What is the most important spec (to you) ?

[Mattias Burling]

9 minutes ago, DBounce said:

Can you add motion cadence?

Too late, option to edit is gone.

[dbp]

That's another category where the pocket wins.

And despite their flaws, all the old Panasonic CCD cameras. HVX200, HMC150 etc. Motion was so nice. 

[Mattias Burling]

Bolex nailed motion. Ccd + global shutter. Ultimate indie cine cam and still worthy to be called BMPCCii or URSAmicro imo.

[webrunner5]

45 minutes ago, DBounce said:

Can you add motion cadence?

Voodoo stuff in reality. Hard to pin down unless it is Way the hell off. And that is mostly Codec related.

 

34 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

Bolex nailed motion. Ccd + global shutter. Ultimate indie cine cam and still worthy to be called BMPCCii or URSAmicro imo.

Hard camera to beat, but the ergonomics of it is my biggest put off, not counting the price of it when it came out after years of pooping around with it..

[Mattias Burling]

You can rig it out to suite ergonomics.

[DBounce]

1 minute ago, webrunner5 said:

Voodoo stuff in reality. Hard to pin down unless it is Way the hell off. And that is mostly Codec related.

 

Maybe hard to pin down, as most get it woefully wrong. 90% of so called “cinematic” footage only looks “cinematic” in slow mo. There’s are reasons that people almost never show 24p examples of cinematic footage with most of these cameras.

[webrunner5]

6 minutes ago, DBounce said:

Maybe hard to pin down, as most get it woefully wrong. 90% of so called “cinematic” footage only looks “cinematic” in slow mo. There’s are reasons that people almost never show 24p examples of cinematic footage with most of these cameras.

Well if you are like me and HATE Slo Mo stuff you are completely right! 

[Cinegain]

Mweh, it's the sum of all parts. Sony cams e.g. are very good on paper... yet they don't have a camera I'd actually pick up. I'm willing to compromise on some specs, as long as the camera overall outperforms others in terms of overall features, reliability, handling and ultimately bang for buck. And I guess as well the ability to keep lenses fairly small, the thing that really makes a system compact. That's why I went the GH2 route over the 600D/T3i back in the day.

[Mark Romero 2]

Just to clarify, by ISO capabilities do you mean lower noise at higher ISO?

Or do you mean going down to 50 ISO?

As @Matthew Hartman said above, I could deal with nice clean 1080p if it had good dynamic range.

I would get an original a7S if it weren't for the fact that I am looking for something to shoot stills as well and with only 12mp (and the price of sony lenses), it would be too costly because I wouldn't be able to crop stills as much (as I can with my a6500 and the cheaper lenses).

[Emanuel]

I see color is placed in the 2nd choice of users to follow dynamic range. 

Build quality means reliability, it should not be misplaced with ergonomics because they are mixed up stuff.

If I would have had the option for reliability per se, I'd have chosen it straightaway.

Ergo is pretty subjective. What fits you is well able to not match the taste of anyone and vice versa.

[Mattias Burling]

All of them are subjective. That doesn't in anyways matter for the poll.

[Don Kotlos]

There are plenty of things that go in a camera so while these polls are fun, they shouldn't be used for generalizations. 

For example I don't mind about the resolution per se. I would be happy with 1080p if is coming from oversampling with no aliasing artifacts. Also dynamic range is less important once you go above 12 stops but the noise in each step might affect that. I would also place reduced rolling shutter quite high on the list. I have come to appreciate smooth auto iso as well. The list of course goes on and on and it is fairly subjective. So I could never reduce a camera to one spec. 

[Matthew Hartman]

6 minutes ago, Don Kotlos said:

There are plenty of things that go in a camera so while these polls are fun, they shouldn't be used for generalizations.

I thought this would be assumed when the question asked if you had to pick one?

 I definitely agree one should'nt make any conclusions from this style of poll. So much goes into filmmaking in general, let alone the camera and it's qualities. 

In fact, the more experience I gain with filmmaking, especially narrative, I grow in my understanding that the camera has so little to do with storytelling in this medium, if that any makes sense. There's way more pre and post production than the actual production, and I love it all!

Well, I don't love producing. ? 

[fuzzynormal]

For what I do, I'm finding ergos and IBIS extremely important, which is why I'm still missing owning a EM5II. [sad face]

23 hours ago, DBounce said:

Can you add motion cadence?

Well, I tend to not use the 180 shutter on my GH5.  When shooting 24fps, I'll shoot a SS of 40 or 30, for instance.  I'll even go to 25 depending.  I like the increased blur a little better with LUMIX --but it's really a matter of taste... BTW, I do think shooting 50fps SS is perfectly fine and looks decent; just like to take the edge off my images a little bit.

1 hour ago, Matthew Hartman said:

the camera has so little to do with storytelling

So so so little.  IQ is certainly great, but it doesn't do the writing or acting.

[Matthew Hartman]

36 minutes ago, fuzzynormal said:

For what I do, I'm finding ergos and IBIS extremely important, which is why I'm still missing owning a EM5II. [sad face]

Well, I tend to not use the 180 shutter on my GH5.  When shooting 24fps, I'll shoot a SS of 40 or 30, for instance.  I'll even go to 25 depending.  I like the increased blur a little better with LUMIX --but it's really a matter of taste... BTW, I do think shooting 50fps SS is perfectly fine and looks decent; just like to take the edge off my images a little bit.

So so so little.  IQ is certainly great, but it doesn't do the writing or acting.

Can't you set an incremental shutter speed in the GH5 so that you can nail that golden 180° in 24fps? (1/48th) 

I sure wish my NX1 could allow that. Oddly you can enable it for ISO.

I've been playing with various shutter speeds at 24fps. The carnal rule being you shouldn't go below your FPS. The NX1 won't even allow you to. A lot of ppl assume the 180 rule is religious, but that is incorrect.  

[Emanuel]

17 minutes ago, Matthew Hartman said:

Can't you set an incremental shutter speed in the GH5 so that you can nail that golden 180° in 24fps? (1/48th) 

I sure wish my NX1 could allow that. Oddly you can enable it for ISO.

I've been playing with various shutter speeds at 24fps. The carnal rule being you shouldn't go below your FPS. The NX1 won't even allow you to. A lot of ppl assume the 180 rule is religious, but that is incorrect.  

I'm all out of likes by now, so my double like expressed here now : ) Dogmas can be a real bitch! Open mind is useful even for religious stuff :-)

[mat33]

If the digital bolex came as a black metal box with lots of cool looking holes and grills, was called the DB Ninja and had a free pair of throwing stars included it would have been wildly popular like some other manufacturer that will remain nameless. 

[Castorp]

Easily ergonomics for me. If the camera gets in the way and I make mistakes the specs of the camera doesn’t matter anymore as it can’t compensate for composition et c. Frustration affects my ability to think clearly. 

Being happy and feeling inspired because everything is working has a positive effect on images

The digital Bolex seems like a very good camera. I think it’s a shame they couldn’t continue. 

[kye]

@CastorpDefinitely agree about frustration / confusion.

So many people seem to see cameras as being as good as their best spec, and ignoring the weaknesses of a particular camera, but I think the opposite is true, a camera is only as good as the weakest feature it has that you use.

I bought a the Canon XC10 which was almost universally hated because it didn't do anything spectacularly well but also didn't have any amazingly bad weaknesses, and yet people rave about the GH5 when I eliminated it immediately as it can't be trusted to focus.  Partly this is people having different requirements (eg, if you use manual focus), but also it's due to people not taking into consideration the practicalities of real-world use.

In purchasing my setup for my own personal projects I eliminated so many cameras - even if a camera shoot RAW 16K in 16-bit with 20 stops of DR it would be useless if it can't reliably focus (GH5), or ran out of battery (A7SII), or its really heavy and you're too exhausted from carrying it to use it (complete BMPCC rig), or you get hassled by security or they won't let you in the venue because your camera is too large for working without a shooting permit (C100), or you don't have it because it's too expensive and you can't afford it in the first place (1DXII), or many of the above (1DC, Red Raven, URSA mini, Kinefinity, Digital Bolex, etc etc etc...)!