Why Do People Still Shoot at 24FPS? It always ruins the footage for me

[SteveV4D]

19 hours ago, kye said:

I don't know about you, but I can't set a variable ND to correct exposure in under 0.04s.

Most of the time, I don't need to set it all.  Unless lighting changes from the last shot, I can leave the ND alone.  I spend more time on the manual focusing.  Thats the tricky part and can delay my capturing a shot.

Still given your shooting style, I'm surprised you stick with the GH5.  A Canon camera would offer superior AF, saving you time there, fullframe would give you more DOF, colours are better, especially with skin tones, so need less post grading than Panasonic, and whilst their 4K has limitations, 1080p on Canon gives good results.  

[kye]

5 hours ago, SteveV4D said:

Most of the time, I don't need to set it all.  Unless lighting changes from the last shot, I can leave the ND alone.  I spend more time on the manual focusing.  Thats the tricky part and can delay my capturing a shot.

Still given your shooting style, I'm surprised you stick with the GH5.  A Canon camera would offer superior AF, saving you time there, fullframe would give you more DOF, colours are better, especially with skin tones, so need less post grading than Panasonic, and whilst their 4K has limitations, 1080p on Canon gives good results.  

I find my exposures typically change from shot to shot, as unless i'm waiting for something to happen, I typically shoot for the edit and know what shot i'm aiming for and when i've got it.  

When I bought the GH5 I had shortlisted an Olympus as it had better stabilisation, and also the A73 for the great AF.  I was a huge fan of good autofocus, and knew that the AF was the achilles heel of the GH5, but decided to test myself and "prove" that manual focus wasn't for me.  So I shot a few short test projects using MF and I found that not only did I find it 10 times easier than I thought it was going to be, I found that I liked the aesthetic.  It's imperfect in a very human way, rather than mistakes that are made by the tech and look robotic or plain awful.  I also remembered, and started to not instantly forget, the times when AF does a great job of focusing on the wrong thing and ruins a shot.  I don't think that AF is at a level yet where I would rely on it, because as imperfect as MF is, I NEVER EVER EVER find myself focusing on something that I didn't want to be focusing on 🙂 

Yes, manually focusing isn't the fastest thing in the world, but it's usable in the edit.  I see people using manually focused shots that are far from perfect regularly online, but it's rare for anyone to show a shot that the AF gets wrong, mostly because it's not nice aesthetically.  I know cameras now have a speed control setting but I always find that if i'm seeing an AF pull focus it's either too fast or too slow.

In terms of the GH5, I have it dialled in and I know it well now.  I feel like i've finally learned it.  I'm invested in lenses, and even bought two new lenses (Laowa 7.5/2 and Voigtlander 42.5/0.95) in late 2019 that I haven't even had the chance to use on a real trip yet!  I don't need more DoF, because my lenses are fast enough, and I get high-bitrate 10-bit ALL-I 1080p.  

You're right that the colour science is a weak point but it's passable and my grading skills are getting better, so I don't mind, however I think this is the biggest thing that would tempt me to upgrade.  It won't be any time soon, and it may very well be to a Medium Format camera, skipping these tiny "full frame" cameras lol.

I'm not sure what Canon FF camera you're talking about with "good results", but I'm not aware of anything that shoots 10-bit internally except perhaps the R5?  One day Canon might make a FF camera to rival the GH5 at a similar price point, but we're not there yet!  I've spent many hours of frustration grading the 8-bit footage from the XC10, and the 10-bit footage from the GH5 is absolutely spectacular in comparison, practically being from a different universe.  I see grading videos of people grading Alexa footage and pushing UMP footage around and it moves smoothly without a hint of breaking and the GH5 footage always gives me that same feeling when i'm grading it.  I've tried to break it and failed.  The Canon 8-bit footage I've shot and graded works fine for perfect conditions but given any difficulties at all it broke before it even looked normal, let alone having latitude to push or pull the footage to adjust compositions in post.