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Good, I'm glad we agree. Sorry if I misunderstood you to be arguing with me instead of agreeing with me. Good. I was mostly responding to the comment about "true" open gate. I just prefer to use the ratios for clarity. Yes. For shooting landscape/wildlife, I tend to prefer sharp modern glass, but for portraits/video, I like vintage stuff and for my vintage lenses that work on GF, sometimes the ragged outer edges of the image circle are really nice. I already said that Fraser's comment was based. Agreed that people can choose whatever hammer they want - and I've also said that I'd consider renting the Eterna for a project if it made sense. I'm not, in any way, saying that people shouldn't buy or use it. I'm more suggesting that it's overpriced and that I think most people who are looking in that price range are going to choose an FX9, V-Raptor XE, or UC 12K LF - and that with a somewhat bigger budget, the UC 17K 65 also becomes an option. Fuji would have a lot more sales (and still plenty of profit margin) if they dropped the Eterna at $9-11k. Still plenty of competition in that price range, but then they're undercutting the 41mm wide sensor of the raptor. Since the XE was announced almost in tandem, I am guessing that Fuji's pricing was determined before that announcement. Suspect it will drop a lot after a little while, but at $16k, Fuji also have to be careful not to anger early adopters by dropping the price too soon. Maybe 1 year.

This right here… Don’t waste your time trying to have a normal debate. Instead of admitting you were right about exposing more lens character at the edges with MF sensors he moves the goal posts and still says you’re wrong because “not ALL FF lenses look good on MF” You obviously never said that or claimed that but it’s a tactic people use to find ways to “correct you” after making a valid point. eatstoomuchjam won’t ever admit the might not know something and always needs to maintain the belief that he’s right. Either self esteem issues or simple EGO. It’s the same tired argument with the “MF Look” or something being “Cinematic”. Terms many of us understand and use but these idiots want to argue on an internet forum about how these aren’t a thing. Yet they’re on a full frame camera talking about how “technically” you could achieve the same look with Super 16. I’ve given up with most of the characters here, big waste of time.

Exactly why/how I am shooting the S1RII; 7.2k 30p 3:2 open gate and *horror* no VND and allowing the shutter to go into even the thousands, because 1/60th is too slow for most stills. If there is any chance of banding such as LED’s, 1/50th here in the EU fixes that. Having said that, not pulled any stills yet, but based on shooting 6k 30p @ 1-50th I know it’s going to be better.

Something else no one seems to mention: the 7K 3:2 Open Gate mode should allow high-resolution stills extraction at a photo friendly aspect ratio. I’ve always struggled doing this in 16:9 or 17:9. In practice, it would be amazing to custom-set a button to grab frames while shooting video (FX2 apparently adds this feature). On the R5C, you can do it during playback, but I don't think live?

I'd say 60p video at 16:9 and the 40 fps max stills burst aren’t directly related. The camera drops to 7K 30 fps in 3:2, and stills use a separate pipeline with buffer/processing limits, so max burst is capped by the stills system, not video frame rate. That said, the difference in DR between FF and S35 mode could also come from the readout: fewer pixels in S35 can reduce noise, though it’s also possible Canon is doing something in the background we don’t fully know. Either way, it’s a clever and welcome addition to the camera!

Depth of field wise 35 mm full frame has more options (on the shallow side). However, the "look" has other characteristics including tonal and color quality and richness. If the MF sensor is used at base ISO and given as much light as it can hold, the SNR, tonal range, color sensitivity etc. are better than the MFT. Since most of these sensors and cameras were mainly developed for stills, these characteristics may or may not translate into video image quality. Also shooting at base ISO for stationary subjects is always possible when shooting stills (using a tripod) but because of shutter speed requirements for video, and the ability to process consecutive images and merge information from them to improve SNR, things get more complicated for video. If similar interframe/dual-gain-output strategies are used across formats, if there is enough light, and if the processing power is adequate and read time can be minimized then the MF image should be superior at base ISO. However, these things are very implementation-specific and so video image quality differences between formats do not always mirror still image quality differences.

Tascam handle will be available in October. Details here https://www.tascam.eu/en/messg-2025-09_ca-xlr2d-n

This is getting tedious, you’re over-correcting things I never claimed. I didn’t say FF magically changes lens physics, just that for equivalent framing it naturally gives shallower DOF compared to S35, which is why focal reducers even exist in the first place. You basically repeated that back to me, so we actually agree there. Same with open gate: yes, 17:9 is technically “open gate” on many cinema sensors, but when filmmakers talk about open gate they often mean 3:2 / 4:3 full-height readouts because those give more latitude for aspect ratios and anamorphic use. That’s all I was pointing out. As for “character,” I never said every FF lens suddenly blooms with quirks on 44×33, just that bigger sensors can reveal parts of the image circle not usually seen, which some DPs (like Fraser) like to exploit. Whether that looks beautiful or boring depends on the lens and the shooter’s taste. No need to nitpick every word.. we’re actually saying a lot of the same things. At the end of the day, people are going to pick whatever tool makes sense for their workflow, budget, or taste. I never claimed MF was a magic bullet, just that it offers options and aesthetics some shooters care about. You prefer the practicality of the Raptor, others might be drawn to the Eterna 55. Both views can be true.

Phil Holland comment

True in this case. But the S35 5K crop mode may offer 14-bit readout as it has higher DR (according to Canon): https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/eos-c50?srsltid=AfmBOopS72Y9u5DIhecahYb7DGeR8xunJqjUY9e2K9yJhO7Jj3sJKvw_

I've posted a bunch of times saying that the GH7 is a great camera. There's not much to discuss with a camera that's been on the market for a wihle, though. Kye posts frame grabs from he shot alone with his GH7 that I think look a lot nicer than what Chris and Jordan did with an entire crew and an Eterna. I already said, though, that I have other reasons for liking my GFX 100 II. I'm not cherry picking anything. I'm just saying the truth, based on 20+ years of shooting with cameras ranging from a 16mm bolex / Pentax Auto 110 to a Gundlach 8x20 inch camera and having done tons of side-by-side comparisons. What you see as ego is just experience and impatience. Anyway, have a good one and enjoy your Eterna if you buy one. Depending on the lens, sure. 😀 The GF 55/1.7 is enormous for a 55mm lens, but the 63/2.8 and 50/3.5 are both pretty small/light. But yes, the two fastest first-party lenses for GF are f/1.7 primes (55 and 80) and the 110/2 is the next fastest. Otherwise, there's not a single first-party lens for the system faster than f/2.8 and only two there (the 45 and 63). Though to be fair, in classic medium format terms, some of the fastest lenses ever made were f/1.8 and only covered 6x4.5 (Pentax or Mamiya system IIRC) and the I think the fastest that covered a 6x6 or larger was a Pentax 105mm f/2.4 (which is a monster of a lens) - unless Hasselblad made something faster. But most 6x6 and larger lenses were f/4 or slower.

Not trying to jump into your apparently long discussion, but EXACT look of Full Frame can be achieved on M43, but you need faster lens, and once you go that fast, the lens becomes so big and heavy that the size advantage of the M43 format loses its relevance at that point. But the difference between 44mm wide sensor and 36mm wide sensor is far less than FF and M43. Its basically f/1.2 vs. f/1.4. And at the same time, lens makers of the two systems went opposite direction. FF lenses are now bigger and faster than 44mm MF lenses, cause FF systems want to differentiate themselves from low end cameras, even at the expense of size/weight, while MF systems want to break the collective mindset that MF=Bulky/Inconvenient.

Funny I’m not seeing any of your posts about the wonders of the GH7 but lots here on the Eterna. Funny that you would waste your time here when you could be getting the same EXACT look out of M43 and save a lot of money. After seeing your further posts below and remembering our previous exchanges I’m going to decline your invitation for further discourse. Your ego and style of cherry picking various “truths” makes it an exercise in futility.

10-1 not to be mistaken for 10-20

Sure, but you can accomplish a similar thing by using S35 lenses on FF. Or S16 lenses on M43. You pointed to a bunch of other incorrect things too like DOF equivalence as well. And again, 16/17:9 is "true" open gate on many cinema cameras. But it's also not true that every lens made for FF has extra character when you use it on 44x33mm. The Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L covers the entire GFX sensor and has minimal character all the way to the edges. The tiny Canon 40/2.8 pancake similarly has minimal character while covering 44x33 pretty well. Fraser wanted to use specific vintage lenses that had more character near the edges of the image circle. Certain FF lenses, yes. And the eterna 55 doesn't use the high MP of the 44x33 sensor for anything. Just like the GFX 100 II, your options to use the full sensor width are 4K with decent RS and mediocre DR (up to 60fps), 4K with strong RS and good DR (up to 30fps? Not sure of the max, but less than 60), 4K open gate with decent RS and mediocre DR (this differs from GFX 100 II), and 5.8k 2.35:1 with strong RS and mediocre DR. 8K goes to a crop really similar to full frame on a 24x36mm sensor and also has strong RS and mediocre DR. I haven't, at any point, said that the Eterna isn't a completely invalid camera with no uses. What I am saying is: 1) There is no intrinsic "medium format look" 2) For a vast majority of use cases, the less expensive V-Raptor XE with a 41mm wide sensor, good DR, and a global shutter will likely be chosen over this one by higher-end owner-operators (those who don't just buy an FX9 (cheaper yet) or C400 (even cheaper) - which, realistically, is most of them). If you prefer the Eterna, you're not wrong. You're welcome to use any tool that you like. I might rent it myself if a project came along where it made sense. I just think that the number of sales that aren't to rental shops will be really low.

Somehow I missed this promo short film, its kinda brilliant in how it showcases a lot of the features in a pretty creative narrative, really liking the overall image from this new sensor:

@eatstoomuchjam Funny enough, the Greg Fraser quote you referenced actually underlines my point. He’s saying outright that moving to a larger format opens up creative possibilities precisely because you’re seeing parts of the lens you wouldn’t on a smaller sensor. The lens itself hasn’t changed, but the relationship between the sensor size and the lens’ image circle absolutely changes what’s captured. That’s all I was getting at: bigger formats don’t alter lens physics, but they alter what part of the lens’ projection you get to play with, which translates to a different look/feel on screen. This is similar to when you have open-gate (true 3:2 or 4:3, not just 17:9), you’re also opening up different aspect ratios and lens visibility. Whether you see the extra image area as flaws or character is subjective, but the distinction Fraser is making is exactly the one I was trying to point to. I know many GFX users like to put certain FF lenses for identical reasons, and the GFXRF & Eterna 55 use that high MP large sensor to open up multi aspect ratios which is why I don't think its irrelevant to the discussion.

Sorry, but this sentence makes no sense. A bigger sensor doesn't change how a lens behaves. The lens always behaves the same and projects the exact same image circle. And "cinematic" is a meaningless term so "cinematic signature" is equally meaningless. This is untrue. Assuming that you mean compared with S35, to be more specific, FF gives shallower depth of field for equivalent framing at the same focal range and aperture. You can get an identical image by using a wider S35 lens with a bigger aperture. This is exactly what focal reducers do when they focus the image circle of a FF lens down onto an S35 sensor. In fact, when using a focal reducer, a Komdoo or Komodo-X has slightly less DOF at equivalent framing than a natively FF camera (the equivalent crop factor at that point is something like 1.05x). This also becomes largely an academic distinction if you don't insist on shooting fast lenses wide open 24x7. And even if you do, do you need shallower DOF than Army of the Dead, that Zack Snyder movie from 2021 that was shot entirely with the Canon 50/0.95 dream lens wide open? This is true, but irrelevant to a discussion of whether there is or isn't a medium format look. It only reveals more lens character in the sense that for some lenses, you see the worse parts of the image circle outside of the standard 35mm film size. In some cases, it also just means you can't use the lens at all - for example, my Noctilux-M 50/1 only barely covers 24x36mm and already has dark corners and edges. On a GF sensor, you just get the edge of the image circle surrounded by blackness. That lens has plenty of character already on FF. On film, yes, but this is related to the inherent resolution limits of film. On the 100 megapixel GF sensor, this is technically true vs 35mm format cameras that have 61 megapixels, but it's largely an academic distinction that is barely noticeable in practical terms. But when you're using line skipped/binned 4K off of that sensor, you have less smooth falloff than off of a 35mm sensor recording 8K. This is also academic and can barely be seen. At the same focal length, sure. Luckily, we can change lenses. It would be true to say that you can capture a different image with the same lens as a smaller format. So if your goal is to get a different look out of your vintage Nikkor 200mm lens and if that lens has an image circle big enough to nominally cover a sensor that's 44mm wide. If you're shooting 16/17:9, will that difference be substantially different than the image from a V-Raptor XE with a 41mm wide VV sensor (that costs $1,500 less)? No. That or if 3:2 capture isn't a concern, go rent the Ursa Cine 17K 65 with a 51x24mm sensor. Yeah, footage from the GFX 100 II looks nice too. But so does footage from the GH7, a camera with a much smaller sensor. For video, I prefer footage from my UC12K LF to what I get from the GFX 100 II.

Really funny indeed, it seems with long takes the only way to trim and save only important parts of footage is through Resolve’s Media management. Tried to rename clips to R3D first in CFExpress, but exporting trimmed parts from Resolve did not work. Compared one old clip and other than R3D’s chroma NR there was not much difference to NEV. Have to test this more with clips that are saved straight from card as NEV.

Technically a sensor by itself doesn’t have a “look,” but bigger sensors change how lenses behave and how we can use the image circle, which is where the cinematic signature comes from. FF already gives shallower depth of field for equivalent framing and a FoV closer to classic 35mm photography. Open gate modes on 3:2/4:3 sensors take that further by giving you the full vertical readout, letting you reframe, use anamorphic, or extract stills without losing resolution. Medium format pushes this even more, however Fuji’s GFX sensors aren’t “true” MF like Alexa 65 or Hasselblad backs, but it’s about 1.7× the area of FF, which is enough to reveal more lens character, smoother falloff, and a slightly different perspective than FF or S35. So when you pair the sensor with fast primes and open gate capture, the format really does offer creative possibilities that smaller sensors simply can’t match. I'm loving what I'm seeing from the Eterna so far by the way!

It would be funny if turns out RED and Nikon couldn't push Davinci developers to address the issue with nraw rendering and decided to fix it themselves by a metadata trick.

Are you seriously asking me to explain the thought process of other humans? I'm pretty sure I'm not qualified for that. None of those films were filmed entirely on medium format. Are you suggesting that when you watch them, you're suddenly jolted out of your seat when The Joker switches from Alexa 65 to Alexa LF? Or that you can even tell? Note that at no part of that does Greg Fraser say "I wanted the medium format look." Instead, he's talking about how much he liked the look he got from using lenses designed for smaller formats. It is objectively true that the designers of those lenses never anticipated that the outer edges of the image circle would get used at some point. This seems like a pretty based and objective take and a reason that somebody might choose to use a larger sensor. I like cropping, it has fantastic dynamic range, and some of the first-party lenses for the system (particularly the 110/2, 250/4, and 500/5.6) are among the best lenses I've ever seen. I'll turn this around and ask you these questions: 1) What do you think medium format look is? 2) Is there a FF look vs an S35 look and does a speed booster give S35 the FF look? 3) Is a sensor size that's just as close to 35mm film as it is to traditional medium format film going to give a medium format look or a full frame look? Because for photos, at least, 44x33 gives a total area of 1452 where 24x36 gives a total area of 864. Meanwhile, 6x4.5 (56x42mm realistically) which is the smallest medium format film size has an area of 2,352 and 6x7 (56x72) film dwarfs it at 4,032. 4) To turn around the question above, if there is a specific medium format look, why do tentpole movies like Mission Impossible which have effectively unlimited budgets use smaller formats, even for some of their big, sprawling epic shots? (And yes, MI Rogue Nation used Alexa 65 for the underwater scene, but the rest was shot on smaller sensors IIRC)

With this aggressive price, in the next few months we'll see if it's capable to shake a little the market. Next iteration of Z9 will probably incorporate some of these features.

I think this camera looks pretty great for the price. Its still out of my price range, unfortunately, I’ll have to stick to an iPhone 17p to get my raw kicks. But I can’t think of anything in the price range that comes close. (Is the Panny S5 IIX also considered a “content creator camera, as well”?)

Yes I agree. I’m ok with this strange little ZR as a sort of 1st gen beta to roll out the new cross pollination. Smart to make it $2,000 because it’s still very capable but it will allow them to test out all the features on content creators, and then hopefully roll it into pros later.