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Fuji have announced the X-T30 IIi https://www.fujifilm-x.com/global/products/cameras/x-t30-iii/ It looks... fine. The price is nice - $1,000. As I said in the title, it looks like it'll be great for someone who would have bought the X-M5, but preferred a camera with an EVF. Photos are 26 megapixel. Video is 6.2k at up to 30fps, 4k at up to 60fps, and 1080p at up to 240fps. The only mention of image stabilization on the product page is electronic so I think there won't be any IBIS which will be a deal breaker for some/many.

Wow, I think that one speaks for itself. I actually just made my first ever purchase from Buyee. The lens was not well photographed or chronicled, but it was listed for a price that I couldn't pass it up. I think one of the things that has stopped me in the past is that I didn't know what the shipping fees would be, and now the tariffs are an x-factor as well (I read 17% a few days ago, but who knows). But for $30, it seemed like an experiment worth trying.

I know we’ve ventured off topic from Anamorphic adapters but I’m currently shopping for some cheap lenses with character and will use these with my Blazar Nero 1.5x so it’s somewhat relevant LOL… I stumbled upon both of these listings earlier, one from ebay US and one from Japanese Yahoo auctions. This is what I meant before when I said that there are bargains to be had for the savvy shopper.

2023 was so poor for me that I almost left the industry. 2024 was enough to get by on. 2025 seems like I'll gross 10-20% more than last year, even though my costs are up significantly across the board. It's still by no means a "well-paid" job. And I don't know how sustainable this is, because I haven't felt like my market would support a price increase for the past three years. I haven't given dared to give myself a raise. This is one of the problems about making a living in video production and editing into the second half of one's career. @fuzzynormal touched on this above; I can't expect to increase my rate based on experience alone when I am competing with people who are literally half my age. Now that I'm in my 40s, the stability and security of a staff position hold more appeal. And yet the job market is so volatile that I might have better job security being self-employed -- for now. My problem is that there is nothing else that I am equally drawn to. Almost every role that draws a decent salary involves sitting in a never-ending stream of unproductive meetings, and I can see a lot of those going away as a result of AI in the next couple of years. I can't reach a place where a career shift makes sense.

It's funny, but I look at "what if" scenarios for lenses about once a fortnight and I've repeatedly considered getting an EF-MFT speed booster and I never found a reason for it. The EF lens options never met the parameters of whatever it was that I was contemplating doing, so I never bought one. On the other hand, my M42-MFT speed booster remains in use continually. Every time I 'tidy up' my lenses and put the ones I don't use into a box this always seems to stay out for one reason or another. I always seem to be learning something about images or shooting or something, and will look at my lens collection from a completely new perspective, and the MFT system and M42 system (for adapting FF lenses) always seems to be the winner.

I'm looking into semi-retirement. Weirdly, not because of the jobs I'm getting or not getting in the next 12 months, (that's already set) but because my niche of freelance corporate gigs is definitely on the way out. It's the devaluing of video production in general. With video now, everyone does it. Quite literally. Anyone with a new'ish phone camera is on the other side of a gate. A gate that's been blocking people for over a century of motion picture creating. Phone IQ is really good. AI can help generate a ton of stuff with low effort/high reward. Canva is a thing. Online tutorials explain production concepts. Creative info flows like a torrent. Hobbyists are better than careerist, etc. etc. None of that looks like it'll affect me in 2026. I have 3 clients with semi-large gigs that'll get me through. Maybe they come around again in 2027? Perhaps. What value can I offer them? A certain confidence in problem solving they require? Sure. For now. However, for one of the clients specifically, I could easily do via AI in an afternoon compared to what it's gonna take me a week to do live in a studio. So, yeah, I'm not gonna reveal that my client that yet, but still, that reality is here. At this point, as a documentarian filmmaker on my CV, that's the thing I feel I can do without AI stealing it away, but, man, not exactly a bunch of people out there have EVER made lucrative careers outta being a documentarian filmmaker. I mean, I'm decent at this sort of stuff, but I'm not, like, an elite creative, you know? No ones ever gonna watch a doc I've made (yet) and walk away thinking, "Wow, I need to make sure to see what that guy is going to do next." Hell, even the elite creatives in the documentary world barely make a living at it. Looking back I kind of feel like I should've gone all-in on sports-video production when I had the chance 30 years ago. Live event broadcasting will stick around for awhile. Other than that, I'm an older married guy without kids that has acquired some in-demand-physical-assets throughout my younger days. Because of that ownership, the wife and I do, luckily, have some things to help us through the final few decades of life. Then again, 3 more decades of late-stage capitalism? Gotta wonder about that too.

Love this. I remember as a teenager I used to translate everything to CDs - how many albums I could buy with the money I was evaluating. +1. My own experience of buying from Japan on eBay is similar to this. There are always examples of scammers / criminals / misrepresentation / bad behaviour from every culture. I think that it's precisely because the Japanese have such a good reputation for this that the few examples of misrepresentation that have happened get blown up and repeated far more than they might from other countries. I've bought quite a number of lenses that were cheap because they had fungus or haze or some other issue, and I consistently found with the Japanese listings that when I received the lenses and really examined them (especially against a strong light source) that the issues I discovered were almost always completely described by the Ebay listing. I suspect I might have had one surprise from a Japanese listing where something was misrepresented, but the level of deception was what you'd sensibly assume to be true on every other listing from any other place basically. From everywhere else, "buyer beware" is just being sensible.