I’ve started to feel that the “affordable”-perfect-compact-camera-rig doesn’t exist. That it can’t exist. An affordable rig that provides a single operator with a compact, audio friendly, “cinematic”, video capturing experience… No.

My first mission to test this theory was through my Panasonic GH4 rig. It was a shoot which I’d consider my worst yet, which deserves an entire video to itself - to explore every aspect that went wrong, but for brevity, there were too many cables and battery powered devices, though necessary for good, clean, audio, added a lot of complexity to the rig, and that’s what allowed for things to go wrong.

Specifically, I used

The 7 inch blackmagic video assist 12G monitor & recorder (useful because you can use its internal pre-amps and its mini-xlr ports to feed your audio into the monitor, which will embed the audio directly into the video file. I used it with a rodelink filmmaker kit, which is a wireless lavalier microphone. You also need an XLR to mini-XLR adaper, something blackmagicdesign supplies, to plug any XLR-based microphone into the blackmagic video assist 7".

(*For Your Information (FYI), The 5 inch blackmagic video assist doesn’t have mini-XLR ports, and the 3.5mm jack on the device doesn’t take audio in.)

The Rodelink Filmmaker kit with a lavalier microphone (You’ll need a 3.5mm jack to XLR adapter, something you’ll have to buy, in order to use the rodelink receiver with the “7 inch blackmagic video assist 12G”) This is where I fucked up by not specifying from the fatllama renter to ensure that they included the adapter. Without it, you literally can’t use the equipment. All that effort voided because of a cable…
A Panasonic GH4 with batteries, lenses, and tripod.
The other issue was with the mini-xlr on the blackmagic video assist. The cable was bent, and only after fiddling around with it for ~15 minutes, wanting to blow myself up, I then figured you can unscrew the casing that protects the 3 prongs of the mini-xlr adapter, making inserting it into the monitor incredibly easy. It was probably the person who previously used the monitor that bent up the cable.
You need to remember. The blackmagic video assist also needs power. I didn’t power it through d-tap via a v-mount battery, so I used the canon LP-E6 batteries that the fatllama renter provided. They also provided D-tap, and all necessary cables. Guess where they fucked up? The batteries all had 25% charge, or none at all, and they seemed to show inaccurate charge. They were all 3rd party batteries, so that may have been the problem but I’m not sure. Maybe I didn’t slide them into the back of the monitor correctly? I check on-location, so I don’t think that was the case.
So, my story is out of chronological order because I mentioned some of the bad revelations early. But don’t worry; things continue to go wrong.
One issue, which is related to my poorness, was the use of a GH4. The camera doesn’t do 10bit internally, which is part of the reason why I wanted the monitor; it provides 10bit 422. But oddly, blackmagicdesign’s monitors, as of now, and for years now, don’t take Sandisk v30 UHS-2 memory cards. They simply don’t get recognised by the monitors. This fucked me on the shoot but not that badly.
The Rodelink filmmaker kit (both the transmitter & receiver) use AA batteries, which is fine. But the fatllama renter didn’t provide any, didn’t say they weren’t included, and I forgot because I was a one man band on this shoot. We did buy some in the end. Honestly, this one was on me; I even considered bringing spare AA batteries the day before but didn’t. I even have a bunch of rechargeables, and a charger for ‘em.

Oh, and the rodelink lavalier microphone cable has a infamous problem with an atrocious interference screeching sound that oh so many users have been victimised by. Rode claims to have resolved it with their new batch of the product… You can also fix it by buying a different lavalier cable to the one rode provides with their filmmaker kit. But I did suffer all through this already stressful shoot with this problem, constantly getting up to wriggle the wire around. I even told the fatllama renter about it. He continues to rent out his shit product, though, having not taken my advice to update his listing, and having kept the original shitty rode lavalier mic.

The final necessity for me, something I’ve been pushing since 2018, is high frame rate availability. Only flagship cinema cameras, including all blackmagicdesign cameras, offer this feature. I’m talking 60.000fps, with audio recording. None of the Variable Frame Rate, no audio, bullshit. If panasonic offered this feature on their gh5s, it would be close to the perfect cinema run ‘n’ gun camera.

In this shoot, I shot at 50.000fps. The reason why I don’t shoot at 59.94fps, commonly, and erroneously referred to as 60fps, is because it’s a retarded frame rate that only works nicely with 29.97. It’s not an integer; it’s bad decisions decades ago fucking every generation in holes that can’t, and don’t want to be fucked, still to this day… Sound familiar?

Mirrorless cameras, DSLRs, and so on, by their nature, cannot handle the audio aspect without augmentation, or even separate audio devices (i.e. timecode). Even the new canon c70 has its issues (FYI it uses mini-XLR lmaoooo); it’s an area of cinema where the micro four thirds sensor was the answer but canon went with super35, which takes HUGE lenses.

So, what are the options? There are camcorder with all these incredible sound and built-in ND filter options. But 1 inch sensors are far too small; micro four thirds is the lowest you should go. Actually, I’m chatting shit. 1 inch sensors are bigger than super16 film!!!!! This may be a solution to a real problem. I’m a fucking genius!!! If there exists a camcorder with a 1 inch sensor, interchangeable lenses (because these shitty zooms are shit, and we want nice glass), high dynamic range (10+ stops), and high frame rate capabilities, I’m in… like Flynn.

Ok, so… calming down now. I had a whole comparison ready but this… this has derailed the ting. I wonder what the low light capabilities are for 1 inch sensor designs, and how engineers deal with noise.

Besides that, the aim was to find a rig, even with a cage, that is relatively compact. No sensor stabilisation like a gh5, so a gh5s is more appropriate. A small monitor for better visibility, a super cardioid microphone that can sit somewhere on the rig for audio, and pre-amps that work brilliantly. Software-wise, high frame rate (60.000fps), and 10bit 422. RAW is a luxury I’m not bothered with.

The issues I ran into with my test for this style of rig was XLR adapter problems Power efficiency problems SD cards problems Bear in mind, I’ve heard of issues with both Atomos and blackmagicdesign monitors. Size and portability problems (monitor needs to be 5 inches or less but rig needs weight to feel grounded and reduce jitter) There simply needs to be less moving parts. Perhaps only the microphone should be a moving part.

To resolve these issues, you can try the canon c200, panasonic EVA-1, and sony fs5 routes, but they still have shitty on-board monitors + they’re quite big and bulky. But most importantly, they’re expensive (£5k is big money to lotsa lotsa people) and super35 (HUGE LENSES).

Does this mean you can’t be a cheap poor bastard and obtain cinema level images? I don’t fucking think so.

P.S. I had a lighting plan for the shoot, and for the second setup we were to have 2 LED light panels as kickers in the back. Both those cheap Neewer light panels, which the studio provided, flickered. The HMI obviously didn’t but they did, and you can subtly see it throughout the video…

Adding more salt to the wound, the one video, of the many we shot that day - that mattered most, had the worst audio because I didn’t monitor it adequately. Well, I’m not sure to be honest. Perhaps the better explanation is I didn’t know what I was doing. But I never do. The subject was wearing a thick turtle neck, which shouldn’t be a problem, even with the lavalier microphone being embedded underneath it. It was the only video I had to make extensive audio fixes to in post-production. Although, 99% of the audience won’t notice it, every other audio professional with discerning ears will know the audio is a few notches below par. Not dreadful but certainly iffy.