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I also agree with @mercer about building a collection of MF vintage primes, and to get as fast a set as you can, but if you're really budget constrained then just focus on what focal lengths you'd need/use. You should also consider the 'worse' budget lenses - the more I looked into vintage lenses the more that it's the imperfections that give the image its feel, and the more I ran across people discovering budget lenses. Take this for example, a recent 'discovery':

Yeah, marketing is tricky. I suspect that these days all products are priced so that the "join today with the link below and get 10% off!" is actually the real price and by having every sales channel being careful to use their unique code you are basically adding traceability to your sales funnels. You could recommend to the event organisers that each post they make in the marketing campaign feeds a unique ID to their sales funnel, that way they'd be able to get at least some sense of how many people saw the hype edit and then bought tickets. Of course, lots would see the reel, then go to the main site later, or buy tickets through some other channel. Do you deliver one edit, or a few? I'm not sure how the economics goes, but maybe there's an opportunity for you to deliver one edit like you currently do, plus a few shorter teasers? Once you've edited the normal edit you do, the other ones could all be based on a single shorter audio sequence (maybe just a single build up / release, and maybe only having 6-15 shots in total) and would all just include shots that were already in your normal edit. You could feature only one sponsor in each of these teasers, and just edit these in bulk, replacing the sponsor on each one and replacing the crowd shots for identical but different shots. If the sponsors were included in multiple videos (the main one and their own teaser) maybe the event organisers can do a better deal with the sponsors perhaps.. just a thought. Social media people who are live posting images also have the potential to sell this years event by posting images from this years event, rather than a hype reel from last years event. It's difficult to do that with video - have you seen the "same day edit" thing that some wedding videographers do where they show an edit of the wedding at the reception? That's film-making at it's most extreme! Two great rules of thumb I find very useful are: For each shot, when the cut happens and this clip appears your brain starts looking at it because it's new, but there's a moment when your brain says "ok, I saw that" and stops looking.. you should cut just before that happens. The edit should feel too fast when you're editing it. I've cut things to be the right speed and then when I've come back to them weeks later I found they felt a bit slow and needed tightening up a bit. Obviously with hype reels you're trying to cut fast and really make it a spectacle, but it's a good rule of thumb I've found. I've gone through a learning curve to get here, and I guess it's easy to say that things don't matter, but that's only true once you've developed an understanding of how to use all the technical settings, which focal lengths and apertures you use and how they relate to the shots you get and the situation and approach you have to where and how you shoot, etc etc. The other challenge that I have that you probably don't have is the size of the camera rig. For example, if I'm using the GH5 out in public then it gets far more attention than the GX85. Even the GX85 is less noticeable when it's got the 14mm pancake lens on it vs the 12-35/2.8. In that sense, knowing how good the 2x digital zoom is matters because I'm pushing the equipment right to its limits because I can't just rig up more without creating issues in post (like people in the shot staring at me because they've noticed I'm filming). Even this is larger than I would like..... It's amazing what you see in the edit that you didn't see when shooting! Early on I worked out that hitting stop immediately after something happens is a bad idea, partly because the camera often chops off the last second, but also because having some room to breathe in an edit is useful. So now when I think I've got the shot I count to three before hitting stop, but it's funny how many times I've tuned out while shooting and then when I get back I see something great happen that I have no recollection of and the clip just ends right in the middle of it. One thing I learned from street photography was to always be aware of what is happening around you and to anticipate the moments before they happen so you can be setup and capture them. I guess maybe I've switched to that mode during the 3s wait at the end of a shot and didn't see what was happening right in front of me! Absolutely. I also really like shooting - much more than editing actually. So I am frequently treating shooting days as one of those 'how many different shots and variety can I get' photography challenges, but with video. This often means I have a good variety of shots, but often means I have 20 shots of the same thing if I happened to be somewhere with only one thing worth shooting lol. It is funny though, I might have thought I got heaps of shots at a particular location but then in the edit it always seems like so much less, so much so that I've often wondered if clips are missing but when I try and recall all the shots I took they're all there on the card. Too much is not enough. You have to experience it to see it. If you're curious then make the test films I suggested. 60p would be great in that instance, but considering that most of my footage is normal speed, how would you suggest I conform the 60p onto a 24p timeline? It would result in a 3:2 cadence, which I don't really like the idea of. Plus my bitrate would be stretched significantly. I'd contemplate shooting 48p but none of my cameras have that, which is unfortunate. I'm also shooting on iPhone, GX85, and GH5, so they'd all have to have it. I've tried a strap in the past, even a few variations, and also things like gorilla pods etc. I'm a much more agile shooter than these things tend to allow and I find they get in the way too much. I'm just as likely to be doing an overhead follow shot from as high as I can reach, putting the camera out the window of trains etc, or doing low angles etc. I've also moved away from movement in my shots because I didn't really know what I was doing in the edit with them and they tended to restrict my options. Now I mostly just try and hold the camera as steady as I can (considering it's so small). I often have to add stabilisation in post and sometimes get frustrated with how much movement there was, but then I remember that I was freezing cold and the wind was howling and I was holding the camera at full arms-length, so there were reasons. I've chased better stabilisation for years but have concluded now that anything I can do will make the camera larger (so the footage suffers in other ways) and whatever camera shake there is after the IBIS and my best efforts to hold it still is actually a reflection of what happened and so has a place in the final edit. A nice smooth slider footage of an arctic base being blown away in a snowstorm wouldn't be the best aesthetic to convey the experience!

Basically, yes. To get from DWG back to 709, the common approaches to use are: CST to 709/2.4 CST from DWG to Arri then use the Arri LogC-709 LUT CST from DWG to Arri then use a Film Look LUT (PFE) like 2383 or 2393 etc As far as I understand it, only the new HDR colour wheels are meant to be "colour space aware" but I've found that the normal LGG wheel panel also works great, much better than I remember them working in years past. This is particularly useful if you have a BM Colour Panel (I have the Micro one) which can be used with either the HDR or normal LGG wheels but is more suited to the normal LGG wheels than the HDR ones.

I've found that the more I learn about colour grading the better my cameras become. I don't know if it's Resolve or just my experience but I've had a bit of a breakthrough in the last couple of years by using CSTs to change the cameras colour space to Davinci's Wide colour space, grading in that colour space, and then doing a CST / CST+LUT to get back to 709. I use this workflow even if the camera shoots in 709. This seems to give a process where WB changes and exposure changes work as intended instead of ruining the images, and you end up with great and consistent contrast and saturation, even between cameras of different manufacturers. I always struggled to get good colour from the GH5, and found the colour from the newer FF models to be much nicer, but Resolve now basically fixes this, it really is incredible.

I've developed the habit of hitting record on the camera prior to composing and focusing so that I can maximise the number of recorded usable frames that are available for the edit. My process is typically: Carry camera around in hand, with wrist-strap for safety/security If I'm in an interesting spot, camera is on and kept awake (half-pressing the shutter every so often prevents it sleeping) When I see something I start to raise the camera from by my side, and I hit record on the way up I compose and focus as quickly as possible Record the shot I find that even with this method I often end up with clips that have 1s of usable video in them once the focus and composition have been achieved, which are hard to use in an edit and had I been just 1s quicker I could have had a 2s clip and it would have been profoundly more useful in the edit. I sometimes reframe in post slightly so I can use earlier frames if the camera was still moving a bit. Literally 1s matters.

You've clearly never run a site or a business! If you've never run a site then you'll have no idea how much effort goes into running it and maintaining it in the background. Sites require constant maintenance as they are constantly under siege from spammers, hackers, new user requests etc. Even if you disable comments and logins and all the Web 2.0 functionality you still need to update the software regularly or hackers will pWn your site and turn it into an ad for viagra or to support Putin. That's the site, but to keep paying for it you need to have an active bank account and need to keep putting money in it. That bank account was probably under a business name, and to keep that active you need to keep the business name active, which means filing tax returns and dealing with whatever other accounting and government tasks are required. Did your business have anything else associated with it? Offices, parking, permits? You'll need to manage those things too. The list is truly endless. There's a good reason that social media sites like Medium or Wordpress or Facebook or YouTube are so popular - because maintaining your own platform is literally a full-time job.

I don't think so. Most of the photography blog were just endlessly repeating "more resolution cameras, more resolution lenses, more resolution computers" but using different words over and over again. The odd post of "15 things to do with a fisheye lens" disguised this myopia, but it was the water that the entire camera internet swam in, and still mostly is. Now cameras have huge resolution and social-media can sustain the endless resolution-navel-gazing that people seem to want. I think there's room for one or two blogs that discuss non-resolution-based-topics, but that assumes that the writers actually have enough knowledge of non-resolution-based-topics to keep a blog alive. That's drastically fewer people than there were camera blogs, thus the "market correction" we're currently experiencing.

I think the best way to do things is this: Test your equipment to understand its limitations Use your equipment to shoot real footage Edit and deliver a real project Look at what issues / limitations there were in the final edit, then.. If you can fix them by using your equipment differently, do that (and do lots of tests) If you can fix them by learning to plan/capture/light/edit/colour/master better then go learn (understand the theory, then go do lots of tests and practice) If you can't fix them any other way AND they're worth spending the money to solve AND it won't hurt you in some other way THEN spend money to fix them Go to step 2 That's it. Only ever fix problems that you encounter in post on real projects - the rest is just BS. Step 7 is particularly brutal as well, because often we're faced with choices where we can improve one thing but it kills other aspects of the process. This is where the "60 seconds can seem so long" comes in. I routinely find that I have clips that contain 1s of good video but that's hard to use in an edit and I'd actually want to include 1s prior to that, but I wasn't fast enough in setting up the shot in order to get it. I developed the technique of hitting record on the camera before I frame and focus because it means that I can use the clip from the very first frame that is in focus. In that sense even 1s is the difference between a usable shot and it being very difficult to use.

I totally understand why people are trying to buy their way to better videos, it's a much easier experience to research cameras and discuss (dream) about what cool new things you could buy, and it's brutal to admit you don't know much about a subject and start studying it (forcing your brain to work hard) and to do that for months and months. Unfortunately, that's what it takes to actually become a better film-maker. I posted over in the "Once in a lifetime shoot" thread about the Tokyo episode of Parts Unknown that won a bunch of awards, but long story short, the cinematography didn't include any shots that were amazing in a grandiose kind of way, but it had a huge variety of solid shots from creative angles the editing and sound design were absolutely spectacular - end result.. awards and nominations, and a great viewing experience that is far from the pedestrian nature of most professional content, let alone us mere mortals. The innovative nature of that episode alone is enough to make you crawl into the foetal position under the blankets, but the news is actually tremendous... most of the content in the world is so bland by comparison that to create solid professional-level edits you don't have to get to knowing 80% of what the greats know - a solid 20% will do just fine.

Don't buy anything unless the lack of it gets mentioned by a client, or drives you nuts in the edit. Instead, focus on colour grading, editing, sound design, storytelling, etc etc. Some of the biggest videos that get the most views or likes etc are shot exclusively iPhones, lots of working pros are shooting on 5+ year old cine/ENG style cameras, and some of histories most critically acclaimed TV and movies were shot in SD on a single prime or zoom lens - if you can't make good enough videos with your Z6 and a Ninja Star and a few AF or MF lenses, then the problem isn't the camera.

Or so complicated that it's only Gerald that will tell you that when you're in a certain codec and connect a HDMI monitor then the eye-detect AF doesn't work any more. That's a real example from the S5, and it was mentioned by others too, but I've seen heaps of gotchas like this that matter to people and no reviewers ever dug far enough to find them.

Great post with lots of practical / useful info! A few thoughts.. I would argue that no-one can help imparting their style to anything they shoot, simply because shooting involves so many decisions that it's practically inevitable that everyone will make them differently, at least in subtle ways. I can tell you, being someone who has never shot for a client, my "style" would likely involve not keeping the client happy, and based on some of the amateurish coverage I've seen online I think lots of working "pros" are also falling hugely short of hitting it out of the park, so if you're really delivering what the client wants then that's a big statement about your style right there 🙂 How close do you think the low-light performance of modern FF cameras are to letting you use a single lens (maybe a 24-70/2.8) for all (sensible) lighting conditions? When I combined my GH5 with the 17.5mm f0.95 my testing showed that the combo saw better in low-light than I did, so I was happy with that. Obviously the lens wasn't the sharpest wide open and this was to my tolerance of noise levels etc, but I have pretty good night vision and I figure if I can film everything I can see then that's success. There's a critical distinction between "feeling like they were there" and "feeling jealous they weren't there" and I think that the former suggests using a 35mm of 50mm lens and the latter suggests using the full range of focal lengths to make everything seem as awesome as possible. In terms of a lens giving the "feeling like I was there" feeling it's a subtle thing, but definitely there, and it's something that you can learn to see if you're interested in it. I know you're a working pro and are getting what you want so there's no need to explore this if you're not curious. For those that are curious to understand how lens choice can give this kind of feeling, there are some fun exercises I can recommend. The best one is this: Get a camera that can shoot in three focal lengths, a phone with three cameras is a great choice. If you're not using your phone I recommend either 16/35/80mm or 24/50/100+mm combinations. Film a very quick video, maybe of 8 shots, and film those same 8 shots with each lens, making sure to match the composition between the lenses. This means getting closer with the wide and being much further away with the tele. I suggest, to make this fun, making a video of an outing to a cafe with a friend who will let you film them. Either shoot each shot in quick succession on the same outing, or make a shotlist and go for coffee three times! Edit the 3 versions together with the same exact timing and matching the framing (crop in post to fine-tune it). Watch the three back-to-back and see how they make you feel about the person in the video, and about the experience in general. If you don't feel the difference, watch them on loop for a few cycles each day and see if you gradually start to feel differently about them. I haven't done the above directly, but as I tend to shoot videos using prime lenses, and often shoot little personal projects with a single prime, I've had lots of experience of making videos with one lens (anywhere from 15mm to 80mm FOV) and seeing the differences. One of the things that made me graduate from the "what new camera should I buy to make my videos better" mindset was really understanding what requirements a good edit had and where I was falling short, and that was in getting sufficient variety of shots. Not only do the variety of shots allow for keeping the visual interest up by having lots of shots ready to cut up into faster montages, and not only did more shots mean that the ones that made it to the final edit were more visually interesting, but it also gave me more shots to solve problems in editing. I've heard editors talk about editing as mostly solving problems, and I think that's true. To this end, I realised that just shooting more shots was a higher priority than the absolute quality of the shots I was getting. Of course, you can't shoot a million shots that all look like crap, but if you're making videos that are more b-roll driven (like you and I are) rather than dialogue driven, then the shots don't need to all look spectacular, just solid and with good composition and with the technical elements done properly. There's an episode of Parts Unknown in Tokyo that won or got nominated for a bunch of awards (American Cinema Editors Awards: Best Edited Non-Scripted Series - won, Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards: Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program - nominated, Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards: Outstanding Picture Editing for a Nonfiction Program - nominated, Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards: Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Nonfiction or Reality Program (Single or Multi-Camera) - nominated). It's free to watch on YT, even if you don't watch the whole thing (although I recommend it highly highly highly), just watch the intro to give a taste of the content of the episode... I pulled it into Resolve and cut it up on the timeline (as I showed in this thread) and the Tokyo episode was spectacular for a few reasons... Over 40 minutes it contained about 2500 clips, which is a cut per 1.04 seconds on average. But, that's not the full story, there are shots in there that are 9s and there are shots in there that are 4 frames. Lots of them! The edit sort of ebbs and flows, creating and building and releasing tension, etc. The shots aren't special. I mean, it's professional cinematography, but just skip around randomly in the YT video and see if these are breathtaking shots or if they're just solid normal shots that you and I could take. It's the latter. This is professional TV but using techniques that are rarely seen outside of trendy puke-inducing YT travel influencers. It includes speed-ramps, extreme slow-motion, crazy wide angle follow shots, overhead shots, under-shots looking straight up at people, etc. This is professional TV edited to the music to the extent it's more musically-driven in sections than most music videos are. It's shot in 1080p, on limited DR cameras (some shots in this or other episodes have the skies clipped or other issues) and often uses slow-mo footage at normal speed, which means it has very short SS video - and it still won an award for cinematography..... In short, it's a film-making masterclass for anyone who wants to edit fast, to music, for shot-on-location unscripted materials. Here's the timeline of it: V1 and A1/A2 are the actual show cut up at the edit points, the V1 on top shows the different sections of the show (different topics), the bottom three audio tracks are (top to bottom) voiceover, on-scene audio, and music. I use this view to understand the macro structure of the edit, which reveals how much of the show is essentially a music video, how much voice-over there is, etc. Here's a little bit zoomed right in to show the ebb and flow of the edit: For scale, the selected clip is 3s16f and the ones after the playhead are 7-9 frames long. What is clear from this section is that there's an interview section with music in the background and a 'normal' editing pace, then the music comes up and we get very fast editing of the band, then it goes back to the interview again. I have cut up 10 episodes of Parts Unknown, as well as a few other episodes of food shows like Chefs Table (as these are all heavily shot-on-location unscripted b-roll and music-heavy shows much closer to what I film than narrative or dialogue driven shows) and my overall lesson that I took away was these: The camera basically doesn't matter except in how fast it is to shoot with and how little it gets in the way The camera settings basically don't matter except if they make the footage literally unusable Get lots of shots and get as much variety and coverage as you can Learn to edit Learn to do sound design Everyone on YT who isn't also a working pro is either a featherweight or an outright joke who is just wasting everyones time To this end on my last trip I moved from my GH5 to the GX85 and using my phone as a second camera with a wide angle. Yeah, that's one of the most important aspects. The biggest critic of how you shoot is the person that needs to edit it together. I'm still getting to the edit and seeing gaps and all manner of issues in what I shot and trying to make mental notes for next time, but I'm also remembering the edit process when I'm out shooting so I'm learning and improving. TBH most folks around here talk about cameras like they exist in a little bubble and it's clear that most are trying to compensate for their lack of colour grading skills, editing skills, or sound design skills.

Is there also the question of style? The traditional thinking is to use the tools and techniques that allow you to take whatever shots present themselves in the scenario you're put in. This is what leads to the hand-wringing that comes with wanting a 16-200mm F1.2 lens that weighs under 1lb and fits in your pocket. The alternative is to abandon the premise that you need to able to take every possible shot and instead focus on the shots that matter. World-famous photographers have developed a signature style that people hire them for, which often involves a very limited variety (but very high quality) in their output. I understand that the client will have expectations of at least some variety in coverage, but I wonder if there's a middle ground? ie, what options from the below can be eliminated? Super-wide (<24mm) - used for taking shots of the whole venue, or of one or two centre-framed subjects in close quarters Shallow-DoF shots Telephoto shots (>70mm) - tight portraits or for compressing the background If you can work out what you can do without, and still keep the client happy, then it will better help you work out what to take. For example, I can imagine a situation where a 24-70/4 and a 35/1.8 could give enough coverage but also not be prohibitive. Or even a 16-35/2.8 and a 70/2. In terms of variety in the shots, you can shoot wide/mid/tight/macro from high/mid/low/overhead angles which is 16 different 'shots', and by the time you get a variety of those with each subject you'll easily have enough variety. Plus the variety of shots you get will also be subject to how quickly you can work. If I can work five-times faster than the next guy then I can get five times as many different types of shots, so even if I was limited to a single prime I'd still have the advantage just through quantity. There's also the goal that people 'feel like they were there'. For that, you should really be filming the whole thing with a single 35mm or 50mm prime as that's how the human eye sees. If you make a nice edit with 16mm and 100mm shots then it's not going to have that same feel.

DR.. sure. A camera can have as many stops of DR as you like - unless you're delivering in HDR then you just have the problem of what to do with all those stops in post. If you spread them all out evenly then you end up with footage that looks like it hasn't been converted from log to 709. Where do you think the "flat look" trend amongst YouTubers came from? Think about it - professional outputs don't lack contrast and saturation, just the YouTubers. The flat look is when the DR of your camera exceeds your ability to colour grade the footage. In many ways then, more DR is actually hurting you rather than helping. Don't believe the specs - better specs are only "better" when you don't actually make films.

The number of stops in IBIS is irrelevant - except for marketing purposes. The difference between a great IBIS and meh IBIS systems isn't the number of stops, it's things like the travel of the system (how large the movement can be before it runs out of travel to compensate), how fast it can react (high-frequency performance), motor strength, etc. When you see an IBIS system failing to compensate for camera movement it will be limitations of these aspects. The GH5 has similar number of stops as many other cameras at the time with inferior overall performance, it was some combination of other factors that made the difference between them.

Great job! This has that quality where everything seems to flow nicely and the film-making doesn't draw attention to itself, which is a lot easier said than done.

There are a few things that would benefit you to understand. Firstly, no camera on the market these days is "accurate" - they all apply a strong look to the image. Those that apply a colour profile (either 709 or log) apply a significant number of colour tweaks to the image, and those that shoot RAW get similar tweaks in post when converted to 709 by a colour space transform or a LUT etc. Secondly, all the looks from all the manufacturers share a number of common traits. I've compared quite a lot of different cameras over the years and shared the results here, so go digging if you're curious. These traits are essentially things that the human eye finds desirable, and they began with film (which was in development for decades and decades with the all the worlds best image scientists all working on it) and then when digital gradually took over this processing continued in development. If you don't agree with this, or aren't aware of it, find footage of a colour checker from as many camera brands as you can and just look at the curve applied to the greyscale and look at a vector scope of where the hues are falling - they're not falling where they should if the image was even remotely "correct". Thirdly, non-camera nerds see the world very differently to us, and it's not like we all agree on everything. I suggest you find one of these people that prefers Fuji and load some images into Resolve and start adjusting things and see which things they don't care about and which things makes them hate the image when you change them by only a tiny amount. This is how you can find out, in broad terms, what it is that they like and are sensitive to about Fuji in-particular.

I think there are three things going on. 1) People can't colour grade and they're trying to buy their way out of learning. As Resolve has grown in popularity the number of people that got access to a colour-managed workflow or colour space transformations has grown, and the number of people that can get the look they want from whatever camera they are using has also increased. 2) People don't remember what film looks like. The number of "filmic" images that look nothing like film has gradually turned from a trickle to a vast deluge, to the point now that many people trying to get the look of film may have never seen it, or wouldn't recognise it even if it showed up with the film-strip not yet cropped out. Over the last year or so I've been rewatching older movies and TV shows shot on film, from back when this was how all TV and movies were shot, and at times I've watched several hours of film a day for weeks or months straight. Most so-called "filmic" content online looks nothing like film, in practically any way. It does, however, remind me a lot of 4K GoPro footage, but with 15 times the dynamic range of both a GoPro and most film processes. 3) People have changed what they like. As time goes on, "cinematic" looks more and more like video every day. The so-called "cinematic" videos that people like, speak fondly of, share, and aspire to, all look nothing like what cinema actually looks like. I lost count of the number of times I argued online about sharpness and resolution and depth of field and colour science and colour grading and began to question myself in the face of almost universal online opposition.... then I'd go see a movie and I'd be reminded that I was right and everyone else was blind, has stopped going to the cinema, is full of shit, or all of the above.

Why not Alexa 35 with one of those Angenieux EZ zooms? That's also not quite a camcorder.

Why camcorders aren't discussed? Simple - pure prejudice. For all the claims of people being shills for one company or other, online forums are almost universally brainwashed to prefer whatever the manufacturers have been cramming down our throats most recently. I suggest doing an objective comparison between the various options - mirrorless and camcorders - across the same criteria. Even writing a simple list of criteria is beyond the level of analysis that most are capable of doing prior to four or even five-figure purchases. Taking a critical look at how important those criteria are and doing real world experiments to verify them would make you rarer still. Linking them to the goal of making a creative end-product would make you practically a unicorn. Beware though, the more critically you evaluate things, the less you will 'fit' online.

What's VP? Virtual Productions? Is that for green-screening and VFX?

Test it and see. It's free and you'll know how it sounds.

From the April edition of Film and Digital Times page 42: https://www.fdtimes.com/pdfs/free/120FDTimes-Apr2023-150.pdf and later on... and It also showed that the BMMCC were put in fireproof boxes. BMMCC and P4K on a €30,000,000 film shot in 2021 that screened on IMAX. Just goes to show that these cameras are still relevant and in active use in productions larger than anything being discussed on here.

Thanks, that's good to know. My main focus for this is the GX85, which doesn't have a mic input, so the internals will have to do. I also shoot a lot with my phone now, but I'm not sure how I would integrate windcovers there. I looked at external mics for it but they're not super pocketable, so I'm still pondering that one.

Nice.. subtle, but these have good shape. The WanderingDP examples are typically a lot darker than you'd want for corporate work. Maybe that's what you were thinking of 🙂