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What happens next is limitless exploitation of the planet's resources for the personal gain of the dictators of the various regimes. War and selfish overuse of resources are clearly not good for the planet. The people in charge couldn't care less about the world or its environment. Some European leaders have tried to show a different path but now are told to arm with 5% of their GDP (which is IMO ridiculous and can only lead to further harm). With current technology, a set of dictatorial powers fighting it out for resources will lead to damage on a previously unseen level.

The Pyxis and Pyxis 12K price changes were initially right in line with the Chinese tax hike. Then a day or two later, the Pyxis 12K price dropped to the Aussie rate. BMD said they shifted enough to Australia to make that a thing. They had also made a comment that they build some of their equipment in China and some in Australia. At a guess, I'd say they focus on the high end where there's ostensibly more profit margin in Australia. That or they just figured nobody would bother auditing them if they claimed it. I'm sure that a big part of it was that nobody was going to buy Pyxis at $4k and the Pyxis 12K at $6600 was about $1,100 less than UC12K and unlikely to be purchased by anybody since anybody looking to spend $7k on a BMD camera probably already did with UC12K. Like me. I went on a crazy buying spree in the last month since I knew the tariffs were coming. Now my credit card bills hate me (which is translating to my bank account hating me), but I do have some fancy gear now. Anyway. None of that detracts from your point about all of the prices being pure chaos. In the reddit small business forum that I linked above, a bunch of people were complaining that foreign suppliers (mostly Chinese) were refusing to even do business with them, at least partly on the basis of insane and unpredictable US tariffs.

I'll believe it when I see it 😉

Zero issues. To be fair, my issues have not so much been with MPB but with DHL regarding pick ups and deliveries. Because so many drivers are sub-contractors these days and get paid peanuts, in more rural areas, they skip as many of the more distant collections or deliveries with the latter often being dumped at some collection point 10-15km away, or undelivered with claims that the recipient was not in to sign. But in recent times, it seems these sub-contracts have been taken over by the post office and they simply deliver or collect on their normal rounds. MPB themselves have downgraded me on a couple of items I have sold to them but have equally, upgraded quite a few. Prices can be a bit all over the place and based on what I am not sure. At one point a year or so back, Canon R3's were well over 5k and as a result, I decided against and bought something else...only for the prices to go under 4k within weeks. I pondered that for a while and made a business case for Canon, but all units were sold out by then and when they had new stock (I set up an alert), back over 5k again! I had same condition S5ii trade price of around 1k one week and below 700 the following week... My 3 lenses that completed this years kit though, all exactly as expected and will be in use in a few weeks time.

Not locally owned any more but RED are still there. And with significantly less cringe.

I have a new setup and pipeline and I'm really happy with it. GH7 shooting V-Log in C4K Prores 422 internally, at around 500Mbps 14-140mm F3.5-5.6 lens for daytime, 12-35mm F2.8 for night-time K&F True Colour 1-5 stop vND Pipeline in Resolve: CST to DWG as working colour space Plugin for basic shot adjustments Film Look Creator for overall look (and for taking the digititis out of the image) ARRI709 LUT to get to 709 output I went on a walk on Monday to test the full setup, and it was a crazy hot day (37C/99F) and direct midday sun, so seriously challenging conditions. Here are a few grabs (be sure to click-through rather than viewing the preview files embedded in the post). My notes and impressions - while shooting: Setup was GH7, 14-140mm lens, vND, and a wrist-strap and that's it I used the integrated screen, showing histogram, zebras, and focus-peaking to monitor I used back-button focus to AF before hitting record, so no AF-C going on while shooting (and randomly changing its mind about what to focus on) All shots were 14-140mm at F5.6 for constant exposure The K&F 1-5 stop vND had enough range, when combined with the DR of the GH7, so I never needed to change settings, despite going in and out of shadow (and even inside, which isn't included in the above images) The vND had a much more consistent sky and colour render than my old (crappy) vND, so I'm really happy with it I did ETTR and bring images down in post, but my tests indicated that V-LOG is very linear so there are a good few stops of latitude there The "tripod mode" of IBIS, which locks the frame completely, was very effective (despite me being hot and not having eaten for hours) and I could hand-hold past 70mm without it needing to drift, and even at 140mm (280mm FF equivalent) the shots will be fine with a bit of stabilisation in post (C4K on 1080p timeline) I shot about 18mins of footage in about 1.5 hours, camera was on most of the time with screen at full brightness, and didn't get any notifications about the battery, and didn't look to see how much was left since I have a spare My notes and impressions - in post: I chose a Film Look Creator preset and then just messed with it for maybe 10 mins, while scrolling back and forth through the footage, and I deliberately pushed the contrast to create a really strong sense of the contrast between the beating sun and the deep shadows Shots had exposure adjusted (obviously, due to ETTR) and some had contrast lowered and a few had slight WB tweaks, but that's it I never felt like I was fighting with the footage, and it didn't feel like work when creating the look.. I've shot with a lot of cheap cameras with tiny sensors and you always feel like you're trying to make gold out of lead, but playing in the FLC was more like choosing between a large range of high-quality options I used another copy of the FLC to adjust exposure etc per shot, with it set to not impart and 'look'. The advantage of that is that in Resolve there is a mode (Shift-F) that maximises the preview image and gets rid of the GUI except for the vertical toolbar on the right-hand-side where the DCTL and OFX plugins are, so it's a way of getting almost a full-screen view but keeping the controls visible.. very useful if you don't have a control surface or a second monitor handy. I'll talk more about my thought process and how I got to this setup in a later post, and also go into some of the technical stuff (DR, high-ISO, etc) but more importantly than that, I finally feel like the tech has come of age. What I mean by that is that I now have a setup where: I can shoot with a conveniently sized setup that doesn't need a rig and is ergonomic to use It has the right usability features, such as histograms, zebras, focus-peaking etc internally The monitor is bright enough The GH7 plus lenses (14-140mm F3.5-5.6 and 12-35mm F2.8) are long enough and fast enough to shoot what I see, without being too large, heavy, or prohibitively expensive It has enough spec that it can deal with almost all the situations that I actually shoot in, with enough DR for the sun, enough ISO for night-time, and fans so it doesn't overheat before I do, etc It shoots internally using a colour space and codec that don't look cheap/amateurish and make me think about upgrading It doesn't fight with me in the colour grade Resolve and the Film Look Creator are able to easily give me the flexibility in post to match images and correct any weaknesses from shooting (e.g. if there's a bit of movement when shooting hand-held at 140mm) Resolve and the Film Look Creator are able to remove the 'digital/video' look and instead give me a range of options that don't look artificial and most importantly, contribute a feeling to the footage without distracting from the content of the images (this is, after all, the entire purpose of what we're doing here.....) For the first time it feels like I'm getting the results I want because of the equipment I have, rather than in spite of it.

I've learned a lot about film-making over the years, most of it came through discovery and experimentation, but the best film-making advice I ever got was this... See how much contrast and saturation you can add to your images This probably sounds ridiculous to you, and I can understand why it would, but hear me out. Not only is it deceptively simple, but it's hugely powerful, and will push you to develop lots of really important skills. The advice came from a professional colourist on some colour grading forums after I'd asked about colour grading, and as I make happy holiday travel videos it seemed to be a logical but completely obvious piece of advice, but it stuck with me over the years. The reason I say "over the years" is that the statement is deceptively simple and took me on a journey over many many years. When I first tried it I failed miserably. It's harder than it looks... a lot harder. The first thing it taught me was that I didn't know WTF I was doing with colour grading, and especially, colour management. Here's a fun experiment - take a clip you've shot that looks awful and make it B&W. It will get better. Depending on how badly it was shot, potentially a lot better. It took me years to work out colour management and how to deal with the cameras I have that aren't supported by any colour management profiles and where I had to do things myself. I'm still on a learning curve with this, but I finally feel like I'm able to add as much contrast and saturation as I like without the images making me want to kill myself. I recently learned how the colour profiles work within colour management pipelines and was surprised at how rudimentary they are - I'm now working on building my own. The second thing it taught me was that all cameras are shit when you don't absolutely nail their sweet-spot, and sometimes that sweet-spot isn't large enough to go outside under virtually any conditions, and that sometimes that sweet spot doesn't actually exist in the real-world. Here's another fun and scarily familiar experiment - take a shot from any camera and make it B&W. It makes it way better doesn't it? Actually, sometimes it's astonishing. Here's a shot from one of the worst cameras I have ever used: We're really only now just starting to get sub-$1000 cameras where you don't have to be super-gentle in pushing the image around without risking it turning to poop. (Well, with a few notable exceptions anyway... *cough* OG BMPCC *cough*). Did you know that cinematographers do latitude tests of cinema cameras when they're released so they know how to expose it to get the best results? These are cameras with the most amount of latitude available, frequently giving half-a-dozen stops of highlights and shadows, and they do tests to work out if they should bump up or push down the exposure by half a stop or more, because it matters. Increasing the contrast and saturation shows all the problems with the compression artefacts, bit-depth, ISO noise, NR and sharpening, etc etc. Really cranking these up is ruthless on all but the best cameras that money can buy. Sure, these things are obvious and not newsworthy, but now the fun begins.... The third thing it taught me was to actually see images - not just looking at them but really seeing them. I could look at an image from a movie or TV show and see that it looked good (or great), and I could definitely see that my images were a long way from either of those things, but I couldn't see why. The act of adding contrast and saturation, to the point of breaking my images, forced me to pay attention to what was wrong and why it looked wrong. Then I'd look at professional images and look at what they had. Every so often you realise your images have THAT awful thing and the pro ones don't, and even less often you realise what they have instead. I still feel like I'm at the beginning of my journey, but one thing I've noticed is that I'm seeing more in the images I look at. I used to see only a few "orange and teal" looks (IIRC they were "blue-ish" "cyan-ish" and "green-ish" shadows) and now I see dozens or hundreds of variations. I'm starting to contemplate why a film might have different hues from shot-to-shot, and I know enough to know that they could have matched them if they wanted to, so there's a deeper reason. I'm noticing things in real-life too. I am regularly surprised now by noticing what hues are present in the part of a sunset where the sky fades from magenta-orange to yellow and through an assortment of aqua-greens before getting to the blue shades. The fourth thing it taught me was what high-end images actually look like. This is something that I have spoken about before on these forums. People make a video and talk about what is cinematic and my impression is completely and utter bewilderment - the images look NOTHING like the images that are actually shown in cinemas. I wonder how people can watch the same stuff I'm watching and yet be so utterly blind. The fifth thing it taught me was how to actually shoot. Considering that all cameras have a very narrow sweet spot, you can't just wave the damned thing around and expect to fix it in post, you need to know what the subject of the shot is. You need to know where to put them in the frame, where to put them in the dynamic range of the camera, how to move the camera, etc. If you decide that you're going to film a violinist in a low-bitrate 8-bit codec with a flat log profile, and then expose for the sky behind them even though they're standing in shadow, and expect to be able to adjust for the fact they're lit by a 2-storey building with a bright-yellow facade, well... you're going to have a bad time. Hypothetically, of course. Cough cough. The sixth thing it taught me is what knobs and buttons to push to get the results I want. Good luck getting a good looking image if you don't know specifically why some images look good and others don't. Even then, this still takes a long time to gradually build up a working knowledge of what the various techniques look like across a variety of situations. I'm at the beginning of this journey. On the colourist forums every year or so, someone will make a post that describes some combination of tools being used in some colour space that you've never heard of, and the seasoned pros with decades of experience all chime in with thank-you comments and various other reflections on how they would never have thought of doing that. I spent 3 days analysing a one-sentence post once. These are the sorts of things that professional colourists have worked out and are often part of their secret-sauce. Examples. I recently got organised, and I now have a project that contains a bunch of sample images of my own from various cameras, a bunch of sample images from various TV and movies that I've grabbed over the years, and all the template grades I have developed. I have a set of nodes for each camera to convert them nicely to Davinci Wide Gamma, then a set of default nodes that I use to grade each image, and then a set of nodes that are applied to the whole project and convert to rec709. Here's my first attempt at grading those images using the above grades I've developed. (This contains NO LUTs either) The creative brief for the grade was to push the contrast and saturation to give a "punchy" look, but without it looking over-the-top. They're not graded to match, but they are graded to be context-specific, for example the images from Japan are cooler because it was very cold and the images from India were colourful but the pollution gave the sun a yellow/brown-tint, etc. Would I push real projects this far? Probably not, but the point is that I can push things this far (which is pretty far) without the images breaking or starting to look worse-for-wear. This means that I can choose how heavy a look to apply - rather than being limited through lack of ability to get the look I want. For reference, here are a couple of samples of the sample images I've collected for comparison. Hollywood / Blockbuster style images: More natural but still high-end images: Perhaps the thing that strikes me most is (surprise surprise) the amount of contrast and saturation - it's nothing like the beige haze that passes for "cinematic" on YT these days. So, is that the limits of pushing things? No! Travel images and perhaps some of the most colourful - appropriate considering the emotions and excitement of adventures in exotic and far-off lands: I can just imagine the creative brief for the images on the second half of the bottom row... "Africa is a colourful place - make the images as colourful as the location!". In closing, I will leave you with this. I searched YT for "cinematic film" and took a few screen grabs. Some of these are from the most lush and colourful places on earth, but..... Behold the beige dullness. I can just imagine the creative brief for this one too: "make me wonder if you even converted it from log...."

Well with one country being run by a tit and the other country selling so much tat, it is quite apt that these tit for tat exchanges will go on for quite a while yet.

All of this uncertainty is just stupid. I'm so glad I made all my business decisions re. kit before all of this kicked off. It amuses me to still look and speculate on a few things, but I won't be buying or changing anything this year and therefore can't be hit by any of this stoopidity, in CameraLand anyway.

Sorry @eatstoomuchjam I can see how I’ve muddied the waters there as I was just illustrating how components of a system would attract different rates. The Ursa Cine 12K and its media module would’ve been a great example of that if it was “Chinese” enough to get hit and as BM didn’t hike the price to reflect that then I’m guessing it isn’t. But it might be later on today when the next random move happens. And then rescinded the next day etc etc

Who will take America's place on the global stage. Clue... It won't be Belgium.

Here is the list of the new exemptions. https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDHSCBP/bulletins/3db9e55 The general HTS code for cameras is 8025. So they are not included in the list. As it currently stands, if you buy the Ursa Cine 12K then you will be hit with 150% for the camera but not the media module. All of this is “as it currently stands” because he’s probably not finished his morning double cheeseburger yet so is almost certainly subject to further “strategic alterations” and all the new tariffs are removed over the next two weeks. I’m surprised they didn’t disappear in real time while I was reading the document.

I have some experience with the 15 1.7 and while its sharp and tiny with nice color rendition I think it's best as a kind of point and shoot lens for the system. It's nice enough but I wouldn't use it for serious video work - it lacks good manual controls and character. No comment on the Sigma, but my highest recommendations for the Voigtlander 17.5mm f0.95 if you're looking in that focal range. Tons of character wide open, tack sharp stopped down, incredible ergonomics and manual control.

I've been thinking about the 15mm Panny Leica for a while. It's a pretty looking lens. I am very happy with my 14mm pancake though, which is an awesome little lens on my GX85 and my og pocket. The 15mm has about 1 stop more light gathering in comparison. If it had a clutch mechanism for hard stops in MF like the Oly 12 and 17mm, it would be hard to resist for me. There is also a cheaper Dji branded variante out there which came with Dji's mft raw recording gimbal camera. What would speak for the Sigma over the Leica? Maybe the big focus ring and ultimate image quality? Though I imagine the Panny Leica is no slouch in the image department. What camera would you mount your lens of choice to? Did I read something about a GH6 or GH7? Maybe big lens for a big camera then?:) @mercer

I think it’s only polite that you disclose your affiliation to the Jehovah’s Witnesses before posting blind links to their religious material. Unless it’s just a massive coincidence that your profile contact details on here link to their jw.org domain.

The frustrating thing, as an American, is that lower income folks are among his most ardent supporters yet are the ones who will end up hurt the most by his heartless, cruel policies. I've said it on here before, I live in a mobile home. I made a choice to live as cheaply as I could, regardless of whether I could afford a nicer home or not, because I want to live a simple, affordable life. I own my mobile home outright, so I have no mortgage. I just pay a modest lot fee every month in the community I live in. My taxes property taxes are extremely low, and I live comfortably. A lot of folks here are lower income, though, and live here because it's what they could afford. They're decent, working class folks who struggle to make ends meet. A lot of them are on public assistance, like fuel assistance and food stamps. You want to know who most of them voted for, though? Based on the yard signs and flags, most folks here voted for Donald Trump. They voted for the man whose policies will hurt them the most. It'd be funny if it weren't so sad. It's a testament to the Democrats and their incompetence that twice they lost to a swindler and con man because they were unable to convince a majority of the electorate that the racist billionaire doesn't give a fuck about them.

These kind of posts are always my favorite. Thank you for sharing!

Impressive @kye no idea what this forum would be without you, really. Food for thought. You're such an asset and a few people here, if no more or/and elsewhere, miss you when you're absent : ) You've summed up the whole thing : ) it's all about that, no more no less, one of the reasons why people love (and use) anamorphics :- )

Z6iii + 28-75mm f2.8 Tamron now available in Z Mount? This was my workhorse, but adapted on the Zf and my only criticism was that the handling of the Zf, even with one of the available grips, was not great, plus the lack of in camera corrections using non-native lenses. The Z6iii fixes all of that. The Z8 also with the added benefit of being able to punch in even harder. For my needs, a 28-75mm on a 24mp sensor means it cannot be a ‘one and done’ set up as the focal length is too short for certain situations. The A7RV makes it almost though with only a couple of scenarios as in crop mode, it’s a 26mp ‘40-110’ with equal quality to a 24mp FF sensor camera. The Z8 with 45mp sits somewhere in the middle but for me is not quite enough to be ‘one & done’ and I think I’d go Z6iii myself between the two. 100mp would be my ideal. Not because I need 100mp because I don’t really need 60, but for that ability to have a compact ‘one & done’ camera and lens combo with a true 2x crop mode turning the 28-75 into a ‘50-150’ f2.8 I looked really hard at the Fuji GFX100 series and though I really like the body, there are no lens options unless I push the size & weight back up. I was hoping that Nikon might replace the Z7ii with a Z7iii but there does not seem to be any sign…

It’s the main reason I post, ie, if my experience shared helps someone else with their own deliberations, then it was a worthwhile effort. Re. cams & glass, right now if from scratch, I’d put the Z8 and Z6iii up near the top, except for the lenses. By the sounds of it, like me, you’d rather have more compact zooms and no one really makes them except Sony, Tamron and Sigma. Sony bodies offer the most options because they can use all 3 natively. I really like the idea of the A7cii or r, but the reality is, especially the r, other than outright size & weight (and price), the A7RV is just better everywhere really whether it be rear LCD articulation and rez, the EVF, handling, twin card slots. And used, the prices are not too bad. It’s always some form of compromise in the end but right now, other than perhaps cost, the A7RV with compact primes is an exceptional option. Just don’t shoot medium raw in low light 🤪