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A couple of years ago, I was saying on Forums that Arri would fail, and people were calling me stupid. Ohhh its image is so special, etc etc how peasants could understand this. But the problem is you can't sell a lot of 70-100 000 usd cameras, the market is what it is, even more so when you have very capable cameras coming for much less. You reach a level where that 5% more cannot justify the 10, 20x the price. Before you had the highend market where camera cost/rent is peanuts compared to the overall cost, but that secondary market, the people that used to rent those highend cameras, can now buy a camera that will do 90% of what they need, and will rent only 10% of what they used to do. Arri and most US/german companies are going to be eaten by the Chinese ones. They still live in the rental business, for camera and other gears light lighting etc. The principal of the Chinese is that they will produce affordable equipment for the many, that will help them also produce for few highend that they will sell. You will find Aperture/Godox/Nanlight models that will cost less than a hundred dollars, to 4k led light costing more than 10 000 USD. They will sell a thousands of the 300 USD 300 watt cob monolight, for perhaps every 10 000 USD 5000 watt one. But those thousands of 300 USD lights will help them for R&D for those big lights. same for camera, imagine if Arri had repackage the original Arri LF in a more affordable casing, taking out some features of frame rate and sell it for 10K. They would be selling thousands of them, perhaps at the detriment of their higher ends, but those thousands of 10k models would overall bring so much money.

Probably because it wasn't ready for the Burano, time and technology marches on. A future Fuji GFX camera with a 12K sensor is an appealing prospect though. Full frame sweet spot I think is 8K.

I just think it's a form of culture rot and US cinema will go down with the ship. The west is in decline and it's time for China to take over at the top of the world order, and that includes cinema. Better start learning Mandarin.

There's something about that 33 megapixel sensor. It's a sweet spot. It also helps to shoot with manual WB as the Sony AWB doesn't just dial in the Kelvin it does a wild green/magenta bias depending on the light, and gets it wrong sometimes. But the underlying image is REALLY good, if you don't mind a bit of occasional rolling shitter.

For now as a Nikon shooter, I am more inclined to shoot NRAW and do the renaming trick to R3D, than to shoot R3D as I am finding that the Nraw has more DR than the R3D and you can shoot the normal version that takes only about 370 mbs for 24 fps in 4k and 700 mbs for 6k. This is a little test of conversion of Nev to R3D. You have NEV (Nikon RAw), NEV but using the RED lut, Then the Nev to R3D renaming and finally the REDraw file. then So I need to make a little bit more test, with skin tones etc, but they are quite close to me, even more so that even between the different red cameras like the Raptor and Komodo, their is some color difference. The yellow are a little bit more saturated and the image is a little more toward yellow in the Nikon ZR redraw R3D files. On side by side test the ZR was the more yellowish of the red camera. So it might balance out in the end.

One thing this test shows is that the Nraw seems to have better DR and secondly the ZR has great DR/latitude. It is scoring 5 stop above and 3 to 4 stop below. So you are at 8+ to 9 stop of latitude which is very good. Very close to the Panasonic S1ii, Red raptor and for reference the Alexa LF is at 10 stops. I put the link to the video below, he has an English version sub, that is his own voice and not AI.

U-turn, - would not be the first time in my life and won’t be the last… Ordered and arriving Tuesday as my new principal video lens. On an S1RII. Why? Simple, - the only way I can make a 3 camera (over a 4 camera) system work, is with zooms. And although I keep considering it out of need over choice, anything over around 700/750g is just larger and heavier than I’d like and really, ideally no more than 500g. As much as I love the Sigma 28-45mm f1.8, it’s a bit big and heavy and slightly limited, even if engaging hybrid zoom crop mode making it more like a 28-70mm (hybrid zoom = x1.4 and engaging standard digital IS = x1.1). It’s a 1kg chunk of glass and isn’t that stable on a freestanding monopod. I have the Sigma 28-70mm f2.8 and that’s been a workhorse and remains so for me, but is now welded to my other S1RII for stills duty, again with hybrid zoom mode making it more like a 28-100mm but without that last bit of compression a 28-105 might have. There is the recent Lumix 24-60mm f2.8 full frame lens and it was an option, but I like the crop option f1.8 from Sigma with its internal zoom. On the S1RII, it offers 4.7k 50/60p in 17:9 and with standard EIS engaged, a useful range of 28-66mm is full-frame terms. Anyway, that is the plan subject to testing it out over the next couple of weeks and if it doesn’t work out as expected, the Lumix 24-60 could be an option, but it’s the more modern reincarnation of the old 18-35 f1.8 but with more range and vastly better AF. Keeping my Lumix 18mm f1.8 to slap on for those few but essential occasions where I do need more width than 28mm for video and the 35mm f1.8 for better low light capability for stills, but the 50mm is basically redundant and the 85, dunno, undecided… I ended up using the 85 a lot more for video than expected the second half of my last season just gone, but about 15mm too long most of the time so probably also going… So going forward I can dedicate one unit to stills, one to roaming video and the third to static video and as a one man band, I don’t think there is a better option for my needs.

Maybe the movie industry will bounce back like vinyl and film when enough folks begin to recognise that they do in fact miss the good old days. Or perhaps not enough will and we are doomed to…well, doom scrolling. I refuse myself not to (use my phone whilst watching something) not simply on point of principal, but because I have an actual interest in watching shows and movies and not simply having them on as background noise whilst I check every 30 seconds people I don’t know or care about, have acknowledged my existence. Or what they just had to eat.

Thanks John for the app suggestion. I use PhotoMechanic for pics and have done for probably at least a decade and it’s my culling software. I do think it was having identical named files 🫣 in both S1RII’s that was causing me the issues because at first I thought it was the latest stoopid Premiere update, but seems the stoopid one was the user…

Cinema is going the way of the railroad. A novelty experience. Why hire a crew to film your car commercial when you can prompt AI to have a car do donuts in the desert with a AI narrator? People are too apathetic and dumb to know the difference between real and fake anymore. I haven't been to a movie theater since Dunkirk. I haven't had a killer movie experience since like "The Matrix" or "Lord of the Rings". People are overworked, overwhelmed, and underprepared for this AI Idiocracy we are barreling towards. People are filling that feeling of impending upheaval with distractions. I for one have canceled most of my subscriptions or upgrading to a new phone "just because there is a new one". Fuck the instagrams, facebooks, and tiktoks of the world. Scrolling physically makes me sick now and I'm actually glad for it. They don't get to monetize my attention anymore.

This is how I name all my footage: 2025-11-23_16-49-13_S5M2.MOV I do this with a free app called XNviewMP. This has served me well for finding date, time of day, and camera. Here's the renaming template: {Creation Date[Y-m-d_H-M-S]}_S5M2 On each import, I can select the last template used for a particular camera. I just use the Finder for finding files. For photos, it's a little more complicated: {EXIF:Date Taken [Y-m-d_H-M-S]}_City_Country_{EXIF:Model}_{EXIF:Focal Length}mm_F{EXIF:F-Number}_ISO{EXIF:ISO Value}_{EXIF:Exposure Time}

I second it, in terms of the A7 cii. High Iso grain is not as blotchy as in the A7iv, and honestly, the evf was one of the reasons to switch from the A7iv. The body is so big that the centered evf is very uncomfortable to use, at least when you have a big nose like me. Additionally, it somewhat flashes the eye in a rather stressfull way. From that perspective, I find the more ‚low res’ evf on the A7c ii to be more comfortable to use. While video on that sensor is beyond any doubt, with stills, I‘ve struggled on both cameras to get the raws right, i.e. realistic, more often than not. Counterintuitively, the highlights are more malleable than the shadows, and the greens tend to be rather harsh and hard to bring back into line.

Nothing beats a jet2 holiday.. I mean Chinese prices. Brand new S5II for only $1100

I wonder why they didn't use this sensor for Burano. FX6/9 target market is mostly ENG and documentary and events and weddings and things like that. None of them doing this stuff say I want 8k30 from 12k sensor. Why not give them A9iii global shutter sensor in a lighter body than fX6 and modern menu with a bigger screen?

A very good example of why used beats new yet again. The sony a1 is now cheaper than the rumoured Sony a7 V at £2999. So there you go... Absolutely zero reason to buy an a7 V 🙂

I’m in the same boat. Trying to time it so that the Sony A1 price vs features hits the sweet spot. I think we’re nearly there. I always talk about the Japanese auction sites but again, right now there is a promotion on Buyee and Mercari with 15% off coupons. Not sure about shipping and import tax to the UK from Japan but it’s still a great deal right now. Found one private party with very low shutter count and light photo use. $2,781 after the 15% discount applied. tempting…

For those web content creators who consider 8K a bit mushy for Youtube work🙂

Sell so did blackmagic. And the image from that camera is pretty amazing. Allthough I will never have an need anything above 4k.

I guess the third base ISO is just the second base but with heavy noise reduction, as its called Enhanced Sensitivity.

8k30p with oversampling and 8k30p in Super35. 16 stops of DR with triple base ISO.

Yeah I hope canon, sony or panasonic would just buy up ARRI just for its patents. Like Nikon did with RED (the nikon ZR looks amazing). If somebody would buy up ARRI and trickle down their patents in a 2K body they would own the filmmaker space and these camera's would fly off the shelves. (Event video etc might be a different game, where fast AF is more important, but heck these big 3 companies already have decent enough AF today as is). But sadly also a sign that the old ways of working is done for. AI will eat lunches, social media has killed traditional video jobs (artfull and skillfull). watching TV has declined, watching slop filmed with an iphone with crazy transitions and bad lighting has become the norm. (as it feels more real to the consumers, and I get that, but also sad to see jobs, careers and also art plummet). Even the actual movies that are being release over the last 15 yeras have been disneyfied. (cute animal, jokes, woke characters, ...) Not sure if anyone watched the new predator movie. The beginning of the film was great, and the ending was great, but man the middle part with bud, woke synthetics and the friendship arc just sucked.

If it wasn't before, there's certainly a lot of those in the Billionaire class that have pivoted to literally advocating for such, are on record wanting democracy to end, and using these tools now. Anyway, fwiw, I'm kind of amazed this niche that you've carved with internet 1.0 is still active. I guess some of us are old enough for that digital nostalgia.

R8 will have advantage for low light vs R7 being an FF camera, I did shoot R8 under summer sun in 4K in a beach and it was fine (more than 2hrs) but it does have temperature guage at slightly more than half way. Interior is fine for R8 as long you got those fan add on, my R8 hasnt shut down on me for overheating yet. R7 on the other hand is a beast in terms of long form recording, I hardly see the temperature guage showing up unlike the R8 even in direct summer sun, paired with sigma 18-50mm 2.8 you have pretty killer combo (or 17-40 1.8 to give u the FF look)

I had a go with an FX2 yesterday. The tilting EVF is great. As are all tilting EVFs.

Owner of an R8 here. Those big phat sensels and sophisticated AF will help you big time in low light. 1080p is very good, if you need it. I've had zero problems with overheating in indoor situations, but the body will get warm if you push it all the way to 2 hours of recording. Same goes for SD card. Remember that you can use EF APS-C lenses with the official adapter and that opens up a huge panoply of options for the R8 which were never available for EF bodies. You'll get the APS-C crop in video, of course, but it's still a great option. Since my R8 lives on a tripod I use mine with a venerable EF-S 17-55 F2.8. That's it. For video I need nothing more, save for some lights and a good Rode wireless lavalier mic kit. Minimal set-up, every good results. P.S: if you'll be swapping SD cards in long recording sessions and the camera has to remain on a tripod, avoid the R8. The SD card is placed on the bottom, so you'll be hitting your battery constantly. The battery door is the worst I've ever seen in any Canon camera irregardless of price. Go for the R7 and its side-loading SD card slot, in that case.