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Completed filter holder V1..... It's far more compact than anything else I've seen that fits anything other than a naked iPhone, which is important because if my phone is a huge rig then I may as well be using a "real camera" and if I can't fit the whole thing in my pocket then that means carrying a bag and (once again) I may as well be bringing a real camera. I cut up some 2mm aluminium sheet to bridge the gap between the two sections of the Tiffen and epoxied it in place. Then I added another layer of 0.22mm aluminium that was painted black (that I ordered by mistake - thinking it was 2mm) to cover it up and give it a semi-nice finish. I did a bit of filing around the edges and added some black nail polish to tidy up the edges, and finally put a pop-socket holder on it so I can hold it a bit more securely. This is how I typically hold my phone when shooting, it's nice and stable and it gives me a good grip. The case is super grippy, so I'm optimistic that it'll work well. I deliberately called it Version 1, because after discovering how easy it was making this one I'm thinking that version two should be a custom one designed from the ground up. After all I have all the tools and plenty of spare materials. I'm thinking I might have a ring of rare earth magnets set into the sheet, and I'll base it on a step down ring that's stepping down from a few sizes above so it's got a bit of material in it. Hopefully I can create something that attaches really well and is still nice and slim.

The 12K line has a steep discount going now, too.

Funny that sony raises prices and blackmagic cuts prices. Allthough for me with the storage space costs at the moment. Braw isnt cutting it. It is better then h265, sure. But I just cant justify the storage costs. I wished they included compressed prores again. Love blackmagic though, it has an amazing look. I think I owned lost of their cameras until the pyxis. But its shitty on gimbals, and storage adds up, not as much as the nikon zr though. I hope nikon announces good news on IBC in a couple of weeks. My c500ii will do for now.

How bad is the dynamic range on this camera? Particularly the highlights? (I tend to just rate at base ISO and shoot traditionally rather than ETTR.) I was hoping Red's highlight recovery (which isn't that great imo as you lose all color information) would help, but it seems to be disabled in RedCineX? I had sworn off new cameras but I sold my old ones and might need something for work.

I wonder if it will ever get the 'Red-lite' raw codec 'everyone' wants... If that ever happens, what a fucking camera it would be.

The problem is that people online gather to complain (if they are happy they are usually silent), and the more appealing the price is, the more they seem to want to be sure they are getting their money's worth, assuming that every missing feature is an attempt to scam them of their money. The ZR price puts it into the radar of bargain hunters who have this mindset. I'm confident enough that Nikon will improve h.265 log footage adequately to make it satisfying to use for those situations where RAW or Prores footage takes up too much space. It might not be the best h.265 nor does it have to be, given the price of the camera, but it shouldn't be noticeably soft, either. I also hope the Prores LT codec comes soon, and that the noise reduction can be adjusted when using Prores HQ and LT formats.

I agree - back in early 2025, I'd been looking for a camera that could do good 4k50 in a compact, lighter, body (smaller and lighter than the Pana G9 and OM-1 that I already owned). Never really thought it would be a full-frame camera, but when Pana seriously dropped the S9 prices in the UK in Feb 2025 I grabbed a 'like new' red S9+18-40 lens bundle from Amazon, basically to try it out properly. The outcome was I now own two S9 bodies and five L-mount lenses... 🙂 (and rarely use my OM-1) I didn't think I'd make much use of the real-time LUT capability, but I now use it all the time in conjunction with V-Log. My handheld 'general video' S9 is in a SmallRig Half Leather Case, which is nice to hold, adds a small grip and looks good. I use the Pana 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 lens sometimes (which supports Dual-IS), and the S9 stabilisation is good enough to shoot hand-held video at 300mm (with EIS enabled). The Hybrid Zoom feature is great too (although for video that only works up to 30fps).

Definitely the best value of it’s kind… For not much more than 500€£$, what it’s capable of is nuts! It’s only real Achilles heel for me is the build. Mine is in the XLCS cage so it’s like Robocop visually, but that does’t change the rear LCD, buttons or dials. I’m not one for chasing the next gen camera for the sake of it, but for real world upgrades that would make a genuine difference. Bring in the S9ii…

Whoa, nice! 🤩 With the discount, used prices are below standard used prices.

For people in the US, at least (I'm not sure abroad), Panasonic are running some trade-in deals. The one for the S9, in particular, is fantastic if I understand the terms right: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/a/trade-in/61933 The S9 is $1,197 normally, but there's a $300 instant rebate and if you do a trade-in, you seem to get an extra $350 + trade-in value of what they describe as "any working digital/film camera." I wonder just how much of a potato would still quality - $547 for a brand new S9 is genuinely tempting. It's pretty much the most pocketable full frame camera on the market now - would be nice if it had internal ProRes, but I think Panasonic's HEVC implementation is decent. Also, kind of crazy to get sensor shift stabilization on a FF camera for that size/price.

Presumably it is so that the footage from the ZR can be more easily color graded by those who are familiar with RED footage, and the material from the ZR can be mixed with that from RED cameras with easier and better color compatibility. Nikon's issue is that the video from its hybrid cameras (especially in SDR mode) is designed to color match with the stills from Nikon cameras and cinema people have their own preferences that differ from that of the stills world. Nikon has been gradually adding features to make it easier to make the footage look similar to that of RED cameras, and this is another step in that process. Personally I like the SDR colors from Nikon cameras in video as they are so familiar to me as a stills shooter, and if I want to present video and stills from an event, they match by default. I appreciate that for video there are reasons to use log formats for encoding the data in a more efficient way to get a wider range of tones and colors recorded while keeping file sizes in check, and this encoding can vary from camera brand to camera brand, making mixing the footage across brands to a cohesive whole more challenging. The 4:2:0 vs. 4:2:2 has to do with how the colors of adjacent pixels are encoded to save space, I don't necessarily see how this would affect the overall "look" or dynamic range of the footage, which the log profile might affect. Nikon does support 4:2:2 in Prores in the ZR. I would assume the RED Log profile would likely be available for Prores files as well, after suitable firmware updates have been made available.

If the h265 is still 4:2:0, of what use is this slightly different log profile?

Nikon have announced an interesting firmware update for 2027. Could be a confidence that’s announcing this three days before IBC or maybe someone else is announcing a competing camera there that Nikon need to get ahead of. Either way, it looks like a great update for existing users. Full details here https://www.nikon.com/company/news/2026/0908_01/

Unless you desperatly need build-in NDs, internal prores or EF lenses without an adapter. I would have retired my 6kPro a few years ago if the FF camera had ProRes, or even a good h265 codec.

They’ve managed to put themselves in a position where their full frame 6K is significantly cheaper than their Super 35 6K version so the latter will hit that sub $1000 point when they clear it out as it makes zero sense at this point.

Yes, you should title them with as many poophemisms as you can find that sound like footage they’d like to steal. Building a log cabin Clearing the pipes Cutting a cigar Decorating the White House Downloading some software Feeding the fish Laying some cable Stocking the lake with brown trout Etc etc

I'll be sure to fill up any cloud storage they give me, then. Maybe I could treat them to a retrospective of my year in toilet flushes, but give it a bunch of other labels like "Doing a sick jump on my bike"

Last time you did it, I bought one! : D

My finger was hovering over the checkout button on that one for a few hours today, but it looks like someone nabbed it. I picked one up during the $1500 fire sale in 2024 and regret selling it later. Amazing camera for that price.

You beat me to posting it. If you want IMX410 and usable autofocus, it'd be hard to find a better choice. Let's see how used prices react as well. Judging by B&H, they're reacting very nicely for the CC6K - there's an L-mount one for $1,435 right in condition 9 right now. That's... even slightly lower than the new price was for a minute a few years ago. 😅 But for $1,435 - that's a hell of a camera. If I didn't already have the problem of "more cameras than I actually use, I should sell some of these," I'd be furiously clicking buy right now. Pyxis 12K used prices seem to only be about 10% off new on B&H and on Adorama and MPB, they didn't catch up at all yet so used are now much more expensive than used. Now... if they would drop the price of the Pyxis 12K to $3,500, I'd already be in the middle of figuring out which camera I'd be making myself sell to justify getting it.

All of them of course. Gotta make that coin whenever and wherever you can.

They will be very important as the cameras will be the capture device for the worldwide free training data they’ll be getting from the cloud storage/editing function that will be offered to the users who’ll be unwittingly doing the training for the company. And paying for the capture device as well. And they ban DJI for being untrustworthy eh? Makes you wonder which family member is backing this financially ?

Great hack for the filter holder! I'd somehow missed how obnoxious they made the camera bump on the 17. Sheesh. I'll have to look to see if my Magsafe filter holder fits over my case (the standard iPhone 16 Pro soft plastic case from Apple). I think I eventually found one, but it's been a bit since I used it. But that is also my preference - just let me use the normal case and a normal screw-in filter and not some weird one with a proprietary filter system that won't work with my next phone. And yeah, Magsafe is definitely the way to go for filters - and if your filter adapter passes through the magnet, you can also get a magsafe CF Express reader/writer. That's really useful when shooting ProRes on the 16 - and presumably for shooting raw on the 17 series.

Getting ready for my next trip and I'm going far more minimal this time, and so the focus is on using the iPhone 17 Pro as my second / backup camera. As such, I've been working on a vND solution for it. The significant considerations for me are.. It needs a ton of ND As it doesn't have an aperture, if you want 180 shutter then you need enough ND to shoot F1.78 in bright sun It has significant IR pollution issues It suffers from IR pollution far more than my GH7. If I shoot with my GH7 and my 1-5 stop True Colour vND I never get IR issues, but the iPhone gets them even with just this 1-5 stop adapter. I need an adapter that works with my iPhone case I'm not taking my phone case on and off when I use an ND, and the "solutions" that the smartphone filter companies provide seem like pretty shitty cases compared to the rugged cases that I prefer to use. I want it to be as small as possible - adding an ND filter shouldn't make it look like I'm shooting a Nolan feature film As such, I've developed the following approach. I'll stack my existing 58mm K&F 1-5 stop True Colour vND with a fixed NiSi 3-stop ND that also has IR filtering in it I'm modifying the Tiffen MagSafe filter attachment I bought to work with my Otterbox case (photos below) Cutting it like this and overlapping them gives the height step-up required so the filter part sits on top of the lip that the case has around the cameras. After some testing, I found that I could position the 58mm filters so that they don't obscure any of the rear cameras (including the ultra-wide). The two limiting factors in the arrangement are that I can fit two 58mm filters but not three (the third one starts obscuring the ultra-wide camera) and if I position it so the three filters are fine on the ultra-wide then the other cameras start to be obscured by the filter holder. The above is only held together with super-glue, but I have will cut some 2mm aluminium sheet and glue it in place with 5-minute araldite (epoxy) to make the thing sturdy. The MagSafe connection is remarkably strong, partly because the Otterbox case has magnets in it designed to transfer the magnetic field to the outside of the case. It'll be strong enough for careful use anyway - it's not like I'll be shooting with it and also wrestling people at the same time! The more that I think about how good these smartphones are now the more ideas I have on shooting with it. Once you toss in high-quality filtration like this, plus anamorphic adapters and all sorts of other things, the shooting possibilities get really exciting!

I’ll let you know once I’ve shot with them and done an edit. I can’t shoot these things side by side ie, Lumix 35/85 vs Sigma 35/85 because it’s work not a set up test so will have to go on feel & results but shooting essentially the same kinds of scenes week in week out, I have continuity in that regard. I’m not expecting any quantifiable night & day difference, but rather some subtle but worth it to me differences. The Sigma’s are going to be slightly larger and heavier. I don’t mind that and were only talking +200-250g so well short of say using a chonky zoom that would require a battery grip. That should be all good and I actually prefer something with a bit of heft for stability. I’m going to get actual aperture rings. Yay. My biggest criticism of the LUMIX f1.8 primes is their lack of aperture rings. Even the super expensive LEICA SL primes don’t have aperture rings. ALL lenses should have aperture rings on my planet! I’m expecting a fraction slower AF. I can live with that for the way I work and I could happily shoot manual focus 95% of the time so… The lower light capability (approx 2/3rd of a stop) is welcome, but I don’t really need it as f1.8/f2 is actually fine…and the Sigma f2 primes were another option, but the slower f2.8 90mm puts me off a bit for indoor work compared with the f1.4 85mm so I ruled them out on that basis. I actually had a set of them including the 90 a few years back and loved them, but I don’t think they are the right option for me right now. Finally, I think I am going to enjoy the shooting/ownership of metal vs plastic and there is that undefinable ‘I want to shoot with these’ rather than ‘I have to shoot with these’ factor. All in all, considering I am funding this 2 lens update by trading 5 lenses, it’s my ‘upgrade’ to something fractionally more ‘premium’ that makes up for not buying a Leica or a Hasselblad!

35mm f1.4 dg dn II plus the 85mm f1.4 dg dn ‘Used As New’ from MPB…except I also bought the MKI 35mm by mistake and have to send that back for a refund 🤦🏻‍♂️ They will get a run out this coming weekend at a 2 day job and then on a 3 day job the following weekend and then that’s me done until late next Spring. I did consider the f1.2 35 and the new 85 is due out any day, but bigger, heavier and when would I ever need f1.2 so nah.