kye

38 minutes ago, hansel said:

@kye thanks! I know where you are coming from now.

I guess it's the question when a picture/clip is truly finished and different reasoning can be applied for this. E.g. For an 10sec tv ad you would go do a complex grade and effects etc. while on a runngun doc with interviews it is just not sensible to do so for different reasons, and p4k is probably not the right tool anyways.

I guess it's exactly the same for photos in that sense. 

People often say that post-production is finished when the deadline is reached or the funding runs out and you send what you have (!), but in a sense this is also not true because the goal is different

As you say, for a TV ad you would do more in post than a doc, but in a sense that's appropriate for the story too - an ad normally has to setup a context, a need/want, and a solution, and do so in such a way that you identify with both the problem and also the benefits of their suggested solution, quite a trick in only seconds.  This requires more manipulation and therefore much more careful construction, both in post with editing, sound design, colours, as well as in pre and prod when the right set design, camera angles, script, must be chosen and then executed.

If you're working on a doc then there's a heap more footage and therefore less money-per-second to spend in post, but this also works for the genre as the goal is probably only to create footage that matches reality enough to be believable or to nudge us subtly into how we perceive people and their motives etc.  

Of course, a long video with heaps of post-processing is called a "feature film" ???

I would suggest that actually the P4K is probably a fine choice for any of these if you've got a small production, just like most modern cameras.  If you were shooting an ad you might shoot RAW for the flexibility in post (if you were going to heavily process it or do VFX or green screen), shooting a doc might be good because 1080 prores would be lovely to edit with and scrubbing through footage to find good bytes would be painless, and an amateur / indy might shoot a feature in RAW or prores knowing that they are going to do lots of VFX or post work, and have the time to do so because it's a passion project not paid work.
It's not the best camera in the world for everything, certainly, but it is relatively flexible and suits many circumstances, especially if you have a lower budget but still want a big image.

IIRC the P4K can record internally while sending video to an external recorder at the same time?  If so, that's the perfect way to record the master and proxy footage at the same time too, eliminating a time-hungry step from post.

1 hour ago, hansel said:

Since everybody is going on about what a masterful knowledge is required to render a "Video" raw file, I am wondering how it differs to  exposing a photo raw? And what other knowledge and skill set is required compared to an experienced photographer?

It depends on what you're trying to achieve.

Turning a RAW photo into a nice picture is basically the same for video.  Perhaps video might be a little harder if theres a single shot where the subject moves between light sources with different colour temperatures, but that's unlikely for most of us.

I think there are two situations where grading does require a very high level of competence:

1. When you're trying to compare two cameras by grading them to look the same, or trying to make both look as good as possible so the potential of both cameras can be compared, or,
2. When you're trying to grade a piece of footage so it just looks absolutely stunning.

The first scenario is what the videos in this thread lacks: people that can't match two cameras (or can't even WB both cameras properly) or people that grade one camera nicely and grade the other one very poorly, resulting in that BMPCC4K vs GH5 video where everyone said the GH5 footage looked worse than even average GH5 footage, let alone be good enough to compare to another camera.

The second is a bit less relevant to this thread, but we've talked a lot about the BMPCC videos and how they just looked wonderful with lots of mojo and general awesomeness, and that the BMPCC4K hasn't lived up to that.  Unfortunately, what we're doing is comparing the best results from years of people shooting with the BMPCC - both in terms of people getting to know the cameras modes and best lens combinations, and how to grade it, but also picking those videos where the colourist was quite skilled.  The BMPCC4K hasn't been out long enough for the people who have it to get to know it, test lens combinations and filters, and probability suggests that the best colourists haven't even touched any of the footage yet.
You simply can't compare the best ever footage from one camera with the first few quick films from another.

The videos we've seen so far have been basic colour space conversions, or even just a LUT.  Wait until people really get stuck into the footage.  

The highest level of grading work will have qualifiers to treat skin and various other specific tonalities, will have localised adjustments that will be tracked as objects within the frame move, and these days often some VFX elements, which it's also worth noting that VFX elements don't always mean adding in objects that aren't there, but can also do more subtle things like adding lens flares, digital re-lighting to change a scenes light-source behaviour, digital make-up with face tracking and face enhancements, etc etc.  Lord Of The Rings is obviously a movie with a lot of VFX but IIRC they said that every frame had some VFX on it, even if it was just localised adjustments to dodge-and-burn elements in a landscape or whatnot.

Truly skilled colourists will not only do all the above to make things like nice and give them a look, but they will emphasise and de-emphasise elements and adjust colours according to the psychological effects that these adjustments give, but all in support of the story and characters and entire world of the film.  When we watch a film we become emotionally invested in the world that the film creates, and we cannot help but let this effect the way we see the footage.  A photograph will have more meaning to us if we know the people in it, and so if a great story has characters we care about then the footage will all look better to us because of our emotional engagement.  
This cannot possibly be emulated by random test shots of strangers in parks, models posing, or travel films where the people aren't really featured and certainly don't have any real dialogue.

Have a look at this video which shows a good but still basic colour grade, and note the difference between the first step (LogC to rec709) and the final grade, even though this is a very basic adjustment.

Truly great images will be made from footage recorded with this camera, but the images themselves won't be truly great until they are made into emotionally engaging art.

Otherwise, cameras really would improve our film-making.

On 10/18/2018 at 5:22 AM, Shield3 said:

Won't the card write speed ultimately be the shortcoming here?

Not necessarily..  The SD controller hack made a huge difference to previous cameras, doubling or more the write speed of the card slot.

On 10/18/2018 at 8:42 AM, Andrew Reid said:

Who knows? Latest UHS-II spec SD cards are very speedy. No idea what controller is on the EOS R.

I think either way it's likely to be a good result.  New and fancy controllers will be pretty fast, but if they use an older one then ML will probably have seen it before, and perhaps already hacked it to go faster.

After the wife saw how much effort I was putting into looking at various options she just told me to buy the Voigtlander and be done with it, so I now have a 17.5mm 0.95 on order!!

I wonder if I've managed to escape without having been bitten by the vintage lens bug?  Probably not! ???

So, my lineup will now be:

• SLR Magic 8mm (for "wow" landscapes and cityscapes / tight interiors)
• Voigtlander 17.5mm (for the 80% of shots)
• Helios 58mm + 0.71 SB (for quirky portraits or without SB for tele detailed shots from lookouts or what-not)

No excuses now    (not that I ever had any before anyway....)

11 hours ago, Jim Giberti said:

Honestly I've been too busy setting it up and incorporating it into our workflow to do direct comparisons but we've been shooting all Blackmagic for a few years including Pockets and Micros.

I have personally shot it on three client films in two weeks and it's definitely not lacking in mojo.

What I think people are dealing with is the new color science which is a big deal - and like the original BMCC and Pocket it took a little time for people to learn how to get the best from it.

And because so few of us have them there isn't any reall workflow buzz and discussion moving things forward.

I've gotten great footage from day one but I'm still tweaking the post process and getting comfortable with it.

I'm thinking of it as a lens with great micro contrast where the image has that presence and 3D pop without being too sharp/contrasty.

But it depends on who's shooting it and how they're posting it and once you start seeeing numbers of good creatives working with it you'll see how it's next level IQ but in a good way.

Great to hear your thoughts, and I agree about post-processing being critical.

I specifically went with Resolve because it had the more advanced colour and image processing, which I believe is more important to the feel of the footage than people realise.  After more than 18 months of trying to learn colour grading I can do a lot of stuff, but putting magic into the footage still eludes me and is a deep art indeed!

The best footage is yet to come.

I know from playing with my GH5 and some vintage lenses that an image can be detailed and yet still soft and film-like, and this is the kind of thing that can be done in post if the colourist has the skillset.

1 hour ago, TurboRat said:

Is that at the Blackmagic offices?

You'd think that they'd know better than to let @webrunner5 in there in the first place!!

10 hours ago, wolf33d said:

Knowing Canon probably 4K30p and no 4K60p. Even with 4K60P, I would not buy it because the camera is too big and heavy. 
XC10 is a smaller package. 

Yeah.  I keep tossing up between calling this fictional camera an XC20 or a C50 or a C100mk3.  If I asked Canon for an XC20 they would probably keep the fixed lens, if I asked for a C100mk3 then they'd probably not include decent 4K, but the C50 might be the winner because it might get the best of both worlds..

9 hours ago, Kisaha said:

I love the XC form factor, they can make it an M mount camera, and that would be a huge success, combined with the ultra cheap lenses for that mount. And they adapt easily to EF (electronics are the same).

9 hours ago, currensheldon said:

This is all I am hoping for. An XC10/15 style body with a modern mirrorless mount (preferably X-Mount from Fuji or RF-Mount from Canon) and a Super35/APS-C sensor. For video users, making it a little bigger isn't that big of a deal because I just want something much smaller than my C200. Once you rig up a mirrorless cameras with audio and NDs and everything else you need to make it function like a video camera, it's quite a bit more unwieldy than an XC10 anyway. 

In my opinion, it is close to the perfect size and weight and modularity. It's like a mini C100.

Here's hoping Canon rights a lot of their recent wrongs with an APS-C XC20 with RF Mount + e-ND... Or Fuji steps in instead. 

The "mini C100" concept is great.

Imagine if Canon changed their stripes completely and made a C50 with M-mount, APS-C sensor with IBIS, DIGIC processor giving 4K from 6K downsample, HFR and 10-bit modes, H265 to the SD-card and RAW to the CFast card, with the existing XLR audio module for the XC15.  

Would anyone on here buy a different camera ever again?

Of course, Sony probably wouldn't deliver anything like this either - partly because its in the grey area between their hybrid team and their cine team, and partly because no other company is forcing them to do so.  If Canon released the C50 as described above then it would almost instantly cause all the other camera companies to restructure to either merge their hybrid and cine divisions or create a third one with people from the other teams.

Ah, we can dream....

Excellent start, and +1 for more videos!!

Everybody on YT has had a go at making a how-to for travel film-making and somehow basically none of them get past having an ND filter and buying their LUT.  ???

I'd love to hear about getting close to people, as well as all the artistic elements that also never get spoken about.  Why you chose one shot instead of another shot in the final edit, how you colour graded to match the location instead of the latest trend, how you choose which places to go, when to use drone footage moving forwards vs backwards, how all that contributes to the story-telling, etc etc.

23 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

I wonder how much space the Sony Electronic ND filter requires versus a mechanical one? I would think less space, but who knows. That one that Kinefinity offers is really not that big. Or is that Red I am thinking about?

It depends on how many NDs you want to put in it.  It might be bigger than a single ND (I'm just guessing tho) but by the time you're saying two or three NDs plus a clear setting, that's got to eat up space surely.

9 minutes ago, wolf33d said:

The XC10 is such a good concept. If only it came with a S35 or FF sensor, interchangeable EF mount and 4K60p.

If they put the A7Sii into the XC10 form-factor then that's basically what it would be!

Of course, the C100 does all that except 4K60.  If they released a C100 mkIII it would be interesting to see what that would look like.

30 minutes ago, MattH said:

Perhaps I'm missing something, but why would you do that?  (build a set of curves that turn the lesser tone curves into the good one).

The way I saw it that with prores you are first choosing a native iso band and then the iso within that band defines were the midpoint is within the exposure range.  With raw you just choose the native iso. The increments within those bands just alter how bright the image looks on your screen to act as a guide for how much light to put on the sensor.

Are you talking about raw or prores?

I wasn't talking specifically about either.

When you said "The pocket 4k has different tone curves at different iso's (shown drastically by the dual native iso) so the discerning user will choose the ISO with a tone curve that matches the look they are going for at that particular moment (narrative/documentary)" it made me think that for people shooting in less controlled situations they could use whatever settings was appropriate (full sun or low light etc) and still benefit from being able to choose which tone curve they want.

If you're on set then you can just dial in whatever lighting hits your favourite ISO, but that doesn't always work for everyone.  Does that make sense?  Maybe I'm the one missing something

Thanks all, just what I was hoping for  

This video was what made me eliminate the Olympus 17 f1.8 - it just looks so flat and 2D, like she's standing almost against the back wall.  I've linked to the comparison shot in the video below.  There's obviously a grading difference, but I don't think it accounts for the lack of depth.

The Panasonic 15mm 1.7 looks much closer to the Voigtlander which is encouraging.

The Olympus 17mm F1.2 looks like it has potential but is the same price range as the Voigt which has a stop or so more aperture (not that sharp mind-you, but it is there).

Size isn't that much of a problem as long as the lens isn't larger than my Rode mic on top of the camera.  

I am also kind of intrigued about the vintage glass, and full manual controls don't fuss me.  I'll build the muscle memory and the GH5s autofocus isn't reliable so I'd rather gear up for MF than have a hit-hit-miss-hit-hit type scenario when I can just do it myself.  I looked up the Hollywood Contax and just about had a heart attack!  Not cheap!!  Still, it warrants further research.
I found it difficult to find 28mm lenses that were fast enough, but maybe I'm not searching for the right things yet.  I'm still learning.

I did some tests today with a few lenses to compare and the results are interesting.

Left = Panasonic 14mm F2.5
Centre = Yashikor 28mm F2.8 (no SB, so 56mm equiv.  and lens has lost its front coating so flares the highlights a lot!)
Right = Helios 44M 58mm F2 (no SB, so 116mm equiv)

While the middle one has too much flare, the right one has a nice balance between detail and softness.  The full images from it look just like film.

I've played around copying the look by softening the left one and sharpening the middle one, and the left one can be softened but the middle one didn't give me much success.

What other ~28mm vintage lenses are F2 or faster?

2 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

They should of had one of those Mini SDI ports in it also. That type C USB is a disaster waiting to happen.

They have no choice as far as I see it. Even a body the size of a GH5 is not going to be big enough for a FF camera doing Raw in 4K, let alone 8K.  The days of a small video camera are done if they want to add what people are going to demand. This stuff is not going to stop next week. Hell we will have 16K down the road. Unless you want to have a 1080p camera only they are going to get bigger like it or not. They are running into the same problem Laptops are having. Bigger batteries, and bigger fans, bigger cooling tubes needed while the consumer wants a thinner body. Physics dictates that isn't going to happen.

I agree it will be bigger, but it doesn't have to be huge.

The XC10 has a small 1" sensor and no IBIS, but it does have one internal ND, a fan for cooling and a pretty powerful processor inside, and it's still very compact.

If you compare the XC10 to the RX100 (both 1" sensors) then you can see there's a reasonable size difference:

However, if you add that size difference to the A7SII then it still wouldn't result in a terribly large camera:

TBH I think they could do a lot worse than to make it similarly to the XC10 because the ergonomics of that camera are absolutely fantastic (especially note the size of the grip which contains the battery), and it's still really quite small in the grand scheme of things.  Here's the XC10 being dwarfed by the 1DX (which actually is a large camera).  Even if you added the XC10 to the A7SII it would still be smaller!

Of course, in the longer-term, these things will all get smaller too.

Go back in this forum and I'm sure you'll find people talking about 720p cameras and claiming you'd need a tripod to carry the camera that could do 1080 at HFR, and now we have the iPhone and it's 1080p240 and 4K60 in it's sub-$40 camera module!

3 hours ago, MattH said:

I also think the og pocket may have had a tone curve that is favourable to highlights.    The pocket 4k has different tone curves at different iso's (shown drastically by the dual native iso) so the discerning user will choose the ISO with a tone curve that matches the look they are going for at that particular moment (narrative/documentary), which is a trade off between highlight latitude and noize performance.  In prores the tone curve is baked in,  while the raw iso increments are only metadata but the native iso comes into the equation even in raw, and the chosen iso will indirectly effect how the user chooses to expose.

And the technically proficient and discerning user might also shoot a test scene with a bunch of ISOs (controlling exposure via SS) and then compare, select the nicest curve, and then build a set of curves that turn the lesser tone curves into the good one.

If you're careful and organised such a thing would only take a few hours to do from start to finish.

4 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Then we enter into the endless debate of what is or isn't a "cinema" camera.....

Actually, I think this question will get easier to answer over time.

It used to be that a cinema camera had lots of features (NDs, dedicated buttons), connections (SDI, XLRs), and high IQ (resolution, codecs, DR, colour science).

So when hybrids got good, it was confusing because they also had much of the high IQ and some of the features.

Once hybrids have all the IQ and features, then it will be down to the connections.  This is as it should be, as no-one is going to run a 20-person crew with a hybrid and rely on the HDMI out - they will pay the extra and get a camera that can integrate into the wider architecture of a professional film-set with multiple monitors showing multiple grades to different people, audio mixing and wireless sends, etc etc.  

If your film set is $20,000/hr then the difference between hiring a $5K camera and a $50k camera is negligible.  Unfortunately the product lines from most manufacturers seem to indicate they are clueless about this.  I don't think they are clueless about it at all, I think it's the middle-managers playing corporate chess for survival coupled with organisational cultural inertia that's the real reason behind it.

Now I've gone MFT, I plan to eventually get a nice lens around the 15-20mm mark as my walk-around lens for travel and home videos.  In combination with the ETC mode on the GH5 that makes it a ~35mm lens and ~50mm equivalent lens - the two most flexible focal lengths.

My criteria are:

• nice MF ring
• aperture control (manual aperture ring or electronic control from the camera are both fine)
• faster than 1.8
• nice 3D rendering
• neutral or on the warmer / nicer / more flattering side

I have other wider and longer lenses to compliment it, but as I think the ~35mm focal length is the most useful, I think I will do most of my shooting with this lens.  As such, I'm saving up and will have a bit of budget.

The options I've found are:

• SLR Magic 17mm T1.6
• Olympus 17mm F1.2
• Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95  (winner in the Hurlblog comparison)
• Panasonic 15mm F1.7 (looked ok in the Hurlblog comparison)
• Rokinon 20mm T1.9 (borderline fast enough)
• Sigma 16mm F1.4
• Panasonic 20mm F1.7
• Speedbooster + Canon Nikon etc fast prime??
• Adapter (not SB) + Canon mount ~16mm fast prime??
• Adapter (SB) + nice ~28mm vintage lens (eg Minolta Rokkor 28mm F2.0)

Eliminated options:

• Veydra 16mm T2.2 (not fast enough)
• Olympus 17mm F1.8 (in the Hurlblog comparison it looked flat and lacked contrast)
• Speedbooster + Sigma 18-35 F1.8 (too large / heavy)
• Adapter (non SB) + vintage wide angle (I couldn't find any wides fast enough or that weren't fisheyes...)

Please help!!

Ideally I'd love the Voigtlander 17.5 0.95 but if there's a better deal then I'd love to know.  Otherwise its a case of saving up.....

3 hours ago, IronFilm said:

The BMPCC had to start from a fairly low starting point, it could leverage some of the early work done with the BMCC, but that was all. Thus the original BMPCC still had a long long way to go. 

So while I expect the BMPCC4K will indeed improve with time, I don't expect it to have such a radical leap forward as the original BMPCC did. As the BMPCC4K has the benefit of being able to take advantage of all their years of software development on their other cameras, and the BMPCC4K is able to to start off from Day One as a much more fully developed camera (relatively speaking). 

Makes total sense

3 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Oh no, it is too good!

Luckily the internet is awash with people that can't shoot or grade very well!

3 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

Well one thing I think is clear with a push toward 8K they sure as heck are not going to do that in these small Mirrorless bodies without some major breakthrough. And I don't see that happening anytime soon. Especially with a push of having Raw in them to boot.

So it seems they are going to have to go to small Cine camera bodies with a Fan to do it. Might be the hangup with the Sony A7s mk III. Not counting a Way bigger battery needed to make it all work. Sony particularly it seems to me is going to Have to up size as they say, or just be stuck with overheating like crazy.

I agree about size and heat dissipation, but that contradicts the idea that all the cameras in a given lineup had the same body?

It's a strange situation to be in because if they push their video line-up and make a new body (that would obviously be larger due to cooling fans) for it, then it would make sense to use the opportunity for adding things like NDs and other things that take up space and they couldn't before.  If they did that and called it the A7SIII then it would confuse the A7 lineup completely but capture all the PR from the A7SII customers and reputation.  If they decide to slot it into their cinema lineup and call it something like the FS3, then most A7SII customers wouldn't understand it.

It's going to be a tough gig to make it better than the competition in performance, large enough to have cooling, and still fit the general form-factor of the A7Sii line and customers existing gimbals and other rigging that they'll want to keep using.

4 minutes ago, Mako Sports said:

To be fair, the EVA 1 isn't even a Cinema camera just like the Sony FS and Canon C100 - C300 line, its a high end video camera.

Varicam LT and Varicam 35 are Panasonic's true cinema line cameras. 

Of course..  that makes the list something like:

• G m43, perhaps with a hi/lo philosophy, as the basic hybrid line
• GH successor as a proper small-factor cinema camera, with emphasis on video operability while  retaining most of GH5/5s stills capabilities
• S as FF contenders against Sony and Canonikon with 8K  ---OR--- EVA as 4K with much larger form factor with dedicated buttons etc
• Varicam as pro cinema line, including FF sensor and no-compromise operability

Even if we started to add their fixed lens cameras below the G series, their entire lineup would still make sense and be useful to almost all film-makers who need A-cam / B-cam / crash-cam options.

This clean hierarchy really doesn't seem to be common amongst the other manufacturers, who completely ignore parts of the market, or have large gaps in IQ between their consumer cams and professional cinema lines.

9 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Is your C Fast card Fast enough for Raw in the PK4? All 10 seconds of it.

Ironically, if I bought the BMPCC4K instead of GH5 then I'd already have the expensive media!!

I don't think they're fast enough for 1:1 RAW at 60fps, but they're usable for every sensible mode.  See below - they test about the same as a SSD HDD.

49 minutes ago, Snowfun said:

If the footage I’ve seen so far is badly graded by people who don’t know what they’re doing then I’m delighted. I can’t grade like an expert either so it proves even I have hope of achieving a decent image.

Expert (often cynically defined as someone who has been doing it badly for a long time) and professional quality stuff isn’t too important for people like me as it’s always going to be out of reach...

But I take your point!

@Andrew Reid is right - badly graded images tell us nothing.

If we see a bad grade, how can we tell the difference between it being a great camera and bad colourist, or a flawed camera that the colourist wasn't skilled enough to correct, or a broken camera that no-one could get a good image out of even if given years to do so?  The answer is that we can't.

Unfortunately, when you give a camera to a pro and get a great image back, you may be seeing the result of a camera that is really easy to work with and a very simple but effective grade, or you might be seeing a camera that takes skill to work with and the results of an experienced colourist, you can't tell.  However, at least you can tell that the camera isn't fundamentally flawed.

I find Philip Blooms camera tests very revealing both in what they show and what they don't show.  He shows what works with the camera, and to be fair, he normally does stress test them a bit.  But every now and then he'll release something like his iPhone 120fps video which makes the iPhone look like a wonderful camera until you realise that every shot (almost without exception) is pointing into the sun.  What's the moral of that story?  The 120fps mode needs a metric shitload of light, especially in 120p when exposure times are so short.  Its an omission, but it's one that is noticeable if you pay attention.

As Andrew said, only a skilled grader or the RAW files are of any use.

That makes sense @UncleBobsPhotography and would explain why I'm not getting 50MBps in the GH5 on a card that gives 80MBps in the computer

I must say though, I went out again today and took some random test shots and the 150Mbps modes just floor me.  Even the FHD 180fps mode looks great.

The phrase "digital film" keeps coming into my head when I look at a clip, either fullscreen which looks soft and with wonderful colour subtlety or zoomed in hugely where it just looks like film grain.  My vintage lenses will be helping with this, but even the 14mm F2.5 still gives that impression too.  It's a mile away from the brittle and digital look most 4K mirrorless cameras shoot these days.

4 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Yes they are. Ain't cheap to own a PK4 is the short run. And that card is on sale!

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1090746-REG/lexar_lsd256crbna10002_pro_1000x_uhs_2.html?sts=pi

Cheaper than the cards for my XC10.  

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1067863-REG/transcend_ts256gcfx650_cfast_2_0_cfx650_flash.html

and that was just to get 305Mbps 4K!

1 hour ago, tonysss said:

Today I was shooting in the vineyard with GH5 and I took the old pocket, and I have to admit bmpcc surprised me again with better color and at least +2 feet of dynamic range extra. I noticed that I use a lot more pictures in my pocket camera. Only add saturation and contrast and it's there. In new pocket I see less DRs and a worse transition of highlights to clipping and of course  colors are different and worse for me... the old pocket remains a loyal partner of my GH5 for beautiful B-roll or more cinematic work. Of course, working with old pocket needs more time and patience :)

From what I understand it took a number of firmware updates to get the BMPCC to where it is now.  I'd imagine the newer one will be the same?

If so, just think about it like you're buying a software subscription with free upgrades

9 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Hopefully the FF mirrorless means that Panasonic will not make the GH series 8K for many years yet to come. 

As I'd much rather they just make the GHx each release be the best best possible 4K camera it can be!

To ensure a smooth (ish) upgrade progression path then the EVA1 has to be a MFT mount (or at least the new L mount) in the future. 

The release cycles indicate the G series is next in line to get an update, with the G85 successor coming next? I do hope it doesn't get skipped over and forgotten about. As I feel the G series is the sweet spot to buy for many people, especially for new comers to join and grow the system.

One of the ways that I like to think about it is in terms of "tiers".

For the average Joe, a G85 might take pride of place in their setup as an A camera.  Their GoPro that used to be their A-cam might then be the tiny / crash cam in their setup.
For some, a GH camera might be your A-cam with a G camera being your B-camera, perhaps if you're shooting weddings for instance and need backup angles for coverage and don't need GH quality across the whole kit.
For others still, the EVA (or 8K S1?) might be their A-camera and the G or even GH camera lines might only be crash cameras.

What I like about this is that is provides a range of cameras with increasing features and IQ that many people can use for whatever scale, budget and IQ is appropriate for their project.

In terms of the new lens mount and 8K, do they go together?  I'm not sure of the resolution of existing Panny lenses, but the new mount would be a sensible time to mandate a minimum level of sharpness.  8K video has more pixels than most still cameras, so I'd imagine the vast majority of lenses will be at risk of falling short.  If that's true, then MFT lens only have to be 4K and 8K lenses are the new mount.  That keeps it simple for consumers and would help explain why the new lenses might cost a lot.

9 hours ago, eyesuncloudedphoto said:

This makes total sense IMO. The GH5 is still untouchable feature-wise, among hybrid cameras. What is perhaps needed is focusing on the video side of things even more, offering advanced features not found in anything sort of a "proper" cinema camera. Internal ND, for instance. Internal RAW and/or Prores. Perhaps the first application of global shutter? A number of things are easier and more economical to implement with a smaller sensor. 

Agreed.  Having the GH line firmly in the "small sensor but large body with many buttons" camp, there's room for things like internal NDs and other circuitry required for RAW recording and associated cooling etc.  Panasonic seem to pride themselves at offering lots of new things into the market with the GH line and there's no reason why they can't continue that trend.  8K might be coming, but the excitement around the BMPCC4K proved that interest in high quality 4K is anything but dead.

9 hours ago, jonpais said:

Maybe this just happens to me, but every time I buy a camera, it’s obsolete in six months.

Tell me about it.  I bought an XC10 and just upgraded to a GH5!

28 minutes ago, Cliff Totten said:

The biggest problem that Sony Alpha has,....is Sony XDCAM.

Its going to be politically hard for the Alpha folks to add 10bit, 4k, 60p, 400mbp/s internal recording with no recording limit to a new A7S-III. This is what they will probably face with a Panny S1 competition at NAB 2019. If Apha does this, XDCAM managers with scream bloody blue murder to the highest Sony executives. XDCAM does NOT want a Sony camera like this to exisr for fear that it would cannibalize far more expensive camcorder models.

Actually, Im certain our favorite Panny EVA1 manager is very nervous about the idea of a fully loaded FF Panny S1 under his EVA1 either. (No, he has never actually told me this)

Guys,...this huge shift we are seeing in the industry scares a lot of marketing execs and is probably making everybody scramble to try and figure out how to fight each other without stabbing themselves in the process!

This is the nature of technology conversion.  The reason they're all touchy about overlapping product lines is that in the end there will only be one or two product lines and the process to get there will involve almost everyone losing their job.

We all talk about convergence like it's the GH5 vs the BMPCC4K, but if you think longer term it's about the death of entire product categories.

51 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

Thanks! though I will say that when trying to move the wing over it's full length, you need to put one hand on the tripod to fully steady it , when the tripod is at it's full size (still totally usable).... With the 90mm attached, this is even more pronounced. As I have it in the photo though, perfectly stable, leaving both hands to get even more smoothness

Could you perhaps put something on one of the tripod feet that you can stand on and it would secure that leg of the tripod to the ground and prevent it from moving or tipping up?

I'm not sure what that would be called, but its the same principle as putting sand-bags on the legs of big lighting stands to make sure they don't fall over.

Then you'd be free to use the slider with both hands.

@Jimmy that setup looks quite neat and compact, nice work!