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True - though an argument could be made that an ultrawide lens and higher resolution frees you from too much need of a screen. Just sort of point it in the general direction of the photo you want and shoot. Then lock down the frame in post. Instead of Weegee's "f/8 and be there," we could be in "16mm FOV and be there." 😉

Yes, the Go is definitely the nearest competitor, but quite different actually. The Charmera is: - half the weight: 20g vs 39g (unsurprising given the processing and battery requirements) - similar in size: it's slightly longer but also thinner but probably the most significant thing is the Charmera has a screen and the Go doesn't, unless you add the case, but then it's the size of a GoPro again: The screen is really a differentiator for use, as the Charmera has a 35mm FOV that you compose by looking at the screen, and the Go is a 16mm FOV that you can't compose unless you use an app or "rig" it up with the case. Unsurprisingly, we're back to the fundamental differences between a normal camera and an action camera, only in this case both cameras are much smaller than a normal action camera! The size is interesting too, as today I took it out with me and it fit nicely into the tiny coin pocket that sits above/inside the normal front pocket of my jeans. If there was such a thing, this would have to be crowned the King of pocketability! I've fitted mine with a finger strap (not a wrist strap, that would be far too large!) and now testing that as a "minimalist rig". The people that use a keychain (like the one it comes with) only get video where the audio is the sound of the metal keychain links all reverberating through the camera body, so my finger-strap is made from a thin paracord. I watched a bunch of his stuff when I was first getting into photography and learning the exposure triangle and all that stuff, but I quickly outgrew his content as he seemed to be a very low-maturity "camera club" photographer, who only ever focused on specs and sharpness and practicalities, and when it came to what you did with the camera he seemed to be all about "the rules" and not about creatively breaking them or moving beyond them. In photography most people resent how the general public think that their expensive camera is what creates nice pictures, not the photographer, but the irony is that most of them don't create work that is really much beyond taking dull formulaic pictures with expensive kit, and Matt was squarely representative of that mindset.

Now, about using it in summer... are we talking about a mild summer, or an actual summer that isn’t even properly hot, where the camera doesn’t need to suddenly remember it has thermal limits? Here’s a useful 45-minute guide: And last but not least, one of the best comparison tests I've found so far, if not the most interesting with a unique range of pros and cons is here, as well as probably the smartest use of a fine example for low light is there (serves as tutorial too).

Do you think it’s time for a revival? I could blog about the mission 1 however it’s not a Nikon…

Usually a clean plate is useful for things like subtracting objects from the scene or similar things. Once you erase the thing, you need the stuff that should have been behind it. If your goal is just to key out the smoke from one scene and add it to another, I can't think of why you'd need it. Though I'm no VFX expert so I'm fully prepared to be wrong!

He used to wear weirdly large cargo shorts and it became a running joke on this forum. He doesn't seem to do that as much anymore, but the meme lives on!

Happy July Everyone, Here's a fun track from my Jazz/Big Band page...now in higher-quality Ogg format: "SLAPSTICK" (Looping) Yo can listen to it here: https://soundimage.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Slapstick.ogg There's also a LoFi version...you can listen to that one here: https://soundimage.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Slapstick_LoFi.ogg LoFi tracks are useful if you need the music to sound like it's playing over an old transistor radio, tv, etc. Both tracks can be downloaded here: https://soundimage.org/jazz-big-band/ As always, they're 100% free to use with attribution, just like my thousands of other music tracks and sounds. WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT OGG TRACKS? For those of you who don't know, Ogg tracks loop much better in game engines, as opposed to Mp3 tracks. Mp3 encoding will often discard music information at the end of a track. This creates an audible gap when the track reaches the end and loops to start over. Ogg encoding doesn't discard any information, hence no gap and perfect looping. For tracks that don't need to loop, Mp3 works just fine, but definitely go with Ogg for looping. Plus Ogg encoding is higher fidelity so Ogg music tracks sound richer and more full. Anyhow, if you're interested in downloading all my game music tracks at once (instead of one track at a time from my website) my Ogg Game Music Mega Pack is a huge time-saver. Plus it's a cool way to support my efforts. Here's a link: https://soundimage.gumroad.com/l/ylyre There's even a preview video you can watch if you'd like...or maybe listen to while doing other things...(it runs about an hour.) An of course, if you need some custom music created special for your project, just let me know. My contact information is here: https://soundimage.org/custom-work/ Until then, enjoy, stay safe and keep being creative! 🙂

Honestly... i don't know. I was coming at it from somewhat of an animation side of things as i know they used clean plates for various effects i think. im probably barking up the wrong tree. I need to do more research it would seem

😝 not sure if i should be offended or not... I vaguely remember him as a nikon guy ? i watched few of his youtubes but there was something that didn't click with me, i didn't watch much of his stuff.

As Kye said, you could also shoot it against a back background and key on luminance instead of color. What would the purpose be of a clean plate in this case?

Another thread where I'll mention the Insta360 Go 2/3/ultra or similar as an option. The price is definitely higher than a Charmera, but in terms of size, it's maybe even a little smaller? And with much better image quality. From what I remember, the carrying/protective case in the Go 2 is about the size of an Airpods case and I've definitely kept those in my pocket before. Matt Granger has entered the chat

The action 6 housing looks a bit tacky although i'm probably nitpicking.. Honestly i don't like watching comparison videos after i have bought something. Its almost guaranteed to start you crying into your beverage of choice lol

I think i will need to watch a few tutorials. I have an idea at the moment but its loosely defined, i need to pin it down somewhat, then do some testing. One thing i noticed today interestingly is, i initially had the new mission1 pegged as taller, wider and chunkier, however thats not the case, its the same height and thickness as the nine, it is about 10mm wider than the nine. Its deceptive when you look at by itself. Probably mostly down to the front lens housing i guess. I even thought the same about the batteries being different as they are calling the mission1 battery enduro2. Yet they are the same size, you would need a micrometer to find a difference. There must be some amazing tech improvements in batteries to increase the capacity but not the size. By the way those craft cutting boards you get cheap at the $2 shops they make really good mouse mats and non slip, not too thick . Pro tip 😉

Most people will probably end up buying both and using them with two different focal lengths, as in the case of the filmmaker you referred to. That level of flexibility is hard to beat. After all, they’re portable and easy to carry around. The footage matches pretty well too. I wouldn’t even mind making a few minor tweaks, if any are needed.

Good on you for trying something different, i lost interest after the image quality comment.. For two reasons 1) i dont think it will happen, every 2 year old and up has already mastered mums phone, and their bigger and heavier than any action camera i think. Ergonomically and for useability i think there's real constraints to avoid when going much smaller in an action camera for the majority of people. If one wanted a tenfold increase in quality you'd just buy a second hand gopro i reckon or other action camera if your not a fan of gopros. 2) I think the amount of people screaming for less sharpening on camera and letting the user deal with it is a very small segment of the market. Which they have been able to ignore so far. Although with the amount of youtubes available on sharpening and grading online, manufactures may have to lift their game soon. In some instances its happening we have the mission1, now theres also 2 other action camera threads on the forum so we should be well catered for.

No worries at all from me! Compositing used to be only green screens, but now you can do it in lots of ways. Considering that smoke is (mostly) colourless, you could just film against a black backdrop and then use the Add blending mode to put it on top of a shot. The path to understanding compositing is to have a clear idea of what the different blend modes do mathematically and then you can film something to match the blend mode that you want to use. You'd probably be better off using different modes and shooting setups for different things.

At $30 i'd buy one...

In that case, I've heard about this excellent pocket camera called the RED Komodo!

I’m just doing a bit of light stirring, I think you can handle it ok. I wouldn’t have bothered if I thought otherwise. Now a question for the group. I would like to film some smoke, I presume in front of a green screen although green colour may or may not work. i do have smoke machine to create the smoke and I think the best option would be to video it as I think a bunch of photos would not give me the smoothness I’m looking for, as i intend to composite as a special effect. im also wondering if i need to shoot a clean plate as well ? I suspect i need to watch a few more vids on compositing to help get my head around it.

Cargo pants…🤔

Yeah, definitely e-waste, although everything gets there eventually so it's all relative. I was thinking more about this challenge of getting a not completely rubbish image from the smallest camera and it's probably getting an action camera and using it in a crop mode to get a tighter FOV and using the stabilisation features so it's not so jittery. For example the GoPro 13 Black is 5599x4927 and 12-39mm FOVs. So the 39mm FOV will be a crop of 1722px wide, and I'm assuming you can have all the stabilisation etc enabled for normal video for that. The DJI Action 4 is about a 16mm FOV and with its 3648×2736 sensor if you cropped to 2x (its max) then you'd have a FOV of about 35mm and about 1824px wide, so a similar story. Of course these are drastically more expensive and far less pocketable, especially if you are like me and only carry things in your front pockets and therefore the camera probably wouldn't have a pocket of its own.

If it had a decent camera I'd actually be interested. But the ones I've seen will all end up as e-waste eventually. If it took photos (I don't really care if it takes video) that looked good on social media I'd be very interested though.

A couple of my cousins did this a couple of decades ago : ) with Kodak disposable 35mm film cameras. No photographer, no wedding videographer at all ;- )

Love the way you put it! : ) As everyone of your posts BTW < 3 Thanks, always a pleasure reading you : ) Great-juicy-post BTW part II ;- )

Really sorry to hear about this, hopefully it's temporary, the body can be more resilient than we think so fingers crossed for you and your family. Everything is a look, and there are no right or wrong answers... I just take exception with the people who run around telling people that the look of cinema is 8K and razor sharp F1.4 prime lenses and "accurate" colour science. Sadly, there are so many of these people sitting around repeating this BS to each other that common sense is hardly able to be heard above the cacophony, and when it is heard the mob chases those voices from the discussion for fear they'll realise they've wasted all their money and spent years sitting around looking like idiots when they could have realised it with a few downloaded reference images and 20 minutes in Resolve! Then the new people come in and see all the "experts" saying these things and because it's overwhelming they have to just swallow a bunch of it because no-one can possibly analyse and check every detail of what they're being told.