Andrew Reid

Really, the Alexa is impractical for most people and I agree with Ed that there are better buys even at £5k It has such a nice image but easy to make an impulsive decision based on the name. This might even get you close to the image for MUCH less https://cvp.com/product/z-cam-e2c-4k-cinematic-camera And RED Dragon 6K getting down towards £6k now. Worth keeping an eye out for those. Much lighter at 2.2kg, so more like an Alexa Mini. And much more res plus a better raw codec, all internal.

Apple and Google phones don't real generate random numbers, which are necessary for secure encryption. Government backdoor right there. I am sure these US bluechip companies are thrilled at the empty order book thanks to Donald Tit. Intel for example is set to lose potentially billions of dollars over next few years in lost Chinese orders. That Trump has so many people believing in his business skills is a neat trick. Unravelling the entire US economy is his other lesser known neat trick and this is the start of it. Huawei can afford to lose Qualcomm as can other companies. Snapdragon is replaced by Kirin 980 already in the P30 Pro and many other handsets and I can personally vouch for how fast it is. However, if the Chinese wanted to withdraw a few services.... Let's say "manufacturing"... Where does that leave important US tech giants like Apple and Google? What if Foxconn closed the order books on those companies? And on RED? A trade war is like any other war. Nobody wins.

Huawei will no longer have access to Android and Google Play Services for future devices (nor updates for current ones) after Google suspended business under pressure from the Trump administration. This has implications for Leica as well, who have a partnership with Huawei on the flagship camera phones such as the P30 Pro and Mate20 Pro. Read the full article

Yes a few scorch marks from the engine and the plastic over the focus scale has melted off. Bit of tape over that!! It has resulted in a nice price though. Usually they are 3 grand on eBay!

Let me know how the Japan store camera hunting goes. Some great shops there. I found a Canon 200mm F1.8 EF in Berlin or 1150 euros last week No idea how I am going to fit it in my hand luggage though.

I would do, but it's probably going to die at some point It's also a heavy beast, so my back might die even sooner that it does. I wish we had got a smaller Alexa, in days gone by - for around £25,000 which could now be picked up for £5000. I suppose we'll have to wait a big longer for the Alexa Mini to come down in price!! I wonder how much it would be to insure an Alexa and how much it could be rented out for? That would be one way to make the £5k back. Talking of depreciation... I just bought a 1DS Mark III with 28-70mm F2.8 for 900 euros all-in... That combo was over 10 grand in 2008.

Fantasies do come true for people willing to work hard over many years but sometimes, a dream can be realised simply by sitting down for a very long time and doing nothing, until the object of your desire becomes a bit old and tatty. Yes, now is your chance to own an Arri Alexa. Read the full article

I hope you are successful GM5 with your efforts at the DPReview forum. I feel it is a matter for them now. This is a very old thread - 2016 was 3 years ago. I don't think we should be obsessing over Ebrahim again, it brings back bad memories for me and bad memories for the people he scammed. Therefore I'll lock the thread from this point onwards.

$949 for a manual focus 50mm F2? Not exactly an outstanding bargain or a unique lens optically. Maybe put a nice 35mm F1.4 on a Fuji X-T3 or X-T30 instead. Both made in China!

Blah blah blah. Somebody's been watching the news! Somebody has probably been listening to Trump as well, blabber on about how dreadful the Chinese are. Well you make a political post, you get a political response. Or somebody showing you the facts on why they're wrong about Chinese manufacturing. Given time they will not just match Zeiss or Leica for lenses but surpass. Even this early in the life of the lens manufacturers, they are doing quality items. You infer they are not, and that the whole country is basically evil. Look at the images from this and tell me it isn't worth $700. https://phillipreeve.net/blog/review-zhong-yi-mitakon-50mm-0-95-iii/ Or put your money where your mouth is and pay Leica prices. And just because I am pointing out to you some facts, doesn't mean to say I am suddenly a communist. Sure, the Chinese government is not a democracy. I hardly think a two party system like we have in the US and the UK is really all that much of a democracy either, but that's a separate discussion for another forum... And sure, criticise the Chinese companies for 'exposing their workforce to pollutants' but I don't see very much what this has to do with a camera forum... You started the topic based on quality of their technology, not the quality of their environment. Trump is running scared from China, and clearly sees their advancements as a threat to various underperforming US blue chip companies. I see this belief and fear is starting to take hold in some of the public as well.

I detect a lot of anti-Chinese bias! It's reasonable enough to raise the topic but save us the old "China makes junk" cliche, it's no longer as simple. China is a developing economy and all countries go through eras of churning out cheap products during this phase. Japan did it. Even the US did it to some degree, but in a very different technological era. Looking at the camera companies - Sigma did it - made very cheap lenses in huge quantities for a LONG time before they started to do the high-end quality stuff we all respect so highly. What is going on at the moment is Chinese home-grown technology is cost competitive and technologically becoming on an even par with western stuff, so that combination makes it a huge threat to US businesses like Intel and Qualcomm. There are political reasons for smearing Huawei. There is also a distinction between IP, design and assembly / manufacturing. Most of China's developing economy has been based on assembly and manufacturing but now they are becoming big on original designs and products, which is another threat to the US economy. Especially in chip design and telecoms. As for quality, perceptions and stereotypes always vary... You're entitled to your views. I find them outdated. RED cameras and iPhones are hardly poorly put together products - both made in China. Foxconn. No doubt if they had been made in an American factory by American hands you'd think they were better made, but that says more about prejudiced opinion than the actual facts or the skills level of the Chinese workforce. Across Asia there are a lot of people highly educated and dedicated to their work otherwise they wouldn't do the things they are doing. And Chinese space programme is another flagship advancement, whether we can agree on their politics or not, the writing is on the wall. The US is no longer top dog. "There will be nobody left in China to do business with. Very bad for China, very good for USA!" --- Of course when you have this twat starting trade wars, you're bound to get people whipped up into a sinophobic frenzy. Let's look at the facts. It's hard to imagine a President so out of touch with US businesses, who have benefited massively from cheap Chinese labour and manufacturing. There isn't a single major US technology or camera company around today that doesn't need Chinese manufacturing or parts supply. And yet Trump thinks attacking that is very good for the USA, because he has a simple world view - "we can make stuff here... it's easy... just build a factory"... For a start, if you look at the quantities of natural resources, rare metals and energy required to make mass produce fundamental parts for modern technological devices and appliances, the US doesn't have any of it easily to hand like China does and digging them up at the scale required would cause massive pollution right on your doorstep. Is that would you want? If smartphones were all made in the US they would cost 10x more at retail and wouldn't sell a single unit vs cost effective competitors. The technology doesn't even exist at the required scale in the US to build the stuff, like it does in China, Japan and South Korea. We're talking here about the machines that make machines. Vast majority of the equipment is Asian. We are talking vast scale of manufacturing, where a single factory is the size of a small city and employees over 1 million people. Add up the cost of those people with US wages vs doing the same thing in China and you start to realise what a fucking amateur Trump is when it comes to business and why he has made enormous losses and write-offs in every one of his business ventures.

Try inter-frame NR off. It might be related to that. I'm wondering if this is all a bit pixel peeping gone mad to be honest. All cameras look shit if you shoot at F8 with lens cap on don't they, and try to pull up garbage from the compressed shadows. Even raw looks a bit rubbish in that circumstance.

Said it before, will say it again. Try H.264.

IMX586 lacking in low light? I think it's superb in 12MP mode on the Mi 9. Nice job at Samsung on the new chip though.

Try H.264 instead of H.265... Oh and take the lens cap off