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True, although being pragmatic about decisions is also useful, and any time/energy you spend on learning a new camera is time/energy you could have spent on story or production design or lighting etc.

This is why. I've heard from the pros that at the first production meeting of a large project, like movie or TV show, there is a moment where someone asks "what are we shooting on?" and if the answer is "Alexa" then everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and if it's not "Alexa" then there is an anxious conversation about it. If you have the most awesome camera in the entire universe, and no-one has ever worked with it before, it's still a risk to the production. "Alexa" is the answer that tells everyone there is one less risk in the project.

Also, the 'n-stops of IBIS' spec is a measurement of how much reduction in movement there is of the sensor when that movement is within the movement range of the IBIS mechanism. There are two problems with this: When people do IBIS tests, the movement that remains in the footage is almost 100% of the time due to the camera shake being larger than the movement range of the mechanism. So this 'n-stops' no longer applies. Different cameras have different ranges of movement of their IBIS mechanism, and therefore, different levels of ability to compensate for camera movement. When you understand that this is what is going on, you realise the 'n-stops of IBIS' measurement is a practically meaningless number that doesn't really predict the level of performance of different cameras.

This was true with RED and yet it barely made any penetration into the industry. It almost makes you think that the image coming out of the camera isn't the thing that determines the fate of the brand.....

I have always been fascinated by complex systems, and film-making is one of them. It includes having an understanding of: perspective and composition and camera movement optics and optical design analog electronics digital electronics data compression colour science editing concepts and the manipulation of time such as montage, cross-cutting, jump cuts, etc sound design music aesthetic perception such as colour theory, psychoacoustics, symbology, culture storytelling and explicit and implicit forms of communication like words and body language emotion and memory etc ..and more importantly it involves learning how each of these effects the others, and how to manipulate each of these elements within its domain in order to create a coherent and affective end product. In that sense, the fact I end up with home videos is only a part of the equation, and my goals are both to make them and learn about this system and what it can tell us about the world. I'm still thinking about this one but I think it really depends on how you do it. People seem to have a good intuition about cameras, and if the lens is sticking out a long way and you're pointing it exactly at them and moving to follow them then they'll know 100% you're filming them specifically, but if you change any of these then it's far less confronting. Perhaps the opposite of that is to pick a composition and hit record and just stand there and let people walk through your shot. If you look at something behind them and act like you don't see them then they're just as likely to assume you are shooting what is behind them. If you have your hands on the camera and are focusing on it then they might assume they've just walked through your composition and you'll wait for them to pass and then try to take a photo. The fact you didn't hit the shutter button while they were in front of it probably signals to them that you didn't take their photo. In aesthetic terms, I'm not particularly interested in taking telephoto shots of random people. To a certain extent the street cinema aesthetic leans more towards the idea that the city is the subject and the people are like ants, anonymous and scurrying and flowing in a mass like water within the larger environment, or that the city is empty and people aren't there, or if they are there then they might be alone, etc. These leanings are far less confrontational to shoot. In a sense if you want to capture the spirit of a place, the way it makes you shoot would be an ingredient in that, so would be aesthetically relevant. Wow, I had no idea it was prone to overheating. Interesting. That skews me towards the BMMCC if I go that direction.

Maybe I should have said "Amateurs buy one, slap it on their lens, and never take it off because they never thought about the decision in the first place and don't ever." Obviously this isn't you. Also of note is that in the wedding genre, the vibe is almost always towards a happy / dreamy / soft / luxurious aesthetic, which is what such a filter provides. This isn't the case with the "wave the camera around, cut on the beat, put on the LUT, upload, get the likes" folks. In my tests I found the Tiffen BPM 1/8 to be pretty strong. This was in daylight exteriors where you have huge DR, and in nighttime cityscapes which have even more DR from lights and shadows. On a set with controlled lighting that's a different situation. For my money, the diffusion that the 12-35mm F2.8 had was about right.

Equipment: GX85 14-140mm F3.5-5.6 12-35mm F2.8 primes: 14/2.5 and 7.5/2 and 17/1.4 and ~50mm F1.4 iPhone <unknown second camera> Setups: Daytime tourist mode GX85 with 14-140mm, and iPhone wide Night tourist mode GX85 with 12-35mm, and 7.5mm F2 Compact / pocket mode GX85 with 14mm Night low-light mode GX85 with 7.5/2 and 17/1.4 and ~50mm F1.4 The unknown second camera is still something I'm thinking about. Options: GH5 Great AF-S and modes. EVF. It's better than the GX85 at lots of things, but not by a great deal. OG BMMCC Much better DR than GX85, which is super-useful for sunsets. Larger. No AF. Slowest to shoot with. OG BMPCC Much better DR than GX85. Compact. Has slow AF. Slow to shoot with. Screen difficult to use in daylight. Now that the kids are grown and moved out it'll be me and the wife travelling, so I'm contemplating adopting a dual-purpose for equipment, shooting for myself but also shooting 'street cinema' videos for public release. The BM cameras would make a much better option for that.

Blasphemy! Don't you want the FF cinematic look? Here's me in NY: Here's me in Seattle: Here's me in LA: Here's me in Texas: (appols for the DOF, I'm saving for the F0.95 version of my lens)

I think the missing part that no-one seems to mention is how they're used. Pros will choose which filter, at which strength, if any, is used for each camera angle and each shot. It will be tailored to the exact contents of that composition, including the actor/actress who is in the shot. It was common back in the day for big-name actresses to include a clause in their contract that all shots that they appear in must have a particular filter used. Amateurs buy one, slap it on their lens, and never take it off. There's a reason that amateur footage looks amateurish. Probably the biggest giveaway is razor sharp footage with diffusion on it.

I was thinking about these exact images when I was writing my earlier post about the advantages of zooms! Such a great example - you have a seat and that's it. To only have a wide angle at such an event would make a very sad looking video. I also think there's a self-centredness of some kind when shooting with only a wide, especially with a gimbal shot where the camera is moving. I don't quite know how to describe it, but it's sort-of like the POV footage from a member of law-enforcement, even if you edited it together so that the person wearing the camera was never seen or heard in the footage every shot would still be whispering "this is where I was, this is what I saw", like the camera person is looming invisibly over all the footage. Contrast this to using a zoom and grabbing a variety of shots, the shots are about the things actually visible in the images, with the shooter no longer being the focus of attention. It's probably just a turn-of-phrase I'm not familiar with, but what did you mean by "can't get arrested"?

Talk about Freudian slips! But it's ok.. we all secretly want the software look.

The application scenario is critical, of course. But first, the individual has to be aware that cameras exist to record footage that will be edited and then shown to viewers. The majority of discussions here are wilfully ignorant of that entire concept.

I bought a BMP 1/8, shot a test video on it of a walk around the city centre, and then discovered in the grade I didn't like it. It gave a softer look, but all the shadows were lifted, and when I tried to give it a more contrasty look it just looked wrong. This was day external footage, so very high DR. Considering that the average lens has a little of this already, and you can add it in post if you only want a subtle effect, it's not for me.

No doubt, and these options are definitely worth pointing out. For me though, I prefer a much larger range of focal lengths for travel. I'm sure you know this stuff far better than I, but for @SRV1981 and others, here are some thoughts.. I'm not far enough into the film theory, but I know they shoot documentaries and ENG with zooms for a reason, and I suspect my reasons for wanting that flexibility is the same as theirs. I shot travel for a couple of years with a 35mm FOV being the main lens, and after a while I noticed a same-same kind of look to the footage. I noticed this same look when iPhone video first got popular but it only had one focal length, and the same for action-camera-only videos. My analysis of award winning documentaries and travelogues showed me two critical things about the cinematography: 1) the shots were nice, but not incredible 2) the way they were used in the edit was what made the final product really great I was also amazed at how many shots there were, and their variety. We all know that the average shot length of today's media is around the 2-4s (with 4s being on the slow side), which is 1400-700 shots for a 45 minute episode. This is easy to achieve if you don't want the shots to be that different from each other, but if you want variety and you want them to be interesting, you either need to go to a large number of locations or you need a zoom. The average vantage point will potentially have a large number of interesting compositions.. the wide shot of course, the low-angle wide and the high-angle wide might also be interesting, but beyond that it's about zooming in to interesting details. Due to compression at longer focal lengths you can also juxtapose different foreground and background elements by getting closer and wider or further away and zooming in. For travel, your ability to "zoom with your feet" is often severely limited, and you have to shoot from where you are allowed to be: At the zoo or the safari park, you can't go into the lions cage and walk up to the lion to get a close-up On the top level of the hop-on-hop-off bus you're not allowed to stand up when the bus is moving.. so the choice is either shooting the wide shot only (which might include the people next to you), or zooming and getting all kinds of compositions My shot of the pope giving a Sunday address at the Vatican would have been a shot of a tiny speck in a window of a rather grand building if I'd only had the wide, but thanks to the 10x zoom I had on that trip I am zoomed in enough that you could see his facial expressions Any landscape photographer will tell you that having a telephoto is wonderful because all mountains in the distance look small with the wide but the tele is how you make them look big Any time there's an animal - birds, squirrels, monkeys, etc... often you want the close up but don't want to get close to them, or they don't want to get close to you etc etc The online world seems reluctant to look at or learn from the professionals, who often have hundreds or thousands of times the experience and insight that the online crowd has. Or, if they do, they only pay attention to what Deakins might say about shooting a feature film. But travel isn't a movie set - it's real life and the doco shooters use different equipment for a reason. Ignore their experience to your own detriment.

iPhone, because it has different focal lengths. But that would apply to anything - if I could choose an iPhone or Alexa or FX3 or.... but the other cameras could only have one prime lens, I'd still choose the iPhone.

It would take a lot of footage for me to be able to see through the grading that was applied to each video, and I haven't deep dived enough to do that. However, both seem capable of creating decent images, if they are pointed at something interesting and treated well in post. Probably the difference is that the Apple log has a fully-supported colour management profile, which enables it to fit into a workflow that includes professional tools and ability to accurately perform WB and exposure changes in post, and to also align to various other treatments to create the intended outcome. In terms of which is 'better', the differences in context completely overwhelm this question when compared to the image.

If you have good taste and know how to process the image in post, there are many trade-offs that can be made. For example, 4K 10-bit 422 could be matched by 6K 8-bit 420 if the camera was used with the right ISO settings to generate enough noise in the file so that in post the downsample to 4K would re-create the intermediate values that are inaccessible by the 8-bit. Art does this with stippling. Soon, AI will be able to resurrect your SD MiniDV tapes into 3D 8K 444 glory with only minimal error. The ever-deepening naval gazing will create the ouroboros, assuming it hasn't already.

Which image?

Absolutely. It's like people have forgotten what the images in the cinema actually looked like, or that they were 35mm film. I say that because people who apply a "filmic" or "cinematic" look seem to apply a film emulation at about 284% of what is realistic. This is a scan of (IIRC) Kodak 200T (source) : The video above is: too sharp too heavy split-tone very heavy-handed diffusion ridiculous halation etc It's like they got a film emulation plugin and put some sliders to 0% emulation, and others to 350%. In colour, "if it looks good then it is good" definitely applies, but it doesn't seem to have a look of its own, it's just got a bad film emulation on it.

Unfortunately, you can't buy skill with money. You earn it with time, curiosity, and humility.

Yeah, that's terrible, and not easy to correct in post at all. I am wondering when the camera manufacturers and/or post people will get their act together and start addressing these distortions - if they profile a lens then it should be 99% fixable, either in-camera via processing or in-post using gyro and IBIS + OIS alignment data, or simply a more sophisticated stabilisation algorithm than a 2D crop of the final image. It doesn't even have to be perfect, an 80-90% reduction in the flappiness would be - well - 5-10x better. I mean, if a GoPro can do it for one lens, essentially perfectly, then it can't be beyond a multi-thousand dollar professional camera body with a native lens.

It's a big "it depends", based on lots of factors: Some scenes are more difficult technically to capture than others Some scenes are more difficult aesthetically to reproduce than others Some differences can be compensated for in post easily (e.g. small WB differences, skin tone hue rotations, etc) Some differences can't be compensated for (e.g. skin tone smoothing, quantisation issues like 8-bit log codec, lots of non-linear processing) The stronger the grade you're going to put on it the less it matters The more skilled you are in post the less it matters The more powerful the tools you use in post the less it matters The better the cameras colour profiles are the less it matters The less picky your audience is the less it matters The less saturated the final image the less it matters Etc The problem with discussing it is that on the open internet, the only two opinions anyone seems to understand is "it is the only thing that matters" or "it doesn't matter at all", and those who dare to look in the middle ground can't tell which of the strange things in the test images belong to which camp - easy or difficult or impossible to fix.

As a fan of colour grading, I'm the first one to promote the idea that the footage SOOC is like a film negative - it's yet to be developed in post. However, while there are some things you can adjust in post to improve the cameras colour science, like WB or hue shifts (which people get triggered about all the time), you can't (without AI) make the footage higher quality. The richness of 5D ML 14-bit RAW can't be created out of the 8-bit 709 images from my GX85 (believe me - I've been trying for years!). BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT.... without lighting this is a BS pointless discussion. (and without anything interesting to point the camera at, lighting is polishing a turd) .....((and without a story to tell, glorious compositions won't even keep me awake)).....

I just watched the OM-1 vs G9ii IBIS only comparison and although the OM-1 looks better stabilised than the G9ii the majority of the time, there are places where it's the other way around, so goodness knows what the different settings were. However, I've experienced the difference between IBIS only and Dual IS on both my GH5 and GX85, and the different is night and day - potentially enough to make the G9ii the clear winner. If you're doubtful, think about the difference between having no stabilisation at all and adding OIS - that's the kind of difference it is. The G9ii might also have the extra mode the GH5 has where it removes all motion, which is enormously more stabilising than the normal IBIS mode, so that would be my preference in this situation. In terms of him doing the test and not telling us because he doesn't want to embarrass anyone, well, you might be interested to know there's lots of things about aliens that the government hasn't been telling us either...

Just looked through the video, he didn't compare Oly IBIS to Penny Dual IS, so you can't judge from the video how good each one is. The reason this is relevant is that Olympus puts IBIS in their cameras but doesn't put OIS in their lenses, so a native Oly system only has IBIS but a native Panny system has Dual IS.