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I wear dark sunglasses and I try not to smile... does that count?? ???

Doesn't the Z7 have an 8K time-lapse feature? Think of it as very low frame rate 8K! ????

People who are shooting on the go and uploading with short time frames are editing on battery. This is both YouTubers and perhaps mobile documentary makers on very short deadlines (not sure if this is a thing?). I've seen ENG people editing in the field, but the setups I've seen are laptops in vehicles, so they could have an inverter and be on charge, so this probably doesn't apply to them. I would also edit my travel and home videos on the train during my commute, and I shoot in 305Mbit 4K, but I realise I don't represent a huge percentage of the users out there!

This could have a real impact. When I watched both A7III videos by Matti Haapoja both had AF failures in them which other people don't have in theirs, but Matti mentioned using centre-focus(?) mode when other people use face-detect, so I think it does take a while for people to work out the quirks of a camera. I'll be waiting for the full reviews before making any real judgements.

This is sad, but not really a surprise to me. It's common practice for market leaders to make 'closed' systems to prevent their customers from escaping, and for market challengers to make 'open' systems as they have far less to lose and an open system is better for consumers. This is a big advantage of m43 for example, but at that point Panasonic and Olympus didn't have a huge customer base to protect. I think these new cameras are interesting, but there are many pros and cons in comparison to the other offerings. I'm not going to be able to make a decision until we start seeing full reviews of production models (not pre-production) and the reviewers have had a chance to discover their strengths and weaknesses. I've watched enough tests by cinematographers who film scenes at varying levels of exposure (-2, -1, 0, 1, 2 etc) and across various profiles and gamma curves to know that it'll be a while before anyone will be able to show what these cameras are really capable of. The full weather sealing is certainly an attractive feature if you're spending so much money on a camera system!

A quite critical review from Tony & Chelsea - based on the pre-production model.

Knowing how quickly BM release updates and how much effort they're putting into development, I wouldn't be surprised if the Windows version of Resolve gets a big performance bump at some point soon. The performance differences in that video can't be explained by the hardware differences so I think they must be software optimisations. If the OP has a preference for PC then I wouldn't use those test results to recommend a complete change in computer platform. @mojo43 sorry to hear about your laptop getting taken! I keep my carry-on under the seat in front of me but I have a soft backpack and I guess if yours is har-shelled or too big it might not work.

Thanks @webrunner5.. @Mokara Never underestimate what very smart people can do with digital signal processing. In audio, where CD and the standard delivery formats are 16-bit audio but very common sources of sound are hugely more dynamic and have to be crazily processed before recording (eg, an orchestra), audio engineers have managed to develop very sophisticated ways to dither and add noise so that the performance of 16-bit is stretched considerably. It's almost a black art in some ways, but the results speak for themselves on a good system. I'm not sure how much of that body of knowledge is applicable to video but there's definitely a lot of experience to draw from.

Interesting video. The way that these results seem to be jumping around between Max's videos seem to indicate that he's gradually working stuff out, like the XPS on charge vs battery, but I think there's also an element of moving goalposts as things change with software and firmware updates too. The fact that Resolve is much better on the MBP than XPS may be short lived if the Resolve Windows team just haven't released their optimisations yet. These computers are relatively similar in performance (the video card being the main difference) so it looks like optimisation differences, which could be improved at any time. I'm glad I'm not in the market for a new computer, there's a lot of opportunity for buyers regret if an update comes along and changes things!

A 360 camera may be a much better second camera than a GoPro actually, so I think that's actually a good idea. A 360 camera will probably control exposure via shutter speed and you won't be able to put NDs on it, and will therefore have very short exposures. This combined with the fact it's 360 means that you can stabilise in post and it will probably be completely fine even if someone bumps the setup. The ability to choose framing after the fact also means you not only have the variety of shots to choose from but you can ensure that the camera and operator never get in frame. My recommendation would then be to put it up higher so that the angle that the camera/operator will be included in will be a lot less and you'll be able to use wider shots. You only have to hold a camera a tiny bit above head level and it looks like drone footage, so there's that too. Low bit-rate 4K spread across 360 degrees makes footage pretty grainy so you want to use the widest shots you can, so the further away from the operator it is the more unobstructed field of view you will have to play with. Best of luck - it sounds like it would actually make a pretty flexible B-cam. I hadn't thought about it in this way either, so this conversation is useful to me too.

Thanks - that makes sense. I guess from that perspective there's a considerable grey area between completely pure full sensor read-outs and completely processed and compressed data. I guess from this perspective it's like many other things where we just need to evaluate it both objectively and subjectively like we already do. I wouldn't care if they used shamanic runes and astrology processing inside if it gives a lovely image!

@Myownfriend @IronFilm Isn't RAW prior to debayering? If so, isn't pixel binning something that happens after debayering? or does the averaging only occur between photo sites of the same colours?

I didn't realise they measured IBIS. You don't happen to know how many stops the GH5 is do you? I read everywhere that the GH5 is so much better, but I'd be interested to know how many stops better it is

In my investigations I've noted that DoF isn't exactly what trends to be relevant in the frame - it's more a case of how blurry the defocused areas in front and behind the subject are. Ie, if you're shooting a person at a given focal length and F-stop inside, where the background is relatively close to the subject, then that background will be a lot clearer than if you shoot the same settings outside where the background is a lot further away. It also changes when you move the camera closer to the subject. I came to the conclusion that if there was no other 'cost' (ie, lighting or ISO changes) you'd probably dial in a custom f-stop for each camera setup. I'm lucky in the sense that I just want separation and depth so it's less of a worry for me. It depends on who you ask. It's a pity that the film industry hasn't adopted any standards for measuring colour shifts or noise, as these would be very useful for rating cameras. Instead, what we get is people saying that a camera is "usable" to a certain ISO - I've heard people give figures that are usable from 6400 to 20000 for the same camera! What we'd also find is that casual shooters have a much greater tolerance for noise and might not even notice subtle colour shifts, pros shooting for online or small-screen distribution would care more about noise but probably not be super picky about colour, and those shooting high-end stuff for the big screen are really concerned even with quite subtle shifts in colour. Those shooting in RAW (where grain isn't mangled by compression algorithms) will have different tolerances again - my 700D looks abysmal at 6400 compressed but RAW with ML 6400 the grain has a nice quality to it. If you hang out with some high-end cinematographers or professional colourists for a while you'll find that they're able to notice colour shift changes with ISO changes almost right down to the base ISO of a camera.

Ok, got it. Thanks The part that I did understand was that to maintain identical DoF you have to adjust aperture with crop factor.. (m43 F2 = FF F4 = given DoF). The part that I didn't understand is that exposure doesn't behave in the same way. This would then be another advantage for m43, no? Get the same look with less lighting?

Isn't that what C-Log is short for? ???

@IronFilm @webrunner5 this is why these things are hard to discuss, there are so many variables. Consider this.. Lenses gather light. For a given design, the bigger the lens diameter, the more light goes in. This is why people have telescopes with really large diameters - they want to gather more light. Lenses then focus that light into an image circle of a given size. This is why m43 lenses won't cover a FF sensor - the image circle isn't big enough. Sensors detect that light. So when people say that "a FF gathers more light" it's only true if there's a FF lens on the front. If we put a Super35 lens on the front, put in a focal expander to spread the light out a bit more, the FF sensor will see less light because there is less light coming in from the lens. The problem with people changing sensor sizes is that they don't change everything else in their camera. I suspect this is what happened with the vista vision sensor - they probably didn't buy all new lenses. If two people go out to buy a camera setup, one buys a FF camera and 50mm F4.0 lens and the other buys a m43 camera and a 25mm F2.0 lens and they then meet and point their cameras at the same object with the cameras right next to each other, then with the same settings (ISO, SS, aperture) and their lenses wide open they will get the same exposure, and they will get identical angle of view and depth of field. When we're talking about the camera industry this is the comparison we're talking about, not changing from one setup to another. Does that make sense or did I mess something up?

Column / line skipping perhaps? If so, the moire should confirm it pretty easily..

I've tried this type of rig and there are a few issues. The first issue is that the wide angle of the GoPro makes it difficult to mount so that it can't see the lens or the shotgun mic that are also sticking out the front, let alone your hand playing with the zoom / focus rings. The second issue is that a second angle is most useful to cut to when something bad happens to the first angle, but if they're mounted together and someone bumps the camera (or some other movement issue) then footage from both cameras are bad at that point. If you don't need continuity editing and only need a second focal length then it might be ok. It would depend on the particular setup. If I was shooting with a tripod then I'd be tempted to mount the GoPro either quite a lot higher up than the main camera (for events perhaps) or maybe 30cm or so to the side, so they'd still be sharing a single tripod. This would mean that when you cut between them the angle is a bit different and it doesn't just look like a jump cut with a bit of a crop thrown in to try and cover it up.

Wow, lots of discussion! @IronFilm Yes, I realise that low light is more than sensor size.. Your comment about a larger sensor requiring more light seems confusing, and I suspect that it's one of those situations that doesn't make sense because "all else isn't equal". My rationale is this - if you have a camera that is a certain physical size and has a number of photo sites on the sensor then each photo site will get a certain number of photons per second. If you were to take that camera (camera body, sensor, lens, etc) and make an identical but smaller copy, you would have a lens that was gathering less light (because it casts a smaller shadow on the wall behind it so less light goes into the lens) but it has the same number of photo sites, therefore each of these photo sites gets less photons per second. This exercise of scaling everything down to the same proportion isn't how cameras are actually implemented, which is where I think the vista vision sensor discussion was coming from. @jonpais I get that not a lot of videographers are feeling the gap that the FF F2.8 zoom lenses that pro photographers swear by, but did you also see that basically every FF prime from F1.4 and faster is not available on the m43. FF F1.8 = m43 F0.7 and FF F1.4 = m43 F0.6. And yes, we could suggest that super35 is our reference, making m43 only one stop behind, but also putting FF one stop in front. It still won't change the fact that the most exotic lenses on m43 have the same amount of DoF as my $100 canon nifty fifty, which is hardly an exotic lens in FF circles. @BTM_Pix No worries - I thought perhaps my tone was coming across a bit too directly Your summary of my position isn't quite right and is potentially due to my wording.. Let me have a go at clarifying and choosing my words a bit more carefully, feel free to reply or not as you choose I think the sensor size is a weakness if you scale the physical size of the lenses to match (as it would have to spread less light over the same pixels), but this doesn't apply if speed boosters are used, and even if they aren't used this can be overcome through high ISO performance, which as @IronFilm points out, they're doing a great job at. I think that in every other way, the sensor size is an advantage, for reasons I already mentioned. In this sense I think the format has no fundamental limitations, just the odd engineering challenge here or there. The current lack of available lenses I think is a barrier to some potential users from adopting the system, but this is also something that can (will?) be overcome in time. In a sense much of this thread is about where m43 has come from and where it's going in the next 6 months, but I'm trying to look at the bigger picture. In the longer term everything that's difficult technically gets done if there's demand for it, and standards can last an incredibly long time in the tech space. Damn it's hard to talk about complex and nuanced topics online.. ??? @webrunner5 We could show you photos to prove that we're correct, but you'd just blame photoshop and stick to your story!! ???

Is this an argument? I thought it was a debate I'm definitely learning things and am open to the idea I could be wrong.. I'm wrong about things all the time! If someone isn't then they need to get out of their rut a bit more ? I was assuming that adapting lenses was something that the pros weren't that into, but maybe that's not the case. I know that the photography youtubers all went to Sony and adapted their Canon glass and then abandoned it, and I thought the GH5 adoptees also adapted and then abandoned them too, but these might all be AF related. I know you didn't bring up m43 on large budget productions - I did. I think that m43 has no fundamental limitations to its potential, and personally I would like it to succeed. Having a lens mount that is supported by more than one manufacturer is great - everyone wins - imagine that the Motion Picture Experts Group didn't exist and all we had was platform specific formats, what a mess that would be. The only fundamental thing that m43 has against it is that a smaller sensor gathers less light, assuming no speed boosters, which means that it is at a disadvantage with noise performance. I can't think of anything else that is fundamentally worse (maybe I'm missing something though) but there are huge potential benefits. Cameras can be made smaller which is useful for some applications. Cameras that are made the same size (eg, for ergonomics and screen size) will have more room internally for IBIS, cooling, more processing. In really fast digital circuits the length of a track on a circuit board can be a problem and shorter paths are better and support faster data transfers. All else being equal these support faster readouts and less rolling shutter. Even if you have all the money in the world, a larger heavier camera might require a robot arm instead of a gimbal, this reduces setup times, cost and weight of the setup, etc. If you halve the size of something (scale to 50% size) it becomes 8 times lighter and occupies 8 times less volume. This means less trucks and fuel and people to lug equipment around, etc. All this at the cost of making a sensor that is two stops better in ISO noise performance, which cinema cameras aren't market leaders in anyway, and having equivalent lenses. I'm not saying that the lens lineup stops the current users from using it, I'm saying it's a limitation of the format taking over the entire industry. Aim big right? Actually, I'm taking a style of film-making and working out what equipment is required to get that end result, and then looking at which camera systems are able to give me the functionality I need. In a way I'm saying that tools should fit the requirements of the customer, and you're saying that the tools don't meet the customers needs and the customer should go somewhere else. That's fine if you don't want to gain those customers, but why wouldn't you?

Ah, yes, now I'm starting to see a benefit... Of course, the vloggers wouldn't be pleased because it's not a selfie screen anymore!!

Yes, but adapters are perhaps even less pro than the native F5.6 equivalent "PRO" zoom lenses. My take on it is that m43 has boomed with the same kind of spirit as the DSLR revolution, people who are willing to sacrifice usability, features (and sometimes quality) for an extreme reduction in price and size, in comparison to the previously available ILC cinema cameras. I am aware that the higher-end industry pros dip into the smaller sensor cameras now and then for specific purposes like dangerous / destructive situations like car crashes and explosions and for tiny hand-held setups like @John Brawley has shared with us, but my impression was that this happens a lot more often than that tier of users would consider using speed boosters or other adapters. Maybe I'm wrong, but the whole thing just doesn't seem to vibe with the "we're on the clock / I need it to be reliable and stay out of my way" requirements of the higher-tier pros. I get that many people are paying off their home-loans from these setups, but if you're talking about m43 being as common as Super35 on large budget TV shows and feature films then I think the native lens selection is a real limiting factor. Maybe it's just a matter of time for more lenses to be released, and perhaps higher-tier industry use will grow over time as it all matures.

Ah, ok. Yes, you're right that cropping in doesn't effect the DoF. So if you put a 50mm 1.8 on a Canon APSC it is the same as an 80mm 1.8. The problem is that if you buy a 27mm F1.8 and put it on a Canon APSC it will have the same angle of view as a 50mm on FF, but the DoF will not be the same as a 50mm F1.8 on FF. This is the part that confuses people.

If you're talking about DoF then many things factor in, but all else being equal I think my above post stands. What do you mean by ETC? I feel like I should remember what it stands for, but I can't It depends on the situation. If you're shooting in a confined space then often you can't step back. I'm not sure if this is true but I think stepping back and zooming in might negate any DoF impacts because the ratio of distance from the camera to the subject to the distance from the subject to the background also changes. Taking a step back and putting on a longer focal length also has other effects. I'm sure we're all familiar with these: Basically, two lenses are equivalent if I mount them each to a camera, stand in the same spot, point the cameras in the same direction, and see the same angle of view and DoF.