All the animals were gathered around the barn, and one of the pigs got up to make his speech. Comrades, I have something to say, but before I get to that I must tell you that I had a strange dream last night. In my dream, I went down B&H and bought a Sony mirrorless camera and the very next morning, I woke up and had an offer from 20th Century Fox on my doorstep.
Read moreTHE CREATOR – With the Sony FX3 you can shoot an $80 million sci-fi film too!
“VENICE” – it’s a word that captures the very essence of cinematic. Everybody knows of Venice, and knows that Venice is one of the most beautiful, most cinematic places in the world. The face of Italy, which is itself the beautiful face of Europe, whereas London is more like the arsehole. Well done Sony, for your VENICE cinema camera branding.
What next? Sony BERLIN? Sony NEW YORK? Sony Milton Keynes? No, the Sony marketing idiots have decided on the name “BURANO” which sounds like something Vic Reeves used to say at the end of Shooting Stars. “BURANO” is a small island in Venice, and it carries the weight of expectations for the sister camera to VENICE. Your Sony BURRITO can be had for the bargain price of just $25,000.
Allegedly this new camera is A) very small, but not as small as a Sony a1 and B) has the same sensor as a Sony a1 but not the full frame 4K 120p. Instead the BURRITO has to crop to 2x, to achieve those lovely high frame rates.
The BURRITO follows the most recent trend of making cinema cameras smaller, but not too small that you look like an amateur on set.
Read moreSony BURANO – Cinema cameras are getting smaller but egos aren’t
The iPhone 15 Pro is starting to look like a professional Super 16mm camera for filmmakers. A larger 1/1.28″ main sensor which is nearly Super 16mm size, Apple LOG, 4K ProRes recording externally, 28mm & 35mm modes and a pretty cutting edge zoom optic on the back in addition.
Although it shouldn’t be missed that an Android phone can record 6K RAW internally in Cinema DNG format, Apple has taken the iPhone to new heights for videographers with the iPhone 15 Pro.
Do we need 8K? First, a short journey to the past. A similar debate was heard over 4K. It turns out we did in fact need Ultra HD. The quality of 1080p on high resolution sensors wasn’t fantastic. Pixel binning. Line skipping. 4K was a way to get a full pixel readout and oversampling for a more film-like image, with less brittle look, fewer hard edges.
Now we have affordable 8K ProRes with the Fuji X-H2 and full frame 8K on the more expensive flagship mirrorless cameras from Sony, Canon and Nikon, even medium format 8K with the Fuji GFX100 II… but so far Panasonic has shied away from it.
A representative for Panasonic remarked on the lack of demand for 8K, implying the customer ain’t bothered. Although this hasn’t stopped team Lumix from giving us 6K with the S1H, S1 and S5 II. From the perspective of a TV company, perhaps 8K TVs are not exactly flying off the shelves, but from the perspective of cameras it might be a different story.
In the last post we saw how EF established Canon as camera market leader, keeping mediocre DSLRs afloat well into the final chapter of the previous decade. EF lenses were critical.
These lenses helped in the transition to Canon’s own mirrorless cameras and with EF, users were locked into Canon’s ecosystem, despite the growing threat of mirrorless in the second half of the 2010s. During that time EF even became the standard choice for video shooters across three completely different systems – Cinema EOS cameras, mirrorless cameras, and Blackmagic who continue to use the EF mount even in 2023.
However, in 2023 I sense trouble ahead for Canon. RF lenses, let’s face it, just don’t have the same appeal.
Read moreLeading for now, but have Canon got it wrong with RF lenses?
Panasonic pioneered mirrorless cameras 15 years ago and Sony made the first affordable full frame mirrorless camera.
It wasn’t until 2018 with the Canon EOS R that the market leader had an answer. Fast forward to 2023, and why is it that Panasonic and Sony have squandered their lead in mirrorless cameras to Canon?
Both companies had a massive head start. Panasonic got to the market 10 years ahead of the EOS R launch, and Sony came up with the first a7 E-mount camera in 2013, a full 5 years earlier than EOS R mount came into existence.
During this time Canon only had the entry level EOS M series, and DSLRs. Now DSLRs are dead, EOS M is gone, yet there’s a familiar name at the top of the sales chart.
Read moreHow Panasonic and Sony let Canon steal the mirrorless camera lead
The designer’s intent for Micro Four Thirds has been so badly distorted by marketing, the system no longer makes any sense.
In the days of the Panasonic GH1, there would be never any question of simply sneaking a small sensor into the body of a full frame camera and calling it a day. This was never the ethos of Micro Four Thirds. Yet that is exactly what Panasonic have done with the G9 II.
In fact you can trace back the system’s decline all the way to the GH3.
Read moreHannibal Lumix. Why Panasonic have lost the plot over Micro Four Thirds
Destroyer of worlds. A fearsome new technology. Cillian Murphy finds himself in an intimate relationship with it in Oppenheimer.
This is one of Nolan’s finest films. It’s incredibly thought provoking and really gets inside the head of those involved with giving the world nuclear weapons.