EphraimP

I can 100 percent recommend these Lindy cables through Amazon. I use two of them at present on my T3 and T4. I also have a UGREEN high speed cable that works. Here's the absolute MUST for using micro HDMI cables, in case you don't already know. You've got to use a cable clamp or you WILL break your cables, and fast. That means you've got to get a cage for the T3 if you don't already have one. And when you're buying the HDMI cable, buy at least two. You'll definitely want a spare in your bag in case something happens on set. I haven't used a clamp on the full size side of the HDMI cable until just this week, when I picked up a Nitze monitor cage/sun hood/monitor mount combo (for about the same price as the Atomos branded sun hood alone). I find the full size connection to be much more robust and harder to disengage, but it never hurts to clamp it. There are cable clamps available that aren't a full cage and bolt right to the Atomos. As for SSDs, save yourself some cash (maybe to pay for a cage) and go with the WD Blue. I currently have two 1TB WD Blue SSDs, one for each camera. I've used them for more than a year, hours and hours of record time, and they work flawlessly. Yes, they stick out a bit from the monitor, but that's not an issue at all.

The Ronin S supports Fuji, both charging and stop/start record. So I assume their other gimbals do as well. Interestingly, the S can also control Fuji native lens focus with the Ronin focus wheel and no external focus motor. The wheel can control the internal focus motors of the lenses. When they first introduced this in firmware, it canceled out autofocus, meaning all Fuji lenses became manual focus only when the camera was plugged into the gimbal. Now, I believe, autofocus will work and you can use the wheel to adjust focus even while autofocus in on. Not 100 percent sure about that though. I should probably test it. Shows how much I use my gimbal these days.

Yeah, people are putting out lots of types of content. In my estimate, I didn't include derivative pieces, like when I make a 3-5 minute piece for Facebook and then 1-minute or less versions of the same content for Instagram/Twitter, or even for paid ads on Facebook. I almost always do that, so one video becomes two or even three. Now one of the social media managers who I feed work to is talking about snipping it up for Tik Tok. And you cut out livestreaming, which is becoming more and more important. I did between 7 and 10 multi-cam livestreams in the past 12 months (can't think of them all right now) and they were definitely complicated and involved a serious learning curve on both the shooting and switching (editing) side. You really need to be able to make snap decisions and think on fly, plus know your gear well enough to nail everything the first time. Many of these shoots involved at least one other shoot, plus a sound engineer. I even ran the switcher for one livestream where we had remote camera crews in two states. And almost all them involved some level of preproduction; creating lower thirds, photo or video assets to switch into the stream, logo bugs. So, yeah, switching a good multi-cam livestream is a lot like editing a video, only harder. You can't just fix it in post 😉

I have larger bags by ThinkTank and Porta Brace. Both are well made and durable. The ThinkTank is particularly nice. It's definitely a tank in terms of padding. I'd recommend either brand. Are you just looing for a bag to transport your gear, or something like a soundie's recorder bag you can work out of on set? I'm personally thinking a chest rig type bag might be a good idea for what I do -- recording sound for my own shoots to a MixPre 3. I'm interested to hear suggestions for that. If you just mean a bag to carry the RX and TX around in, you might already have something that will work. I have a couple of soft bags my various lenses came in that I don't use for the lenses. One of them is a drawstring suede bag with a leather bottom from my 17-40 F4 L (I think). It works great for containing both of my Sony UWP-D11 systems, for transport in a backpack or one of my bigger backs. Maybe you already have something like that lying around?

Because I shoot for nonprofit agencies mostly (that's NGOs for you non-American types 😉), the videos I shoot are pretty issue specific and not at all redundant. Just yesterday I was up in a wetlands restoration project that had been burned out in a major forest fire. The Forest Service and our local land trust are replanting it. The clips I got from it will go into a three-part series of social media shorts about how the land trust and its partners are helping the community and the ecosystem rebound from this devastating event. And I maybe be able to use it in a longer term documentary about the fire and its aftermath in context of climate change and the increase of severe wildfires in our region. That's definitely not redundant content and I'm really excited/motivated to tell these important stories. Maybe the answer to feeling like you're creating redundant content is to find unique stories that feel like they have value to you and shoot them!

For the past two years, I had 20-25 videos I shot and edited (not films, really) posted to various social media platforms. And last year I edited another 30 short videos for social media with assets provided to me by others. This was as a part-time professional. This year I went full-time, so I should see an increase in volume of output. I definitely have learned a ton from watching tutorials online and also agree that practice makes perfect, especially on the shooting side of things. Familiarity with gear is huge.

Ugh. You should warn a guy before you link to a Peter McKinnon video. 😉

Yeah, that's true. Mostly I was trying to be funny.

Fair, I missed that. I'm not saying we can't compare different cameras. My point was that it's pretty subjective to list one or two points and say that one camera is definitely better than the other because of only those points. Yeah, I think the Sony variable END is an amazing feature and I wish Canon had it. On the other hand, the Dual Gain sensor means the C70 is batting at full frame levels when in comes to noise, even before adding on the speedbooster and gaining a stop of light -- but not in all modes and all ISO, which Canon will hopefully improve in future models. I think that's probably as big a deal as bringing a full frame sensor, maybe a bigger deal if they keep refining the implementation. Arri anyone? And the C70's ability to utilize EF lenses as if they were native plus the modern, short flange RF mount is pretty huge. How many more EF lenses are there in the world right now than E Mount? Any single shooter's style and experience are going to seriously color their perspective on what makes a camera better. And because final image quality is so close at the end of the day and honestly the end viewer can't tell the difference in all but the most extreme circumstances, what makes an individual shooter more comfortable getting the right shot is more important than technical gains at this point, IMHO. Honestly, my "perfect" camera at this price range, which is the price range I'm ready to invest in for my next body, is probably a mashup of these two cameras. If I could get the FX6's form factor and e-VND and Canon's RF mount with EF adapter I'd be happy camper. I fall into the camp of thinking that Canon still has better out of the box color and IQ than the FX line, but the difference is damn close. So I feel it's a tossup between Sony's FF sensor and Canon's Dual Gain S35 sensor. I'm (not) holding my breath to see what the rumored C200 Mark 2 looks like when it comes out in April. Most clients paying for work shot on cameras at this price point won't be able to see the difference even if we can split hairs over it on the board. The people who watch the videos I make online sure as hell won't notice. If I'm doing my job right they'll be wrapped up in the story.

Ha! Curtis Judd has the flattest affect ever. I mean, some of his videos are very helpful and all, but that dude is speaks in middle grey. You and me both! But if you can't afford an audio guy, you gotta be the audio guy. And if you take this stuff seriously at all, you quickly learn just how important audio is.

I'm with you. I think reliable autofocus is key to shooting on a singlehanded gimbal, unless you're locking the focus and maintaining the right distance from your subject. Of course, I'm not the best gimbal operator and prefer handheld shooting. I personally don't think pulling focus with a wireless system on a single handed gimbal is all that great an idea for a single shooter. If I were doing a lot of gimbal shooting and wanted to pull focus for myself, I'd probably build out my Ronin-S, or an S2, with a ring grip and Easy Rig type backpack stabilizer or the Tilta Float -- basically a support system that transfers some/all of the gimbal weight to my core so my right hand can focus on framing the shot and my left could run the focus wheel without having to provide stability. And of course I'd rig my Ninja V or another monitor to pull focus from instead of the camera's rear screen. Both of those solutions are spendy and the bulkiness/rigging complications dilutes the simplicity of a good small gimbal. On the other hand, the type of shots you can get with a Arri Trinity style stabilizer system are dope. If I did a lot of music video content, I'd definitely buy the Tilta Float, which can work with the Ronin-S. Since I personally shoot mostly doc-style stuff, I'll probably going the Easy Rig route. Do you still have the X-T3? If so, maybe make sure the firmware is up to the new version and play with autofocus settings for each lens you want to use to see if you can find a sweet spot for your intended use.

I'm not a C70 or FX6 shooter, but I gotta say, nothing new here. Yes, the Sony leads in low light/low light AF and the electronic ND. But, as has been discussed on YouTube and on this site and others endlessly, and in the video itself, there are other factors to consider, including ergonomics, noise, dynamic range, timecode availability, xlr port placement, etc. In the end, as with most near competitors, the whether one camera is "better" than the other based on an individual shooter's workflow, experience with a brand's ecosystem, shooting style and the lenses and other gear they already own. Both cameras can produce pretty great images, in the end. Like the dude in the video says, it's about the system you have/want to go with.

While you can definitely rig the nano to work on a gimbal. I wouldn't put too much faith in the unit itself. It's more -sumer than pro. I've had so many issues with it that I hesitate to use it on paid gigs, especially high pressure situations.

You're right about the additional powering solution. Fixed on a tripod indoors for something like a livestream or studio shoot, it's no problem to run it off mains power with the included power adaptor. For mobile shoots, you can turn that particular lemon into lemonade by using a V-mount battery or an NP-F battery with USB and DC outlets to also power you camera (with a dummy battery or a USB-C cable) and even another accessory. I have one rig built up with mini-cine style with a V-mount and two of the super cheap Powerextra 48 Wh batteries for my more minimalistic setup and they work great. The balance can be an issue with a heavy battery up high if you go the NP-F route. I personally tend to mount the monitor off to the left on that rig either on top of a side handle or just using a magic arm as a field-expedient side handle off the nato rail built into the side of my cage. If you go with a side handle or just on top of the camera/cage/top handle, do yourself a favor and use a monitor mount like Smallrig's that you can tighten with an allen key. Regular ball heads will always come loose. I think I'm going to try one of the Nitzi mounts because they tighten with an allen key AND are the only monitor mounts I've found with Arri-style locating pins. I'm not sure why no one else has them. The monitor is built for them and why wouldn't you want to it in so it won't twist when you are trying to swivel it?! Even the ballhead I got from Atomos kit doesn't have them for crying out loud. Anyway, probably deeper into the weeds than you were interested in. But there you go.

I'm not sure why you couldn't have flown your X-T3 on the Ronin S and done everything that the a6500 did, aside from perhaps a difference in AF in some situations. The Fujis are certainly going to give you better AF than the S5, and the latest firmware increases the AF to X-T4 levels.

Dang, that would make at least for of us on this board. I'm kinda shocked. It's a pretty small place, taken from a global perspective. You can probably find/rent a Ninja V pretty easy up in PDX. I've got two down here in Eugene. If you were close enough to make it worth while, I'd let you play with one for a few hours to see if it is something you'd be interested in using and/or rent you one when you needed it. I use them with Fuji X-Ts and definitely appreciate all the pro features they add to the camera, plus the much bigger screen to monitor and capturing in ProRes.

I'd say that's a bit of an overstatement. You may not need any of this year's new offerings, or last years. But you have no idea what other professionals are shooting on, or what equipment will make their jobs easier or what will help them book more jobs or sell more productions or help them boost their rates. If you don't like the way the market's trending, awesome! Vote with your wallet. I won't be getting an FX3, or a A7SIII for that matter, or an FX6, a Pocket 6K Pro, or an R5 or an R6. But I'm not going to pretend that just because these cameras, or Panasonics offerings or any number of other cameras out there don't work for me, are not the right camera for someone else. The whole idea of individual shooters determining what other people need is quite silly. Yes, the market might offer a whole lot of choices a whole lot more quickly than it did in the past. Some of it is pure marketing, as the FX3 seems to be. But a fair amount of it is due to more rapid technical innovation, some of it is due to market disruptors like BMD and the new breed of Chinese cine camera companies forcing the big dogs to compete on price and features. And some of it is camera companies scrambling to see what features and body styles will get a shrinking market excited. In the end, we actually benefit from these new releases, if we're smart enough to weigh the options carefully and only buy what we as individual shooters need and can swing. That's the way I see it, anyway.

Yeah, I'm over Matti and Peter and that whole crew of YouTube influencers with their increasingly worthless camera "reviews" and their endless blogs about their hipster lifestyles. Back in the day they actually posted useful videos about shooting and editing techniques, plus their shtick was new and interesting at that point and not totally played out. 0f course, I've come to learn that some of their tips, like how to conform 60p footage to a 23.976 timeline were ass backwards and causing problems with a proxy workflow. Gerald Undone, on the hand, is still pretty good on his reviews. I did watch his review of the FX3, and it's pretty spot on. It hits a lot of the same points as folks on this thread have brought up, including that the biggest real differences between in at the A7SIII are the tally lights, lack of viewfinder, button changeups and the handle with integrated XLR module. He makes a great point that if you are a video first shooter who doesn't really care about the EVF and does care about XLR mics, than the FX3 is a bit cheaper than the SIII and an XLR module. Other than that, it's pretty much the same princess in a different dress.

Belt and suspenders baby, belt and suspenders. I definitely use lavs. Whenever possible I use a shotgun as well. If we're not too far from vehicles and doing a formal interview, I have boom a shotgun over talent from a c-stand or light stand. I've drafted people who are part of the group I'm interviewing but not being interviewed at the moment to hold the boom, under the camera's site line. It's almost guaranteed that they'll move the boom up into the frame of the wide angel at some point, but I typically shoot in 4K for a 1080 timeline. I've even held the boom myself once or twice, while running cameras and directing the interview; that's a pain in the ass. If we're doing a moving interview or I'm filming people in their natural habitat, as it were, I'll run a lav on talent and an on camera shotgun. In these situations the lav is usually the best sound, but it never hurts to have multiple tracks to choose from. The biggest problem I have with booms in the field isn't usually how to get it over/under talent, it's wind noise or other atmospheric noise like highway traffic or river noise. This winter I finally got a Rycote blimp. It's supposedly for Rhode mics, but of course it fits my Deity S2 perfectly.

I've been running a machine with a similar spec for a year or so, 3950X with 64G ram and a card upgrade to a 2080 Super. No experience with the S5/S1H though. I do edit H.265 files from an M2P and H.265 files from X-T3s and T4s, which are both 10-bit 420. Doing simple edits to a few clips is fine, but I find the machine gets cranky if I am really layering the H.265 files and doing color grades plus heavy effects live warp stabilizing. I agree with @fuzzynormal that proxy editing is the way to go. It's pretty simple and quick to load your batch of files into your Premiere project and then batch create proxies. If storage is an issue, you can trash all the proxies when you finish a project and just remake them if you use the footage again at a later date.

There are lots of interview situations that don't call for a chair, or where one isn't even possible. I, for instance, shoot mainly doc-style pieces for environmental nonprofits as a solo shooter, which means 70-85 percent of my works happens outdoors, in the field. Thus, standing interviews are a must almost all the time for me. And even if you tell someone to stand on a mark and not move their body too much, most of them are going to move in some way or another as you get deep into the interview, especially if you get them comfortable with the camera and really into what they are talking about. And if possible, I'm running two cameras in these interviews, so I can cut between different angles to add interest to the piece and hide cuts that would be obvious I only had one camera angle. If you are trying to get non-pro subjects to say scripted lines, I find you're going to get a pretty wooden delivery most of the time, no matter if your subject is sitting or standing. As a former journalist, in my experience I get much better results if I do a traditional interview and get my subjects really talking about the topic at hand, even if I have some very clear bullet points of information I need them to say. I find getting people comfortable enough with the camera that they forget in the moment that it's rolling is key to getting an good clip. People getting animated and moving around a bit and talking with their hands gives me the most impactful interview material. Basically, if I can film interviews that feel like the subject is just talking to someone (off camera) with all the normal ticks and motions and conversational gestures people expect in a real conversation, the end result is many times better than having someone say scripted lines to the camera. And there are lots of times in doc work where you want to see your subject moving around while talking. It doesn't have to be an interview necessarily; you might want your subject inspecting a logging site or in a burnt-out forest and talking about what they see, or walking along a river that's the subject of your piece telling a story that is relevant to your video. Or maybe you want your subject talking while driving or riding in a car to an important destination, or through a critical scene. Or you might be recording a protest or town hall meeting or some other live event where you can't direct who is speaking or how they are moving. In all of these situations, having really good AF-C, especially with face tracking, can be extremely helpful for a single shooter or a small crew without a dedicated focus-puller. And none of them has anything to do with what a pack of self-referential YouTubers recommend or another dreadful blog about someone making coffee or riding a One Wheel around Toronto or LA. They are real-world situations that professional shooters encounter every day. If they are not situations you shoot in, great. But it would be silly to discount them. Is perfect autofocus a must? No. I do a lot of manual focus in these situations. But solid autofocus is a valuable tool that shooters like me want access to. It definite factors into my camera buying decisions. It's not the only factor I consider, but I'd probably rate it higher than a lot of other features such as RAW shooting or open gate/true anamorphic modes. It just comes down to what each individual shooter prioritizes in their work. In the end, none of the cameras out today are perfect, but it's awesome that we have so many choices and so many key features and jumps in quality are filtering down to sub-$10K and even sub-$5K cameras.

The micro HDMI on my Mavic 2 Pro broke as well. That one was user error on my part (I tried to plug the charger in the wrong way) but they are pretty fragile and break without much force. Luckily it was easy to swap out the board that the port is on at home. I'm not so sure it would be easy to replace a port on a camera. If you are using micro-HDMI ports on a camera, I think it's critical to use a cage and clamp, both to protect the cable and port and also to make sure you don't have the cable come loose during a shoot. I agree heartily that cameras that can't host an SDI or full-size HDMI port should go to something like a USB-C port that's reversible and stronger.

True, in terms of 10 bit vs 10 bit. When I read Llaasseerr's comment I saw ProRes. Missed the RAW part. I find that ProRes files are some much nicer to use on a long/complicated edit. Plus, you do get the bump from 420 to 422 and a bigger, brighter screen with pro monitoring tools like false color, monitoring luts and desqueezing anamorphic footage.

Ninja V is your pal.

If IBIS isn't a must, I second the notion of getting an X-T3, especially used. It's a great camera. I use mine all the time in combination with my T4, and the latest firmware beefs it up to close to X-T4 performance. The T3 is a better video camera than the H1, even though the H1 was supposed to be their top range APS-C body. Unfortunately, I'm seeing the T3 body only for just over a grand, so it'd be a bit more for a lens, the 18-55 F2.6/4 being an excellent everyday zoom for video with stabilization.