get a tight / third angle from an unattended camera on a tripod that's been pre-setup and manually focused (in addition to an unattended wide angle and the camera you're operating which can get reaction shots). I've also seen people put a recorder / mic on the PA speaker itself with a strong attenuation to one channel as a safety precaution. IIRC it was literally an external recorder taped to the speaker stand and a LAV mic sticky-taped to the grill in front of the main driver in the PA speaker. Assuming that you set the levels correctly, it means that if there's a problem with what you're recording then the PA tech will also be hearing it and will fix it, instead of your line-out getting messed up accidentally at some point and no-one noticing.

You're welcome! Video is tricky and colour and colour science is especially tricky because it's a very very deep subject. The main levels I see in colour are: Use camera on full-auto in standard colour profile, don't adjust in post Dial in a profile to get the results you want in-camera, maybe using a grey-card and maybe not Shoot log using a grey-card and grade in post using LUTs and basic adjustments Grade manually without relying on LUTs to do the work Professional colourists I also hang out on liftgammagain.com which is aimed at professional colourists and in many ways the gap in skill level and knowledge between 3 and 5 (or even 4 and 5) is larger than the gap between 1 and 3. If you're curious to have a tiny taste of what a professional colourist skill level might be like, check out Juan Melara on YT. It's a fundamentally different kind of skill level. Here's a couple of videos to get you started: In talking to the professional colourists I've come to understand that the world of Hollywood and the real pros has basically no overlap with the YT world - if all you know is YT then you've never seen a glimpse of how that other world works, with the only exception I know of being Juan Melara. I'm happy to point you to other resources where pros hang out if you're curious. In this sense I appreciate that you're torn between people that haven't got a clue how little they know and probably complain about anything resembling work, and those with more knowledge criticising you for not catering to a more informed audience.

Not that I know of. There are some de-flicker plugins that might speed up your exposure adjustments though, if they've got a long enough time-base built into their algorithm.

After much time spent editing and even more gnashing of teeth in the colour grade, here's a teaser edit I did from the bull ride adventure. GH5... Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95... Minolta Rokkor-PF 135mm F2.8... Rode VMP+ I wish I was better at this!

Ah, crap. My original logic was that @Mako Sports listed his setup as the Z90 with fixed 29-300mm equiv lens and the A6300 with a 70-300mm tele, so the 16-35 was to be able to get a ~28mm shot on the A6300 and also give a wide with FF coverage, but this was important because I was thinking the FS5 was FF and it's not.. ha ha. All this talk of FF cameras and it's got me all confused! In that case a fast lens that can cover 18mm would do the trick nicely! Thank you sir.. that looks to be exactly what the doctor ordered! It doesn't ship to me but the idea is sound and I'm sure I can locate someone that will take my money

What a great looking video.. so jealous I can't make things that nice!!

So, after yesterdays adventures (including getting a point-blank shot of what looked like a kid punching my son in the head but turned out to look far worse than what it was) I have now realised the weakness in my setup is rain protection. Any advice on a half-decent rain protection setup? I don't need to stand there filming in pouring rain, but something that could repel a light shower would be nice. Setup is GH5, long zoom, and microphone by the side. I've seen those things they put over ENG cameras in the wet and that's probably overkill, just like the price(!), but keen to hear how others approach this? A backup camera can also be a second body, so if you had a 16-35 style FF wide on the A6300 and a cheap ~18-200 all-in-one zoom then you'd be set. This would allow quick wides with the A6300, and tele with the FS5, but if anything broke then you'd have a spare for it with only one lens change.. If the A6300 dies, you can swap lenses and take a wide with the FS5, if the FS5 stops working you can swap the tele onto the A6300, and if either lens stops working then you have an all-in-one spare (that's good enough in a pinch).

4k 120p sure would be nice! I'm shooting a lot of 1080 120p now football season has started, and although my vintage 70-210mm F4 and 2X TC probably only have 1080p resolution, it would be nice to get a 4K image to downscale and get proper 1080 output.

You're probably right, but there's no harm in being welcoming. If we can influence any of them to do tests with a grey-card then instead of lamenting the decline of industry journalism we can enjoy videos that are useful and informative, but that's probably not going to happen if all we do is unconstructive hyperbolic criticisms.

You guys are right.. I retract my comments! Of course they can just filter the data based on the first question. Duh. ??? And they might find that there is a best-of-both-worlds type situation, like I'm sure BM are enjoying with the P4K where amateurs and pros have found a place for the camera in their tool-bags.

I think I kind of agree with them. You're right that a hobbyist could make a good suggestion, but in a way we could also make a bad one, and in that sense it's better to keep us out of the data. I mean, how many times have you been talking about something and had people coming into the conversation with bone-headed ideas and you've just felt like saying "THIS ISN'T FOR YOU.. FRACK OFF!!" ???

Hi Max, welcome to the forums! Things here can be harsh, but it's more that people are passionate about their perspectives rather than just being nasty, so I hope you can get past the initial impressions and stick around. You'll never question if people are being honest with you, and people do spend a lot of time agreeing and helping each other too, and nasty people are invited to leave, so it's not toxic like most other forums, IMHO. I've really enjoyed your videos and you're definitely one of the most thorough reviewers with tech performance and the like, so thanks for your work, it's been both entertaining and informative. In terms of how you did the camera tests, I agree with a straight-out-of-the-box test. It's useful to see what the manufacturer has suggested and what many people will use. I think the second most worthwhile test is to set exposure and WB with a grey-card. In a way the out-of-the-box test is for people that don't know or care, and the grey card is for people that do. The third (and most difficult) test is to try and tweak profiles to get a good result, and that's the one fraught with peril, because it's going to come down to taste unless you get objective about it, perhaps placing skintones at a given IRE, etc, but if done well it's probably a 40 minute video exploring all combinations across many scenarios with a comprehensive analysis and recommendations component. This audience would have preferred a grey-card style test, as perhaps the majority of people that post here are either professional film-makers of some kind and the rest of us are ultra-serious amateurs (like myself). This forum also has a bit of an issue with what the YT algorithm does to creatives - heavily pushing you guys into low-quality disposable first-to-publish click-bait industry-shill type content designed to help brands sell cameras to bros who need to be told they need a "FF sensor" "fast glass" for awesome "bokeh" great "colour science" awesome "codec" and "ND filters" and a gimbal and "buy my LUT the link is in the description" to make "cinematic" videos, and insert more meaningless buzzwords here. (and never mind that cinema was glorious for decades without any of these...). I realise that you have resisted these pressures more than many others, which is to your credit and why I'm still a subscriber. [Edit: I think your hardware performance videos are excellent and have been well received on here in the past, it's just that this video was a bit subjective and click-bait-ey so that's why it got the negative reaction. Talking about colour science is a difficult topic and one that this forum is pretty sensitive to because the vast majority of YTers don't know anything about colour science beyond buying a LUT and the results they produce are so terrible that the only conclusions that we can draw is that that particular person didn't bring out the best of that camera, and we have to wait for someone who knows what they're doing to show the potential of the equipment. So you hit a nerve basically...] Keep up the good work and I hope you stick around

I saw the first question and closed the window.. but that's fair enough, we have lots of cameras aimed at us. However this thing lands, I think the price won't be aimed at me!

Cool review.. subd. How's the FS5 setup treating you? In the Z90 video you talk about being able to quickly go from telephoto to wide for huddles and things like that, I'm curious what lens you'd use for that flexibility, unless you have your second camera with a wide on it, using it the way pro stills shooters run two bodies where one has the 24-70 and the other the 70-200.

I hit this when I decide to do a 2.35:1 project from 16:9 clips. IIRC there's also an option somewhere (maybe Project Settings?) where you can choose how clips scale if they don't match the timeline resolution. I think the default is to scale them to fit 100% within the timeline (so you get black bars on the sides) but there's an option to scale the clips so they fill the timeline resolution. When I do this (which isn't very often) I typically forget about that option, and just go through the timeline scaling clips (1.33 is the magic number for this situation) and also taking the time to move them vertically to control which bits get cropped.