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I suspect that you're right for most cases. I've tried sharpening the GF3 image and it just reveals the compression around edges coming from the poor codec (17Mbps just isn't enough), and I've found that higher bitrates mostly don't need sharpening and higher resolutions don't need it. What did need it though was the RAW and Prores 1080p from the OG BMPCC and BMMCC, as it was a little too soft straight out of the camera for my tastes. I'm not sure how much this was due to the lens sharpness (the specific video I'm remembering was the BMMCC with 14mm F2.5 lens wide open - maybe if it was stopped down where it's ultra-sharp that might not have needed it?). Anyway, apart from the BM cameras, I've never needed to sharpen, only to soften, but maybe there's a combo of camera / codec / lens that benefits from a little sharpening. Adding a little sharpening in post can be invisible. In my test where I zoomed in post to 150% it was obvious which the zoomed image was until I added some sharpening to match and then they were indistinguishable and the image didn't look sharpened at all. Anyway, all this is why I need to do the tests.

I keep thinking I should do a sharpness test of the cameras / modes / lenses I have. For example, obviously the 4K on the GX85 will be sharper than the 1080p from the GF3, but I haven't yet tested the 1080p24 or 1080p60 on the GX85. Of course, you can't test a codec without a lens, and how will (say) the GF3 with the 12-35/2.8 at F4 compare to the GX85 with the RMC Tokina 28-70 / 3.5-4.5 on the m42 SB? Not sure. I've tested the GF3 with various lenses before and established that I only find the image acceptable if the lens is quite sharp to compensate for the soft codec, but how much softening does the GX85 need from a lens? Not sure. What about the P2K or BMMCC, also not sure. How much can be achieved through sharpening in post? By which mechanisms (I think Resolve has at least three ways to do it)? Essentially it's about knowing what I like and then making pairings that can give me that (maybe with some treatment in post), and also give the right stabilisation and focal length and aperture combinations for whatever it is that I'm shooting on that occasion. Lots more work to do yet.

Thanks for posting this - I hadn't seen it and I really enjoy doing these blind tests as they reveal what products you like and also reveal what things you're looking for (I look for colour first and foremost, then texture). My results were as follows: F BMCC D GH4 B- NX1, C100 B GH2, Z6 B+ GH1 A 1DC, EVA1 A+ GH6 The BMCC looked like it had colour issues (likely IR pollution). Most of the cameras got marked down for looking "dirty" which came from shadows being too blue or the image being unacceptably noisy (some noise is fine). I went back and forth on the top five as some of them made the saturated colours in the checker look neon and others made them darker and desaturated them slightly (like film does) so this aspect is sort-of personal taste. I must say that I wouldn't have predicted the GH6 coming out on top next to the Z6, 1DC and EVA1 in there, but if the test had included a more modern Canon camera, a current BM camera, a Sony FF camera, or a Sigma FP then I suspect the GH6 might have struggled as those are all excellent. It's also sad it didn't include a OG BMPCC or BMMCC. Here's a video that @mercer showed me that is just spectacular.

I stopped being a tech early adopter a long time ago, now I wait for the tech behemoths to beta-test their products on other people and work out the bugs (you know, or don't) before jumping in. My plan is to hold off on buying anything until I start travelling again, which is COVID dependent and let's just say that I think that'll be a long time. Even then, with the improvements in Resolve and my glacially-improving colour grading skills, I could easily hold-off for a trip or three and just keep using the GH5. Right now, the cameras that are most interesting to me are my BMMCC and my GF3.

Amusing comment about the influencers rigging out their cameras. I think if you gave them a camera, asked them why they rigged it, fixed that thing so the camera did it without needing rigging, then went around that loop half-a-dozen times I think you'd find they'd get to a point where they'd still rig it but wouldn't be able to tell you why (or would give you some stupid answer that is fluff like personal preference). Ultimately, I think the "unknown last answer" as to why they want to rig things up is that without a rig they don't feel as important or as "professional" as they feel with a rig. Hardly any of them would admit this and most probably don't even know it themselves, but I think it's there, underneath all the other reasons that get thrown around. I must admit the A74 caught my eye, just out of sheer dynamic range per dollar. Sony has gotten their colour science sorted since the original days of the A7S when everything was green - now they are almost indistinguishable in a blind test between a Sony and Canon when the footage from each just has the official LUT put on top. For my purposes, I really want Prores HQ in downsampled 1080p from a camera. The GH5 has the 200Mbps 10-bit 422 ALL-I h264 mode that's pretty good, but I'd prefer Prores if I can get it in a camera. It's partly for the file-sizes, but it's also for the ease of editing on my laptop and not needing to generate proxies. For some reason I've seen that the Prores from cameras that do it is much better looking than the h264 or h265 from cameras that use those codecs. I'm not sure if it's the processing that the cameras do (after all, only the more professional cameras use prores, so maybe they sharpen and NR far less) but the experience in post is very different when grading, and I much prefer the more analog film-like aesthetic rather than the hyper-modern aesthetic. I'm contemplating moving to shoot 48p with a 1/60s shutter. On a 24p timeline this would allow me to either get real-time playback with a 144 degree shutter (and have the NLE only use every second frame), or conform the 48p to 24p (using every frame) and get 50% slow-motion with an almost 288 degree shutter. Those shutter angles would give the real-time footage a relatively neutral aesthetic, and give the 50% speed footage a dreamy slightly surreal aesthetic, but would allow me to choose which aesthetic I use in the edit once I get to post-production. There are a lot of times when I'm out and hit record and I don't really know what the shot will be, so I can't really decide before I hit record. I have been in an Italian town square and hit record and been getting a shot of my friends eating ice-cream in the sun and talking and then I see the flock of birds get startled by a little kid running and so follow them as they fly overhead and around the square waiting for the ground to be safe again. Another example is when I'm shooting a group of people talking and one of them flashes a smile that only lasts a second or two. One part of those shots works better in real-time with audio and the other in slow-motion without it, and shooting 48p 1/60s would give me the ability to choose in post, or even transition in-between them if I was editing in a particularly stylistic fashion. That will depend on what camera I end up with though, as not many cameras shoot 48p. I could put it in PAL mode and shoot 50p for a 25p timeline, or even 60p for a 30p timeline, or even 60p for a 24p timeline and a 3:2 pulldown but I'm not that keen on any of those, as my other cameras all have 24p but not 25p, so I'd end up with 24p vs 25p audio sync issues. I've recorded footage in 60p and not liked the horrible bitrate options and I've recorded 24/25p and tried time-stretching the footage in post, but neither gives a result that is worth having the option of the slow-motion footage. These days most of my shots are normal speed, static compositions (with the occasional slow pan/tilt) so that's the priority, but it would be nice to have the option for the odd shot where its warranted.

The GH6 is the likely replacement for my GH5 but I'm waiting until I start travelling again until I buy something. I'm hoping that Panasonic will gradually "fill out" the modes and options. Off the top of my head, these are some of the things that people are talking about: Digital zoom (2x and 3x would be great)** 1080p48** Prores 444 (12-bit!!)** Prores LT (UHD 328Mbps or 6K ~750Mbps) UHD resolution modes More of the lower resolution modes (like you're saying with the 3.3K anamorphic) SSD recording USB-C charging ** - these are the things that I'm seriously hoping for. The GH6 anamorphic modes and especially anamorphic stabilisation will only become a larger and larger feature once the new batch of anamorphic glass from China really comes in. At the moment the camera market seems to be very fragmented and the GH6 has a number of very serious but unlikely competitors. For me, the weaknesses of the GH5 are the DR and lacklustre colour science. The camera industry has made huge improvements on these since the GH5 and the GH6 doesn't appear to have caught up to the leaders. As such, and chasing those things, the two main competitors are the Sigma FP (FF, spectacular DR and colour, lacking codecs and stabilisation - either IBIS or OIS lens options), or potentially something from Blackmagic if they get their shit together and release a camera with the image of the 6K or 12K UMP but that will fit into the same seat as me on planes/trains/ferries/etc. However, if someone (Deezid?) is getting Alexa-like results from it then I'm all ears (or eyes!) about how that's possible and what working methods that might involve.

Sometimes I think that learning is like an upward spiral. You look at some things, do some things, think about some things, then move on, and years later you find yourself looking back at the same things you were looking at before, but having learned a bunch of other stuff in the meantime often you can learn more the second (or third) time around. Or maybe it's just me being a little thick-headed! 🙂

Every shot taken is better than every shot not taken. This is really the strength of cameras the size of the GX85. Plus, not only is it small, it's got IBIS and half-decent 4K. Not that common in something so small.

This post says that the 28–80 f/3.5–5.6 USM is great and has a metal mount (or the first version has anyway). There's a couple of other lenses they liked too.

GX85 is a hell of a camera. Sell the S1 and invest back into the market when the time is right.

Looks nice, but not at all like BMMCC or OG BMPCC to me. Those cameras mimicked the resolution and texture and noise of film, but this is too clean and modern and high-resolution to really give me that cinematic feel. It is high-resolution, but it also LOOKS high resolution, which film never does, unless maybe you're talking 70mm or something, but that's not what I associate with cinema. The aesthetic of cinema to me is like a dream. Seeing actors on the big screen isn't real, it's not realistic, the stories and characters are not human beings - if you met the people in real life (or even see the actors being interviewed on TV) the illusion collapses into them being normal human beings, but that's not what cinema is, it's not how it feels. Modern cameras seem to be getting closer to the dynamic range of film, which can be very nice when graded well, but they're moving away from film with resolution and clean noise-free images, which ultimately make the images less cinematic overall. I think all the people on here who think that 4K can be cinematic (without enormous degradation in-post) have forgotten what film actually looks like, what cinema feels like. That's fine - not everything needs to be cinematic - the market demands what it demands and that's fine, but it doesn't matter if you acclimate to something different (sterile ultra-resolution images) the subconscious still knows and it still misses the mark even if you're not aware of it consciously. We don't want consistency - in 1400ad there was consistency about the shape of the earth (flat) - we want a time-lapse video of the camera recording in a temperature-controlled cabinet.

Nice! I saw those articles with it on Halo and that's the perfect use-case for it in high-end productions. Hopefully word spreads and Sigma starts to get a presence in that niche. For me it's the image and the dynamic range that is just soooo tempting despite being a poor fit for my use-case (hand-held travel style in purely available light). I'm still actively looking at their firmware updates, hoping that they'll drop some more goodies in there. Otherwise maybe an FP mk2 will come and deliver some of the holes in the mk1. If it had Prores, a tilting screen and some kind of stabilised options for standard focal lengths (other than the 24-104/4) then the sheer image quality would get me to swap brands and sensor sizes, not an easy feat considering I can see 5 MFT cameras from where I'm sitting, plus a tray-full of lenses!

Thanks! I've noticed a huge difference in 'feel' when colour grading between the GH5 and the BMMCC, with the BMMCC just doing exactly what you wanted it to and the GH5 colour feeling like it was arguing against me all the time. This was between the GH5 in 150Mbps 4K or 200Mbps 1080p vs the BMMCC in Prores HQ (~176Mbps 1080p) so it's not a RAW vs compressed issue. What are your impressions of colouring the GH5 vs GH6 footage? Does the GH6 feel nicer to colour grade? It was kind of hard to quantify, but when I pushed the BMMCC footage around (warmer, cooler, greener, more magenta, etc) it just did what you'd expect - it felt simple, whereas with the GH5 it felt like some parts of the image would do the right thing but others wouldn't - like it was complicated and resisting and squirming, and basically the colour turned to shit pretty quickly. This might have been related to not getting the WB correct in-camera? I would imagine that a proper implementation of V-Log in the GH6 would help in the grading experience, and I'd imagine that any sufficiently skilled colourist could probably get good results from either camera, but for us not-so-good colourists I'm wondering if there will be a difference in difficulty where the GH6 is easier to grade than the GH5 footage? I'm also keen to hear your impressions of the h264 vs h265 vs Prores codecs, including the analog vs digital aspects of the aesthetic they each have. I'm imagining that the Prores would have a nicer noise floor for example, more like film than digital.

I understand that h265 can do 12-bit and ALL-I, so why not give us a 12-bit ALL-I mode with V-Log? I mean, if we're talking about what can be done vs what a commercial company would actually do...

In terms of audio, further to @IronFilms comment about getting the mic closer, is the arrangement of any sound treatments or room elements that absorb sound (such as soft-furnishings, curtains, etc). The closer that a wall is to the talent the more you'll get that wall reflecting sound back to the mic, but throw an acoustic blanket up on a couple of c-stands and you should be fine - most YT studios will have acoustic blankets hung up just out of shot to minimise room response and reflections.

Absolutely. I think unless you've done it, you really don't know how stretched and fast that video work requires sometimes. I shoot home and travel with zero direction and no retakes, and even I wouldn't suggest I understand the full experience of a wedding gig, especially when mixing stills and video! The other factor about having bodies with the same mount/crop is the redundancy factor. If you have a FF lens stop functioning then replacing it with a S35 one further complicates everything, if it's even possible. I've got an MFT based system and have worked out a kit that includes backups of almost everything, but involves using the backup camera as a second/third camera in some situations. If my two bodies had different crops/mounts then my kit would be a lot larger and heavier to keep that level of backup functionality. I can't imagine what it's like dealing with clients (let alone bridezilla) if you had an equipment failure and had a compromised ability to get the shots you need! You're suggesting a career change from solo-shooter to management. Navigating all the perils of managing staff, being an employer / dealing with other contractors and their own schedules etc, dealing with no-shows / sick days / poor skills / "artistic differences" etc... let alone navigating all those and still making a profit on each job. The wedding shooters I've seen (those that actually run real businesses - eg Scott McKenna) basically say that the amount of work and learning curve for hiring one person (or coming to have your business rely on services that require another contractor to deliver) is so large that you should only do it if your plan is to scale the business to the point where you're not shooting, you've got half-a-dozen crews going each weekend, and your exit strategy is to sell the business in a few years and pocket the money.

It could also MF in AF - if you wanted it to go in a certain direction or to change the subject of focus a spin of the MF ring would tell it to go in that direction and choose a new subject. It was a good camera for certain things, I think that what I tried to use it for was just waaaay outside what it was designed for.

Yes, I agree about it being a team effort. I think the main thing is Auteur Theory (https://indiefilmhustle.com/auteur-theroy/) which is the culprit and has perpetuated, especially around directors who were popular when the theory was popular. I can understand the rationale for it, being that the director is sort of the head of the creative side of the film (as opposed to the Producer being head of the logistical side of the film), and it could be argued that the director makes the single largest contribution creatively, but that doesn't mean that they're the only ones that contribute. Yet another example of humanity trying to over-simplify something just because they don't like how complicated it is!

Yeah, I read a number of articles that talked about films shot on only one lens and one of the favourites was the 24-28mm on S35 combo, which was a ~35-40mm equivalent. It's wide enough to get a wide, but not so wide that it distorts too much on close-ups, so it's a good middle-ground if you're only going to use one lens. I ended up settling on 16mm, 35mm, 85mm equivalent focal lengths for my own work, and that was before I really read a lot about lenses and understood the implications around them. The 35mm focal length is great for environmental portraits, which is perfect for the work I do (family and travel) which is primarily about my family and friends being in and interacting with interesting places. The 85mm focal length is a great second option as it can give the impression of being far away. So a wide on an 85 seems very distant emotionally, a mid at 85 seems like a normal gaze at a normal distance, and a close-up at 85 indicates a combination of being relatively close physically with a very very keen interest emotionally (intense focus on that person). It's a great compliment to the wide/mid/close emotions you get from a 35mm.

The deep DoF on the xc10 was definitely a downside, but perhaps an even larger downside was the autofocus performance. If anyone thinks that Panasonic auto-focus is bad then their brain will literally melt if they ever saw what a truly bad AF looks like. Using the camera was a joy, punctuated with regular occurrences of the AF messing up a shot and it was so slow and traumatising it was like watching a car accident in slow motion. You would literally be screaming at the camera inside your head, and several sentences would pass that way before it locked focus - often well and truly after the moment had passed and the shot was already lost. I didn't tend to notice that in real life TBH, and I shot in all kinds of conditions using auto-ISO and hand-held. The way people talk about it I would have thought that I'd have shot after shot after shot ruined but I don't think I ever noticed it. I definitely noticed indoor shots that had heaps of noise, so I definitely used it in situations where the ISO noise degraded the image severely. I always used the camera on full-auto and I know that the lens wasn't parfocal but IIRC Canon mapped the lens and when you changed the focal length it adjusted the focus on the fly to maintain the same focus distance, so if you zoomed at a slow-medium pace then it would feel like a parfocal lens. I mention that because I don't think I ever noticed it change exposure when I zoomed either, so maybe it was compensating for that in some way too. Still, if you shot with it manually it would have been an issue.

I was surprised that it had enough exposure as I have told myself this is a "outdoors during the day" lens, but on closer inspection I think the ISO was working a bit on the images so it's not the best choice for post-sunset. One thing that got me a couple of times on the previous shoot (with the GF3) was that putting it into my pocket seems to adjust the focus to the "closed" position and pulling the camera out of my pocket seems to adjust the focus to the 0.3m position, so that's a trap for new players. Still, when I'm shooting MF with the GH5 focus is always a thing to adjust so I just have to keep that mindset that it's a manual lens and needs to have that attention too. I am contemplating doing a sharpness test of various cameras and lenses and I think that this lens might actually be in the sweet spot of sharp but not too sharp. I'm optimistic for that, plus the size is incredibly convenient. Your analysis is terribly kind in ways that I probably don't deserve, but I'll take it - thanks!! I like to think I have pretty good composition but to be honest I've been shooting for long enough that I don't really even think about it that much anymore, and my mental effort is more around anticipating what is about to happen. For example, with the bird shot, I was thinking that: the bird was chasing bugs and spent most of its time off-screen frame-right and down below the edge of the wall if I moved the camera to the right then that's where the sun was setting and the auto-exposure would be slow to react and would clip the sky, which isn't a good look on the GX85 (even in Cine-D) I don't know enough about bird behaviour to read it's body-language so I can't tell what it's doing, plus if it spots a bug then it all changes in an instant I could make a half-decent shot if it darted off frame-right by starting to follow it, stopping short of the clipping point of the camera, letting it leave frame, and then me lingering in an odd composition telling a little story of interaction and abandonment between the bird and the film-maker, but also giving me the opportunity to cut earlier than that and to just have a bird shot without the little drama Then I just went through the shots in VLC and found a good moment and did a screen grab, based mostly on instinct. In terms of light - I'm reminded of that old saying in film photography - "F8 and be there" 🙂 The lens isn't fixed focus, but it might as well be. It's got a little focus slider on the front that closes a little lens cover, and has stops for infinity and 0.3m (12inches). You can position it anywhere in-between, but you'd really be guessing... Theoretically you could manually focus with it, using peaking or whatever, but the DoF is super deep so it would be difficult to really nail the right distance. If you set it to 0.3m it certainly blurs the background though. This is a shot from the GF3 video I filmed the previous day with the lens set at 0.3m: It's got good flaring characteristics too (that's the sun in the background) but isn't so modern that it's clinical. I shot a few test shots of RAW still images on the GF3 and at 12MP (4K) it was pixel sharp, so it's a pretty decent performer and priced very reasonably (I think) for what you get. Yeah, I'd be inclined to summarise the shot more like "the shot of the bird flying around" rather than what @PannySVHS said!! 🙂

I've seen multitools feature fairly steadily in the "things I carry all day as a film-maker" type articles/videos. D4darius did a great video that talks about his setup.. he uses a chest bag with heaps of pockets...

Thanks, that what I thought you meant and what it would be. It would obviously be nicer if it could tilt through 180 degrees (straight up to straight down) while in-line with the lens, and then the normal 270 when flipped out to the side, but I'm used to the GH5 screen which you have to flip around to at least 90-degrees before it can be rotated to face up or down. I don't use it for selfies (I think I tried it a couple of times, but nah...) so for me it's like @Kisaha said - low angle where you are looking straight down or high angle where you are looking straight up (as well as train shots lol). I've gotten quite a number of nice shots by using that high angle approach. Sometimes I'm tall enough that at zoos I can get the camera higher than the glass barriers and so can get a reflection-free shot, or avoid some other barrier or other. The XC10 really was great for standing behind the camera. The ergonomics and layout etc were all exactly what you'd want. Canon sure know how to make a cinema camera.

If you are ok with cropping then going wider will give you more options. One thing to be aware of with cropping in post is that you frame up properly while shooting for that crop. I have lenses that vignette and so I have to crop in post, but while I'm shooting I don't think about it (composition is quite an automatic thing for me these days) and so when I go to crop in post I am cutting people's heads off left and right and things all go sideways basically!