Andrew - EOSHD

If anything good comes out of this, less dependance and less monopolies would be a great thing. [UK switching to Chinese tech in 3,2,1...]

I struggle myself with using US services at the moment given that our data could soon (and might be already) in the hands of a neo-nazi government. In terms of the ethics of it, I'm also disappointed with the behaviour of the American CEOs and how they have brown nosed the nazi President like a bunch of pathetic losers. It leaves a very sour taste in the mouth and not just for them. It does make me uneasy paying for YouTube Premium, Google Gemini, Apple iCloud, Adobe Premiere and Netflix, actually it makes me more than uneasy, it makes me sick. But unfortunately our leaders in Europe barely know how to use MS Paint, and have over the years completely dropped the ball on tech. So there are no decent alternatives, not really. That said, the UK & EU gets a bad rap for what it's created. The best of European technology is the most complex in the world from ASML and Zeiss. Without their EUV lithography machines, TSMC, Nvidia and Apple would not have their fancy chips. They'd be reliant on Intel fabs and old processes. Any more funny business from the US admin and the Dutch should fucking remind them of that. Also the British invented the WWW, RISC architecture for CPUs and smartphones, not to mention ARM. We've not done so badly, we've just failed to commercialise stuff properly and let the American venture capitalists snatch it away from us. If it is political and that's why he's taken the channel down, he's missed a big opportunity to publish a video saying so, and directing us to his new channel on a different and more ethical Tube. It's a real shame just to pull the plug entirely without even so much as a goodbye. But then, maybe he has good reasons to... I don't know. I just rather hope he's ok.

Absolutely love the form factor, hate the image quality. If they'd do an X-mount Bolex with 1" sensor, we could put some proper Bolex 16mm glass on it. Actually the Evo is a fun toy. And for 350 euros, it's never going to be an XF camera in terms of optics or the sensor, is it? But the concept itself deserves so much more. The eras dial, the loupe on the little screen, the grip and shape, the looks, I love everything about it. But the digital images that come out of it really very bad... ProCCD on a smartphone is much better at replicating the analogue look or y2k digicams. Also the 15 second limit on video clips sucks... It would have been nice to have an option to turn that off. It's there for the Fuji cloud storage feature, for quick uploads, quick downloads with the printed QR code, and there to prevent Fuji needing to spend more than 10 dollars on their server! I really, really, hope they do an enthusiast level version of the concept, even if that means it has to be without the Instax printer built in. Also EVERY camera manufacturer should be trying new form factors. There's such a lack of variety. The Bolex form factor is wonderful and there are others that should be making a come back as well. From the MiniDV era there's the Sony PCe1 handycam, there's the Canon Tx digicam which was like a tiny aluminium Bolex, just beautiful, and of course there's the Digital Bolex form factor and that Kodak sensor... These are the cameras I'd like to see modern versions of, and in the case of the Digital Bolex, maybe not so modern but we have to be realistic about CCD... it ain't coming back to a Canon or Sony! There's also a massive gap in the market for a Micro Four Thirds or Super 16mm size sensor Handycam with a proper camcorder lens that can crash zoom and take fisheye adapters, yet remain as small as a MiniDV cam from the early 00s. These lenses had very small sensors behind them... but if someone would even slightly upgrade the lens and sensor size whilst keeping the same zoom and autofocus characteristics we had in the MiniDV era, including the variable speed zoom rocker switch, it'd be a winning combo with the modern image processing we have now and RAW codecs. Perhaps Nikon can be brave and try something? There's a 'video' lens for the Fuji X mount camera, but it's really very large and bulky by MiniDV or Handycam standards. So I wouldn't mind a smaller sensor than APS-C if it gave us a modern 4K RAW shooting "Sony Handycam" the same size as we had in 2003.

Certainly has a much better screen than the original 😉

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?

I think we will be seeing more and more a decoupling of American interests and European, it'll take the upcoming inevitable AI crash to spur things along though before any real change occurs. The EU needs to build stronger tech and will do so. We have the expertise just get on with it.

This was just an attempt by Nikon to bring the cost of buying the patents down. RED never actually lost a case in court, or ever had the patent invalidated. Settling, and choosing to sell, is very different to losing a legal battle for a patent that didn't stand up.

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.

Except it's Nikon now isn't it? A Japanese company owns the patent. Europe voiding the US patents of a Japanese company... Now that is very risky politics.

Replacing a leech like VISA as just one example should absolutely be done but I don't think it's a lack of self confidence, I think it's just really tough to do, both legally and in terms of the policy and the politics of it, the EU has always been about encouraging big American corporate types to come in and set up shop, and invest, so it would send a very bad message to all US businesses that they're no longer welcome to invest billions in the European economy, and it would cost a heck of a lot of European jobs as well if they all pulled out, they are such big companies. Practically it would be almost impossible, like taking the egg out of a pancake mixture. I personally though, as a consumer, want to see many of these big companies gone. I want to see eBay vanish or be forcibly bought by the EU and split up into multiple European companies, PayPal can fuck off, VISA, Mastercard, many of the US banks, all can go and do their business elsewhere as can Tesla. There are numerous US companies that have a near-monopoly or duopoly, or act like a cartel. Some have built valuable infrastructure, like Amazon - both in terms of physical goods distribution, and online with their cloud services. Kicking them out would be very unpleasant for Europe and for jobs... But it might have to be done if the US doesn't change course.

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.

This sir, is a very good point. Ideally for these situations there should be a mode which transfers automatically to an encrypted server at home and the camera never stores anything, so if it's taken captive, there's nothing to see.

Looks great 👍 Is it still on the Play Store?

Vimeo was probably one of those American tech platforms that never existed to make a profit, only to grow, backed by generous venture capital funds. It's the Amazon model. Lose money for decades and finally become so massive and big that you can finally at the end make some huge profits with a diverse business (i.e. not just books!) With Vimeo they were number 2 only to YouTube so the server costs must have been astronomical. With a return of the same concept, personally I'd do it differently. I'd make sure the subscription fee covered all the costs and made a profit which could be invested back into growing the business, rather than relying on corporate socialist handouts from banks. As for storage - you get a finite amount, and you have to delete the junk yourself to keep your account in order, or delete old stuff that never gained any views. There's a lot of waste on platforms like YouTube, a lot of junk like live streams that have 2 hours of dead air in them (just a camera pointed at a stage for example). These lower res copies pay for themselves in reducing the bandwidth bill. I think it balances out. Some users will use storage all the way up to the cap, some will stay well under it, so it's all about the average. Yes but let's say 100,000 users paying £60/yr that is 6 million quid a year, which should more than cover the hosting costs 🙂 No definitely not, it's all about the average views, everyone subsidises each-other, so when you have a breakout success it's covered. YouTube benefits from massive economies of scale but look at the cost of Premium. It's as low as $4 per month in some countries like India, with vastly more bandwidth and storage requirements than a niche filmmaking site, but YouTube still makes enough money from it to run the platform with no caps and take down ads for those users. It's a temporary increase in RAM and SSD prices, it'll all go way down when the AI bubble bursts in a few months. I don't think peer-to-peer can work for a Vimeo-clone. For exactly the reason you mentioned above :)

Look at the difference between societies with widespread smartphone camera use and functional internet, compared to somewhere like Iran where over the last few weeks 12,000 citizens, women, young men, murdered by the regime but hardly any images or footage coming out = world ignorance. I barely saw any news coverage at all. If the only purpose of the camera is to create shock and outrage, that's one thing. More useful, is it keeps a watchful eye on what the authorities get up to and when they lie it's harder for them to pass off their bullshit. Also the Leica M10 is a documentary camera that just so happens to also create stylish art, rather than the hyper clear smartphone look, so the stuff that produces is fit for the history books - which cherry pick the most iconic images. Of course number one objective must be to stay safe but if you have a chance to open your eyes and look around in these historic times, never pass it up.

I'm more optimistic than you on this front.

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.

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.

Interesting mentions, but it needs not to be a general dumping ground for any kind of content, it needs to be laser focused on filmmakers / artists / DPs and musicians, exactly like Vimeo was in the very early days with the full community aspect built in, comments threads, forums and really good portfolio curation. Staff Picks has to be there (under a different name of course), as a launchpad of careers like it was at Vimeo. There is no reason why it can't work again. YouTube is dominant, won't be going anywhere. So it shouldn't even try to compete with that. The unique selling point is the ad-free viewing, original file downloads and community aspect, as well as that laser focus on filmmaking & cinematography of all kinds. A niche site for artistic filmmakers that costs £60 per year ad-free, that isn't just another copy-n-paste YouTube or Frame.io is what's needed now! Any interest in gathering ideas for a crowdfunding?

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

I really like the idea of the time travel dial A really elegant way of switching the look. Good to see the Super 8 / Bolex form factor make a come back as well. Fuji of course, now should do a high-end version of this with Cinema DNG.

Wow. Yes. That's a perfect example of when you get your exposure wrong by 5 stops. The dynamic range in this shot is about 3.5 stops!

Once they brought the price down it made so much more sense to me, $2k region was always asking just a tad too much for a Micro Four Thirds camera, at least that was the perception. But this now has the specs of a $6k camera, only it's a Micro Four Thirds size sensor. So even at $2k it's a good deal. At nearly half that it's a total must-have. In the old days, the smaller sensor lacked dynamic range, low light performance and decent autofocus. This is just not the issue it used to be, gap has closed up.

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!