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As there are too many separate threads and topics about cameras that have fisheye lenses and small sensors, i.e. anything that goes on the end of a selfie stick, I will combine them all here and anything that gets posted separately will be moved to this post.

This firmware was released some time ago, and I already used a lot the 40mm zoom mode. Yes, there is almost no drop on image quality - only "problem" is that it only works in the Normal color profile, don't work with Log. Did not tested the breathing compensation, but from the reviews that I saw, it works really well.

Does this mean that those specialist art films his wife made back in the old country will now have a 100% tariff ?

100% tariffs on American films which aren't all shot in the US. 100% tariffs on all foreign imports and Netflix production. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz01kx3yrmvo https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-announces-100-tariff-on-non-us-movies-as-film-industry-dying-13362069 Proper details sketchy but looks bad. But all par for the course when your public votes for a thuggish fascist dictator.

Cleopatra should be taken as an influence to every movie produced after it came out. If you're studying that era of photography it's obligatory, IMO.

I think the solution is to have distribution channels independent of the USA. Create your own streaming platforms for content made regionally and also internationally (among movie-producing countries that don't go into trade wars with each other). This way the market becomes much more healthy and less dominated by a small number of current players that are very large. Of course I understand that funding can be an issue, but such platforms could gather public financing (either via subscriptions that are a bit larger than the big platforms' fees initially, or via government or intergovernmental support from tax money). The streaming costs that a platform incurs are dependent on the quantity of content and if the focus is on quality, this shouldn't be a huge issue.

For a 20 second ad filled with 1 second or less shots this could work. For a full-featured movie no. We are still a ways away from realism. The uncanny valley is brutal. And I'm talking purely about the visuals. The sound just comes through as very fake. So bad sound and mediocre visuals = AI fail. On the bright side, it's really clear they used the movie Cleopatra (1963) for their AI teaching-learning. I actually wanted to see the old Hollywood mega production during one or two of those shots.

I don’t really agree with “if you can’t beat them, join them” attitude to stuff like this. Being a right wing imbecile is very much on the rise but it doesn’t mean we should just fall into line with it. AI should be used for taking away mundanity like doing the dishes and laundry from our lives to free us up to do the fun and creative stuff not steal that from us. I’ve got admiration for whoever’s work was used to “train” this but only contempt for those who are facilitating and grifting on the blatant theft of original work. Do you not see that these tools that you are espousing will only make that situation immeasurably worse ? This will literally give these people the ability to say “yeah just make that last one again with a slight variation and set in a different location” and churn this shit out even faster and with waaayyyy more profitability than they do now ?

Some shots from a few days ago in Insadong. This area was very crowded and I did grab a range of normal shots at street-level, but the ones looking up were of particular interest to me due to the variety of architecture in the area. For reference, this is what most angles at street-level looked like: I have been recording a number of themes while out and about. The first are the 'normal' street scenes taken mostly at ground level. The second is views from the hotel window, which I posted earlier. The third is looking up. The tall buildings here (with its ~25M population in the metro area) are seemingly unending, in variety, size, and number. Some are deeply creative and stylish, some are featureless and faceless and nameless. A good subject to include if trying to capture a sense of the place. Here are a few shots looking up. Like all things here, it's about contrasts, and often the vegetation contrasts beautifully with the buildings so I've leaned into capturing compositions including both. These were all taken on the same day as the above shots.

Published by Canon (JP 2025-040484) a month ago... «To provide a compact imaging optical system that’s wide and fast.» The prototype coming (or is it mere proof of concept for patent purposes?) would be for a 24mm f/0.7 from those white papers announcing they have worked out «a long-standing challenge in lens design» but according to Canon rumors, any RF f/1.0 lens is then just arriving around the corner, very likely.