Andrew Reid

I'd also argue that the conventional wisdom over high resolution sensors needing better glass is false unless you are heavily cropping the image. I've had soft 50 euro lenses look better and better, the larger and higher the resolution of the sensor. Same soft lens on a Micro Four Thirds camera or X-T5 looks terrible. Put it on a GFX 100 and it completely transforms and looks so much sharper when you're viewing the whole shot as intended, as long as you don't start pixel peeping it of course.

You can't compare a fast 35mm to a 50mm F8 macro lens or whatever it is they usually use on the DPR test scene. It's a fantastic lens, always was. Even wide open at F2.0 it's close in sharpness to F5.6 stopped down. Of course, only in the centre - but the DPR test scene is a sensor test scene, it isn't designed for wide angle lenses. The real-world performance of the lens is what matters. It's not as good as a Leica M APO 35mm F2 for 4 grand or the 35mm F2.0 lens on the Zeiss ZX1, but it's still very good. I have always treasured the shots from my RX1R and RX1R II That's what counts, not the pixel peeping at 2000% magnification. I think it does just fine... By far the most important thing with a lens is to go out and take real shots with it... The Panasonic 28-200mm on paper is a piece of garbage. Is not the sharpest, not the fastest, F7.1 at the telephoto end, and yet it shoots shots like this... Which look like they're shot with a high-end 135mm F2.0. The rendering is just superb at 200mm F7.1 Does it look like F7? Nah.

For the first time I got my hands on an S1 II yesterday, just in a shop. All my initial suspicions are correct, it's a second rate sensor in a very plasticky cheap feeling body. Not impressed at all with the way it feels in the hand given the lofty price tag.

Not too bad... RX1 OG: 700 euros used RX1R: 900 euros RX1R II: 2000+ euros The Mark II price is only going to stay high and may even go up as it has features the Mark III removes such as the articulated screen, oops. The old pop-up EVF is more premium and funky too. I think the hiatus was about protecting E-mount, as for some people a fast 35mm is all you need, and the return is about trying to out-Leica Leica on profit margins. Sony are a very numbers driven company. I have always liked the RX1 series as it was one of the very few options if you wanted a full frame sensor and beautiful fast 35mm Zeiss lens matched to the sensor, in an overall package that is smaller than even Micro Four Thirds. Hands down one of the best compact cameras ever made... the Contax T3 of our times. The successor was never going to be cheap, but the price escalation in the camera industry really makes me an unhappy customer. I haven't bought a camera "new" for years.

Same sensor as the Nikon D4. I had a play with the Sigma BF recently, and the controls are quite frankly batshit. I came away a bit underwhelmed and it's definitely not an intuitive camera when you first pick one up. Some very strange decisions by Sigma going on with it. It does look pretty though.

After all the social media shilling of the last 10 years maybe Sony want to see if they now have the brand power to pull off Leica level mark-up (without the German bits) and enter the luxury goods business.

The RX1R can be had for as little as 700 quid and has the same very good Zeiss lens. The Leica M Typ 240 remains the cheapest and most underrated Leica for 2 grand if that floats your boat. I regret selling mine. The Sigma Fp-L with EVF-11 has same sensor as the RX1R III, but like the a7rc isn't as pocketable with a 35mm F2 on the front. The attraction of the RX1R for me has always been the fun factor and size, plus that Zeiss lens is one of the best you can get, perfectly optimised for the sensor and it sits right up against it, without the optical compromises of E-mount. But in some ways the Mark III goes backwards from the RX1R II, which sells for around £2k second hand. No articulated screen any more, and the beautifully engineered pop-up EVF is replaced with a boring standard one for cost reasons. If you don't need 4K or 60MP, that 42MP Mark II does a lot of things right including phase-detect AF. One thing I am curious about with the new model is whether they have modernised the lens. As the original lens had a big heavy element that moves around and slows down the AF system. The RX1R III at £4200 in the UK bodes well for the used price in a couple of years, probably down around £2800 unless they are really scarce. The US price seems to have been Trump-fucked. One final thought is I wish Sony would do a camera this size with E-mount, to give us something other than the Fp-L and Panasonic S9 to play with.

Love the RX1R III. Hate the price. Then again, people will pay this much and more for a Q3, and they are defining the market at the moment. Rich idiots

The 28-200mm has quite a wide sample variation in terms of sharpness and uniformity. I had to buy two before I had a good one. What I like about it is the size and weight, for such a nice range in full frame it's tiny. The optical stabilisation is also very good, especially in video mode - which is super-useful for cameras like the Sigma Fp that lack IBIS. An alternative (although I haven't tried it personally) on Sony/Nikon is the Tamron 28-200mm F2.8-5.6. Faster, but heavier and longer. No OIS, but cheaper.

Has anyone noticed with some of the biggest tech reviewers on youtube like Hardware Unboxed or MKHB, there's a trend at the moment for deadpan anti-hype style reviews. Be careful with that as well, it's a style-change to counteract the falling viewing figures caused by them overhyping everything every day for the past god-knows how many years, as people catch onto it and get bored of it.

Surely the main point is that if you can afford to shoot ARRI Alexa 35 you are not quibbling over software licensing fees over the week(s) long duration of a shoot. Whereas with Adobe they scavenge £ from grandmothers and students for years and years.

I got it from the resident Berlin Leica Thief.

The book is highly recommended 🙂 Or as they call them in the Netherlands... Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooek

Does Android 6 have Camera API 2.0? I'll try it out

A very good move with the stacking of adapters for E. That adapter at $150 is $100 less than the Megadap one too.

According to a book, Dutch company ASML got into a big fight with Nikon a few years back. They both make lithography tools for semiconductors industry. ASML's optics supplier is Zeiss. To pressure Nikon into a settlement, they had to take the patent fight to them in cameras. So ASML got Zeiss to make them a camera. It also doubled as a marketing adventure, shown off in stores but rarely really ever in stock. Until one day this popped up on my radar, with the serial number XXX XXX. The AF wasn't working, or the manual focus (fly by wire), lens stuck at macro 30cm. So I cracked it open, mopping sweat off forehead. Inside is 256GB SSD, final release model was bumped to 512GB. Android 6, with Zeiss test suite of apps onboard including FCC certification test suite 🙂 A music player. A Dutch full frame 36 megapixel sensor with some analogue colour. A Zeiss 35mm F2 lens (but different optics to the Sony RX1), 4K video (Super 35mm crop) and an EVF. And some weird prototype issues. I'll make a YouTube video on it. Sample shot And I still have no idea how I fixed the AF. Just wiggled the lens and sensor ribbon cables a bit and it started working properly, but there was no sign of either cable being loose in the first place! It is quite a fun tool, and a bit different. Android is decently snappy on it, the camera app is well designed, the physical dials are lovely but it doesn't have a joystick or command dials... So a lot is on the touch screen, but it's well done. Shall I root it? Update to 3.0 production firmware? (Risks bricking it). Given the rarity factor... I probably won't!!

How I would love to see uncompressed 14bit Cinema DNG on newer Canon. Perhaps the R7, would be a perfect candidate. Let's hope they focus efforts on supporting the stuff beyond the DSLRs and older EOS M 👍

Might be time to release my version for free then! The download link will self destruct in 48 hours. Until then... enjoy! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z60UNsWHuc6wFmgEOlp0VgDlucHoutip/view?usp=share_link Works on Panasonic S9, S5 II, GH7 as well as all the new cameras. I'd welcome any questions, feedback, help making a guide for regular folk, or even comparisons to the official ARRI LOG profile, or even the odd ALEXA. Sample shots also welcome!! @BTM_Pixhas shot some nice stuff with it already. If you're ok for me to share it? And the ARRI LUT library is available here https://www.arri.com/en/learn-help/learn-help-camera-system/tools/arri-look-library-app Installation is via SD card as a real-time LUT so it sits in-camera, next to V-LOG and the regular picture styles.

Not much wrong with the specs. One of the only 40 megapixel APS-C bodies. Same flagship sensor as X-H2, but much smaller, sexier body. IBIS and all the features of an X100 VI but with the benefit of X-mount. 6K 10bit LOG and 4K/60p. I think for £1299 it's a bit of a bargain. Especially in a world which is used to $2k micro four thirds cameras. Whether the average person will choose it over a £1799 EOS R6 Mark II is another matter though. As for the USD prices on new gear, these are irrelevant now and I'm going to start using the £ price as a basis for determining the true pricing of stuff.

I am thinking full frame sensor is pretty bad for telephoto work at such long focal lengths. You are carrying much heavier glass and cropping into the sensor, aka not making the most of full frame - so you'd be far better off with a Micro Four Thirds camera for that. I am confused with your need for a fully articulating selfie screen at 750mm too 🙂 The R5C has worse AF for video. What about R5 II? Might be worth a look. I'd be tempted to go original R5 and a different camera for your telephoto shots, with a high-res crop sensor.

£1299 in the UK. $1299 would be the original US pricing without Trump's madness. So the tariffs are adding $400 onto a $1299 camera body. All of it into the pockets of a fascist administration rather than a nice Japanese camera company, too. Ouch.

I considered the same dilemma myself a few months ago and it boiled down to this: My need for pro-video features = less, I am a purist when it comes to shooting moving images - no peaking, no zebra, no elaborate extras, no clutter on screen, I have very basic audio needs, far more need for a fast operating nimble camera that can switch quickly between the highest possible video specs and nicest possible ergonomics for stills, so for me the EOS R5 was a better deal than R5C, far less money used, it behaves in a more nimble way for smaller scale creative endeavour and filmmaking, with better AF and is a superior stills camera, the overheating aspect is much improved vs the launch, and the hardware was never really limited very much by raw thermals anyway - it was all silly firmware trickery. So I recently went R5, but the mount just doesn't do it for me. With the Nikon Z8 I can use many more adapters, many more of my existing lenses, far more comes off my shelf and is happy on the Z8, especially for stills. So it really boils down to lenses and whether you'd be happy with a normal R5, before considering the Z8 as a step up from that.

And the X-T50 was already a steep rise on the pricing of prior models, even DPReview called it out, which is very rare as they act like the third arm of camera PR agencies. Also with the X-E5 now being priced as an X-Pro... It means the X-Pro5 will have to be in the region of $2500. A lot for an APS-C camera. I think the pricing strategy is silly. I think it's heading for disaster actually. And the alarming thing is that Trump's tariffs which nobody in Europe voted for has fucked OUR prices as well. Like COVID it has accelerated already existing trends and price pressures. The entire Japanese camera industry is heading for a Leica-style niche of crazy prices. And it will all unravel for them in a big way, when further advanced smartphones arrive (even more capable than the 1" sensor high-end current models like Xiaomi 15 Ultra) and DJI + other Chinese enterprises begin to compete more directly in terms of product line. Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji could all be history in 10 years time.

On the one hand it's great, as it's the closest you can now get to an X100 VI with an X-mount. On the other hand, the price means far fewer people will be able to justify buying it, let alone any lenses for it which is the whole point of the system - to get both smartphone & X100 VI users to step into the very profitable X-mount ecosystem. Then again as cameras are only aimed at rich people these days, it's probably all moot.

Flexible Colour Picture Controls. I have been waiting a long time for this. A Z6 III feature, first the Zf got it, now the Z8. It's effectively a full grading suite on-camera, bringing in-camera colour profiles far ahead of what Nikon offered before. The latest NX Studio Software used to create profiles and export to camera. It is much more advanced than the Canon Picture Profile creator software too. As good as having real-time LUTs. Pixel Shift + Focus Shift at same time is also pretty mega. Like having a 200MP medium format camera for macro, close-ups and product shots.