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This reminds me of using my old Sony camcorder with the 5.1 surround sound microphone. I would shoot with it, then in post be able to isolate each channel and choose which one to use and ignore the ones that were just location noise. Pretty handy without much effort when shooting. This might be similar in that sense.

Fair enough. I just wish they'd spent time and resources elsewhere. I want a small, up-to-date, Panasonic M43 camera, not an overly complex version of a on-camera mic. This seems like a great product for 2010. But what do I know, maybe this THE MIC, the one that everyone was waiting for. What I can tell you with 100% certainty, people are ready and willing to pay vast sums of money for old gear, only because it's small. What happened Panasonic? The whole miniaturization of components thing has been apparently disregarded.

Getting prepped for my next trip and have further refined my setup. This trip is a quick trip to China, but it's also a test case for a trip I'm taking later in the year to Europe where the packing approach will be minimalism. Unlike the way I like to travel in Asia, the Europe trip will involve changing accommodation every few days, so packing and unpacking and hauling bags around will be much more of a pain, so I'll try and travel really minimally. As such, my approach for this trip is "when in doubt, don't take it" and see what I actually use. So the setup for this trip is: GH7 14-140mm F3.5-5.6 zoom, which I use during the day at F5.6 which means my 1-5 stop vND is enough 12-35mm F2.8 zoom, which is a great walk-around lens after dark Takumar 50mm F1.4 with M42-MFT Speedbooster (with bokeh insert) for "night cinema" iPhone 17 Pro setup (Neewer phone filter mount, K&F 1-9 stop vND, MagSafe Popsocket) The GH7 and zooms are self-explanatory, so here's the 50mm F1.4 setup. I have played around with "inserts" and ended up with a pretty extreme design, so this is a test to see if the vertical edges are too strong a look for me. It's made from the sticky part of the post-it note, and a layer of sticky tape over the top to keep it a bit more together. It sits between the speed booster and the lens, and I won't use the speed booster for any other lenses while travelling so this will stay in there and protected, so doesn't need to be that robust. It's a strong look in some situations and quite "painterly" in others, so I'll be curious how it goes. For my iPhone 17 Pro, it's a phone most of the time and a camera only as a backup, so I searched for a setup that would: Protect my phone from drops (I dropped it on the last trip and the screen shattered, despite it being in an Apple case - the only one available at the time... sigh) Still be right-sized for getting in and out of pockets etc Have a vND solution for when I want to shoot and use 180 shutter I'll spare everyone from the rant about the options out there (everyone wants you to buy into their "ecosystem" now) so I ended up with the Otterbox Defender Series Pro case, which makes the iPhone feel even larger than it did in the Apple case (which doesn't seem possible but is true), but seems very robust. The vND is the Neewer phone filter mount, which sort-of clips onto the phone (It's designed to screw onto and clamp the phone but you're clamping against the screen, so I wouldn't tighten it that much). It's designed for a naked iPhone, so I had to modify it (and the Otterbox case) slightly where it interfered with the Otterbox case to get it to sit a bit flatter. It still doesn't sit flush, but it goes on and seems to be fine. I haven't got around to actually taking it out to shoot with it, so that remains to be seen. I paired it with the K&F 1-9 stop vND, which boasts 18 layers etc, but doesn't claim to be a "True Colour" one like the 1-5 stop ones do. It doesn't have hard stops and I think it still gives the X at the max amount, but I'll see how I go. Not having an aperture sure sucks considering you're not really losing having shallow DOF. That is all combined with the MagSafe Popsocket as a safeguard. I've used the adhesive popsockets before and they're great for giving a much better grip on the phone, but I wasn't sure how strongly the MagSafe would be. The Otterbox claims to have magnets in it that strengthen the MagSafe connection, and this might be true. It feels quite sturdy actually, and I tested it to require 1.75kg of force to pull off, compared to the 1.45kg of force it took to pull it off my naked iPhone 12 mini. No idea what strength a naked iPhone 17 Pro MagSafe connection would have, but it's not terrible. Lots of compromises involved, but it's really my backup camera, and the Otterbox case is very grippy, so I'll see how I go.