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At this rate they will shut down for good in very little time. That's cool. Have fun! And while you're at it maybe copy-paste your GH4 review on DPR on your new site before it's too late! 😆

Yes! I'm pretty sure 90% of the slightly older gear serves perfectly well for high-quality video. There are some true gems out there that seem to be relegated to obscurity, being the most egregious example Olympus' E-M1X. In the DSLR front I'm also certain Nikon's D780 is more than good for most video situations, or even Canon's good-ol' 90D. This only makes sense if you're buying used, of course.

At least so it seems https://www.dpreview.com/news/panasonic-did-what-apple-sony-and-nikon-couldnt-overturn-a-red-raw-video-patent/

The FX2 makes a lot more sense than people give it credit for. If you actually need open gate, internal RAW, 4K120 or the stacked sensor, then sure: FX5. If you don't, you're paying nearly another $2K for features you may never use. FX2 gives you full frame, 4K60, S-Log3, proper AF and an EVF already built in. For a lot of jobs that's enough. Different job. Different tool.

That works for long-term storage, but there are really two separate problems here. Transcoding R3D NE to H.265 solves the archive size. It does not solve the card capacity, ingest time, temporary disk space or transcoding time. A more efficient compromise might be to keep R3D NE only for the selects that actually benefit from RAW flexibility, then batch-transcode the rest to H.265 in REDWideGamutRGB / Log3G10. So the weak internal H.265 still matters. The workaround is viable, but it moves the cost from storage to workflow.

The Forgotten camera! (I had myself!!)

Why does nobody talk about the FX2? Much better value for money!

DPR is telling me about care homes, maybe they think it's itme? That's the first fold on desktop of an article - 10% content, 60% ads, 30% blank spaces. Maybe if they want to stuff 60% ads down our throats on every page at every scroll position, giving some of that blank space over to useful content would have been a consolation prize but they didn't even do that, the stupid cunts. Scrolling further and it gets worse. It's like a malware site. Finally relieved to reach the bottom of the article, with just 4 ads here - unfortunately they are laid out completely at random as if sprayed on with a paint gun. The conclusion is that DPR is now dead and it may have well as been shut down. Everything that was usable and useful about the classic site has been eviscerated. In terms of the historical specs and camera info I'll make my own site that can replace some of it, like a Wikipedia for every worthwhile camera ever made going back to the 90s. It's actually under development now so expect to see it within the next few months.

Indeed. So much empty space reserved for ads, the content just looks completely lost and every single change they've made to every single detail and feature feels like a massive downgrade, their tools and feature comparison database for example... now almost unusable. Yet still they pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Typical isn't it!

It looks like a beautiful place. Glad you had a nice trip! Were you looking for additional feedback on the video?

I quite liked it, but do know that if you're trying to capture anything with sound, the fan noise on the raw is really obnoxious. The image was pretty nice, though!

If you have 20 mm and 60 mm as the equivalent focal lengths that are available, the wider angle makes sense for including oneself in the footage, and showing a bit of environment, which must be a common thing in social media. However, at least I would preferentially shoot with 35 mm or 50 mm a lot of the time. By starting with an 8K sensor, you can get more detailed crops that mimic those lenses at least in angle of view. Of course, you lose light in cropping so the quality won't be the same as using one of the native options, but it is probably less damaged than if you start with a 4K sensor and crop from 20 mm to (say) 50 mm. I'm personally perfectly happy shooting in 4K with a 35 mm full-frame mirrorless camera and doing a bit of cropping doesn't really bother me, but the camera that I use makes the 4K footage by downsampling from 8K resolution, so even in the 4K file (typically for me Prores 422 HQ), there is a better starting point for cropping than if I had shot with a 4K native sensor camera (due to the Bayer sensor not registering all colors for all pixels natively). I think 20 mm would be extremely wide to shoot everything with (that's what the DJI Pocket 4P's magical sensor produces, 20 mm equivalent footage), and I'd want to moderate the angle of view a lot of the time to something in the 35 to 50 mm range. Thus the sensor resolution is likely to play some role in the practical quality that can be obtained. Although I like the idea of a camera that has a gimbal and can be just taken out of the bag and used, and I commend DJI for bringing the long-in-development LOFIC sensor into an actual consumer product, neither of these cameras (luma ultra and Pocket 4P) are really for me as I basically never do videos with myself in the footage, and the 20 mm equivalent angle of view is just not what I want from a video camera. Cropping (to get an acceptable angle of view) from a small-sensor camera is going to make noise more visible and detail less clear. I think use of a gimbal on a heavy full-frame mirrorless camera is painful for the setup that is required. Eventually I think some good compromises will arise, with moderately light total weight, internal (optical) zooms that don't require recalibration after FOV change, better integration of camera controls into the gimbal user interface, and some digital signal processing that is optimized to reduce the gimbal motor noise from on-camera audio tracks (this will require work on the motors themselves and the processing) are likely to make things more practical for me, but for now most of the time my gimbal is just not being used. With regards to the dynamic range, I'm used to slide film from long ago and when using it (for still photography) it was essential to photograph in what we called good light, which meant light that was suitable for the material, with no exposure latitude whatsover, and I still try to choose where I shoot so that the subjects and the scene will look good straight out of the camera where possible. With my camera the top video dynamic range is 12 stops and I've not run into anything that would make that feel inadequate, given the starting point of acceptable conditions for photography to begin with, in fact it feels wildly liberating what kind of post exposure adjustments are possible today. I would argue that if there is a situation which requires higher dynamic range, then alternatives probably result in better quality: use lighting for the main subjects in the foreground. If the scene can't be lit then shoot in a location which gives better results without lighting. Post-processing has its limits and I would argue it is not easy to mimic really good lighting on a scene with high contrast but no light (or too little light) on the subjects in post-processing. However, if you can use and benefit from 17 stops of dynamic range, by all means use it if available. I think my life is easier by carefully choosing where the original material is shot.

If you can afford the cards and temporary space on an internal drive, you could shoot in R3D NE in camera and then after transferring the files to the computer, convert it to log h.265 and delete the original files. By doing this you can get high-quality h.265 and avoid the long-term accumulation of storage otherwise needed for the raw files, not much different from having a high-quality h.265 codec in the camera, apart from the fact that you would need large memory cards and some space on the computer's internal drives for this step. I'm not trying to make an excuse for Nikon for the h.265 but suggesting a workaround who have this camera for one reason or another, and need a practical workflow.

The funny thing is that 8-bit cDNG on the FP would actually make the challenge more interesting, not less : ) Sigma really does offer CinemaDNG internally in 8, 10 and 12-bit, so “8-bit RAW” is not an oxymoron here. The FP even uses a different dual-base ISO behaviour for 8/10-bit CinemaDNG than for 12-bit RAW. Which could make a nice test in itself: how much of what we normally attribute to “8-bit limitations” comes from bit depth, and how much comes from the usual baked codec / chroma / processing pipeline?

Good morning, everyone! I spent two days on nearby Thassos, where I visited the Trypiti Cave for the first time. It’s an amazing natural spot nestled among the rocks, with seawater forming a small, "hidden" beach behind them. Here is the video covering the two-day trip.

I think the gap isn't another database of specifications. We already have plenty of those, and the old DPReview reviews are still remarkably useful for understanding what a camera was when it launched. What seems to be missing is a "today" layer. How easy is it to live with in 2026? Are batteries and accessories still readily available? How well does the codec fit modern editing workflows? Are there reliability issues that only became apparent over time? What does the current used price actually buy compared to newer alternatives? I'd also like to see a stronger filmmaking angle rather than just image quality. Some older cameras still have a rendering or shooting experience that makes them genuinely enjoyable, even if they're objectively behind in dynamic range or autofocus. Most launch reviews answered, "Is this a good camera today?" The more interesting question now is, "Who is this camera still a great tool for?"

Compressed RAW is probably the part I'd focus on before adding more film simulations. For the dropped frames, a small diagnostics page could be useful: sensor timestamp delta, queue depth, compression time per frame, sustained write MB/s and dropped-frame count. That should make it much easier to see whether the bottleneck is capture, compression or storage. I'd also preserve per-frame black/white levels and WB/colour-matrix metadata where the device exposes them. Especially useful if you want the RAW processing and calibration to remain consistent across ISO changes. Interesting project.

Have you thought about background continuity too? With people and traffic constantly changing, wouldn't traditional coverage sometimes make things harder rather than easier when you get to the edit? I wonder if longer takes, a few selective close-ups and plenty of B-roll might actually suit this kind of shooting better. ☺️

Go figure, I still have a 4K BenQ TK800 gathering dust 'cause, for what I actually need most of the time, our little 1080p GV50 units do the job perfectly well ; ) And then there are our 1080p XGIMI MoGo 2 Pros too. We actually bought several of them for our facilities instead of going for the newer MoGo 3 Pro or even the MoGo 4 (the latter even comes in a Laser version), although both were already available by the time we acquired ours. And yet, I religiously keep my good old 22-year-old XGA (1024x768) BenQ PB6200 in my office! LOL : ) BTW, 768p has pretty much become our new norm for the MiniMax H3 work we've been doing locally on our Olares system, even though 2K is available in the cloud. And there are some pretty good ways of bridging that gap in post anyway: Topaz Video with Starlight Precise 2.5 when maximum quality matters, SeedVR2 through ComfyUI when we want to keep the whole workflow local, or simply Resolve Studio 21's Super Scale when we want to stay inside the NLE. Different tools, different trade-offs, same principle. For me, in the end, what matters with every new tech development is simply what we can actually do with it. Horses for courses. Nothing more. No need to be fanboys of any particular brand, format, sensor size, resolution... or even of any poster here! : D Brand-agnostic, format-agnostic, tech-agnostic ; ) Use whatever gives you something useful, for the sake of the art and whatever the state of the art happens to be. (E. :- )

I question the need for 8K for any use. I understand some people shoot in uncontrolled ways and would rather reframe in post than compose their shot during capture. I understand people like Fincher prefers working this way. I understand that it is great to have extra resolution for VFX. But how many users of these types of cameras need these features? We're not discussing sweeping Hollywood sci-fi epics. That said, I believe the next huge indie film, shot from some kid in the middle of nowhere, will probably use one of these cameras. So if having 8K slates helps the vision come to life... that's really great. For me, I'd rather have the extra DR and I'd love that Osmo Raw that @eatstoomuchjam referenced. Hell, I may be able to afford that now. Hmm.

I may be up for an 8bit challenge! Can I use the 8bit cDNG from the FP? 🤪

I agree, my time spent on that site has fallen by 90% at the very least since the re-design. Their bounce rate must have skyrocketed.

Thanks, I'm looking for a more human approach though.

Happy August, Creatives! I've created a couple of brand new looping music tracks to share with you...free to use, as always, with attribution, just like my thousands of other music tracks and sounds. They are: "THE CYBER SUBWAY TO EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE" "NEON GRUNGE" You can freely download them here: https://soundimage.org/sci-fi-14/ Please don't forget to check out my Game Music Mega Pack which enables you to download all of my video game music at once...a big time-saver. Over 1400 tracks (looping & non-looping) and growing. Here's the link: https://soundimage.org/ogg-game-music-mega-pack/ You can also check out my smaller genre packs here: https://soundimage.org/ogg-music-packs-2/ Thanks, as always, for your support...I sincerely hope my music and sounds are helpful in your projects! 🙂

This is turning into quite an interesting rabbit hole, good call starting this thread : ) Well, at least we have one thing in common this time ; ) the GX85 is in my arsenal too! ... That also makes the format issue particularly relevant. Since the GX85 records video in 16:9 rather than genuine 4:3 open gate, a 1.55x adapter would produce a rather extreme 2.75:1 image. The more practical 2.07:1 combination would require an open-gate body such as the GH7. A potentially more practical option might also be one of the smartphone anamorphics with a standard 37mm rear mount, such as the Beastgrip 1.33x or 1.55x MK2. These could be attached to lenses such as the Panasonic 14mm or TTArtisan 17mm with ordinary step rings, making mounting and alignment considerably simpler than with the 17mm-threaded Neewer.