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While AI can be employed for positive or negative things, there's a bigger outlook at play for me. Robert Persig's famous musings are where I want to stand philosophically. His theories, and my limited understanding of them, are pretty much the reason why I ultimately view AI unfavorably.

Do you agree with my choices... And did I miss anything? https://www.eoshd.com/news/the-2025-hybrid-mirrorless-camera-rankings/ The 2025 camera rankings for video quality and value for money are in!

Yep that's the kind of intermediary codec that the ZR needs. But only if Nikon doesn't cook it with that aggressive noise reduction. You know the drill, Fuji had similar issues I seem to remember you pointing out. Thing is, I don't buy cameras based on promised or wishful features anymore. Been burned too many times waiting for "coming soon" updates that arrive late, incomplete, or not at all. So as of right now, the ZR is off the table for me. It's not just the codec situation though tbh, the unreliable view assist/exposure tools and first gen quirks also give me cold feet. Good to know LT is officially on the roadmap, though.. great for early adopters but I think I'm done gambling on "maybe later".

I’m not ‘waiting’ for it as such, but based on my S9 experience, it could be something pretty special. If they get it right. If they even make one… I have gone backwards and forwards over what to do with my S9 that has been at times both A cam and B cam but due to me picking up a pair of S1RII’s mid last year, plus certain limitations of the S9 (mainly build), I was going to let it go… But then too many times I have let stuff go and regretted it so I have repurposed it giving it an XLCS cage, super-lightweight tripod and the dedicated 2 lenses to it, the 18mm or 85mm f1.8. I am hoping they do an S9II with a bigger screen à la ZR but with the S1I/R/E tilt option. And make it a bit more robust but spec wise, it’s already peak camera for my needs. So @gethin maybe look at an S9 because straight out of the box, it’s very high spec and really it’s only the body that is a bit weak, but beef it up with a cage and it’s 💪 And used, pretty cheap!

Thanks for chipping in. Yes Pocket og II would do really well. I actually have had so much fun shooting with it since the video and will have more stuff to put out soon. Watch this space. When I say it is so much fun, it is actually very inspiring just taking it with me wherever I go with a few batteries and capturing life happening around me. It is a great storytelling tool. Take care and have a great holiday everyone.

Vimeo is in the process of deleting ALL my videos, due to their new policy of deleting their entire library of content for ALL non-current users without an active Pro paid subscription. Also, about 90% of my Vimeo was nurfed by the copyright music shambles, where Vimeo did the 3-strikes thing and they delete your entire account. So to avoid that, back in the day, I just decided to make these videos private, and unlisted. I have not got round to putting it all on YouTube yet, but perhaps I should?

It once was that the pros had 16mm an 35mm film and the "amateurs" had Super 8 and videotape. Now that's all changed. Yesterday I was capturing some old videotapes from a friend's project that we did in 2011 on a Canon HV20. It looked amazing. I was expecting it to look worse than cameras of today but it doesn't. Just shows that even a camera from then, with a CMOS chip from that era, MPEG 2 encoding, 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, 1440 x 1080 frame size recorded of the wide screen image, and 8 bit colour, it still can look amazing. It just shows that cameras have been very good for a long time now. The differences are mostly ergonomics and physical size. When deciding on a camera, you have to consider what you want to spend months living with.

Here’s a quick review.

I think people are mistaking pretty with good cinematography. There’s good cinematography and there’s bad cinematography, and then there’s cinematography that’s right for the movie. In this case it looks right for the movie.

I'd argue it is the MOST important because without the camera, you don't have a picture. It is the small differences between the latest sensors and codecs that's the unimportant thing. In cinematography, our job isn't to worry about the costumes or set pieces, that's the job of someone else. So lighting and camera are the most important for a DP. What has happened is the gap between the top-end i.e. ARRI and the cheap stuff has closed up. This has been going on ever since the start of the DSLR revolution so it's not a new thing but there's never been a smaller gap that exists now, for example between something like the Alexa 35 and a $1000 used Panasonic S1H. By the way although Magellan has beautiful content and really nice camera-work, the sharpness of it and the deep DOF isn't everybody's cup of tea. It does look a bit too soap opera in parts of that trailer, I think. It looks very different to an IMAX shot film. So there's big differences between formats and lenses still... The same cinema focal length for example on 16mm has always looked vastly different to same on IMAX or large format. Also there are big differences in grading style, camera movement style, and so on. I think most relevant for us is that you don't need to make a massive rig any more to get good results. It's horrible having the weight as a one-man DP. Probably why they used such a small camera on this.