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the tricky things with underwater stuff is how you waterproof the camera controls (how to do push button controls and levers that can keep the water pressure out but are still easy to use from the high pressure side) and how you shoot through the watertight housing without the additional plastic or glass surfaces and the air/water boundary distorting the image too much. Nikonos-style wet lenses are the best solution but expensive and very rare. Dome ports are one of the most useful compromises for most uses and I think it should be relatively easy to do a housing which uses for example the DL lens ports https://www.ikelite.com/collections/dl-lens-ports

you want to jump into water but not going much under the surface? so a splash bag could do and no need for an actual dive housing? something meant for prosume video cameras could work with the a-cam I believe if the size is somewhat similar. you could also let someone to custom manufacture a dive housing for your camera if you'll gonna use it extensively in water so that this kind of better solution would be practical. For example a thick glued-and-bolted-together polycarbonate custom housing which uses Ikelite lens ports. The deeper you want to get the more challenging it will get to keep the water out (one bar of water pressure added for every 10m addition in water depth) but should be reasonably easy to manufacture one for surface shots where you'll be no more than about one or two meters underwater

yes it can generate disturbing strobing artefacts if always shooting at 50fps and converting everything to 25. if the camera has rolling shutter it can add to the effect to generate even weirder artefacts which can be very difficult or even impossible to remove. I recommend shooting those shots at 25fps which you KNOW you will never do slow motion effects to and the rest of the material can be 50 if you want. I mostly work with slow motion material which can be conformed directly to the playback fps and it will never play at normal speed. For example material which is shot 120fps on 50base and then I will just interpret footage it to 24fps before editing. One does not lose ANY image quality that way and it is very simple and fast to do. That workflow is possible because sync sound is rarely needed and the camera sound is not usable if there even is any. ------------------ One of the problems of not knowing what you'll gonna do with the material afterwards is that you will always lose image quality one way or another and will make your post workflow more difficult. By my opinion, you have to know .

I meant this model, NOT the m4/3 normal E2 model: http://www.z-cam.com/e2-s6/ they are developing raw options for their cameras. we just started to use the regular E2 model for documentary stuff and it manages very well in that environment, especially when needing the remote controls. the integrated monitor thing is not important for most users if they are really doing work-related stuff and not super low end vimeography as a hobby. A fixed non-orientable monitor on the back of the camera is just not usable at all in any real production environment, not even in low budget indie films. If you really want to do anything with the camera you will need a separate onboard monitor anyway. the built in display on the Pocket is usable though if one is so low budget that cannot even afford proper lenses to put on the camera... It is nice to hear that the regular Pocket has been reliable in most uses. by my experience the Blackmagic hardware tends to be cheap build quality and unreliable at times so it would be great if they would have at least one product which does not release smoke and die in the middle of the production XD probably the 6K Pocket will not be delivered in time like has happened with all their camera models. Still better though than the Nikon Z6 raw option, they NEVER deliver the promised features not even one year late :P

EF to PL adaptors are not compatible with anything. or maybe one or two or three lens types but very limited lens options can be used and would be much more practical to just use the EF version of the same lens because most of the ones which can fit the adapter can be purchased and rented in EF mount as well or can be easily switched between PL and EF. Anyway, if someone noticed there is some comparable models from Z-Cam which are in same price range and have some features the Pocket cameras are unable to do... like full remote control, more practical form factor, batteries lasting longer, full resolution 10-bit hdmi. Can be ordered in PL mount as well. As I see it, the Blackmagic and Z-cam are now competing directly with each other and the Kinefinity cameras (being less bang for the buck even when the intermediate mount system is very very nice solution) are those who are going to suffer

I always stack the densest filter closest to the lens to avoid reflections from the less dense filters like diffusion filters which I use very often. diffusion can have significant impact on saturation if the image contains bright highlights... for example the Promist filters will contaminate the other parts of the picture with that bright area colour, for example if the highlight area is bluish white the filter will contaminate most of the image with that colour and it will be most prominent in the shadows. and will reduce the saturation on objects as well because of "spreading a layer of colour over the image area" . I personally use promists mostly for the highlight effect on digital cameras and will grade most of the exposure boost +contrast change away. sometimes I also use them to fake more dynamic range to the image (depending on the content I can get an advantage of about 1.5 or 2 stops that way but I will lose some colour separation and saturation so it is not a perfect solution for all uses)

the large format and anamorphic trend after the 3D is not a new thing at all, it has happened multiple times in the past. People are all into 3D for a short time and when it fails they will go to large format and anamorphic again. It is a cycle which seems to happen once per every generation I think. This is maybe the fourth time it is happening again...? anyway, I think at least the VFX thing has come to stay... that is because the market is nowadays dominated with endless sequels and remakes and adaptations of existing material (for example the Disney remakes with talking CG animals, the Marvel adaptations and sequels with lots of vfx, all the book adaptations etc.) and there is relatively small amount of completely new fresh content. almost every film nowadays seems to be a remake or based on a bestseller or a comic book series. It is much safer to finance that kind of content than to try to invent something new which has never been seen before and which needs to be rebranded.... (compared to for example to those Disney remakes where they mostly seem to pretty much copy the original hand drawn characters 1:1 and replace them with talking CG animals. no need to even compose new music for the movie because you can just use the old songs and everything. you can recycle the whole script as well, just let the current big name actors to read the character lines again and you're done :P )

the better xavc varieties may be visually very similar looking in quality compared to the prores422 unless you underexpose the xavc camera a lot which may generate weird compression artifacts like blue dots flashing around. I haven't pixel peeped them side by side with material shot in the same situation (would require the same camera to record both at the same time which has not been practical yet in projects I do) . nowadays I shoot a lot with an external recorder on Prores422hq and it is slightly better quality than xavc especially if underexposed though will take significantly more storage spage. So I would put it pretty close to the Prores422 on that scale if it is properly exposed. workability in post is pretty much the same in most situations I think though you may find differences if the material is not optimally shot. this is for the 300-400Mbps 4k/UHD xavc varieties... if you shoot the more compressed ones like the 100Mbps ones then there is lots more difference

one could probably also construct something out of one of those multi-purpose ladders which can be bent to U-shape... that should be a fast alternative if said ladders already exist on set

I would find a tele zoom more useful especially if it does not breathe much and focuses close. the 70-200 is very useful like others mentioned and for most work it is much faster to use than a tele prime because you can fine tune the framing without moving the camera...

Never give away expensive equipment for free even on no profit projects. You can donate you time and work if you really want but them taking advantage of you financially is a completely different thing. Personally I sometimes do no profit projects where I may not charge much for my own equipment IF they accept to rent some expensive additional gear which I really want to test on a project but dont want to rent it by myself just for camera tests. Effectively making yourself a no charge rental house is never a good idea and will make it look like you are hired just for your gear not for your talent

the magazines are the mildly challenging part of these cameras but they are relatively easy to load with little practicing. if you would live here I would lend you some mags for free for practicing but not practical to ship them to Canada... you can ask the locals if you can borrow a mag for loading practicing :) one easy way to load Konvas mags, this is for the older 1KCP model but works for newer mags and cameras as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s8-wCGC3eg

I havent tried matching them but by my limited experience it is usually a bad idea to push the 50d that much even on 35mm. That is subjective of course...But you may run into serious issues on losing the shadow detail even if the grain would be ok for your uses. I would rather try to source some 250d instead as a starting point and adjust in processing or in post to match

sometimes it works for the scene but often it is pretty pointless and just gives a "student movie" impression (overly artsy with not enough to say and too stylistic and concept centered instead of wanting to tell a good story in the best way possible)

Yes it is important to test the result on uncalibrated devices as well. But one can't really grade the image without having the main monitor calibrated to the working standard...you will grade to one standard and then you can do versioning for different viewing environments and devices. But you cant really grade a project without having ONE of the monitors properly calibrated so that you will know how the image SHOULD look so that you can adjust the colors and especially the gamma and brightness levels right. Otherwise it will look like crap on every device no matter if they are calibrated or not. Often the project graded on a properly calibrated setup will look surprisingly similar on most uncalibrated devices as well. Much easier and faster to just get it right from the beginning rather than trying to avarage the grade using 10 different uncalibrated devices to guess how the project SHOULD MAYBE look on a calibrated device on a good day. One properly calibrated monitor would probably have saved about 15 versions worth of OP's work so calibrating would be much easier by my opinion :)