Leaderboard

Really sad if he has indeed given up on YouTube. He's still on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mattiasburling Maybe we should ask him if he's alright?

That's really unfortunate. His Vimeo is still up, and his Instagram too, though they haven't been updated recently. His content output decreased a lot once Gunpowder passed, but he had already been less active as I think he became more and more disillusioned with the entire YouTube/Filmmaking/Photography scene. I hope he is well and creating the art that he loves.

Of course they know how powerful this anti-fascist tool is and will try to make it unlawful, or an excuse to kill. As the SS saying goes that Kristi Noem is so fond of... "One of ours, all of yours" BTW has anyone ever tried logging out of YouTube, enabling UBlock Origin and putting a few choice keywords into the YouTube home page? It is incredible what the 'other side' is seeing and the sheer amount of propoganda Google is feeding them. When there's the equivalent to the Nuremberg trials, the Google execs should be taking the stands and going down with the rest of the fuckers.

I hope someone is able to reach out and check on him, and let him know that he's missed. He was a rare gem on these forums and YouTube; he was just someone that enjoyed sharing his passion for video and photography. He wasn't trying to sell anything, or get free stuff, he just loved sharing. There was a purity to that, and it's severely lacking these days.

I had been searching awhile back for one of his videos I remember watching a few years ago and couldn't find it. He might just be pulling out of being online. I know several friends who have done that, (usually to stay sane.) Maybe he's not into photography anymore in his life. I don't think any of his videos were at all political, they were always about photography and his personal philosophy about it. The thing I got the most from his videos (aside from some pretty thorough reviews of equipment) was him saying that it's okay to go back to a place and take the same picture again and again, improving it each time. This was good advice for me. I guess I had some idea that every picture should be original. (Don't know where I got that idea and wasn't even conscious I held that belief before he helped me change it.)

Unusually, Petapixel and DPReview have found a backbone and posted some interesting stuff in relation to the Minneapolis protests. https://www.dpreview.com/interviews/6336791578/john-abernathy-pierre-lavie-protest-photographers-ice-minneapolis-thrown-leica Imagine for a moment if smartphones and this Leica didn't exist. All we'd have to go on is the lies coming out of the federal government and they'd easily be able to smear the dead and do the big cover-up operation they're attempting to do now. But the images all around social media tell a different narrative. And I for one commend the bravery of the folk on the streets with their cameras. The truth is constantly being debased and it really took the biscuit last week with Trump's denial of British and NATO troops service in the Gulf War, Iraq War and Afghanistan. They were on the front lines and gave their lives for it. To anyone still thinking of voting Reform in the UK, or for those who voted for Trump at any point, surely your eyes are not still CLOSED after what you are seeing in recent weeks? If yours are, I'd be fascinated to know why.

I don't see fundamental changes for good happening without widespread and surgical reforms happening. I'm talking about dismantling the billionaire "news" networks. Enacting some kind of "capitalist equality reforms" putting caps on compensation for corporate owners and leaders. Something like enforceable laws requiring executive leaders never make 30x what their lowest paid worker makes. Abolishing the "two party" system (it's really one party; the rich), educational reform, the list goes on and on. How it will ever happen? It would require immense upheaval of an entrenched, broken system by the concentrated intentional action of many or of one benevolent dictator. Anyone that has a MAGA friend or family member knows what I'm talking about. No discussion can happen when they argue in bad faith and change their moral and social goal posts ON A WHIM and on COMMAND.

Certainly has a much better screen than the original 😉

I miss Gunpowder! Burling's YouTube channel went down a few days ago, and the only thing that remains is the title, "ICE was here." It's a shame, because he created some exceptionally informative videos. Some of the transcripts from his videos are archived here.

Miss him. He also randomly deleted or privated a bunch of his older videos; I noticed this happen maybe 2-3 yrs ago. Tons of old Blackmagic videos, his awesome Canon XC10/XC15 review, etc etc.

It turns out I am a bit wrong. ... That Micro Four Thirds was dead. Well near me, the G9 II came down to a much more sensible 1299 so I thought I'd give it a try. This thing... oh my gawd. Feel like putting the rest of my gear in the bin! This little box of joy is pure art in the handheld 4K/120p mode (and also in 5K open gate). The colour science, slow mo and IBIS are so, so good. The new GH7 sensor is quite something. Beautiful filmic quality to it. And I thought IBIS was good on the full frame Panasonic cameras or Olympus OM-1 but this is taking the biscuit now. You can just stand there and get a completely static frame especially in 120fps. I keep putting shutter at 1 second for long expose stills, pin sharp...The first camera that can really lay claim to being a tripod killer, in my view. Then there's the image processing... It totally defies the price. The new sensor just looks so clean in low light and dynamic range is fantastic. The real-time LUTs look stunning here. No other Micro Four Thirds camera has nearly as good colour processing (except the more expensive GH7), so in this sense I prefer it even to the Olympus OM-1 with the lovely Olympus skin tones. In some ways it is better than a flagship $4k full frame cam... I am not joking. Not missing a full frame sensor that much to be honest. It has the dynamic range, the low light, the resolution, and with a fast enough lens... the full frame look as well. The Metabones Speed Booster 0.64x fits without scraping the sensor-box. Also, the EVF is enormous and totally defies the price. Criticisms? Autofocus is very lens dependant - it's still a bit rubbish with the older stuff and adapters. Also no ProRes LT like the X-H2... With two SD card slots, it limits you only to 1080p in ProRes mode which is a bit silly... but the high-res stuff is available if you plug in an SSD via USB. GH7 has an advantage there for sure. But in plain old 10bit H.265 the image is superb. I think this body design suits the smaller lenses too... You know I'm not the greatest fan of the S5 II body design, well it is growing on me here... Micro Four Thirds and small stuff seems to go well with the G9 II / S5 II body design. It starts to make more sense. The sharp angles cut in less, camera as a whole is lighter, the grip is sufficient for everything and it's got that "GH2 feel" when you put the tiny 20mm F1.7 pancake on there whereas the S5 II with the larger lenses doesn't have that same charm to it. I am inclined to say Micro Four Thirds LOOK is back too... It's an antidote to predominance of a super shallow depth of field in commercial work and Netflix. It really makes me want to fully commit again to the system as it just does SO MUCH, far more than any full frame camera remotely affordable. It does more than a Sony a1 II FFS!

At least we're not checking people's political persuasion and social media history at airports. If the online posts are right wing incitements to violence, I am on the side of the police. While I disagree with some of the heavy handed methods used, there are certain people who deserve to be prosecuted and only have themselves to blame. And at the same time, the government is also making bad decisions, and some decisions that are straight out of the right-wing playbook rather than what you'd normally associate with a centre-left Labour government. For example the whole approach to the pro-Gaza protests has been baffling, the arrest of peaceful anti-genocide protesters completely wrong, the overzealous roll out of facial recognition technology is wrong, the attempts to roll back encryption, all quite wrong and the police getting involved with online 'hate speech' resulting in them arresting people like Graham Linehan for his opinions, just because a lot of people find him offensive. (It's a real pity that he chose to die on the anti-trans hill and it's classic depression... why couldn't he keep giving us more IT Crowd and Father Ted instead?) The government is reviewing the hate speech policing and quite rightly too... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2922w73e1o But when it's online literal nazis inciting people to attack others, they deserve to have the police at the door and I've no problem with it. That's less about censorship, than it is about law and order.

Good! But still there is hate speech published daily online on some platforms. Hopefully European countries soon shut those sites down before someone like Adolf or Nigel or Josif or Donald gets elected here alao and does their worst.

The US government twats underestimates how angry Europe is over the greenland BS and the damage we can do. The EU and UK are one of the biggest economies in the world along with China and the US. I am not sure why the US would want to piss us off. But we could ask Canada and Australia to join a customs union. We would even go all the way and have them join the EU. UK could rejoin too. We could sell the trillion dollars of US bonds and crash the US economy. But what is rarely talked about is the US services industry. They are deeply embedded in European life but this might change. VISA, Mastercard, Apple, X and many American banks could suddenly find themselves kicked out of Europe and replaced by European companies. Imagine the damage that would do to the Americans. eBay and PayPal would lose almost half of their global market share.

I would argue that social media is due a re-invention as well. Everybody hates what it has turned into (basically crap addictive television). Facebook is no longer a place where you hear from friends. It always promotes clickbait, professional content creators and ads above what your friend's post, and the stories on Instagram have stolen what Instagram started which was a linear feed of photos, and turned it into TV. As entertainment it works fine, but it undermines the original concept of what Instagram was supposed to be and why people liked it. I would have a cross between Flickr and Instagram for photographers, with decentralised hosting and no Meta copyright BS.

Time for a UK / Europe Based Vimeo alternative then. Time to make our own.

Now it's truly the end of an era. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46707699 https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjtjgbabzx

... and the Ursa Cine 12K LF. This would be huge for me.

Pretty nice, they need to bring it to the Pyxis 6K

Everyday is a new nightmare from the moron machine of modern life.