May I ask why not the new AG-AF100? Besides the size advantages of DSLRs or mirrorless "bridge" cameras I suppose they must be a real pain to use for video purposes because they lack dedicated features that "true" video cameras would have. I'm already griping - for stills use - that the Gxx bodies lack options such as vertical grip, built in wireless flash control, PC sync port or even hand-friendly size etc., which makes them "impractical" as compared to more "serious" cameras, even when the image quality is perfectly fine. Basically they force you to use workarounds.
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I'll be using the GH2 mainly because of it's tiny size and it's superior resolution compared to the 5D / 7D. I'll be using these ONLY for video and with mostly SHG lenses. The AF 100/102 body is getting quite big for what I need the cameras to do. Our main unit camera package was 5 x RED bodies across 2 units. We also had 2 x 5D's on main unit (and sometimes also on second unit) for
trick shots, where the RED is just to big to go. Most of our travelling shots in cars are shot with 5D's. We did start to use it as a third camera amongst RED shot scenes, but even on air you can really tell when a 5D shot was intercut with RED.
It's noticeably softer. They tend to work best when you shoot entire scenes on them so you don't notice the resolution and DR differences.
And yet, an entire major movie was shot with $20,000 lenses at T/1.3 on S35.
You need to add another zero to that. Each Zeiss Masterprime lens is about 20-25K. A full set of primes is about 200-250k. I seem to remember that there was a whole sequence in the middle that was shot using tilt-shift lenses, so clearly the entire film wasn't shot this way either.
As I've mentioned previously, most cine primes are T1.3. or less commonly T2. The main reason a 50 million dollar studio film is shooting on masterprimes is to get as much resolution on the screen as possible. They also chose to shoot portions of the film wide open, but as I say, all the primes available to this scale of production can generally do this.
This is also considered to be a cheaper studio film. You notice that there are no "A" list stars to artificially inflate the budget.
So now every filmmaker with a 5D is shooting everything at T1.2 just because very shallow DOF can look very beautiful for certain shots. Mostly though its wallpapering over bad storytelling and the other known sins of dslr filmmaking.
Has not a film with bad plotline or other known sins ever been shot with deep DOF. Are those points really relevant to the DOF discussion at all?
I think they are. The OP was linking a post where it was asserted that ultra-low DOF is largely impractical to shoot motion with. I am agreeing with that notion. But what I am seeing is a lot of filmmakers shooting ultra-low DOF just because they can and they think that it makes the story telling in their films better. And whilst this
can and often does look beautiful, it's done for reasons of fashion rather than for good storytelling reasons. Right now, I describe it as a fad, because DSLR's are being used extensively to shoot a lot of short films and music clips. Just like tilt-shift lenses were big in the late 90's. The next hot thing now is to use the oldest obscure M42 mount lens you can find.....
As well as being a practitioner, I see a whole lot of contemporary filmmaking. I've been a juror for Australia's two biggest film awards, the AFI awards and the IF awards as well as a selection panelist for MIFF, one of the oldest film festivals in the world.
Perhaps we need to make a distinction about low and ultra low DOF. Perhaps we need to delineate amateur, fringe, indy and professional filmmaking. They all have different requirements. FF video give access to a look that wouldn't be otherwise possible and I'm not knocking that at all. What I am saying is that give me a compelling story reason to choose ultra low DOF. Don't just do it cause it looks good. That's not enough reason.
I'm not arguing that DOF isn't a useful tool
That's what you were arguing.
If that's what you take from my comments then I have been misunderstood. I would never argue that isn't a useful tool.
DOF and the use of selective focus is one of the most powerful and discrete ways a cinematographer can direct the gaze of the audience and I use it routinely in my work every time I'm on set.
jb
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John Brawley
Cinematographer
Sydney Australia
http://www.johnbrawley.com 
