bjohn

That all makes sense. I bought my BMPCC and BMMCCs for a documentary project (and future doc projects) and they'll work for that; most of my doc work is music-related and I don't need a "run and gun" setup. But I do a lot of concert and dance photography and am occasionally being asked to do video as well, and that's where something faster and easier to use would be helpful. My big requirement there is low-light performance, and it seems that despite its smaller sensor the GH7 might be better in that department than the FX30 (the FX3 is out of my price range, although the Nikon Z6iii could be a contender), plus I'd get the advantages of more depth of field (and thus more forgiving manual focus) when shooting MFT. I'm in no rush to make a decision as I can get by with my current cameras for now, but I definitely want a simpler, hand-holdable and faster option available when I need it.

Definitely useful. The big lesson I keep relearning is that it's more important to get the shot than to have optimal image quality; of course if you can do both that's ideal, but in my case I find that I rarely shoot video because my cameras are so cumbersome to set up and operate. For Halloween evening I got asked to make a short video of the trick-or-treaters in our neighbourhood and first I set out to do it with my OG Pocket, handheld (with three points of stabilization) but it all took so long and I kept having to adjust focus etc. that I quickly switched to my iPhone and got much better video for much less effort. "Better" in this case means I grabbed shots I would have missed with the Pocket; the Pocket video looked better but I was able to achieve much more with auto exposure and autofocus on the phone. The GH7 seems like a good idea, since the only autofocus lens I own is a Panasonic (the 12-35 zoom) and I have some nice manual MFT lenses I could use on it. But I use Sony for photography and have a huge collection of lenses that I use on E-mount with adapters (I have no Sony lenses and only two native e-mount lenses, which I rarely use). So I have to decide whether to go the GH7 route or the FX-30 route as a more practical video camera with built-in stabilization, autofocus, etc.

Yeah, I think the BMPCC 4K would be a more practical choice. Another problem is that even though the new Micro 4K collects gyro data, there's no way to enter lens information into the menu so the gyro doesn't actually work....at least for now, maybe that's something they could fix in firmware, but as a studio camera it's unlikely their target users would ever use gyro stabilization to begin with.

That's a good point of course, and I keep thinking about getting one of those cameras, especially since it looks like I could use all the same gear I use with my BMMCC. The only thing that put me off initially was the inability to play back what you've recorded, at least in-camera; that's important for me mainly when I'm shooting video in places with artificial lighting (especially stage lights) so I can check to be sure there's no flicker (that would require changing the shutter angle). I could record to a Video Assist and play back on that, which could be a simple solution although it means buying a new monitor (I have a Video Assist but it's an old one that's not compatible with this camera and the batteries run out after about 15-20 minutes).

There is a cheaper OLPF for these cameras available from Alt Cine, although I believe they make them in small batches which means there's a waiting list, and I haven't seen any reviews. https://altcinecam.com/product/altcine-optical-low-pass-filter/

I read a couple of years ago that the newest version of the Rawlite OLPF for the OG BMPCC and BMMCC has much less impact on sharpness than the original one did. I bought mine (two, one for each BMMCC) in 2019 and 2020 so not sure if that's the latest version but the images are sharp enough for me, keeping in mind that for video I have a personal preference for less sharpness (though it's better to have sharpness and dial it back than to try to add sharpness that isn't in the image to begin with). I have occasionally experienced moiré on my OG BMPCC (which doesn't have an OLPF) but the main reason I got the OLPF was to avoid having to use UV-cut filters on my lenses. One less thing to think about and carry with me.

Yeah, it was the building pans where I noticed the IBIS artifacts. In theory gyro should do a better job here because IBIS is always playing catchup; it's very fast but the lag can produce noticeable artifacts. There is no lag with gyro, but there's a crop and you have to use a lower shutter angle (typically 90 or even 45 degrees) and then add back motion blur in post. The lower shutter angle is to counteract situations in which the camera is moving faster than the exposure time per frame; if you use a 180 degree shutter angle the camera will often be moving faster than the exposure time per frame and you'll get blurry images.

Nice! Did you use IBIS or gyro for stabilization? I definitely see some catch-up jerkiness in the pans and some of the tilts so assume IBIS.

The lack of IBIS seems like a bad idea, though -- how effective will that electronic stabilization be? Probably most users will be shooting this handheld unless they really are thinking of it for vlogging where it'll be sitting on a tripod.

Working on these videos, where I'm panning from reasonably well-lit musicians to dancers who are basically in the dark, makes me realize that I need to make the effort to keyframe my colour grades. I've been too lazy but with Resolve's auto-keyframing it shouldn't be much work. In this last one I posted, there's too much contrast and saturation on the musicians because I boosted it for the dancers.

More low-light video with the BMMCC. Sigma 18-35 with speedbooster. I did some light denoising on this; there's certainly still noise in the footage of the dancers but that level of noise doesn't bother me.

Came across this potentially useful video. A newer trick to try is to use the density and saturation tools in Resolve's new Color Slice tool. The saturation controls there are by far the best in Resolve, and density makes a huge difference as well. I don't know how well they work on 8-bit footage but if I ever shoot any (I do have a Sony A7s that I still haven't used for video beyond a few experiments) I'll try.

I assume the old Canon D Mark II was 8-bit, right? It was used to shoot this (which was actually a clothing advert masquerading as a short film; the trailer was released and the other segments are available on Vimeo but no full-length film was ever released):

It sure is ugly, but I don't care as long as it takes great pictures, which it does. 🙂

I have several film cameras now (Leica M2-R, Canon P, Minolta XD, Mamiya C330) but the one I'm using most these days is a Fuji Work Record, a point-and-shoot film camera that was made up until 2006. It has an excellent Fujinon 28mm/3.5 lens and is totally waterproof (submersible to 1 meter) so I can shoot in the rain and snow with no worries. It cost me $90 USD in mint condition with the original box and manual (which is all in Japanese; this camera was never sold outside of Japan). I made an album of some of the photos I've taken with it here: https://www.lomography.com/homes/bernache/albums/2465864-fuji-work-record