What camera are you shooting with?
I've been surrounded by high-end cinema cameras my whole life. They're great. I love them.
But what I love more is a £350 camera I bought second-hand off MPB. A Panasonic G80 — a camera that came out in 2016. Nearly a decade old. It comes with me on every holiday.
This little grab-and-go is a marvel, and a constant reminder of how far the technology has come. I use it for photos and videos, and I've captured some glorious moments with it. Photos that are now printed and hanging on the walls of grandparents' houses.
I couldn't tell you what the dynamic range is. Damn, I'm not even sure I know the native ISO. But what I do know is that it's frictionless, light, holds up to a bit of colour correction in post, and costs barely anything. That makes it my go-to family camera. Honestly, I've even used it on a couple of jobs when I just wanted to float about and grab some stills.
My expectations have always been low. The highlights clip. The shadows sometimes crush. I don't care. This is my family camera. It's meant to be raw capture, in every sense.
And the funny thing is, the G80 is what taught me to stop caring about gear on the proper jobs too.
Because it's 2026, and we have to be honest with ourselves — the gap has closed. I've shot a Canon C70 recently and it stood next to my Red. I've shot a Lumix S5II and the image held shoulder to shoulder with an Alexa Mini. On a music video the other month, I had my Panasonic S1 with me and ended up shooting an entire scene on it, because it was easier than fitting the Red in the back of a car. The footage cut in fine.
I've spent a career dominated by Red vs Arri bollocks. It's boring. It always was. It boils down to what you're doing with it, not what you're doing it on.
So here's my point, and I don't care about the backlash on this one: if you're an emerging DP, stop obsessing over kit. I see it on BFI films constantly — DPs chasing packages that cost more than the people they're paying. That's ego, not filmmaking. Give me a good crew and a cheap camera over a £5,000 rental package any day of the week.
A £350 mirrorless, nearly ten years old, put photos on my kids' grandparents' walls. That's the whole job, really. Capture something true, with whatever's in your hand.
People make films. Not cameras.