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Another one to match the above with a slightly better matching scene (still not hard light though - the pollution in India is no joke!). Ref: iPhone grade: iPhone (ungraded): Ok, I'll shut up now.

Another one, this time a shot from one of the Jason Bourne films, I think this was the second one, which was shot on Kodak Vision 3 and printed on Kodak 2383. Reference image: iPhone grade: iPhone (ungraded): I'm not so happy with that one, but the subject matter was a lot more different, with the reference shot being in full sun and the iPhone image being overcast and also containing a lot of different hues. The road in the reference image is asphalt and is slightly blue in the image, whereas the "road" in the iPhone shot is actually tram tracks and concrete, not asphalt. Still, there was something in the green/magenta/yellow hues that I couldn't quite nail. Oh well. That's those HDR images from the iPhone - you have no creative control over them. If only Apple had given me a slider for saturation, sharpening, and other controls, those would have matched the look of S35mm film and Cooke lenses perfectly 😉

A bit more playing around with what is possible from my HDR iPhone 12 images... Reference image from the move Ava (2020): iPhone grade: iPhone (ungraded): It's not perfect, but without having them next to each other it's not terrible. I couldn't find what camera Ava was shot on, but I did find that it was shot with Panavision anamorphics. No doubt that is a contributing factor to why my iPhone shot doesn't match the exact look of the movie lol.

Here are a set of four shots from my iPhone 12 Mini that I have graded very quickly in a few different ways to give a sense of what is possible, and what "film looks" might be able to be created. The first row has no grading applied, the second has my standard default iPhone input transform, the rest are more creative grades, just pushing it around to create various looks. All these shots were shot on full-auto with the default iPhone app. Every shot on the same row has the same grade, including exposure and WB and everything, despite being shot on three different continents. All these use only effects that are available in Resolve - no third-party plugins or LUTs or other YT influencer bullshit. You tell me - do I look like I am currently experiencing a complete lack of creative control over my images?

Remember before when I said that colour grading knowledge is lacking? This is a far deeper subject than I think you're aware of, and the comments from the guy in the video are so oversimplified that they're closer to being factually incorrect than they are to just being misleading. I've been studying the "video look" because I hate it and want to eliminate it as much as possible in my own work, and you're right that over processing images will contribute to this, however that's not what the guy was saying. He said that shooting HDR gives you no "creative control over the image", which is patently false because you can get it in post. When grading any footage, regardless of the camera, there are a number of standard operations you would apply to it, and you apply all the same treatments to LOG and HDR images. I have a testing timeline where I am developing my own colour grading tools and techniques, and it contains everything from HDR iPhone footage to 709-style GX85 footage, to HLG GH5 footage to LOG XC10 footage to RAW and Prores footage from the OG BMPCC and BMMCC, to ARRI and RED RAW 8K footage. I apply a custom transform to each of them to convert them into my working colour space (which is Davinci's LOG space) and then I apply a single default node tree to all clips, regardless of which camera they came from, and then I grade all the clips in one sitting. I have done this process dozens of times. The HDR profile from the iPhone is approximated pretty well by a rec2020 conversion. In that sense, it's in a colour space just like any other footage. Do I grade the iPhone footage "differently" to the other footage? Yes, and no. I still apply the same adjustments to each clip, adjusting things like: White balance Exposure and contrast Saturation Black levels and white levels Specific adjustments to things like skin tones, colour of foliage and grass, etc Power windows to provide emphasis to the subject, usually lightening and adding contrast Removing troubled areas in the frame like anything that stands out and is distracting Texture adjustments like sharpening / softening / frequency separation Adding grain That stuff all sits underneath an overall look, which will be based on a CST or a LUT, as well as up to a dozen or so specific adjustments which are too complex to explain in this post. Does the iPhone footage "feel" different when being graded? Sure, but the XC10 and GH5 and OG BMPCC all feel more different to each other than the iPhone does. TBH it feels more like in the middle than the other cameras, and similar to the GH5 and GX85. Is it harder to grade because I'm having to overcome all the baked-in stuff? It's probably not as difficult to grade as the XC10 footage, and that's shot in C-Log, which is a proper professional LOG profile. The RAW stuff is easiest to grade. What you might not be aware of is that all the different forms of RAW also feel different. Different scenes feel different too, even from the same camera. Can you make iPhone footage look as nice as ARRI footage? No. Definitely not. But you won't be able to make the Apple LOG footage look like that either. Can you have "creative control over the image". Absolutely. You have no idea how much control you can have over the image. Apple LOG does give you more "creative control over the image", but compared to the creative control you have by even learning the basics of colour grading, the difference is minimal. The only people who have no "creative control over the image" are people that have no colour grading ability. The ironic thing is that by applying a LUT designed by someone else, you have less effective creative control than you had before you applied it. Going back to the "video" look that over processing the image gives, I have become very sensitive to it and see it online in almost all free content. It is present even on videos shot on high-end cinema cameras. The only places it is almost completely absent is on high-end productions on streaming services and in the cinema.

Ah, now I understand... He's a LUT peddler! This is an AD!! He doesn't want you to settle for the baked-in look from Apple that gives you no "creative control over the image" - he wants you to buy his LUT and the fact that it gives you no "creative control over the image" doesn't matter - he has money in his pocket so it's ok! Designing LUTs is hard and lots of skills are required - if he can't grade HDR footage then he falls well short of any standard.

What an amazing statement... at around 46s he says "by shooting in normal HDR video mode I am sacrificing all the creative control I have over the image". HA! Does Resolve disable the Colour tab when you use these files? Does FCPX or PP disable their colour tools? Does a hitman from Apple appear behind you in your editing suite and put a gun to your head when you pull up a HDR shot in your colour editing tools? What a muppet!!

Great stuff, this is exactly what I meant and the kind of learnings you'll get from actually trying things. Sadly, many online will use endless excuses to avoid actually trying things. One thing you might struggle with is how much effort you put into the video-making side of things. It's well known that if you're going to video yourself doing something then it takes twice as long, or more(!), and I hear people regularly saying "Sorry, I didn't film the assembly process because I had a deadline, but here's some finished shots", so it's definitely a compromise. I'd suggest you crank up the ISO and try to make and edit a test video, as this will show you what kind of light levels you need. You might find you need an F2 lens at ISO 3200, or you might find you need an F1.4 lens at ISO 25,000. You might also find that a certain level of noise in the footage is ok. All of that will require testing, and obviously will inform your equipment choices if you end up having to buy something. Also, you might try to make a video without buying new camera/lens and see how that would work. Maybe you just omit the shots where you're in full darkness? Maybe you can film shots of you setting things up with a small light on, and then the parts of the video that are in darkness are just a slideshow of your photos with a VoiceOver? It's worth trying different formats. What do other people making the same type of video show in their videos? Ben Horne is a large format stills photographer who makes great YT videos (and spectacular images) and vlogs his trips which often involve him filming bits of the vlog in darkness. From memory the shots are often: him getting stuff ready from the boot of his car (which is lit by a small light), him walking to the location which is filmed hand-held and lit with a head-lamp, etc. He's been making those trip vlog videos for many years now so it might be worth watching a few to see how he does it: https://www.youtube.com/@BenHorne/videos I think it's really just a matter of trying things and learning and adapting. The trick is to arrive at a workable setup without having to have gone down too many dead-ends that required huge equipment purchases first. I've done that - to get to where I am now I have probably spent 10k on things I tried but no longer use or need.

I have, and you're right that it's less sharpened than the 16:9 modes. I'm still trying to work out what is what, but my current thinking is: Analog has a decreasing contrast on fine detail RAW unprocessed digital has approximately no (or very low) lowering of contrast on fine detail Processed digital has a rising contrast on fine detail By this measure, even if there was no sharpening on it (there is, it's just less) then that would still look digital, it would just look less digital than the over sharpened stuff. I've been paying attention to peoples hair while watching TV and movies over the last few weeks, especially where there is edge lighting, and most of the material shot with high end equipment has significantly less contrast on fine detail than the test videos published by the camera and lens manufacturers. I suspect this is deliberate, so I suspect that even shooting digital requires some correction in order to not look digital. The ARRI videos demonstrating their lens lineup look quite digital to me, and not in a good way - this might be why.

As is the entire YT channel of WanderingDP, a real life working pro breaking down commercials. Not only does he break down the composition and lighting, and also shooting logistics like when you'd schedule different shots at different times of day, but also advice on how to be more efficient on set etc, plus he's hugely sarcastic and his videos are often hilarious... https://www.youtube.com/@wanderingdp/videos

Would it be better if I called it "unsharpen" ? 🙂

This is why I have swapped to the GX85 from the GH5 - the image quality from the GX85 isn't as good as the GH5 but the footage is better because the people in the frame are less aware of the camera. What is the workflow? That video shows the guy grading in Lightroom and then later on in Resolve, which seems rather odd. Can Resolve open the DNGs? People thought the earth was flat, and even now despite mountains of evidence some people still do. Popularity is a pretty poor way to judge what is true. The answer might just be a simple blur. Spoiler alert: I'm even wondering if over-sharpening in-camera might be a positive thing. More on this as my thoughts develop!

Looking at those stills close up they seem to have a nice noise structure which is actually quite filmic / organic. You can definitely tell it's RAW and not sharpened in-camera. I had the same experience with my Canon 700D when I installed Magic Lantern. Using the compressed modes was awful because the noise from the sensor (which was a lot) was awful when compressed, but in RAW it had a rather pleasing aesthetic.

NASA!! Wow! Great stuff! In terms of documenting what you do, could you perhaps give us some more detail about what you're hoping to do (if you have something specific in mind)? From a technical point of view the thing that immediately comes to mind is about low-light performance - how much will you be shooting after sunset with lights, and how much would you shoot in the dark? From a process point of view, I'd suggest the following: If you know what you want the work to look like, then doing some analysis would help. Make list of the types of shots and setups you'd need, then work out what equipment you'd need for each Just try shooting videos. Don't expect to post the first one, or even the first few - they're just test shoots designed for you to just figure out what equipment is missing, what shots work, what shots don't work, how to edit, what to say, etc etc. Essentially, just keep trying to make a video and making mistakes until you manage to get things sorted enough to actually finish the video. Post it. It will probably be rather clumsy but if you go back to the first videos that anyone posts online they always are. We learn by doing, so just keep making them and keep experimenting and learning and posting 🙂

Obviously. No-one was saying that though.

Another test, this time from our good friend Matti..

I am trying to design a compact but professional live streaming setup for an education / training / coaching business. It has to be: suitable for international travel so needs to fit into suitcases, including the lights etc be computer-based, beyond the limited functionality of a stand-alone smartphone setup to include (picture-in-picture, slides, etc) What is the cheapest "proper" camera for streaming / recording online content? Also, what interface device would you use to get that feed into a computer? Obviously the cheapest setup is your laptop camera, but once you want to upgrade the image quality a bit, what is the best option out there? Second hand is fine. My thinking is that: Smartphones don't allow for the functionality in streaming that something computer based will (picture-in-picture, slides, etc) The external USB webcams don't seem to offer much better image quality than the internal laptop ones Getting a good image from a real camera will require a lot less lighting than with a laptop camera so it's worth the investment (plus it makes the lights much easier to fit into a suitcase) I can put a fast lens on it for a bit of background defocus (and even smaller lighting requirements) It can also be used to pre-record videos I still don't know what the rest of the setup will be (stream management software etc) but I figure if I can get the image into the computer then that's a separate topic to what happens to it from there.

If you had to buy a camera either way then it might be a good idea. What cameras do you have now? Why do you need a new one? TBH if you're willing to develop a small amount of skill in colour grading, it means you can spend thousands less on a camera and get the same results. Literally. I can get better images from my GX85 than many can get with a C70 / R5 / S1H / etc. That's very kind of you to say, but it just makes me worried for the so-called professionals you're referring to! I am pretty deep down the post-production rabbit hole though. I've started reading patents to learn colour grading techniques... This one is next on my list: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/41/0a/e5/0a78ae57552549/EP1158779A2.pdf

Enthusiast.

Learn how to grade it in post to look like a normal camera. I recommend a small radius blur. .....and if you've kept reading after "blur" then congratulations, the camera nerds are gone and it's just us creative people left. Here's the best advice that I saved for a select audience - tell a good story. That is all.

Once again, I'm reminded of Noam Kroll and how, with the right attitude, you can get out there and make things happen.

It has been for over a decade. No-one who tries and fails to make a film did so because of equipment limitations, unless they're trying to shoot a film about deep diving in acid or some other extreme environment. Film-making is hard, but saying you couldn't make the film you wanted because of the camera is the same as saying you can't make it because you couldn't find the right shoes!

I am perhaps the closest here to saying yes to this comment, being that I value size, simplicity, speed of working, stabilisation, and am actively opposed to creatively-inappropriate shallow DoF, etc. I do, and will continue to, use my phone as my second camera. I use it when I don't have a dedicated camera with me, I use it for a wide-angle (to complement the normal-tele lens on my proper camera), and I use it to shoot the in-between shots like getting in and out of vehicles and while travelling between locations. However, it is along way from becoming my only camera, because: They're crap in low-light, especially the wide-angle camera I tested my iPhone 12 Mini vs my GX85 and GH5 and I found that the normal iPhone camera had similar noise performance to the MFT cameras when they were at F2.8, and the wide camera was equivalent to F8! It's always your phone and your camera You always want to use the latest phone as your camera because they're getting better and better, but you always want to use the latest phone as a phone because the battery life etc is newer and better and they're faster. Therefore, you are always in danger of getting messages and pop-ups etc on your camera while shooting, or if you put it into aeroplane mode then you might miss important notifications. They're too expensive to buy two of. They're a pain to shoot with No handle, no wrist strap, etc, and if you rig it up then it's a pain to use it as a phone, and a pain to put in your pocket. Also, if you want to have any external accessories like lenses or NDs, they always require a case, but the cases are completely shit at being a protective case, so you're perpetually changing cases, which screws them up. Even if you don't use lenses etc you're going to want to use an SSD with it now because Prores. They lack flexibility of lenses Even a Panasonic GM5 that shoots low-bitrate 1080p will look better fitted with an F1.2 (or F0.95) lens than a phone for low-light situations. The GM5 will also look better fitted with a 100mm (or 200mm, or 400mm!) lens than a phone using heavy digital cropping on its longest lens. The GM5 will look nicer when fitted with a fast aperture lens than the Cinematic Mode which has about the same subtlety in blurring the image as a toddler does when smearing food on themselves at dinner time.

Great post and well made points. I'd suggest that MFT is more suitable for any form of film-making that is focused on story/plot/emotion/meaning because it protects you from moronic ideas like shooting with a 50mm lens at maximum TONEH, which beyond shooting a scene where someone is on serious drugs, is creatively inappropriate.

I'm reminded of the comments from @John Brawley talking about how he used a super-minimal setup based on the BMMCC when shooting The Resident. Obviously these are all completely controlled sets with lighting etc all dialled in, so external shots out in the world would need a bit more rig perhaps. John spoke about how the size of the rig allowed him to get much closer to the actors like you see with him holding it out in front literally between the actors, which would have been a different equation had it been bigger / heavier.