kye

Yes, time will tell. and I agree with you about the body size of the A6X00 cameras, they're crazy small. I guess my beef with Canon is not that they're protecting their more expensive cameras, it's that more expensive also means much larger. I'm literally in a position where I can't buy the camera I want for any price. I mean, look at the XC10 (which is on the large side for blending in with the amateurs) next to the smallest Canon cinema camera... I'd love to be in the position of at least having a perfect option, but alas... If they took the XC10 and added ILC mount and DPAF it would be great - they could even make it a bit bigger, but just not three times the size like the C100.

How is the weight limit on the Moza? IIRC it doesn't have AF-C so you might want to put rods and follow-focus on there, which obviously would add weight, and not only that it would add weight at the front.

I've had fast internet for years and YT works most of the time but Vimeo has never worked. It's like it loads a bit, gets 1 second before the buffer runs out and then says "oh, shit, I better start trying to load some more...... damn!"

It would be great, because the A7III looks like it might be the perfect camera for me (that eye-detect AF!) but this thread talks about overheating. https://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/27258-a7iii-overheating-and-oem-vs-aftermarket-sony-np-fz100/ The overheating doesn't look like it's a major major hassle, but going from XC10 which has fans to something that doesn't makes me a little nervous..

You should be able to. The trick is finding the right converter. The issue is that XLR actually works slightly differently so most often when people want to sell you a converter they actually convert the signal, which is a more than just a couple of connectors, however you don't need to convert it, so it can be done very cheaply. I've done it but I ended up soldering up a converter cable myself because I couldn't find what I was wanting available to purchase from anywhere.

The Rode mic should have come with a dead cat - I haven't tested it extensively but Rode probably made it relatively well? In terms of micing an acoustic guitar the closer you get the more 'body' (low frequencies) you will get so if you can do a few tests beforehand and see how it sounds. The people who run recording studios often take a long time to carefully position the microphone for the best sound. Not all aspects of the sound coming from an instrument radiate equally in all directions so by moving the microphone around you can kind of 'mix' the different sounds that make up the total sound. Micing up a piano can take hours. For your purposes though, closer is probably better considering your microphone options

Sorry Andrew - somehow I didn't see your post. Thanks for the link, I didn't realise that they included video compare function now, that's very useful. If only the XC10 had interchangeable lenses - even in 1080 it still has the edge over the 5DS.

Addendum: even if you're right, why does ML RAW processed and encoded into H264 via Resolve look so much better than Canon encoding H264 in camera? This means that the sensor can at least read out fast enough, so maybe it's the DIGIC processor... If this a limitation in the DIGIC processor then why doesn't the 700D with DIGIC 5 have drastically better video than the 600D/60D/5dmkII which have the DIGIC 4 when "Canon claims the new DIGIC 5 processor is six times faster than the DIGIC 4 processor" (from wikipedia). The DIGIC 5+ in the 5DmkIII and 70D "is an enhancement to the DIGIC 5 and DIGIC 4. The performance is said to be 17x the performance of the DIGIC 4" (almost three times the power of the DIGIC 5) The DIGIC 6 appears to be almost a doubling in processing power, although who knows why it would be slower than the DIGIC 5+ but anyway. "Further advancements attributed to DIGIC 6 can be experienced in movie mode, which records in MP4 format and doubles the frame-rate to 60 fps at 1080p". And if those doesn't have enough horsepower then why not go all the way to the M50 with the DIGIC 8 (surely the 8 would be better - it can process 4K at 25fps!) and get decent 1080 performance? I get that Canon want to protect their more expensive cameras, but regardless of how much money I pay I don't want a physically larger camera. And the XC10 can process UHD at 30fps compressing it to 305Mbit files, and that's in a smaller form-factor too.

So, are you saying that the 18MP sensor is actually only 18 million photo sites? ie, for two of the colours it only has 4.5 million pixels and the other has 9 million pixels? If so, then how does that fit in with the 3x3 pixel binning? and what about the chroma subsampling (I think it's 422 or 420 anyway) so maybe it would be enough pixels for 422 or 420? I think I'm right in saying that 2x2 binning would be enough for full 1080 4:4:4, but 3x3 wouldn't be, but who knows - this stuff is quite confusing

I'd think of it as allowing you to record extra channels. One thing that can come in handy is safety channels, which is where you record the same signal but at a lower volume in case there's a loud bit that overloads the louder signal, so in post you can use the quieter track (turned up to match of course) for that little bit. Alternatively, you could buy a second 10 pound lav and record a third track. When recording a guitar people often record it with two microphones, one on the body and the other closer to the strings, which can be panned a little left and right in the mix giving a nice stereo spread, or mixed in mono to get a nice balance of body and string sound. Alternatively alternatively you could record the crowd with the extra channel and mix that in to taste as well. In audio extra channels give you flexibility if you use them right

Assuming that @jonpais is correct about the pixel issue being fixed, and acknowledging that the overheating issue exists, what other issues / limitations are there with the A7III?

Trying to get nice 1080 while casual handheld shooting with an ILC is a mine-field I've been trying to cross for some time. To grossly over-simplify: All cinema cameras are out because they're either too heavy or too attention grabbing Canon non-cinema cameras are deliberately crippled to protect their cinema line Canon with ML is unreliable and has a steep learning curve The GH5 either can't focus reliably or people can't work out how to do it The Sonys all seem to overheat (although depending on what you shoot this might not be an issue) and the smaller/cheaper ones have bad RS The Fuji XH-1 chews batteries and the extra grip costs extra and makes it pretty heavy Things like the original BMPCC need a rig and becomes cumbersome (BMPCC needs external power) Going modular with things like the BMMCC requires a rig and BMMCC has almost no controls and so you can't use it to adapt to changing situations Mostly the way I see people getting around this combination is to either choose Canons soft 1080, sacrifice reliability and use Canon ML RAW, get a fast fixed-lens camera like RX100 or RX10, accept RS and overheating with a6300/6500, or accept a fixed focal length and give a big middle-finger to the whole industry and use their phone (where with up to 4k60 and 1080p240 it beats everything up to 10x or 20x the price). Or just put it on a tripod, and accept that you'll get hassled or barred from most places you go. The basic issue is that industry assumes that consumers who want convenience don't want image quality (compact point-and-shoots), consumers who want image quality only take photos (Canon DSLRs take lovely photos), or that if you want image quality then you're a pro and you can use a tripod and don't mind a huge camera. We're caught between the other users basically.

@Inazuma My guess is that if you didn't use the TRRS cable then the phone wouldn't have 'seen' the microphone and wouldn't have used it - instead using the internal microphones as you suggested. This is the cable @Don Kotlos mentioned here: http://www.rode.com/accessories/sc7 but any good quality alternative should also work. I've used this setup and it works well. @Kisaha is correct that the Rode VideoMicro is a good mic but is pretty wide. As others have said, the general sound quality advice definitely applies here in terms of getting the mics close and providing appropriate wind protection (dead cats). If you want to get the Rode mic close you could just mount the mic / phone combination somewhere close-by, or run an extension cable, but if you're going to do that beware of interference. Running long cables without interference is the main reason why pros use balanced audio connections (XLRs) - for short runs it normally doesn't matter. To expand on the reference that @Kisaha made to my comments in another thread, I mentioned that putting dead-cat style wind mufflers on internal microphones can be very effective if done correctly, however there are a few things to keep in mind. I've seen reviews of products similar to the one Kisaha linked to and they are mixed - some work ok and others are terrible. The best results I've seen were DIY and turned massive wind noise (from someone using the internal microphones on a point-and-shoot camera while riding a skateboard at perhaps 20mph into a decent headwind) where no dialog was audible into the same situation having audible but subdued wind noise. This is a huge difference, thus my comment about it in the other thread, however it may or may not work for your situation and I've seen most DIY solutions of this type fail almost completely. I would recommend buying an adapter cable for the Rode mic and then doing as many tests as is required to confirm that you're getting the best audio out of the equipment you have, and only then working out what other equipment you might need. Preparation and knowledge of your equipment and basic techniques is absolutely critical, which is why pros can reliably get good results even with modest equipment.

That's every shoot for me! ooh, that's interesting. effectively multi-channel audio. With those codecs I guess it's not going to really be a big deal in terms of writing more data to the card!!

LOL.. I'm not sure if that was specifically aimed at me, but it's pretty funny, and if I end up with this camera then it's totally something I would do!! I think I missed a specification or something.. does the camera have three inputs? Apart from those crazy YouTubers, another use for these might be recording on camera audio for use with those automatic audio syncing functions that editing software seems to have these days.. If the audio in-camera was too omnidirectional or had too much wind or handling noise then it might not be able to sync but potentially a bit more quality might save some work in post. I'm not sure how useful this is to film-makers who care enough about audio to record to a separate recorder, but maybe it's a thing? Time is definitely money, but it might also facilitate audio syncs to be fast enough for on-set review, potentially being part of the feedback loop to the creative teams. I've read articles about productions that shot test footage, roughly graded it, and then turned that into a LUT so that the rough 'look' of the film could be seen on set (and applied to a large monitor) giving the crew a better idea of how well things were working artistically. Maybe @IronFilm has seen sets like this where the audio is roughly mixed on set for review during the shoot?

In terms of these mics being usable for "real world" situations, I'd be more concerned about handling noise and directionality (isolation of what you're pointing the camera at) than wind noise. Handling noise might be a reason for them being so large - if there was a suspension mechanism in there of some kind. The capsules likely to be in there are quite small so I suspect something interesting is going on in there The reason I'm less worried about wind noise is that I've seen YouTubers (the ultimate "real world" shooters!) put fluff over in-camera microphones with quite amazing results in some cases, so it might be something that can be retrofitted pretty simply. Considering the location they might not get in the way much either.

I will be.. partly due to the rumours of impending releases (gold at the end of the rainbow) but also due to there being no good options that seem to suit my (very particular) needs at the moment!!

The XC10 is almost perfect for me, if only it had a faster lens (and the AF to keep up with the resulting shallower DOF).

Two setups: Canon 700D / ML raw and SD card hack / Sigma 18-35 Canon XC10 My problem is that the 700D with ML is unreliable, the 700D without ML isn't good enough image quality, the XC10 looks flat, and the AF on both isn't the best. I was hoping that a Canon DSLR with DPAF might be 'good enough' IQ, but it seems not.

Awesome, thanks.. So, 4K downscaling + 24Mbps = nice image. This means that the 50Mbps bit-rate isn't fundamentally flawed. I'd also suggest that YT videos are pretty low bitrate when they go from YT to the viewer so that's a second point of reference for bit-rate. I'm not sure if all H264 encoding is of the same quality, so maybe there is some other limitation to the codec other than bitrate. Agreed. I'm skeptical that there's a huge difference between H264 encoders (other than the bitrate) and a quick google didn't reveal lots of people comparing encoders so it doesn't appear to be a thing (happy to be proven wrong though!). This would leave the 'processing' step, which could contain who-know-what! Interesting - I'll have a read of that thread, thanks. I am pretty sure that my 700D upscales from 1.7K to 1.9K. I've directly compared Canon stock 1080 vs ML compressed 1080 at both 1x quality mode and 3x quality mode vs 1.7K RAW upscaled in Resolve 14 and there wasn't enormous differences in terms of detail, just that the detail was smeared in the compressed versions. The question about the quality of the external feed is whether it is just upscaled or if the bad processing is also applied? There will be processing applied (colour science for example) so it depends on what else is in the processing apart from that. Agreed. Considering that the >22.3MP models aren't magically better I think we can conclude that the upscaling isn't the main issue, and that it's the processing that gets applied. Combined with the C-line cameras not seeming to suffer these issues, I'd suggest that the poor processing is either a function of the hardware in DSLRs or a deliberate choice in software, perhaps to protect their C-line products. Regardless, this means that unless they deliberately change this, that 4K seems to be the only likely solution for getting good 1080 out of these cameras (by recording 4K and downscaling to 1080). Unfortunately this isn't likely to happen soon IMO, considering how slow they've been to introduce it, and considering the awful RS on the M50, which combined with this article from Andrew suggests that it's more of a fundamental problem. Bummer. Looks like I'm not only up for a new camera, but also have to change to a new lens system.

I'm very interested in this. The A7III is very high on my list right now, but I live in Australia and need something that will be reliable in up to 40degC / 104degF in full sunlight. I've had my iPhone 8 overheat while shooting before which isn't a widely encountered problem in the northern hemisphere.

Maybe a small selection will be announced with an appropriate camera when (if!) the time comes The Pocket 2 will be an absolute killer even if it only has half the features promised, but it depends on what particular features your style of film-making requires. The lineup of cameras is getting better and better but each still has significant flaws - there is no perfect camera unfortunately (or if there is - please let me in on the secret!!)

Damn, was hoping those cameras with enough pixels would be one destructive processing step less (which they might well be) and that it would be one of the ones that did the most damage (which it sounds like it isn't).

So, about the Pocket 2 then....

There's no doubt that Canons huge lens catalog helps to keep customers from changing systems, and we definitely live in a time of ecosystems. If they did decide to jump head-first into the mirrorless market how long would it take for them to build up a decent lens selection? It would be interesting to know how long it took them to build previous lens systems - I'm assuming they happened slowly and steadily but I could be wrong. Considering how important lenses are, it could be a huge factor in their business model in coming times, and if the rumours about an ILC XC20 eventuate then they'll need to have a decent collection for it. Maybe that's why the first two had fixed lenses - they weren't ready to unveil their masterpiece EOS-M lens lineup!! (Here's hoping!!)