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Back from a visit to Japan. We spent most of the time in a small town but went to Tokyo for a weekend, so I shot a lot in Tokyo and used the rest of the time to test a range of lenses I took just for that purpose. I tested the 12-35mm F2.8 for Night Cinema and it worked great and I loved the images, but as it got darker I kept cranking up the ISO and in the end it just didn't have the levels for the truly dark backstreets. I also tested the tiny 35mm F1.6 c-mount CCTV lens I got off ebay some time ago. It produced some really nice images in the right scenarios, but the plane of focus was so incredibly distorted that any scene with stuff off-centre in the frame would look really strange. It had more level than the 12-35mm but still fell short of my better options. My themes for the place emerged very quickly.... vending machines, bicycles, and lanterns. Anyone who has been to Japan will be surprised by this exactly zero percent. At this point we went to Tokyo and I treated it like a Night Cinema interval event, basically shooting as much as I could. I shot a whole sequence from the hotel window as the sun set using the Takumar 50mm F1.4 and SB, my go-to setup. I did a number of walks around the local area with the same setup. Each time I went out I liked using the setup more, and each time I reviewed the files I liked the images I got from it more as well. After China I was feeling like it was a bit too vintage / low-fi but I've really warmed to it since. I found myself a bit at odds with Japanese culture, especially in regards to the fervent dislike of badly-behaved foreigners and the locals dislike for being filmed in public (despite the fact no-one will tell you they don't like it), so I mostly filmed the place and not the people, or at least I didn't tend to film individual people, instead including them small in the frame, or en-mass, or out of focus. I think that lent itself to the cultural experience as well. The city, and to many extents the culture, dwarfs the individual, placing the focus on the group. As a tourist I can only glimpse the culture from afar, so taking the perspective of the outsider in the compositions is very much representative of the experience. My "big" outing was a walk from Shibuya to Harajuku on our last night there. As these places are known for youth and fashion and culture (and the counter-culture that fashion normally draws from) I concentrated on the grittier side of these areas. I also leaned into the layers and the overall chaos of the place, taking advantage of the Takumars ability to focus on a small slice of the chaos, both through the 70mm FOV and also the shallow DOF. Back in the small town I did more "test" walks with the TTartisans 50mm F1.2 (100mm F2.4 equivalent), the Helios 44M + SB combo (82mm F2.8 equivalent) and Takumar + SB combo for comparison (71mm F2.0). As the small town was much less dense I found the extra reach of the TTartisans to be useful, and the DOF was shallow enough to be useful at distance, and the image was much cleaner across the frame compared to the Tak. The Helios 44M was a different beast. I felt like I was fighting with it basically the whole time and came back from the shoot thinking it was a bust and I'd wasted an outing. The FOV often seemed wrong, it lacked the aperture to get enough light to the sensor and I was pushing the ISO a lot, the DOF was also deeper and so I found myself having to get closer to objects to get the separation I wanted, which then meant I was too close and the parallax motion from my hand-held movement was really distracting. The focus on my copy is very stiff and it is a very low gear so to go from distance to closer focus had the ergonomics of opening a jar where something sticky had gotten into the threads. Still, I got back from the shoot and lots of the images looked really nice, which I think is to do with the extra diffusion this has. It was also better behaved on the edges of the frame compared to the Tak too. One thing that isn't obvious from the frame grabs is the ghosting from the strong light-sources in frame, and because I shoot hand-held and have IBIS active, they move in unnatural ways. At first I thought they were coming from my vND but if anything they got worse on both the TTartisans and Helios after I took it off. I think due to this I'll have to lean into the imperfections in the grade and edit and go lo-fi, which is why I've applied a film emulation softening equivalent to 20mm film to the Helios footage. I also shot a lot with the iPhone 17 while there, normally during the day for non-cinema purposes, but that's a different topic for another time.

"Max Yuryev left the chat room"

According to Brandon Talbot, Nikon is working on fixing H.265 and adding RED Log3G10 as an option for it besides N-LOG. That will make the camera tremendously more useful for the majority of normal users who don't always want to shoot R3D NE.

Well, they just launched the Canon R6V, so I hope Panasonic enjoyed their 20 hours of PR!

So there are indeed some details in the video specs that will be of note to some. Internal RecordingH.264/H.265/MOV/MPEG-4 AVC 4:2:0 8/10-Bit 5674 x 2988 at 23.98/24.00/25/29.97/47.95/48.00/50/59.94 fps (200 to 300 Mb/s) 5184 x 3888 up to 23.98/24.00/25/29.97 fps (200 Mb/s) 4352 x 3264 up to 47.95/50/59.94 fps (300 Mb/s) 4096 x 2160 at 23.98/24.00/25/29.97/47.95/50/59.94/100/120 fps (100 to 300 Mb/s) 3840 x 2160 at 23.98/24.00/25/29.97/47.95/50/59.94/100/120 fps (70 to 300 Mb/s) 1920 x 1080 at 23.98/24.00/25/29.97/47.95/50/59.94/100/120/200/240 fps (16 to 200 Mb/s) H.264 ALL-Intra/MPEG-4 AVC 4:2:2 10-Bit 4096 x 2160 at 23.98/24.00/25/29.97/47.95/50/59.94 fps (400 to 600 Mb/s) 3840 x 2160 at 23.98/24.00/25/29.97/47.95/50/59.94 fps (400 to 600 Mb/s) 1920 x 1080 at 23.98/24.00/25/29.97/47.95/50/59.94/100/120 fps (200 to 400 Mb/s) Interesting to note that Panasonic have sidestepped the Micro HDMI bleating by just fucking it off altogether. Although it was playback only on the original anyway.

The GH5 has been my workhorse for almost a decade now. For whatever reason, the need to move on from it has never been necessary, so I've stuck with it. For instance, AF is not an issue. Manual focus is how lenses get used by me. Slow-mo is a thing to do less of, not more of, imo. A full 10 years on, what does a different camera offer; like really offer? An extra stop of exposure? An extra bit of DR? Looking at a GH7 the thought is, "MMM, pretty nice." But then what? A big difference in ... what ... gets captured? Maybe the market has matured TOO much for me?

No doubt. I have a 5DMII that I think still delivers in this regard as well. What I have is good enough for me, so I've decide, "Eh, I'll stay where I'm at." (for now) 😉

I heard this recently and think it's pretty interesting. I'm not sure if it's the best definition I've read, but it's more practical than other ones, so is useful from that perspective. “He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.” - Saint Francis of Assisi I'm 100% for not gatekeeping. Even from a practical perspective, saying someone/something is or isn't 'art' doesn't mean anything, and people who like to be critical are really just telling us about themselves, not the thing they're talking about.

Mosts artists create and never share their work with people outside of their immediate friends and family. Others create and share it on the micro level, simply wishing to share it but not make a big thing of it (example: folks that play at the local bar but have no interest in recording and releasing music.) I think as a whole we are far too judgmental about art and the things people create. It's okay to be critical, but at the end of the day, we should encourage people who create anything at all, especially as AI creeps into the picture. People don't just use AI for the convenience, but because of their own insecurities. I know too many local businesses who have started using AI because of the belief that it looks better than what they were creating themselves. I'm certainly guilty of thinking to myself, when looking at something a local business owner clearly made themselves, "that's awful." What I wouldn't do though to go back to seeing that stuff over the soulless, gross AI slop that they are all switching to. At least it had personality and you knew someone put their time and effort into creating it, even if it wasn't great.

some people can't understand why some oil painters have no interest in selling their paintings ,the satisfaction is in the pleasure of creating the painting ,and even sometimes it may be better than the last one.

His choice... It's always a choice. Needless to say there's only so long you can go on liking cameras but never shooting anything with them. And the social media skit can make one thin skinned and insecure - people look up to you like a God, which is ridiculous, or tear you down - not much in-between. So while part of me understands The Gerald Dilemma, the main part of me thinks, well, he chose to milk it for all it was worth didn't he? And it was a very privileged position that many would kill to be in, he could have used it as a springboard into an artistic career, but there wasn't an artist inside, nothing on the springy board. The problem is the system. YouTube / Alphabet is a billion dollar industry based off the hard work of content creators, who get a very small share of the overall pie and Google's Ad Business the lion's share. The internet has pivoted from a place where the artist owned the platform themselves (own website, own server) thus able to keep the benefits of 100% of their labour, to big tech owning the platforms and us becoming mere commodities as consumers/creators in a hive mind, whereas before we were founders, builders and owners as well as artists. The shift is noticeable in the language too. In 2012 we were all saying 'filmmakers' or 'musicians', but now everybody is lumped in together as a 'content creator', which got shortened even further to simply 'creator'. It's really dystopian shit. This is at the heart of what created The Gerald Dilemma - being a little pawn in a PR machine and ad industry rather than an individual. Being on a treadmill of content creation for the benefit mainly of big tech platforms. I don't see how anyone can take any personal satisfaction from it other than the money.

Luckily photography/videography are my hobby so my decisions don't need to make any sense... so I just bought a new-in-box Nikon ZR & a 40mm f/2, both for 30% off. Same store had a Megadap ETZ21 Pro for half price. So far having a blast with the camera.. I like the form factor a lot and the screen is just exciting, both the IBIS & AF are easily better than my Fujifilm X-H2s. The H.265 is definitely subpar, but it's still ok for social media use because once it's 1080p on a phone, anything will look good. You should buy things the way they are now, but I sure am hoping they'll bring a firmware update to bring the H.265 to the same level as in the Z6III.

Well I came, I saw. I chickened out. Bought a secondhand ZFc with a kit lens. Effectively, I confidently walked in to get the 64 Strat in classic white with triple single coil pickups and a whammy bar…and walked out with a banjo. Went from getting a forever camera to getting a foralittlewhile camera. I had an FM2 when I was a kid and this drew me in as did the £450 price. The Z8 will have to wait but…

Here's an anecdote regarding our level: A-Cam was an Alexa Mini on a documentary shoot. The cinematographer didn't really get enough variety for the storytelling the director wanted. We tried to make it work in the edit booth. Couldn't do it. Late in the edit/production when the budget had been burned, the two of us went back into the field to get necessary pick-ups. Those pick ups ended up covering close to 1/3rd of the film. All the footage was cut together, color graded, and released on one of the major American TV networks. Every shot looks cohesive. That pickup stuff was done with my used, ebay purchased, 9 year old GH5. And there ain't no way anyone watching that film could readily tell the difference between the two. That said, anybody got one of those Alexa-Minis laying around they want to give me? I'll trade you my GH5.

I like film and retro filmic looks, but shooting Super-16 (or even Super-8) is still an expensive PITA. After some testing of my equipment, I've realised that my GX85 has image quality equalling or surpassing a Super-16 film camera (with some categories surpassing a Super-35 film camera) so in my pursuit of a pocketable, portable, fun, simple, and fast setup that looks like film, this project is born. The criteria is to work out how to get great images from the tiny setup that are enough like film that most people would believe it if you said it was shot on film. My approach is simply to compare the two and find the biggest differences and then work on bringing them closer together, 80-20 rule and all that. The first point of comparison is already known, the crop factor is similar (2.2x vs 2.88x) so making sure I don't go too hard into shallow DOF then this should be comparable. Second consideration is camera movement, shake, and how they'll be used. S16 film cameras can be hand-held, but they've got some weight so are relatively steady in use. 8mm cameras were designed to be hand-held and are much lighter, so will move more. The GX85 is far smaller than either, but has IBIS (and OIS with some lenses) so that should make it feel larger, but I'll have to watch out for parallax, which will give away the cameras lack of heft. Third is the DR. Film has a huge DR and I wasn't sure how this would go - harsh clipping of highlights and blacks will be a dead giveaway. Without knowing anything about its rec709 profiles, I shot an exposure test where I took shots one stop apart. Film negatives have a lot of DR, but print film has far less, with stocks like Kodak 2383 only having about 5-6 stops in the linear range of their exposure (between about 10% luma and 90% luma, before the rolloffs kick in). Bringing in my test shots and matching the contrast within my standard colour pipeline (based around the Film Look Creator tool in Resolve) I realised the GX85 has enough DR to push its highlights well up into the highlight rolloff curve of the FLC, and same with the shadows, so this is fine too. DR, check! Fourth is resolution and texture. The images should be soft and noisy, but how much? After reviewing a number of sources, I realise that there are all kinds of factors, such as the speed of the negative, how it was exposed (0... or -1 and pushed in post, etc), but often the biggest factor in softness was the lenses used, and the biggest factor on the grain is the processing that the streaming service does when you upload it! In this sense, I have a lot of freedom in these aspects, but I'll have to do further tests on uploading to YT. I have seen videos that have really nice grain in 4K, so I know it can be done, but my previous tests showed the YT compression really changes things, so I'll have to do more tests. Then we're into testing with real images and just seeing what we see. My first test was some random shots in the garden, just to have a starting position. The feedback I got (including one friend who practically lives to talk about film!) was that it looked good but needed more saturation. My thoughts were that I exposed too high (I'd forgotten that the LCD is deceiving and the GX85 has a lot of shadow info) and as such the highlights in the first image were clipped in the file and still show in the graded image. After this test I happened to watch a YouTuber go through their grading process and they said they exposed by putting the image in the middle of the histogram, which made sense to me and I realised this is what I should do with the GX85. Second test was just a few images while out and about. It's the GX85 and 14mm F2.5 pancake lens. I'd previously forgotten this lens is both a 31mm and also a 62mm (with the 2x zoom) and so is much more flexible than I was remembering, so I made sure to include some 2x shots to see how useful that was with this level of image degradation. I also decided to push the images to get more of the kind of look I'm chasing. The 2x seems completely fine too, having quality far more than this level of softening will show. I also re-graded them in B&W, pushing the contrast much further. I may even want to go harder on these. Much more work to do, but I'm really liking the process so far. In these days of digital perfection, the attraction of film is in the colours and the texture. If you want the colours and not the texture, wanting to keep a much more modern level of sharpness and noise, emulating some of the properties of film is so ubiquitous that I think it's just called "colour grading". The phrase "film emulation" then is for the texture of film and deliberately wanting the imperfections and aesthetics of it. You don't have to go hard like I have with Super-16 film + Super-16 lenses levels of softening, but if you did this is easily possible too and FLC has 35mm presets which soften, but do so far more subtly than this. I'll continue to iterate on the colours and textures, but moving into moving images is probably next, with all the testing of the YT processing and compression that comes with that. But seriously, imagine telling someone in the 80s that you could fit an interchangeable lens camera capable of shooting feature-film level images in your pocket... Feedback welcome.

I originally read the title as “This Guy Makes Any Camera Shite” and thought my cloud account had been hacked. I enjoy watching Brandon Li’s stuff, particularly the self shooting ones. Self shooting as in shooting on your own as though someone else is shooting rather than self shooting in the vlogging context. Tripods basically.

https://www.43rumors.com/just-announced-new-panasonic-lumix-l10/ I wasn't that interested until earlier today when I went to set my S9 up for the imminent season only to discover the audio on it has stopped working. Or is at least intermittent enough I can't use it until it's fixed and as there is zero chance of that happening before my season starts and I am between 2 countries so which to even have it fixed in, is a bit of an issue. So ordered a used S5ii from @Andrew - EOSHD favourite used camera emporium to tide me over. But then, less than 2 hours later, my YouTube feed gets flooded by the Lumix Bros who have been on another jolly and...actually, as above, wasn't particularly interested as I had my S9 as my compact C cam and social media unit...except, this would work even better, so probably going to put a preorder in as they should be available in June. The only thing I find odd is that every man and their dog has a video or press release and the only one's who don't seem to have mentioned it yet, is Panasonic Lumix themselves. Same funny old Lumix marketing department 🤔

The secret sauce is skill. As someone that used to make my living doing travel videography decades ago, this Brandon guy has really honed the judgement it takes to get the shots. There's so much going on out there in the environment and he's able to omit it, control it, and/or shape it into something impressive. It's really quite a thing to do. He could make any camera in manufactured in the last 15 years look similar to this. In fact, he has. This guy is a cinematographer that really knows how to chase the light, compose a shot, and also create advantageous serendipity. Which might sound like a paradox, but it really isn't. But, yes, images like this sell cameras. Okay, buy the camera if you'd like and start the path to making an edit like this. You can't buy his boots-on-the-ground experience though. He's casual about it all during his "how-to" segment, but it really is the biggest factor here.

It’s the Frank Sinatra of camera review retirements then.

I may have dreamt this but either in Flickr itself or an external site that used it’s data, you were able to search by EXIF so you could look at the extremes of the lens range and in this case it would be to display all LX100 images at 24mm f1.8 and 70mm f2.8 which was a more informative way to do it. People can fuck up the composition and the processing but even they struggle to overcome the physics. Welcome to episode two of the series! Fixed. The EIS is an additional crop as far as I can recall.

Unless of course they got me mixed up with Gerald Undone.

From Canon's support people, someone has to examine the camera to determine the level of work, but a rough estimate of prices, based on the perceived difficulty is: Minor = $269 Standard = $359 Major = $499 That's before my CPS discount on repairs which is, I think, 30%. So I guess that'd be $180, $270, or $340, give or take. Added to the approx. $1,500 below new price (and about $1,100 below most used prices I've been seeing), that ain't bad at all. (Though I do really need to sell something now, my gear list is getting ridiculous - anybody want a used Z Cam E2-S6G in good shape with a bunch of accessories including the eND?)

That's a key point. Or "Kye" point, if you will. My handheld shooting drifts and sways a bit, as I like that sort of kinetic visual energy. Not all IBIS handle this camera movement AND stabilization elegantly. Rapid shifts of the image that are unwanted can happen. Fuji is a disappointment in this regard and it makes shooting my style of video with my X-T5 pretty much useless. Meanwhile I can "dance" pretty good with LUMIX and Olympus.

For those interested in small setups, in modestly priced gear, in non-clinical rendering of images, in very fast lenses, in vintage lenses, or older equipment, we exist in a space that has no quantitative reference. There are no numbers to look up and understand things from. It applies to the equipment: Questions like "how sharp is that lens?" don't have an answer (that is intuitive anyway - MTF charts aren't intuitive and often aren't reliable or even available). Even if it did, that answer would only be true at one aperture setting, and even then, is only true for the middle of the frame or the edge of the frame, but not both at the same time. If we shoot at base ISO with a 4K camera then we'll likely get an image with roughly 4K resolution, but at higher ISOs the effective resolution will likely drop due to ISO noise, NR, compression, etc. If we use filtration, like diffusion filters, then these lower the effective resolution of the image. It's literally what they're designed to do. How much do they do this though? Not only is there no published answer to this, but the answer changes depending on focal length, sensor size, etc. It applies to the look we're creating: Any colourist working creatively will be trying to create an image with the right amount of resolution / sharpness / noise / etc, not just "the sharpest" or "the highest resolution". How much is desired? What are the references? I've been struggling with many questions from my own equipment and projects, including: My TTartisans 17mm F1.4 is less than half the weight of my Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95, but the TT is quite soft at F1.4. How soft is it though? Is it too soft? If I want to shoot low-light with the GX85 (which has terrible higher-ISO NR) then what ISO setting is too soft, and then which lenses do I need to use in which environments to get enough light into the sensor? My Takumar 50mm F1.4 on my generic M42-MFT speed booster has pretty soft edges, but how soft? You'd think the solution to these would be to look at the footage and decide, but (for me at least) it's a double-edged sword because I also don't know what final images I want! I have spent a good amount of time looking at Hollywood films and big budget TV shows (see the original The Aesthetic thread) but apart from just going "I like that" and "I don't like that" we have the problem once-again of there being no way to quantify things. Saying "this show is softer than that show" really doesn't help. My solution is to reference things back to film. I originally did this with my Panasonic GF3, which shoots 1080p so soft you could cut it with a wet noodle, by comparing it to the presets in the Film Look Creator tool for 8mm and 16mm film I concluded that when the GF3 didn't show macro-blocking due to the (very low) bitrate, it was about the same as 8mm film. This was actually a really useful reference for me, because the associations I have for 8mm and 16mm film are quite useful. 8mm film has an aesthetic that is very nostalgic and low-fi, but was never good enough for TV shows, let alone the cinema. My new plan is to reference everything back to film, across quite a number of ways... Texture, which is what I've talked about so far: - I will be trying to "map" my lenses and cameras and codecs to a specific resolution of film (16mm, 35mm, somewhere in between) - I will be trying to "map" my aesthetic preferences to film too, like wanting a certain project to have the resolution of 16mm for example, but further than this - the size and amount of grain can also be a useful reference. These are useful references for me because a lot of the aesthetic references of cinema I have were actually shot on film and so by associating these things back to film it's a relevant reference, not just some arbitrary scale that isn't directly related. Dynamic Range and Contrast: - How does the DR from the GX85 look when put through an image pipeline in Resolve compare to the contrast of a 250D -> 2383 process? - What about the iPhone vs a 16mm process from the 90s? or a B&W process from the Italian Neorealism or French New Wave period? Contrast and DR should be relatively easy to match to various film stocks by just shooting some over/under exposure tests and adjusting my standard Resolve colour pipeline to match what is in the spec sheets. Speaking of spec sheets, not only do the spec sheets for motion picture film contain the Sensitometric Curves that show DR and contrast, but they also contain the MTF curves too as a reference for resolution. When it comes to resolution you don't need to look at the charts though - I asked some film geeks I know to comment on the FLC presets and they said that the 8mm / 16mm / 35mm presets in the Grain panel have about the right amount of image softness and amount of grain (but that the character of the grain isn't accurate), so the FLC is a reasonable reference for the texture of film in a very broad sense. What else? Image stability is another one. 8mm film cameras were larger than modern compact cameras so were more stable with the lenses they were normally fitted with, but 8mm had pretty terrible gate weave (alignment from one frame to the next) so having micro-jitters from hand-holding is compatible with the look. Whereas 16mm would have had more mass and less gate weave but at least at first would have probably been shoulder mounted or on a tripod, so some types of shots / angles will be more compatible with the aesthetic than others. Depth of field is another one. Lots of people think the "Super 16mm look" just means deep DOF, but it's more nuanced than that, as the lenses typically used would have some separation in low-light when focused closer, but due to the lenses at the time the shots might have been softer wide-open, so that's another relationship to understand. There are lots of other parameters that make an image that aren't covered here, but I am finding that getting some kind of reference for texture and contrast fills a very large gap in the landscape for me. The goal isn't to accurately emulate anything, its to develop a keener understanding of the spectrum these things exist in. Where I'm hoping to get to is to be able to develop summaries like: The GF3 is about 8mm at base-ISO, which during the day is equivalent to <some particular F-stop>, so I can put basically any lens sharper than 8mm onto it and the result will still look like 8mm. I can hand-hold this tiny camera with an acceptable level of shake up to about Xmm and it'll still fit the 8mm vintage / amateur / nostalgic vibe. The GF3 is tiny but once you add a lens that is larger than a pancake then I may as well use the GX85, so the only sensible lens is the 15mm F8 bodycap lens. Any other combo doesn't make sense. (This is an actual example I've worked out through testing). The GX85 at base-ISO is equivalent to <film size of some kind.. 16mm? 24mm? 35mm? 50mm?> which requires lenses of <F-stop> during the day and <F-stop> in well-lit night environments. This amount of resolution is suitable for projects with a vibe of <gritty street? vintage? night cinema? high-end commercials? etc?> but not other vibes. (This is still yet to be tested, but once I've worked out the camera then certain lens combinations will reveal themselves to make sense and others will obviously not work) iPhone? Where does it sit in all this? It has huge resolution and very strong codecs (4K Prores HQ or even Prores RAW) but poor DR and even worse ISO performance. GH7. What are the aesthetics I want to create that I can't create with the above (because the above is too limiting). What lenses and shooting styles and approaches are required for these aesthetics? The ultimate thinking is developing "constellations" where there is compatibility / alignment between: a camera, one or more lenses, certain shooting situations and techniques, an image pipeline, and a target aesthetic. I've been working on finding these "constellations" by starting at the camera and working forwards, but also by starting with the end aesthetic and working backwards, and I've identified a number of partial matches, but I think that by relating everything back to motion picture film, I can make more progress fitting the pieces together.

This is why, for me, there are two likely ways to use it: 1) My small bag full of C-mount and D-mount lenses and possibly attach it to the smallest 5" monitor that I have (which is quite small) 2) Throw it in my bag where it takes up almost no space and attach it to the back of existing short telephoto lenses which now function like long telephoto lenses

There's a colleague in my town that is trying to make "animation" films with 100% generative A.I. What would Francis conclude about someone working without 'hands' and 'head'? Or at best, no hands and half their head. Like Gerald, this colleague is hoping he's able to maintain a financially rewarding YouTube channel. It could be that he is jumping on the slop-train. But, on the other hand, at least he's making a novel effort production-wise to try and pay his bills. Whereas, my naive thinking is that there's still a chance my documentaries will be, somehow, someway, financially rewarding. And, even though that's unlikely, making docs is at least creatively fulfilling.

Luc Forsyth likes it, or what he saw at NAB anyway. This is a setup they had with a broadcast servo-zoom lens on it. His comments (link with timestamp) He's worked on the survival show Alone for a few seasons and they use dozens of GoPros, but the footage always looks like it came from a GoPro This new model with a proper lens attached looked like footage from a real camera The broadcast zoom setup (with a phone as a monitor) handled like a proper camera He doesn't use AF when rigging cameras to vehicles etc most of the time so the lack of AF doesn't bother him in that context

Everything is art, that's why you can stick a urinal in a gallery and suddenly it's art. With YouTube what matters to me is the intent of the artist - are they doing it to shill a few cameras and get cozy with marketing, or are they doing it to further their aspirations in filmmaking and trying to build a community of other artists around it? Shilling a few cameras and getting cozy with Jack from PR is an art. But it's on the same level as cinematography is it?

I think you hit the nail on the head there. Gerald is a rigger, and a studio guy. He stuck to what he knew. Nothing wrong with that of course. It's interesting how vague he was in the goodbye video about what he's going to pivot to - something product based, but stuff that gives him joy, not very specific is it? Just shows how important enthusiasm and obsession are in this industry. If you lose interest, you're finished!

This is interesting to see whether internal H.265 will be better than shooting R3D NE and converting it to H.265 RED Log3G10 with 500Mbps bitrate in Resolve. R3D NE bitrates are not that bad, but not having the possibility to save trimmed R3D NE files as R3D NE is THE problem. Shame on Nikon and RED if they don’t fix this. With NRaw it works, so it is up to RED SDK to support R3D NE trim.

Content is art. Not all art is equal, but it's still art. It's like arguing that the people who write instruction manuals or textbooks aren't writers. They are, but that doesn't mean they're Stephen King.

I'm pretty sure that the Mavo Mark II LF is using IMX410. It's a great sensor which is why it's been used in so many cameras since it was introduced in 2018. But that's also exactly the problem. It's in a lot of cameras already. Sell it at $1,500 and it's interesting as a budget play. Sell it at $3,000 and you're going up against the EOS R5, Nikon Z8, Red Komodo, Nikon ZR, Panasonic S1 II, and EOS R6 Mark III. IMO, every one of those sensors that's at least equal to the IMX410. They also support 10-bit internal recording that doesn't look like ProRes 4444 (I think that's the only 12-bit format available on Kinefinity right now). Of course, it's also up against the much cheaper Z Cam E2-F6 and E2-F6 Mark II which also use IMX410. The form factor is enticing, but a ZR is even smaller and also has a big flippy 4" screen. And internal raw. And really good autofocus. And costs around $1,000 less. Just like with some of the other cameras that have been announced recently, the question to ask not just "What makes me buy this over the other cameras on the market?" - but it's also "What makes me buy this over a camera I already have?"

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20260414-01 In Portuguese. In conclusion, now in English: The big leap in Resolve 21 is this: it is no longer just an editor and colour-grading system for video. It now also includes a new Photo page, designed for still photography, with album management, node-based grading, crop and reframe at original resolution, tethered capture with Sony and Canon cameras, support for LUTs and Resolve FX, and collaboration through Blackmagic Cloud. On the AI side, the package has become much more aggressive. It now includes IntelliSearch to find people, objects, and even words spoken in dialogue, a voice generator from text, CineFocus to recreate depth of field, Face Age Transformer, Face Reshaper, skin-imperfection removal, automatic slate reading with AI Slate ID, UltraSharpen, and Motion Deblur. In the Cut and Edit pages, the most visible additions are improvements to keyframes and curves, the ability to adjust Fusion effects directly inside those editors, native support for HTML and Lottie graphics, improvements to Text+ and MultiText, and more practical smart bins for filtering footage in the Media Pool. In colour, VFX, and audio, Resolve 21 adds MultiMaster Trim Manager to generate HDR and SDR versions from the same timeline, Magic Mask render in place, list and layer views in the node editor, and group versions for grades. Fusion gains the Krokodove library, improvements to the macro editor, and an updated USD toolset. Fairlight adds track folders, 6-band clip EQ, EQ and Level Matcher, and Chain FX. For creators and modern workflows, there are ready-made square and vertical resolutions for social media, direct upload to YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, and X, support for IntelliScript with Final Draft, import of ATEM Mini ISO projects, and major reinforcement of immersive workflows, including VR180 and VR360, Panomap, ILPD retargeting, MainConcept H.265/MV-HEVC, and foveated rendering for Apple Immersive. In short, Resolve 21 seems to be three things at once: more useful AI, tighter integration between areas that used to be separate, and a much broader opening toward photography, creators, and immersive content. Blackmagic itself presents this version as a major update, with the new Photo page, dozens of new features, and many usability improvements. This is no small improvement. And who said they were focused only on the SMPTE crowd?! ; ) LOL Amazing upgrade, kudos to them! : -)

I think laying off 23% of it’s workforce has had a lot to do with the share price rising. Those finance vampires love people losing their jobs.

What are you shooting and what lenses are you contemplating? I can't recall what your other normal equipment is, but MFT opens up a Pandoras Box whole world of possibilities with adapters etc too (if you don't need AF) so that can be fun too. I've been shooting street video at night with two combos that work incredibly well.. the first is my 42.5mm F0.95 with the Sirui 1.25x anamorphic adapter on the front, making it an equivalent of 68mm F1.5 and creating beautiful rendering wide open, but the combo is 1.3kg / 46oz so I also got a Takumar 50mm F1.4 on a speed booster, which is equivalent to a 71mm F2.0, which is much more vintage but is tiny and almost a full 1kg lighter. I'm contemplating a native 35mm F0.95 or F1.4 to replace both and have a less vintage but still lightweight for travel shooting. I also rock the 14-140mm for day shooting while travelling, and in brighter places the 12-35mm F2.8 is pretty hard to beat. So many great lenses. If you don't need crazy DOF then MFT is a great option, even with the larger body sizes.

I mean, the lens mount makes it very adaptable, but not having auto focus seems like a big deal breaker.

Z6 III vs ZR, you said? Both are full frame, both use the Z mount, both have subject detection AF for 9 subject types, and both offer internal RAW up to 6K/60p. The Z6 III has a 24.5MP full-frame sensor, and the ZR also uses a 24.5MP full-frame partially stacked sensor with EXPEED 7. From there, though, the split becomes pretty obvious. The ZR is the one Nikon has shaped as a compact cinema camera. It gives you internal R3D NE, RED colour science, Log3G10 / REDWideGamutRGB, 32-bit float audio through the internal mic and 3.5mm jack, plus a 4.0-inch screen designed more for actual filming without leaning as heavily on external accessories. Nikon is very clearly positioning it as a compact cinema body. The Z6 III, on the other hand, is much more complete as a stills camera. It has a 5.76M-dot EVF, burst shooting up to 120fps, Pre-Release Capture, mechanical and electronic shutter options, and up to 8 stops of stabilisation with Focus Point VR. It is simply the more all-round camera of the two. Physically, the ZR is noticeably smaller and lighter at around 134 x 80.5 x 49mm and 540g body only, or 630g with battery and card, whereas the Z6 III is larger and heavier at roughly 138.5 x 101.5 x 74mm and 670g body only, or 760g with battery and card. The viewing setup also says a lot about the intent behind each one. The Z6 III has an electronic viewfinder and a 3.2-inch vari-angle screen. The ZR goes the other way with a 4.0-inch rear monitor and is not really being sold as an EVF-centered body at all, but as a video monitoring-first tool. Audio is another area where the ZR is in a different class, because the 32-bit float recording is a major selling point and still quite unusual in this form factor. The Z6 III has serious enough audio for video work, but that is not one of its defining features. Even the card slots tell the story. The Z6 III uses CFexpress/XQD plus SD UHS-II, while the ZR uses CFexpress/XQD plus microSD. That alone already says a lot about the difference in philosophy between a photographic hybrid and a compact cinema camera. The Z6 III is still the more rounded hybrid camera, while the ZR looks much more like a compact cinema body built primarily around video use. On paper they overlap in some important ways, because both sit in the same broad full-frame Z-mount ecosystem and both are clearly meant to appeal to shooters who care about strong video features, but the intent feels different. The Z6 III is the camera I’d look at first if the job includes serious stills as well as video, because it gives you the EVF, the more conventional hybrid ergonomics, the stronger photographic identity and a much more all-purpose way of working. The ZR, by contrast, seems aimed at the person who is leaning far more into filmmaking and wants a smaller cinema-oriented body, RED-style workflow influence, more specialised video tools and a more stripped-back approach that is less about being a do-everything camera and more about being a focused moving-image tool. That is really the core of it. The Z6 III is the safer all-rounder. The ZR is the more interesting specialist. So if somebody mainly shoots photo and video in equal measure, I’d say Z6 III. If they are really after a compact cinema camera in Nikon form, then the ZR is the one that makes more sense.

I vacillate between being a cynic and a nihilist, so where on the spectrum would "F these kinds of dudes in this BS society" fall?

I half expected him to retire into YouTube Apple product reviews, as that would bring in much more dollars than pixel peeping Sonys.

After reading the newsshooter article, I think the Vega h2 is a really cool camera with lots of neat features, but I'm definitely skeptical about the sensor and color and stuff.

Sure, I'll give you a deep dive. I'll also vent a little. You might imagine there would be some worry matching footage, but for this project, surprisingly not really much of a big deal. We had worked with the Alexa footage for months, so I didn't fret at all that a GH5 would do the pick ups. Why? None of the Alexa footage was shot with a deep consideration for the lighting. It was all very workman-like. And the "eye" of the shooter was decent, but average. That's really the biggest thing. Anyway, the cinematographer and director decided to bring a rigged out Alexa to a run-and-gun-available-light shoot. The dudes are older gents and they just felt like "the best" camera was the logical tool to use. Not true, honestly, but you couldn't convince the cinematographer of that notion. Which is kind of a legacy mentality with older guys, but that's what happened. There was a political element here too. It's a decent budgeted doc so the "shot on ARRI" rhetoric was desired. Okay, so the main reason re-shoots were required: there weren't a lot of compelling shots that could juice the narrative. The footage was decent to look at, but not dynamic. The cinematographer really couldn't get around easy with this big 'ol rig and sticks. Interesting things would happen situationally with the characters, but he would unfortunately deliver a single shot when dozens were needed for a good edit. He'd just end up being burned out physically as the day went along and couldn't move into interesting places for useful footage. Ultimately, a big powerful camera was being underutilized because of "reasons". An Alexa camera delivers nice footage, of course, but when you're pointing it into blown out skies and shooting mid-day with it on the regular, it's not like it'll give you miraculous results. Here's the other rub that had me slapping my forehead, the cinematographer and the director really like the crushed blacks sort of color grade. And they didn't mind the whites being blown, so... That's a style that was typical a few decades ago, right? Well, you're taking a 14 stop Alexa, throwing away a ton of information, and delivering 9 stops for the final project? That's certainly a look. And Michael Mann loves it as well. But then, why the hell spend the $$ on an Alexa in the first place? Now, in this story you're getting a bunch of bias from a guy that spent my entire career as a one-man-band. If my background was from the more collaborative perspective of traditional filmmaking, I suppose a lot of this wouldn't even stick in my craw. Don't discount my naivete'. As for lenses, the cinematographer was using a very clinical variable. Ziess cinema Zoom 28 - 80 mm. And he liked f5.6. Great lens, but neutral character to it with how it was used, so when we went out for more footage I slapped my Olympus 12-40 on my GH5, packed a few ND's, and went with that. At the end of the day, it turned into an effective modest film. Could have been better, wasn't a disaster. imo, it was too verbose and that ends up being a slog, but all that talky stuff appeals to people that vibe on the themes of the film. And while the film doesn't stretch to get beyond that sort of thing, the director is happy with it, so all's well that ends well.

What to think about it? It's a lot of beauty shots of a boxy camera with a lot of buttons, and apparently has some menus - from a company who made a Micro 4/3 cinema camera that I thought nobody bought, but judging by B&H having a used one for sale, I was wrong at least once. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1733741-REG/bosma_dc0201_g1_pro_camera.html But $3,500 for a Micro 4/3 camera with poor dynamic range from a mostly-unknown manufacturer was always going to be a hard sell - especially with the Komodo now costing $500 less brand new. This new camera is up against some really tough competition from other vendors, both new and used. It will need to have features a lot better than the others or have "good enough" features and compete a lot harder on price than the G1 did.

Unfortunately the Beta phase via Testflight is full and you can't join anymore it seems. I hope it'll release soon to the AppStore as it's a lot more useful than the official Nikon app.

For anyone that is interested anyway… The new Sigma AF cine lens pairing of 18-45mm T2 and the longer 28-105mm T3. These could be and are indeed of great interest to a run & gun hybrid shooter like me. The wider lens is internal zoom but the longer lens is not but having said that, it doesn’t extend much at all. Moderately chonky but nothing too outrageous. Probably going to replace 4 primes with this duo in 2027 for my pair of S1RII’s. Too much expense for me this year as I’m running a much tighter ship in ‘26 with my only purchases being a new drone (the old one flies too wonky after various err, ‘incidents’) and new wireless audio gear after a few issues with RODE WG2. But anyway, these new Sigmas look the business and I’d like to see some real world AF as the principal example they gave in their promo video is of a woman slowly wobbling towards the camera…on a tripod…in a studio…and that is not ‘real world’! Anyone else interested?

🤷‍♂️ sexy as fcuk ? Perfectly legitimate reason to be honest.

It’s for a personal travel/ski film next winter in northern Finland (supplemented by a Sony rx0ii). I have several manual Nikon lens which I previously adapted to the Pocket 4k. The 85mm is a favourite. Plus all my M/ZM/VM (one of my favourites is the Voigtlander 50mm f3.5 Vintage Line Heliar). I want the Panasonic/Leica 100-400 (not sure why but it seems ridiculously fun to go to 800mm equivalent!). I’ve also ordered the 9mm f/1.7 Panasonic/Leica to replace a MFT Voigtlander 10.5 (far too heavy). A healthy mix of MF and AF. Shallow dof is certainly not a priority. Interestingly, I am finding that the “fun of using” is far more important that ultimate IQ… after all, none of this really matters!

Just curious what advantage the cine versions would bring in your application over the stills versions, particularly for the price bump ? Are they parfocal or have significant reduction in focus breathing ? Or are you looking at having wireless motor FIZ control with a Nucleus etc?

Remember what kye wrote about ;- )

I needed a colour sensor for a specific project (my primary camera being a M11M) and just picked up a G9ii - it’s a fun little thing. Seems well built and easily customised to play nicely with individual requirements. Even with a (Smallrig) cage it’s a convenient size (identical to LUMIX S range I think - although lenses are presumably smaller). Currently just the Lumix 14-42mm but plenty of exciting options. Until I read this thread it wasn’t really an option I’d have considered. Glad I can read!