Rick_B

@Kisaha It was actually your passionate advocacy for the Focus in a thread from a few months back that encouraged me to take another look at the real benefits that I'd be getting for spending the extra cash, and to take another look at the reviews. When I factored in that the mount is good enough that people were looking to get it for non-SmallHD monitors, general enthusiasm for the touch interface (which most inexpensive options don't have, or if they do, it has issues), questions about support/documentation for the inexpensive options, and that I am an "Apple guy" (we have 4 Macs, 3 iPads, and 2 iPhones in a household of 2 people) and like setups that I know will work well out-of-the-box, it seemed like the best choice. Also, just realized that I didn't do the @ thing right in my earlier thanks, so thanks again to @KnightsFan for all the info on the A5!

Thanks to all for the input! After going back over some reviews, I realized that I might have been conflating Focus OLED reviews with the regular Focus, which has generally gotten very solid reviews (with some misgivings about the custom cable). Along with the recommendations here and a couple things I like about the available Focus kits (basically comes with everything I'd need, plus the Sony dummy battery that I can use for personal stuff with my RX10 IV), I decided to go the SmallHD route in the end. Should be here Monday. Thanks to @Mmmbeats for the pointer on possible mount issues - I'll keep an eye on it. Thanks also to @KnightsFan for the detailed response regarding the Lilliput A5 - I very nearly went that route, but since I've been able to get some good deals on the rest of my kit, I decided to splurge a bit on this piece.

First off - I don't claim to be a filmmaker. I'm a photographer with a decent eye, dipping my toes in video out of economic necessity. I'm in process on my first decent-paying video job, and I'm trying to address the pain points I discovered on that shoot. I am, for the foreseeable future, an Olympus shooter. The original E-M5 was my first mirrorless, when I was looking to lighten my 5DII/7D bag after a year of shooting professionally. I've dabbled with Panasonic, but they just never took for me. For the low end stuff I'm currently doing, 100mb 4k is fine - I've had an E-M1 II for a couple years, and just added an E-M10 III as a second camera based largely on the review here (the camera wasn't reviewed particularly favorably in photo circles because of the simplification/feature deletions). I like the size/weight of my current gear, don't want to take the resale hit of switching to something dramatically different (Fuji), and can't justify the likely $2k+ cost to get something more serious right now (GH5/BMPCC4k) until I know I can generate business. The one remaining place that I think I could invest in right now is an on-camera monitor - I didn't miss focus on my shoot, but I can see how I easily could have in the right (wrong?) circumstances. I don't need a recorder, as my cameras only output 8bit over HDMI and I'm outputting to 1080p for web viewing, so the boost in color fidelity doesn't really move the needle for me. Olympus doesn't have a real log LUT, so that's another thing I don't really need. I want to stay in the 5-6" range to keep weight down, given the size of my current cameras. I was looking at a SmallHD Focus as a possibility, but then realized that, like just about everything other than the Ninja V, it won't do 4k60p if I get to that point (I may not), so what am I really getting to justify their $600-700 setup vs. any of the whacky Chinese brands at $200-300? SmallHD's reviews are all over the map, and some hate the "special" micro-HDMI cable they use on the Focus. My main need is something with a cold shoe mount arm with a separate cold shoe to mount my mic/recorder, reasonably bright screen, good peaking/zoom for focus checking, zebras for exposure (scopes would be nice, but probably not necessary at this point). So, among the flurry of Feelworld models, iKan DH5e, Lilliput A5, MustHD, BestView S5, etc - what is the best bang for the buck? Any I should absolutely avoid? Or should I bite the bullet and get a SmallHD? Thanks for any pointers.