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Yeah, that stood out to me as a real advantage in my imperfect real-world shooting. I've previously found the grain on the GH5 150Mbps 4K mode to be pretty good at higher ISOs as well. The noise on the R5C doesn't seem as nice - and that banding wasn't at all aesthetically neutral!

Great stuff! Simple concept, clean compositions and overall seems like it was well executed. With such strong content and cast it's best just to keep it simple and not have the production get in the way. Well done 🙂

Lots of good discussion on various aspects, but I think perhaps you're being a little unfair. First reason is the Dual Gain sensor. The GH6 DGO sensor is what, the third ever released in a camera? ARRI ALEV, then Canon DGO, and now GH6. If you cast your mind back to before it was released and the speculation about what a potential GH6 might include, there were expectations that it would 'wow' and really stand out from the pack (or that it would need to), and I don't think anyone predicted a DGO sensor. I suspect I might have mentioned it, but if I did it would have been a passing fantasy rather than a real prediction. It was more than anyone could even think of to ask for. and then it arrived in a GH camera. Why isn't this simply blowing away everyone? Unfortunately, the DR from it just doesn't seem to wow. I think there's a few reasons for this. One is that an MFT sensor has an outright disadvantage in terms of light-gathering ability over S35 and FF through physical size (two stops compared to FF and one compared to S35), but even beyond that, the DR measurements just aren't that impressive, compared to single-gain sensors. I wonder if the GH6 sensor has been in the pipeline for so long that it's a DGO implementation of an older technology? Regardless, with it's two-stop light-gathering disadvantage from FF, it didn't rocket to the top of the DR test charts, and that's what people want right, "best ever" headlines - not "best ever (in it's class and taking into account blah blah blah)" headlines. I must admit I'm a little disappointed by its measured DR, especially considering the original S35 ALEV sensor only has one stop of light advantage but has well over one stop of DR, plus it's decade-old tech at this point. I also think we haven't seen enough stuff from this to truly understand what this looks like when pushed to its full potential. GH6 footage is actually pretty thin on the ground, and the meticulously crafted footage (like we all refer to when talking about other cameras) is even rarer still. Second reason is that the GH line is an all-rounder, which is difficult in itself. Lots of competitors do a few things well, and a few things really really badly. The GH line doesn't really have an achilles-heel, and before you say "autofocus" think again - the AF on the GH6 is actually very respectable, it's just not world-class. If most cameras reallocated awesomeness from their killer-features to their weaknesses, their killer features wouldn't be killer anymore. It's like there's only so many awesome points that a camera can have, and it has to choose which features to put them into and which to sacrifice. The GH line has prioritised not having huge flaws rather than having headline features. Some examples. P4K - stepping right over the fact it's a cinema camera and automatically lacks about half the features of the GH6, it's huge and butt-ugly, it's AF isn't even continuous, and has no stabilisation at all. Take the P4K, and think how much extra it would cost to make it a sensible forum-factor, give it functional C-AF, add IBIS, and then, you know, make it a stills camera too. The P4K is literally half the features of a GH6, with a few extra advantages. Sure, it can shoot RAW internally, but if you add an external recorder to the GH6 you get an articulating screen and it's almost still smaller! FP - I really want to love the FP but it's also sort of half-baked like the GH6 is. It makes you choose between uncompressed RAW (which is absolutely huge compared to compressed formats - this adds to the cost of media and add post-processing time which I'd prefer to avoid) and its internally compressed formats that are so lacklustre they kind of negate the benefits of choosing the camera at all. Sure, you can go external and record prores or compressed RAW of your preferred flavour, but you've added almost another $1000 (with cage, recorder, its own batteries and charging requirements, cables, etc) and now you don't have something comparable in form-factor. Also, because the FP doesn't have stabilisation, you'll need to buy stabilised lenses if you want that feature, and with the L-mount that's either adapters or pretty-pricey and limited glass. B&H list two L-mount FF lenses with IS under $1000, but they list 9 in EF mount, one is under $500. So not only does "adding stabilisation" mean you become very limited in choosing the lenses you can to use, but it puts a $500 fee on top. I know - I've been looking! Panasonics FF cameras are also less polished. The S5 doesn't have an ALL-I codec (let alone Prores). I've heard that the lower resolution modes aren't nicely downsampled from the full frame sensors. For a comparison, the GH5 will downsample the full sensor for all resolutions, all frame rates, and all levels of digital zoom. I shoot in 1080p ALL-I codec, in both 24p and 60p, and using 1x and 2x digital zoom, and every combination is downsampled beautifully. As far as I'm aware, none of the Panasonic FF cameras can do that, even the S1H which is almost double the price of the GH6 and a behemoth physically. Thirdly, some features aren't measurable (or simply aren't measured) Stabilisation is one of these. We all know that stabilisation is measured in stops, but this is only half of the picture. The "stops" is a measure of the reduction in movement that's provided by the camera when given some shake that's within its range. To put its 7.5 stops into perspective, it's a factor of 181. So if you jiggled the camera horizontally by 181 pixels, the IBIS would stabilise that so that the movement was within a single pixel - ie, zero blur. It does this by moving the sensor, and the stops is the measure of how accurately the sensor can compensate for the shake. The other variable is how far the sensor can move, and this is the one that no-one ever tests, but it's the one that's more important. The reason that travel is more important is that once you shake the camera by more than the amount its IBIS motors can move, you go from having a 7.5 stop stabilisation to a 0-stop reduction. The GH5 stabilisation was beloved by all because of how far it could move, not by how much it reduced the vibration when it was within range (which was similar to OIS lenses). MFT has an inherent advantage in this sense, but there's no way to really know how much this is in play in reality because no-one tests it. I would imagine that FF sensors have gotten better at this, but I max out the GH5 IBIS regularly, and I suspect others do as well otherwise they wouldn't have praised the IBIS back in 2017, so the last thing I want is less stabilisation! People love to compare the strengths of cameras, but when you start comparing the weaknesses, the GH6 actually does pretty well, because most features aren't so weak that they're worth talking about, or are overblown. I mean, what are the weaknesses of the GH6? It's AF isn't the best in the world - well sure but it beats the living crap out of every AFS and non-AF camera ever made, which until the last 5 years was basically every camera The base ISO of 2000 for the DR boost mode is high - it's 1.3 stops higher than ISO 800 which is the common base ISO for millions of cameras Its battery life is about an hour (I've heard people say 80 minutes of record time) - what was the battery life of the P4K and P6K cameras again? I've forgotten. It's expensive and large for an MFT camera - actually it's pretty small when you consider its got a fan, tilt/flip screen, EVF, records to a very high bitrate professional codec internally, IBIS, and a flag-ship number of knobs and buttons It also has this streaking issue that definitely isn't acceptable but I suspect will get sorted in firmware, and it also hasn't gotten the promised update to implement Prores in 4K and 1080p (which I suspect will also come with higher quality downsampling in those resolutions) and the USB recording.

I'll happily admit that I repeat myself, but I try and do so only when it adds to the conversation. Just posting negative one-liners - not so much.

Agreed. Film-making is so personal / contextual, which is why a great plethora of various cameras and related equipment abounds. I see pros and cons to the various sensor sizes, everything from 2/3" in smartphones to FF and beyond. The challenge is getting something that best fits your unique needs and preferences. Fair enough. We all have individual preferences. Not exactly sure why you're commenting this over and over again though? I'm not in the anamorphic lens threads saying how I'll never buy an anamorphic lens - it wouldn't accomplish anything.

I'm not sure it will take years, but it's not here yet. I'm in no hurry. A GH5ii isn't a bad purchase actually. Yeah, I don't know much about sensor design but the guy said it was an issue of CMOS sensors and that you have to compensate for it. The problem seemed to be something that could crop up in real use.

I thought the topic was "things you can buy". ....but if you must limit it to film things, the best double feature I have ever seen was Clueless and Clockers. A true pairing, if ever there was one.

Great video showing the streaking issues that the GH6 has with its current firmware version, and comparing the streaking with other cameras that share the same technology (FX3, Red V-Raptor, Pocket 6K Pro, S1H, and GH5).. Spoiler, the GH6 is worse than the others, but all the others (except the V-Raptor) have some degree of streaking. My read on it is that since it appears to be heavily influenced by the ISO value and DR boost feature that this is something they can probably improve in future firmware updates. We all know the camera isn't really "fully baked" yet as it still doesn't have Prores in 1080p or 4K modes, and lacks other features that Panasonic promised on release. I think they rushed it out to stem the bleeding from all the "MFT is dead" BS from people who don't actually shoot anything, and will gradually improve it in future versions.

I never said it wasn't legitimate, just that that's what they did. In terms of it being a gripe, it's still got better battery than P4K and P6K, despite those cameras being enormous in comparison. I'd prefer it be smaller than it is and be lower-resolution and therefore need less processing and therefore be smaller and still have better battery life. You'd prefer it to be larger with better battery. We'd both prefer it had 27 stops of DR. This is camera-land..... where no-one gets what they want.

It's backwards compatible with the GH5. Plus the camera supports lots of other power options so you can make it bigger if you want to.

If they lift the camera above their heads then boom... drone shot! Let's put those 7' tall people to work!! People have been saying this about every latest thing when it gets overused. I am against not using the tools and techniques that are creatively relevant to the project. Gimbals create a certain type of motion that is appropriate for a certain aesthetic, but inappropriate for all others. Same with literally every other camera support and technique for holding a camera in 3-dimensional space. There's a reason that Hollywood still uses hand-held, sliders, cranes, dollies, and static locked-off shots - they all work. Same with focal lengths, degrees of background defocus, shutter angles, frame-rates, etc. It's all aesthetics. Learning how to use each technique turns you into a camera operator, learning when to use each one is a fundamental requirement to being more than a technician. Sadly, most people don't progress beyond this. Most won't be able to articulate why they are doing what they're doing beyond basic technical concerns (cameras shake, etc).

Double cheeseburger

I agree, and I've come to think about under/over latitude tests as the measure of useful DR from a camera. I haven't yet gotten an understanding of how this usable DR relates to absolute DR, but early observations are that they seem to be proportional. As someone who incorrectly exposes, almost exclusively, this is the main concern I have. Obviously if you're pulling things up (I don't often overexpose) then noise and the various characters of that noise become significant, but NR is very good these days, so it's the strange colour shifts that I find are what limits this.

I've done several international trips where I was filming with the GH5 and my wife was taking photos with her iPhone - often while standing right next to each other, and when I got home and got copies of all her photos I found that the colour that the iPhone had for its still images was very impressive. Colours looked bright, punchy, giving that clean commercial look where the world looks nicer than it really is. That's a hard look to do in post, and I tried a few times to grade my GH5 HLG footage to match it, but at the time wasn't able to get that close. I've learned a lot about colour grading since then (and still have practically an infinite amount more to learn) but I definitely made a note that I should try and match the two. Apple have done a great job of their image processing, that's for sure.

DR is highly susceptible to processing, like highly highly susceptible, so if there's any change to how the camera processes the image, or there's any change to how it is processed in post then the DR measurement will reflect that. It could be that something like the debayering is different etc based on the metadata from the cameras (ie, not something that he did) or even that it got upgraded int he software in the meantime. I'm starting to lose trust in DR measurements as the more I look at it the more I find that it's sensitive to things that don't matter in the real world, and isn't sensitive to things that really matter in the real world. Not saying that DR itself doesn't matter - far from it - but the way it gets measured I think isn't a good representation of that.

Gimbals and drones.

I'm alway torn between things being functional and being small/light. I would absolutely rig out a camera if it wasn't too large/heavy for what I am doing (shooting personal projects under the radar). The functionality of a rig like yours above is hard to argue with. 8lb though... hand-holding that for hours - my arm would fall off! I've heard other people who shoot minimally use that as a line to help with concerned clients. Just saying "this is how I shot all my work - including <project the client mentioned during the sales process>". Nah, it's cheap LEDs that the problem!

Yes, you only have to add a few items before the size of most camera bodies is visually irrelevant. As someone trying to get the best image quality while actively NOT looking professional, it's extremely inconvenient that this is the case!

New Sirui FF cine lenses... Caleb describes them as being like rehoused vintage lenses, combining the optical properties of vintage glass (flares and haze) with the solid build of rehouses, but for significantly less cost / hassle than the "real thing". More benefits from cheap Chinese manufacturing responding to the vintage lens craze. Good stuff IMHO.

One of my favourite YouTubers is Martijn Doolaard who is renovating a cabin in the Italian Alps and besides the obvious fact that he's a great cinematographer / editor / storyteller, the frequency of fog in the shots I think makes a huge difference. He recently did a Q&A and mentioned his equipment and it's nothing special (A73 and DJI drone) but the footage just looks magical a lot of the time.

I can't remember where I saw it, but somewhere I saw someone from ARRI saying they have been working on the new sensor for years and had one ready to go years ago but the quality wasn't up to their standards and so they went back to R&D. The message was that they weren't in any hurry (as they had 4K+ in the LF) and that quality is their highest priority. It makes sense too - they could easily have released a 4K S35 sensor by now (or a decade ago) if quality wasn't their highest priority. I think ARRI (and their IQ) pairing 4K (and instant Netflix approval) with S35 (and all the lenses that are out there) will be a very popular option. It'll be the "safe" option in a world where 4K is a magical number for cameras (despite not being so for eyeballs).

If you can handle the form-factor.....

I'm aware it was a fog machine. I've been consistently amazed in BTS videos of large productions the sheer quantity of fog that some productions have - and the fact that there are machines capable of generating so much of it. I have vague recollections from before digital of a movie adding fog to several entire hills to get the fog-in-trees look while doing a huge dolly-up on a crane that went from the subjects up through the canopy and out the top to show the hills of trees with fog. Must have been an army of people in the forrest with machines all set to full-blast! Colours in the images look really nice too BTW 🙂

Good post. To clarify I was comparing RAW Linear with compressed Log in the context of ETTR vs exposing for middle grey. ETTR is a great strategy if you're using Linear RAW and don't mind compensating for the level changes in post. The Alexa is a bit special in this way (I believe) as it can output Log in very high-bitrate 12-bit 444, compared to (say) the GH5 200-400Mbps 10-bit 422 log, so the Alexa has an enormous amount more latitude just because of the codec. It's also special in the sense the readout from the sensor is a higher bit depth than the Log codec. On a camera with a 12-bit sensor output, if that was transformed into a 12-bit Log profile then the highlights would lose the effective bit-depth they had when in Linear, but the other stops wouldn't really benefit much because although the 12-bit log has better bit-depth for the lower stops, the limitation would always be the bit-depth from the Linear readout. Regardless, having a 12-bit sensor readout converted to a 10-bit log profile in-camera is probably good enough for almost all applications - I've tried to break the 10-bit HLG on the GH5 by applying curves that were severe beyond reason and the image held up. Of course, the thing missing from most consumer cameras is a decent codec, like Prores HQ or 4444. I'm really looking forward to the GH6 update to see how the 1080p Prores looks. Unfortunately most cameras have really weak internal h264/5 implementations and the in-camera downscaling is often very poor. I suspect the push towards RAW in this segment is partly a way to deliver better image quality without having to design cameras that can scale and compress properly or having to buy a Prores license. Unfortunately it then means they run into the challenges around internal compressed RAW and so we end up with tiny cameras needing an SSD or external recorder strapped to them. Hardly ideal.

@TomTheDP In addition to the above, and I don't know if it's related to DR or not, but the more modern cameras seem to have much better behaviour in their under/over exposure tests. I had the impression on older cameras that when you went under/over significantly that colour shifts and strange / unpleasant behaviour crept in before clipping or noise, whereas now most cameras seem to have only very subtle colour shifts right up until they clip or get overtaken by noise. Maybe I'm getting that wrong, but the DR that exists between noise and clipping is far less relevant if the usable DR between strange colour shifts the dominant restriction.