kye

If it's got a variable focus lens then it will need to focus just like any other camera. I was just making the point that a 7.4mm F2.8 lens doesn't have a narrow DoF - it's got barely shallower DoF than a smartphone.

Oh yeah, that would be perfect! I didn't know it took RS into account, that's cool. It makes sense because the data is all there. Hopefully we're heading towards a common gyro data standard, or at least a set of standards, that can be used for things like this. I'd happily shoot without an ND, then apply stabilisation and blur based on gyro data, then apply any lens simulations, then colour grade on top of that!

I contemplated the idea of carrying something around to build my strength, but in the end didn't / couldn't be bothered / decided to lighten the rig. Some things are a matter the strength of muscles, which grow quite quickly if you do strength building exercises, but other things are about the tendons and other stuff, which grow incredibly slowly. For me, carrying a heavy camera around ended up hurting my wrist, so I figured it was tendons / ligaments / etc which all take time to grow.

I don't see your problem, just build strength by carrying around a brick all day when you're at home or running errands. It's a standard industry strength training practice. This photo shows a steadicam operator popping down to the shops on his day off:

I started with the situations I find myself in, what I have done in those situations that worked and what didn't, what I like the look of and what I don't care about, and then tried to work backwards from there. That thinking lead to a number of realisations that helped me focus, for example: I see compositions in all sorts of focal lengths My home videos are only when we go somewhere interesting, so are about the people interacting with the environment (so are environmental portraits) and this means I want to keep the background relatively in focus most of the time During the day I will see compositions of far-away objects but at night you don't normally look at far away things, but if you do then you normally have time to change lenses (e.g. if you're at a lookout) Painting is about adding things into your composition but photography / videography is about removing things, so in cities I tend to use longer focal lengths more than I would when I'm in nature How big the camera is has a big difference on how I feel when shooting, and that influences when I shoot, how I shoot and how people act in the footage, so this is more important than FOV in those situations etc. Obviously yours will be different, but it's the thinking-it-through that I think provides the insight. A fun thought experiment is to start with nothing and then only add things into your setup when you can justify needing them. Then when you identify a need not met by the current hypothetical kit you add something that only satisfies that requirement and not more. This way you are sure to not over-spec. Mine is similar too. I worked that out when I had the Canon 700D and Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 which were 1.4kg and were definitely too heavy and by a good margin. I later had the GH5 + Voigt 17.5mm + Rode VMP+ which was 1.3kg and was a challenge, and XC10 + Rode VMP+ which was 1.1kg and manageable but at the upper limit for carrying it around and having it constantly in the hand and ready (e.g. at the zoo for a few hours, or at a festival, etc).

I just saw this video where Waqas demos the OFX version of the Motion Blur effect, and it does a seriously good job - I've linked to the final result: He's also applied a blur to counteract the ridiculous sharpening (what a great idea!), corrected for the lens distortion, and added a subtle grade. I have no idea if the OFX version of this has recently gotten better or if it's just been there all along, but it's waaaaaay better than the tool in the UI, which is what I tried previously. I haven't played with it yet, so this might be a cherry-picked example where it worked ok, but it's interesting and worth playing with, especially on clips with more subtle movement.

Easy! It's that black thing with some white writing on it.... duh!

I have the GH5 and GX85. The GH5 was my default body, and I used it with the Laowa 7.5mm F2, the Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95 and the Voigtlander 42.5mm F0.95. Occasionally I'd use a longer lens for wildlife etc, like the FD 70-210mm F4, or the Tokina 400mm F5.6. I would carry the 12-35mm F2.8 for difficult situations where I need very fast zooming or extra IS. That was up until a recent trip when I discovered the GX85 with the 14mm F2.5 pancake lens combo. Not only did I fall in love with the size of the setup, and the lack of attention it raised, but I also discovered that the AF-S was extremely useful and the DoF was adequate. I've since come upon the idea that there are three setups that I think I will pursue: GX85 with 14-140mm F3.5-5.6 zoom lens Having a 10X zoom lens will be liberating because I'll be able to shoot whatever compositions I can see, the AF-S will allow me to work really quickly, and (after spending a lot of time with a DoF calculator) I realised that the DoF should be sufficient for the work I do. This is a day-time setup. Interestingly, this lens is the same size as the 12-35mm F2.8 lens, so not too bad in practice. GX85 with 12-32mm F3.5-5.6 pancake lens Compact walk-around setup when size really matters, and still gives a good zoom range. Similar use-case to the above. GX85 with 7.5mm F2, TTartisan 17mm F1.4, and TTartisan 50mm F1.2 lenses This is the low-light setup. All that is in combination with iPhone, and especially the wide camera, which acts as a second body and gives quick access to a super-wide angle. If I was going somewhere that camera size didn't really matter, like doing a tour with a busload of tourists, then I'd consider taking the GH5 instead, but I'm struggling to put my finger on why it would be that much better. I know it has various better specs, but in reality I'm only doing home video stuff, so the shooting experience and the reaction of people in-frame matters more than DR etc. My philosophy is to think hard about how I shoot and what I am trying to achieve and to challenge my assumptions. Hope this is useful 🙂

Enjoy!! I think it's a solid choice - apart from the size of the body making people very excited it looks like a great spec'd camera.

Being able to stop down a few stops won't help you much during the day, you'd need to use an ND filter anyway. Of course, in combination with an ND, using the aperture to fine tune the exposure would be useful, but it's not going to eliminate the need for an ND. It wouldn't be noticeable - the 1 inch sensor giving a 20mm FOV means it has a 7.4mm F2.8 lens - not exactly a shallow DoF monster! This lens has infinite focus unless focused very close: When focused at 5.8ft, the focal plane is from 2.9ft to infinity When focused at 5.0ft, the focal plane is from 2.7ft to 36.1ft When focused at 3ft, the focal plane is from 2ft to 6.2ft I very much doubt that anyone shooting with this camera and focusing closer than 5ft would see the background slightly out of focus and want to stop down. I mean, maybe someone somewhere would do that, but it's hardly going to occur frequently enough for DJI to add an aperture mechanism to an entire product.

One difference I can see is that on a drone you can't just put on a stronger ND, but you likely could adjust the aperture remotely. Of course, I agree with you that an aperture would have been a handy addition. I'd imagine including the ability to have shutter speeds that are crazy short is a cheaper alternative and achieves the same exposure.

I'd imagine that it would have a partial effect to reduce any moire, but may not be strong enough for moire with large contrast. The mist filters essentially do a blur of a small percentage of the light that goes through them, with the blur being stronger at small distances, so it's sort-of like a mostly transparent OLPF.

I don't think it works that way though. A 12K sensor would be sensitive to moire if there were repeating patterns that happened to align with the gaps between the pixels, just like a 4K sensor. It might be that common causes of moire are around a certain size and therefore impact one combination of sensor resolution / sensor size / and focal length more than other combinations. Also, lower resolution sensors might be more prone to moire as they're typically older and there were larger gaps between the pixels than there are now. Lower resolutions are likely to have issues on cheaper cameras too, due to the camera line skipping and therefore effectively creating very large gaps between the active pixels. Sadly, there's lots of different ways to create moire, and many of them tend to come from strategies to make the product more affordable!

Yes and no. The Foveon sensor would mean that demosiacing wouldn't be required but it might still have dead spots between the photosites, which is what I was talking about. Here's an image showing what I mean... the yellow areas indicate the light from the scene that would be captured by each photo site, and the blue areas indicate the light from the scene that would not be detected by any photo site on the sensor: If the micro lenses were configured to make sure all light made its way onto a photo site then it would eliminate this issue, like the below shows on the right with the gapless micro lenses: It's worth mentioning that not all lenses project the scene onto the sensor from directly in front either - some lenses have the light hitting the sensor at quite an angle, which can interfere with how well the micro lenses are able to direct all the light to a photo site. These lenses are typically from older cameras which were designed to project onto film, which didn't care about the angle it got exposed from. This is why different lenses often vignette differently on different cameras, especially vintage wide angle lenses that might be projecting the image circle from the middle to the edges at quite a steep angle.

When I was in South Korea earlier this year they had ads for 8K that were TVs showing demo material - they were everywhere in airports and shopping centres etc. When you walked up to them and inspected the image it was highly compressed and obviously being streamed from some central location, by the compression that source might have been some other planet - it really was completely trash - probably worse than YT in 1080p. This strikes me as being an interest in technology for its own sake, rather than for the end result. I can imagine such a thing driving the whole market in certain places. I can imagine a shift to the Alexa 35 from even the 65 based on the improved dynamic range and new colour science (LogC V4 vs V3). The lenses might also be lighter too, although not sure how much that actually influences the big budget productions.

I suspect that there will be a GH7, and that it will be out sooner than their usual release schedule (as the GH6 wasn't well received) but I also wouldn't wait for it, it could be a couple of years and still be "ahead of schedule". In terms of moire, the only guaranteed solutions are an OLPF or to have pixels that have 100% coverage (ie, no gaps between the pixels). If you don't have either of those, there is always the possibility that a repeating pattern will fall into the gaps between the pixels and therefore be completely invisible to the sensor at that location where the pattern and pixels are identically spaced. AI can't deal with moire because it happens before the image is digital. The only way AI could deal with it would be for the AI to re-interpret the whole image and replace sections of the image because it "knows better" than what the camera captured. Getting a good result in video is a long way off I suspect. Your eye will have moire because the interference comes from the actual objects exhibiting this behaviour, not the capture mechanism. The "lines" shown in the below images are formed because the objects physically line-up when viewed from this particular vantage point, and the areas that don't have "lines" are because the objects didn't line-up from that vantage point. I've been saying this for years now. In the conversation that follows, people resume talking about PDAF and CDAF like my comment never existed. It's nice to hear someone else say it, but don't expect to raise the level of discussion!

I couldn't find any DR results either. Let's hope that the people who give thorough technical reviews are still working on them, rather than it just being passed over for deeper technical investigation.

Interesting stuff, thanks for giving a summary. I think the workhorses represent the quiet majority, with all the discussion going to the exceptions. It makes sense - the things that would get remarked about are the things that are remarkable, and the unremarkable things aren't worth remarking on. It's all literally in the dictionary definitions 🙂 Considering that professional equipment should have a very long service life, unless accidentally destroyed a good proportion of the cinema cameras manufactured over the last decade are likely to still be in-use, quietly getting the job done and as they get a bit beaten up over the years will start flying under the radar because the rental houses and studios sell them off to owner/operators and so the cameras don't appear on any sales figures or rental house stats, etc.

I'm guessing there should be sufficient tests of the S5ii by now to be able to tell? I was also wary of the GH6 because of that mode, and specifically because they obviously had a problem with it with the horizontal banding in high-DR situations, but de-prioritised it. Apart from that, I'd benefit more from having a camera with dual-native-ISO rather than a dual-gain mode and only one native ISO because of the extended low-light it would give. I saw this review talking about how the highlight of the G9 ii is the 300 FPS mode - linked to timestamp: In terms of waiting vs buying, I adopt a risk management strategy. If an option in front of you is worth buying even if there were no new products, and you couldn't wait (you need the features now) then I say buy. If you can wait, then wait until you can't make do with what you have and then buy then. Worst cases are that: 1) you bought and then a better option was released - but if you needed the tool for the job then it was an investment and also you can just trade-up with the interim projects helping to justify the loss, or 2) you can wait and so you do wait and no better option is released - but that's fine too because either you never buy because you never needed to upgrade or you eventually do need to upgrade and you buy then when the product is cheaper.

Ah, I'm with you. When I read your previous post I thought somehow that you were using both cameras simultaneously on the same head, and that other heads weren't up to having two cameras mounted at the same time. It makes more sense if you have them mounted separately. I occasionally would like to capture multiple FOVs simultaneously from the same setup, but it's not something easily done or rigged up.

Why use dual cameras? One wider angle and one tighter angle? What types of shots would you use this for?

These young people, are they expressing this interest in a film-making context? Are they film students? I'm curious... I've never known what the cool kids were doing!

I'd wait. Both are far too large for me! But for you, I'd say you should think about the total package, including lenses, batteries, accessories, etc, and work out what suits you and your workflow best. TBH, the camera body probably matters least out of everything...

Do you find that having RAW is more of a benefit on the wider cameras? I'm having vague memories that RAW matters more on wider lenses because there's more detail visible in the scene and things are likely to be sharper due to having a deeper DoF. I know on the iPhones the wide camera has historically been worse, but I'm not sure if that was just ISO performance. I did direct comparisons with my iPhone 12 Mini cameras and found the main camera had equivalent amounts of ISO noise to my GH5 at about F2.8 but the wide was about F8!

I'm not really up with all the latest things that all the flagships have in them, but I'd imagine there's a bunch of things that they could do that would fit into the "spirit" of the GH line, being that each one isn't really head-line grabbing but cumulatively it creates a real workhorse. Things that come to mind (but is by no means everything): PDAF with all the modes (face, eye, dog/cat/gerbil-eye-AF) Variable eND External RAW support (BRAW and Prores RAW) Focus breathing compensation Shutter angles All the prores modes internally (including the 4444 12-bit mode) Dual native ISO with a nice high second ISO for serious low-light performance Support for more than 2 channels of audio Clean HDMI out Updated BM-like UI where you can choose the resolution, frame-rate, codec, quality settings, audio settings etc all in one simple place 1000/1500/2000+NIT screen They could also make an effort to create a good package / rig, by offering products like: Updated interface module that offers XLRs, TC, other stuff On-camera hotshoe shotgun mic like the Sony ECM on-camera mics which make a nice compact package Bolt on ARRI LPL adapter Integration with DJIs system so the camera can talk to the gimbals (for follow-mode) and their LiDAR products so you can have AF on manual lenses etc A custom-designed grip that provides extra batteries but also integrates a swappable SSD NVMe (the long skinny ones) so you can record to SSD without having to mess with cables I mean, there's nothing life-changing in the above, and we're not breaking the laws of physics by suggesting a 20-stop DR from an MFT sensor, but if it came with half of that stuff then it would be a serious offering I'd say. I mean, if you think there's no improvement above other offerings just watch a few videos where people list the 27 reasons the FX3 isn't a cinema camera, or the equivalents from any of the other brands too. No camera has all of the good features, they're all missing a random smattering of them.