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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.

Yes, but it's been the most popular camera for quite some years! Just look back at the Flickr camera stats from previous years...

You and me both! They say the first step is admitting you have a problem, which we've both done, so that means we're probably ahead of half the pack already 🙂

This isn't how the technology industry works. In order to cater for the long development cycle and also try and respond to market conditions you want to use something like set based design. This is a reasonable introduction to the topic. https://scaledagileframework.com/set-based-design/#:~:text=Set-Based Design (SBD),eliminating poorer choices over time.

There is no good way to judge colour online - lets review all the possibilities: log images are shown this is the purest experience of the camera, but you can't judge anything with this log images + manufacturers LUT is shown this is the best way to judge images, but its random chance how good this will look and doesn't really show the potential of the footage graded images are shown, but they look crap this tells you nothing as you can't tell if the camera is bad, the LUT is bad, the colourist is bad, or all of them graded images are shown, and they look good this tells you what is possible but not what is possible for you. great images could be because the camera is great and colourist is ok, camera is good but colourist is very good, camera is mediocre but colourist is world class BTW, if camera forums and camera YT had the same level of knowledge about cameras as they do about colour grading then every video would be trying to work out the exposure triangle and failing. Even rudimentary colour grading and colour science knowledge online is rare outside professional colourist circles - I know more about these things that most and I am at the very very very shallow end of the pool so if I know more than you do then you're basically no-where...

You'd have to watch that around young kids - now the corners will be razor sharp.

That setup caught my eye too - it's basically a way to add "internal" NDs 🙂

I hear you, being one of the most "sizeist" users here, but I just don't see the strength of the reaction being proportional. We could make a list of all the things wrong with the G9ii release, or the release of any other model from Panasonic, and we could easily find parallel examples from other manufacturers of things they do that are just as egregious, but when Sony releases yet another camera that overheats, or GoPro releases another doppelgänger camera with microscopic spec improvements, or whoever the hell else waits years and then releases an uninspiring black box, we don't then spontaneously question the future of the brand or the entire format. If someone were to post in every Sony camera thread that FF was dead and Sony was going to exit the camera market because of the latest release then they'd be considered unhinged, but somehow with MFT every camera announcement is turned into a wake.. What will you use it for?