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Made a lowball offer on ebay and scored the “Vintage Lumix” S1R kit for $800 US this week. I have a book project and need to photograph a lot of oversized art in high megapixel raw so i couldn’t pass it up for the money. Been wanting to try out the 5k mode for a while now and have a whole list of vintage lenses to adapt. As much as I wanted the SL2 or the GFX 100s the prices haven’t come down as much as the Lumix stuff and I can always revisit those later. For now the Original S5 with Ninja V for prores raw and the S1R for high res stills and 5k Super 35 Anamorphic. A little S9 for $800 is next and that will round out my 3 camera budget system for under $2,300, Not bad…

Such a great camera. I'd argue it's the best value out there, as far as used cameras go. Still using two myself.

I wish I hadn't!

Anyone watching this cringe fest World Cup draw would swap in a heartbeat.

Another thing to compare is how the manufacturer handles the age old question of an OLPF. The R3, which share the sensor with the C80 and C400 has a pretty weak symmetrical OLPF, but it’s certainly good. The FX3 has no OLPF and is prone to moiré. So is the S1ii and the Z6iii and the Zr, which share the same sensor, and a very weak asymmetrical OLPF. The R5C, the R5ii and the R5 also has an asymmetrical OLPF but is less prone to moiré, maybe because of the 8k sensor. What kind of OLPF Canon put in the C50 and the R6iii remains to be seen…

Yikes! You know, I've been too busy to get around to upgrading my iPhone to iOS 26 and now maybe I won't (until they sort this out.)

With Sony the only FW update you get is probably for your Playstation, but don’t worry, Sony will always release a cheaper model, which will have some of the features you miss. Canon R5II and R6III sounded tempting, but after looking the 3D pop & toneh show from YT I am not sure Canon IQ is any better than Nikon. It depends on which kind of image you like more. So it leaves only Panasonic and Nikon on the table for me. With them you might get some HW and FW quirks at launch, but they also try to fix them and give new good additional features along the years, not just in the form of new bodies like Sony. I have a 35mm F1.4 too, but it is only for those cases I can’t use the 135mm F1.8. My 50mm F1.2 captured only dust since I got the 135. Still not sure whether I should up or downgrade it and 35 F1.4 to 35 F1.2 or to boring, but easy to use 24-70 S II. Probably not. Thought also about swapping the Z6III and 400mm F4.5 to Z8, as with 2.3x crop 135mm would be 310mm F4.1 on Z8. Very likely not worth it either.

Ah yes, I've never liked them either 🙂

If you're in Berlin and would like to check out some nice gear give me a shout...https://www.kleinanzeigen.de/s-bestandsliste.html?userId=6113630 I have listed the Nikon Zf, Sony RX100 V, Fuji X-T30, Oly PEN F and more... The Cooke 50mm T2.8 is also up there, a legend 🙂 The shelves are full! It has to go!

I've been rocking 2 secondhand S5s all this year, mainly with my Super Takumars (I've got the 20-60 kit for when I'm feeling lazy) and I've yet to touch the edges of their capabilities.

I suspect that for the majority of working professionals, convenience > image quality. Hence the use of zooms rather than primes. And, let’s be honest, the image quality of good zooms isn’t too shabby! Those of us with time on our hands - no commercial deadlines - playing with M mount lenses is great fun. I’m certainly enjoying my Voigtlander VM Apo 28,35,50 set.

Never heard of it, but I like it.

Haha. I am not one of those then... Lenses are more important than cameras, really. It's true a lot of people are happy with one modern 24-70mm F2.8 for silly prices like $2k that can only be used on ONE camera and maybe a fast 50mm... F1.2? for another $2k (fuck me... no wonder they don't own many), maybe a longer lens - 70-200mm perhaps for 2 grand or whatever, that is 6 grand totally down the drain. Just get a good 35mm prime and learn to use back-button AF. I don't understand why they think the heavy zooms are such a great option. The 24-70s are massive and don't have the character of a nice 35mm F1.4. 28mm or 35mm are a fantastic focal lengths... Not too wide for people shots, easy to crop to a 50mm FOV. The do-it-all lenses. Give me a small 28mm F2 like the Leica Q over a DSLR 24-70 any day... I have the images to prove it!

I see the guy responsible for Liquid Ass has taken his ass off to Meta, which in my opinion is one of the most unethical companies in the world. Quote of the week comes from Tim Cook: “The truth is we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer, if our customer was our product" “We’ve elected not to do that.” “Privacy to us is a human right. It’s a civil liberty, and something that is unique to America. This is like freedom of speech and freedom of the press.” “Privacy is right up there with that for us.” ** Last time I looked, privacy was not unique to America. In fact, Tim has just spent the past 12 months cozying up to a fascist dictator. Maybe he got kicked in the head by a horse, I don't know. But something there isn't quite right there. Could it be that these companies are taking us for fools? Alan Dye is the guy responsible for the current mess at Apple by the way... Alan's a perfect fit for Meta as he appears in my opinion for all the world to be an absolutely world class bullshitter. If fake-it-till-you-make-it was an olympic sport he'd be the GOAT. How a design department under his leadership took years to come up with a worse phone UI, a cheap Android-like skin with folders that look like fucking icecubes, I'll never know. It must be one of the worst tech failures of all time. The quality control is nowhere. The aesthetics are awful. The AI side is an abject failure (Apple even admit it). What is it with these fuckers and failing upwards? He's gone from one of the most highly compensated positions in tech to possibly an even higher paid one, and his singular achievement has been to ruin our phones. I am actually an Apple fan, their design ethos under Jonny Ive was sensational and the engineering has always been spectacular, people criticise them for design over substance, it's total BS - Apple Silicon is a revolutionary architecture. The current Macbooks are the best laptops ever made. The iPhone, which gave rise to it (RISC Apple Silicon) have always featured the best operating system on a phone, by a mile, it's not even close. So what the hell is going on under Cook? This is a company which is able to attract the best product, marketing and engineering talent in the world, bar none. They should not be ending up in this situation, by promoting Alan fucking Dye into senior leadership positions. In my opinion they should roll back everything he's done. Give us back iOS 18 and apologise. The fact they have gone cap in hand begging to Google for ai features is the other big humiliation of 2025 for Apple. This is a rival which literally stole the very concept of a modern smartphone from Apple, and they are now rewarding them for it.

Thanks to A7V the S1II is AU$1000 off in Oz, making it same price as R6III and few hundred dollar cheaper than A7V, so competition is good for us consumers, but yeah never get new camera on pre-order unless its likes X100VI for the profit ha.

RF lens have price for both High/Mid/Low atm so I m actually fine with it (haven't got RF L lens, but no need to), I just got the RF 45mm 1.2 recently, no other 3rd party do F1.2 at such low price. Beside you loss some function with 3rd party like slightly worser AF, no Dynamic Active IS and limiting FPS for high speed shooting on some brand, and incompatible issues with new body or new firmware. When I was with Sony the only 3rd party lens I got is tamron 28-200mm cause sony 24-240mm sucks, the rest of my len is G/GM lens. The old Zeiss 24-70mm F4 is really showing the age vs newer zoom lens except the 28-70mm 2.8 lol. Currently I use some Sigma lens on my S1II and there is a difference on AF tracking/hunting vs Panasonic lens, but at least I dont get limited to 15FPS or no Active IS..

I own one L-mount lens and two bodies, with about 40 adapted vintage lenses. I could imagine kitting up if I was on Fuji X mount or Micro 43s, but I made a decision at some point to put everything into EF mount so that I could jump between camera systems when the time comes.

That each camera owner of a particular brand buys, in this case, 1.7 lenses for his camera. From memory, almost all brands are below 2. So that means the aside from the kit lenses, buyers rarely ever consume another lens for the camera body.

What does a lens to body ratio of 1.7 mean?

At the moment the best lens to body ratio in the market is like 1.7, and a lot of that is standing on the shoulder of kit lenses. Having third party option is good, but majority of people don't buy many lenses to begin with.

I don't know what people see in new cameras really. Used ones just so much more exciting. A GFX 100 for £1800. You don't need to buy a single medium format lens for it... Bang on a 10 quid adapter and Minolta 50mm F1.4 for 50 quid and it looks like a Leica M11 with Noctilux F0,95. A7 IV for £1300... What a bargain that is. Does everything. If you need the exotic frame rates and codecs... EOS R5, 4K/120p, 8K raw, £1700. Sony a1... You can go to Japan and the flight pays for itself. The list goes on. I will never buy a new camera or pre-order one again.

My thoughts on the blog. https://www.eoshd.com/news/are-canon-back-on-top-in-specs-race-sony-a7-v-and-canon-eos-r6-mark-iii-comparison/

I agree. However, when this rumor first surfaced back in July, it seemed fake and not any kind of a leak from Sony. The FX3 and FX6 are still wildly popular cameras in the TV/doc business, so there is no urgent need to replace them. Meanwhile, the FX9 has been entirely discontinued, which is a shame as it has the best image of any FX camera. Based on market conditions, it is possible that Sony may abandon the prosumer Cine Line FX cameras in favor of the lower FX cameras. Since Burano came out at $25K, which is about $10K overpriced based on where the F5 CineAlta was priced, I've had a very bad feeling about Sony and its market segmentation.

The thing is, open gate is a pretty big deal for people in charge of social media for companies big and small. Almost everyone i know doing that kind of work is a Sony shooter and are frustrated that they don't have that option, while my S5II X does. I know of at least three folks who switched to Lumix for open gate, though that's a drop in the bucket. Still, as other companies introduce it, Sony might find themselves shedding customers if they too don't introduce it soon.

$3,000 being entry-level is crazy...the A7V is a beast but so is every single camera out right now haha. Honestly the GH7 or used G9II is whats tempting me at this point if I were going to upgrade. I'd take the smaller sensor for crazy IBIS, tons of features and great IQ that punches above what people expect from MFT. Lowlight would be fine with a sigma 18-35 and metabones 0.64 lol. But that's a totally different topic...back to the A7V. I just don't like how expensive cameras are now; seems every new model is crazy in price. Nikon are the outliers with incredibly competitive pricing. Sony not having Open Gate here is very lame. Yes you don't need Open Gate, yes the A7V is still a beast, its just that every camera is a beast right now. I could buy a 5 year old A7SIII on eBay for $2,400 USD and never need better in my life...and we had this camera 5 years ago. The fact that the A7V doesn't give me a dramatic reason why I'd want it over the 5 year old A7SIII or even the A7IV which as previously said will become cheaper...says a lot.