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@PPNSThat BM Evf is a great, small and elegant solution, just like ones for Oly Pens or a Pannyboy GX1. I wished for a design and size like this for other cameras as well. I really liked the 12bit Prores 4444 on the original Mavo LF. Very thick image with great texture. Dynamic range felt a bit less than a Lumix S1H, in the highlights and moreso in the shadows, but with a unique and organic image and colormetry.

Should be the exact crop of the GH5 in UHD Extele mode, which is pixel to pixel and has about a 1.4 crop factor of the Mft sensor. GH5 and GX9 have the same sensor resolution.

That is fortunate that you get to test the L10 for us.:) Hold it! You bought that thing and can put it through a real tour de force! That's awesome. No need for us to watch any youtube shills. Thanks a lot!:) @MrSMW

OK, I have a black one inbound and should be landing tomorrow or Thursday… I tried to get the LTD version but has to come from PannyBoy direct and they have zero stock, so black it is. My S9 is still not fixed and I have missed it on the first 3 jobs of the year and with 5 more imminent, can’t wait any longer. On the off chance my fixed S9 does turn up prior to these next 5 jobs I am away for, I’ll use both as a bit of a test but regardless, probably have a place more now for the L10 until an S9II comes along. My experience of not having a mech shutter has not been the greatest and the role either of these units is destined for is more photo, so…

Hey Everyone, Here's a really fun track from my Jazz/Big Band page that I've just released in higher-quality Ogg format: "SHUFFLIN" (Looping) You can listen to it here: https://soundimage.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Shufflin.ogg And freely download it here: https://soundimage.org/jazz-big-band/ SENDING OUT A BIG THANK YOU! This goes out to the folks who downloaded my Ogg Game Music Mega Pack this past week. The pack now has over 1460 tracks and is growing all the time. Thank you so much for supporting my efforts! If anyone is interested in checking it out, here's the link: https://soundimage.org/ogg-game-music-mega-pack/ You can also download smaller genre packs here: https://soundimage.org/ogg-music-packs-2/ Enjoy...and as always, stay safe and keep being creative! 🙂

I’d have urged caution in buying the Luna before DJI released the Pro version of the Pocket 4 anyway but now the P4P has been officially released in China then I would definitely hold out for some comparisons. One of the major USPs of the Luna is the excellent removeable remote screen but it seems DJI have an interesting solution with a small external remote for the P4P. Its a bit of a swings and roundabout in that it is more convenient with the Luna but it’s equally true that if you drop the remote then it’s game over until you can locate a new one. Insta threw everyone a curveball (shills included) by releasing the Luna far earlier than expected and it’s worth considering that this was in part motivated by them discovering their major USP was about to be countered with the P4P solution. Oh and the 17 stops of dynamic range of the P4P is interesting too.

I find it difficult to believe that worse quality as such is the motivating factor, but a less polished result, a less artificially processed and perfected result may be desirable when one wishes to appear authentic and I do believe a lot of people are tired of the ultra-processed images from mobile phones and editing apps. They may also be tired of commercial images for partly similar reasons: DYI images may look more real and home-made, and somehow more true to the person in the photos, even if not captured by extended arm holding the camera but someone who truly knows the person in the picture. In some cases, commercially produced portraits which often reflect the photographer's tastes and some product or image style that the photographer has found successful and applies to all their clients. Doing it yourself for an authentic feel doesn't mean the quality of the photo has to be poor. Of course, it's possible that some people specifically want a "different" look such as 8 mm film etc. but I don't think this is common or at the core of the issue, the excessive processing and manufactured "perfection" is much more likely to be what triggers a change in fashion (or perhaps I am just wishing that). You may be correct that the smartphone generation sometimes just wants to use something other than their smartphone, that's perfectly understandable and would be a healthy development. In my mind "high quality" and "smartphone" are difficult to put in the same sentence with a straight face. High quality for some things, yes, but for a lot of things, not good quality at all.

For example, here's a K-pop video that clearly has enough budget for half-decent cameras, but was shot on cheap looking cameras and definitely looks like it: ...and don't think it's a student film or anything, it was posted 6 weeks ago and has 9M views and lists the A&R person amongst the dozen or more people involved in making it!

I think compact cameras are also enjoying a resurgence because some of them are far worse than smartphones! Just look at how retro SD video cameras have taken off, and how people are applying 00s digicam filters in post to their (comparatively pristine) smartphone footage too. In a way the high quality and ubiquity of smartphones creates a desire for something different... which includes things like poor image quality (low resolution / DR / bitrates / etc), long zooms, ghosting and other image distortions, etc. Beyond even that I think the fact that the phone is in people's hands for many hours a day means that having a change means putting something else in your hand, so a dedicated camera allows for that change of pace. It also means that taking a photo at a social event or festival or solo walk etc doesn't mean involuntarily seeing all the notifications on your Lock Screen either. People are always looking for a change from what they have, and when what they have is high quality that means they will pursue low-quality.

Good points from @eatstoomuchjam. That's why I went for the sharpest frame grabs I could find - considering the range of variables involved a soft looking grab might have been a scanning issue or provenance issue or there might have just been movement in the frame. Now that I've done that analysis I'm wondering where to from here. One thing I can do is to take my S16mm emulation and scale it 50% of the size and then adjust my power grade to match the grain and halation etc, and see if that looks like a 35mm scan (it should - that's how film works!!). If so then I can proceed on that basis, but if not then I might have to get feedback and iterate again to get something appropriate. Once I've got that sorted out then I should be able to interpolate / extrapolate the parameters that needed changing and get a range of looks that vary from 8mm up towards 16 and 35mm and then beyond. At that point it'll be interesting to explore different combinations of: Film sharpness and grain Lens emulations Filtration (diffusion etc) From these I should be able to get a range of common looks, inspired by different combinations like: 8mm shot on-the-go Bolex 16mm camera shot at night The look: Faster 16mm film with mediocre prime lenses shot wide open Krasnogorsk-3 16mm camera during the day The look: Slower / clearer 16mm film with standard zoom lens (17-69mm F1.9 Zenit) shot stopped down 35mm film camera with master primes, or Cookes, or Panavision C-Series & T-Series, etc (I have a few lens tests with many of these lenses so should be able to recreate something that smells vaguely right by changing the vignetting, edge softness, CA, bloom, etc) I'd imagine that certain combinations will be more convincing than others, as we've likely come to associate certain image attributes together. Obviously I won't be recreating them faithfully, but simply by taking inspiration from these a range of looks can certainly be developed. One thing I have noticed is that lens designers often get custom requests from film-makers to tune a set of lenses to have a customised response. For example maybe they want the speed and bokeh from a set of lenses to remain as-is but want more/less horizontal streaks and much more diffusion, etc. This is noteworthy because if film-makers are are interested in different combinations of lens attributes then I don't feel like I need to try to get a perfect emulation of one lens or another either - it doesn't matter so much when you view it from a creative perspective rather than engineering perspective. This is why my goal in my S16 emulation project wasn't to emulate this or that film stock, but rather to get something that looked like it was shot on some unknown stock with unknown provenance (e.g. maybe it's expired or wasn't stored well etc).

Yes, it's on my radar too. Their Discord server is where the action is if anyone wants to follow along or get involved. Sometimes there are even daily updates so it's very much still in development.

These are really nice. The best is the footprint. I played around with SpektraFilm but didn't do much with it. I should try it again.

https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/cameras/gimbals/hohem-isteady-mt3-pro-review https://store.hohem.com/blogs/news/the-ultimate-all-in-one-stabilizer-hohem-isteady-mt3-pro-review-is-the-ai-tracking-worth-it Any takers / user experience over here?

Raw pictures taken with a OnePlus 8 pro modded, lens used: Linos Mevis 16mm F1.6

Presumably there will be significant demand from news broadcasting/journalism for this “quality in the pocket”. In addition to the obvious applications in DIY sports videos.

Fair point. Agreed : ) A proper apples-to-apples test should also include each mirrorless camera in its best baked-in Rec.709 / HDR / tone-mapped profile, not only Log. Log is obviously not meant to be judged as a finished image straight out of camera. But that was not really the point. The point is not that the Luna has “better” image quality than an FX3, R6-style camera or any serious mirrorless body in a controlled professional workflow. It clearly does not. The interesting part is that this tiny dedicated video camera is giving a highly usable, stabilised, low-light image immediately, with very little operator burden, in a form factor where people would normally expect a large compromise. That is where the disruption is: not pure sensor performance, but the whole capture pipeline: lens, stabilisation, exposure strategy, temporal processing, denoising, subject visibility and ready-to-use output. So yes, a mirrorless camera can absolutely be configured to produce a good baked-in image. But the Luna is attacking a different use case: fast handheld available-light shooting where the question is not “which camera has the most flexible file in post?”, but “which camera gets me a usable shot right now, from my pocket, without rigging, lighting or grading?” That does not make it a cinema camera replacement. It makes it a much more serious pocket production tool than this category used to be.

Backrooms was made on a budget of only $10 million and has so far made over $260 million box office.Directed by Kane Parsons who is 20 years of age, his father is a video game developer and Shane has been deeply into VFX and 3D since about 12 years old How it was filmed and lit is really interesting the interiors look real but have a creepy eerie feel to them. Shot on a Sony Venice 2

I've always tried to figure out what the crop was in 4K. Always assumed it might have been 2.3x, similar to the GH4 but it definitely feels a bit more than that.

Available on the app store at last only US $15

@Framed_By_Dan Afaik the Lumix GX9 has a 1:1 readout in 4K, covering exactely S16 image width, with a 2.8 crop of FF. So even a 10 or 12mm S16 lens should work perfectly in 4K.

This is quite misleading as mirrorless cameras can be set up to do a similar thing where the image is tone-mapped and written to a rec 709 video, usable immediately. The use of a log format and pretending that it is meant for direct viewing and comparing that to a highly processed video from a different camera is a bit disingenuous when cameras have menus with processing settings that allow the user to get a video without editing, with less AI for sure, but with good algorithms that do a roughlysimilar thing more predictably and with higher quality. I am not familiar with how Canon or Sony cameras do things but on Nikon I often use ADL which is their tone-mapping algorithm and it allows me to shoot high contrast, suboptimally lit scenes and get good results without editing. Log video is specifically a storage format and not meant for immediate viewing, which you of course know. Extremely edited night time footage where subjects have been dug out from the shadows will never look very good, and using appropriate lighting and/or making the video in conditions where the existing lighting is half decent is better than relying on extreme AI processing. This is probably one of the reasons why compact cameras are enjoying a resurgence: people are sick and tired of the sickly-looking overprocessed results from smartphones, and even a compact camera that has a small sensor but does not overprocess the image is preferred.

Whatsup with arri clog on the s1ii though? It still seems way off from actual arri footage?

This is where computational photography becomes impossible to ignore and where it starts to look more like computational cinematography. These Luna Ultra low-light comparisons are not simply about sensor size, ISO or aperture. They are about the entire imaging pipeline. The Luna is not just “seeing better” in the traditional optical sense; it is processing harder. It is lifting shadows, stabilising exposure, reducing noise, rebuilding colour, brightening faces and subjects, and delivering an immediately usable image in situations where more traditional camera pipelines can look extremely dark straight out of camera. The Sony FX3 comparison is especially revealing. The FX3 is a serious full-frame low-light video/cinema camera, here shown in 4K S-Log 3 at ISO 12,800, f/2.8 and a 180° shutter. That is not a weak setup. The Canon R6 V comparison is also striking, with the camera shown in 4K C-Log 2 at ISO 25,600, f/2.8 and 1/50. Yet, in these posted frames, both traditional camera images look dramatically darker than the Luna Ultra low-light mode. Of course, this does not mean the Luna is “better” than an FX3 or a Canon cinema-style camera in any broad professional sense. It is not. Log footage is not supposed to be judged as a finished image before grading, and larger-sensor cameras still have major advantages in colour depth, dynamic range control, lens choice, codec robustness, monitoring, rigging and production workflow. Properly exposed, lit and graded, they remain much more flexible tools. But that is not really the point. The disruptive point is that the Luna is delivering a visible, usable image immediately, in situations where a traditional cinema pipeline still expects the operator to expose carefully, light when necessary, grade later and finish the image in post. The iPhone comparison makes the argument even more interesting, because a phone is already a computational camera. Smartphones built their reputation by using software to overcome small sensors: multi-frame processing, HDR, tone mapping, noise reduction, subject detection and AI-assisted reconstruction. So when the Luna Ultra in 4K low light Mode produces a dramatically more visible image than the iPhone 17 Pro Max 1x lens in this kind of scene, the story is no longer just “computational camera beats traditional camera”. It is “a dedicated computational video camera can beat a flagship smartphone at its own game”. That distinction matters. Smartphone night photography and smartphone low-light video are not the same thing. Phones can do extraordinary things with stills because they can merge frames, hold exposure, stabilise aggressively and tolerate a more processed photographic look. Video is harder. It has to work continuously, frame after frame, without destroying motion, faces, texture and temporal consistency. In this example, the iPhone image remains very dark, while the Luna Ultra clearly prioritises subject visibility, colour recovery and immediate usability. So the real lesson is this: low-light performance is no longer just a hardware contest. It is sensor plus lens plus stabilisation plus temporal denoising plus tone mapping plus AI reconstruction plus exposure strategy. The most useful image may come not from the device with the largest sensor, but from the device with the smartest pipeline. The Luna does not replace cinema cameras. It does not replace phones either. But it attacks the space between them: fast, handheld, available-light video where the most important question is not “which camera has the biggest sensor?”, but “which camera gives me the shot I can actually use?” And in these comparisons, the answer is surprisingly uncomfortable for devices that are much bigger, much more expensive, and much more established. source

Not only the Leica :- )

There are so many variables when it comes to how you're viewing the film images. Negative film has wide dynamic range and soft highlight rolloff. Positive film has much more limited dynamic range and pretty hard highlight rolloff. Faster film tends to be grainier. Filmmakers with a big budget would be choosing their film stock for aesthetic/style reasons. Imagine shooting Taxi Driver on the same technicolor low-grain film stocks that were used for The Sound of Music. Bright saturated colors would have been terrible for Taxi Driver. Scorcese chose less gritty films than some others might, but Travis Bickle lives in a relatively desaturated/dark world and that's for the best. Filmmakers with low budgets were likely to choose the cheapest film stock they could and some even used the leftovers that weren't exposed from the productions of others. Or in the case of John Waters, whatever film he could steal. Next, as you said, for these classic films, you aren't necessarily looking at scans from the master negatives. You might be looking at scans of the release prints. They didn't always save the masters. It could even be a second or third-generation print. Then to add to that, the way the film gets transferred matters. Did they scan the original negatives or a print? How was it scanned? Was the film being scanned perfectly flat? What compression was used on the scanned image? Was it scanned or telecine? If telecine, which projector lens was used during the telecine process? As far as the lenses, razor sharp lenses have been available for a long time, including in the 50's, and including wide angles. Lots of vintage wide angles are a little softer in the corners, but they can be very crisp in the center... but fashion applied in many eras of film, just as it applies now. For some of the softer images, especially close-ups, they might have been using a net filter, made more complicated by the net filter potentially being mounted behind the lens instead of in front. https://www.provideocoalition.com/the-secret-life-of-behind-the-lens-nets/ I'm sure I'm forgetting more things too. Like almost anything going through an analog to digital process, there are about a bazillion variables to consider along the way.