Andrew Reid

Don't upset the ChatGPT bots I am currently negotiating with one to write the next 100 blog posts for free 🙂

The stuff that bothers me about current online content, I could write a 10,000 page book about it... Camera tests (the ones that grab the most views that is) have become completely meaningless. They're just about undisclosed variables. Everything looks more or less the same and if there's a difference then you can be 99% sure it's due to a random undisclosed variable like somebody grading two LOG formats a bit differently, trying to match but not quite. Tells me nothing about the camera. Any subtly even big differences in texture between uncompressed Cinema DNG and silky smooth H265 just gets completely obliterated on YouTube and most people probably even watching it on a phone! It is like evaluating MP3 vs FLAC through a $10 bluetooth speaker. Completely pointless. The format is all so similar now as well. American YouTube clickweasels who chuck a cheap bit of eye candy in front of the lens and think the results are the definitive verdict on image quality! Manny has a model walking stiffly up to the lens and that is supposed to be definitive verdict on an AF system. Toneh has a pool table in Rec.709 colour profiles and that is supposed to say everything about high ISO performance. Not that simple now there is dual native gain circuits is it? This is where Gerald at least goes further than skin-deep, but it always ends up being a box specs reading or box ticking exercise that doesn't merge the technical data he collects with the creative appropriation of it through the eye of an artist or story-teller. So what REALLY looks best out of the Z9 and A1? All I get out of these videos is... slight colour differences? From different colour profiles? And different grades? Don't even mention what codec and modes they're comparing. Pointless shit. If you fall for this shit, you're enabling those high viewing figures. Wonder if what you're doing is just consumerism, entertainment. Nothing wrong with that. Just don't pretend anything otherwise or pretend it says anything useful about the current differences in camera technology and performance. We need a standard benchmark look for cinema as well to judge the mirrorless cameras by too. Perhaps in a useful camera test there should be an appreciation of the grain and texture of film, the imperfections of it, because everything looking technically perfect and clean is not really doing it for me.

Read the full article on EOSHD: https://www.eoshd.com/news/sony-a7r-v-and-the-curious-case-of-a-disappearing-dial-also-is-twitter-all-over/

Global shutter has been around on a few cameras already like the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K, which people complain about because it can't do ISO 800, and Sony F55 which also took a low light hit. There is a reason why the Alexa isn't global shutter. Because a fast rolling shutter is fine. Atomos have to compete with Sony if they want to enter the sensor game. I say good luck to them but get your company ethics sorted first, bye.

It was never going to be a viable product for the end user though. Anyone putting up money would have been burnt to a crisp. Didn't stop all the clickbait artists and DPReview hyping it up on their feeds though. A bit like you are doing now!

The good old GH1 and GH2 were the same mechanism. I'm used to it. Ultimately we will be heading to an A7R IV type solution though, and in future maybe that but with folding OLED. Although that is a long way off.

Quite surprised how on the ball Nikon is at the moment. I think it was a make or break year for the company and they are having to push to survive. The grip looks great. Just what was needed.

Can you shoot video in Aperture priority mode on this one? 🙂

X-H2 seems like a much better choice to me.

Impressive strides? 😆

Nobody is allowed an opinion if they haven't first developed, designed and marketed a cinema camera. I guess we should all just shut up then Apart from tupp?

No more of him on this forum please @kye

Looks interesting https://www.octopuscinema.com

Maybe a sign Sony are overtaking Canon & Nikon in sales figures. A YouTuber's favourite camera is the one that generates the most affiliate commission with B&H.

Gerald is one of the only long-form reviewers on YouTube, he doesn't have much competition. Someone like Kai is not going to be much competition The thing is Gerald is a box and spec sheet reader, the presentable face of a specs sheet. It is useful for finding out info although you could find it out a lot quicker by reading a web page instead. He is a tester of what it says on the box. If it shoots 8K he is probably going to show you what the wall of his studio looks like in 8K versus all the other modes. Without wanting to get rude, or personal, What's missing is any kind of real world creativity. This was apparent in the Sigma Fp and especially Fp-L review where he dismisses it for not having IBIS and fancy AF. That was yet more proof if you needed it that he doesn't shoot anything. Those Sigma cameras have a unique look, a unique form factor, and Cinema DNG. I think Gerald has an imaginary user in his his mind whenever he does a reviews. His imaginary user is always turning up for work for an online advert shoot, rather than on a street to shoot some poetic cinematography, or showing up at an indie film that he wrote himself. So it is always going to be heavily biased towards "getting a job done" based on having all the boxes checks... AF, IBIS, 120fps, and so on. It is a pity that in so many years he hasn't developed a craft, because he's had the perfect opportunity - so much spare time, money and freedom to put these tools to good use - but seemingly no actual interest in cinematography. Anyway, that's just my opinion of Gerald. A bit like as was the case with Bloom, these people get put on a pedestal because of internet fame and their work just doesn't justify it.

Interesting that he would give 1.24 for best dynamic range, do you have a link to the interview with Wakamatsu? Maybe the binning / oversampling different in SSD DNG 12bit vs internal 8bit DNG? However your 1.30x shots look pixel binned and all the same detail. Different sharpening maybe. From memory of my tests the other month, I am 99% sure it needs to be at 1.37x and anything less is similar in detail to the 1.0x full frame. Maybe Wakamatsu's ghost writer got the numbers slightly wrong... Someone also needs to tell him to get back to work from the motorbike track and put a LOG profile in there pronto 🙂 Wonder what the deal is with that still not being in? And an articulated screen would also be a great edition to future entries.

Are those 1.3x? You need to go 1.37x before the oversampling kicks in.

The Fp-L starts oversampling around 1.37x And looks very nice and crisp up to around 2x, maybe even a bit further The full frame and 1.1/1.2x crops are binned but still look very nice. I just wish it had a 2.8K RAW mode oversampled from 4K RAW to save on file size.

It certainly appeals more than the other box cameras!! BGH1 anyone!? LOL. Did the same. Just in case Nikon's patent swap tactics don't get pulled off. Even if Sigma end up not making Z mount lenses, can always adapt the E-mount versions. Unlike with RF! I think whilst both Canon and Nikon get their mirrorless lens ranges sold through and established they're both going to be wary of any competition intruding on their little walled garden. There is also a Mark II of that E-mount Techart adapter thing, which hopefully makes it bullet proof reliable especially on Z9 with latest firmware. Or it could just not work at all. Only one way to find out isn't there!! The rest of the world is too obsessed with AF and IBIS to give it much attention! I think it is the closest thing to a spiritual successor of Magic Lantern on a full frame DSLR. There is something about Cinema DNG that screams RAW. More so than any other. Although we'll hopefully see what N-RAW brings especially roughed up a bit with an old lens and ISO 3200

Trapped into a dying ecosystem! Are you confusing Z mount with EOS M or something there 😉 Native Z lenses aren't my bag (although the 50 and 35 1.8 are decent bargains) but it's an enormously flexible mount. Compared to EOS R mount, I can adapt Sony E mount lenses to Z, which I can't with R or L or M43. I don't think there are c-mount Bolex adapters for R but there are for Z. Then with the broader manual lens eco system being PL, Leica M, Canon FD and also Canon EF via the Z mount Fringer adapter for nigh on perfect AF and the Nikon F-Z mount adapter, the ecosystem for lenses looks pretty strong to me. Unless you are talking about the ecosystem of the planet, now that is fucked.

It certainly would be hard to beat a Z9 for years to come. Although I can imagine Fuji putting their X-H2 processor in a GFX100S Mark II at some point, the Z9 is unique in that it is the only one to stick two fingers up at RED and go all guns blazing with internal RAW. Canon with their sweetheart deal have a decent compressed 6K RAW codec on the R3 but it has hardly any options or frame rates compared to the Z9, which has about 5 pages of them! Including the crop mode and 120fps 4K N-RAW. I also feel the Z9 might have the distinct advantage over R3 in having that handy E-mount adapter compatibility. I have a shed load of E-mount lenses including the Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 and would be nice to put them on the Z9. It is hard to see how Nikon could have done a better job really... Perhaps shave 300g off the weight and have a mechanical shutter, which I might or might not miss depending on how the electronic one holds up. Also in the next firmware it would be nice if they put ProRes Proxy and LT 4K/6K/8K in there like the X-H2 for smaller file sizes (rather than just the HQ variant). Has anyone seen it covered anywhere about N-RAW bitrates and whether the 4K RAW is binned or oversampled from the 8K sensor readout? If I can put about 10 older cameras on eBay and replace them all with one, I'd probably still not be able to part with a few 'tricks' like uncompressed CDNG on the Sigma Fp-L, with the mojo that has in the crop modes, and a dedicated camera for my Super 16mm c-mount lenses, although these will mount on the Z9 too, remains to be seen if the new Firmware 3.0 lossless zoom goes all the way to 2x crop.

The A7 IV at £2.5k and A1 at £6K? In that gap there's the A7S III and the FX3. Not sure there is much of a market for the A7R IV, as those who can afford it are more likely to go for one of the above cameras or spend a bit extra for the A1 if they need 8K and high res stills? What puts you off the Z9? It seems like there's not much it can't do. Have you considered EOS R3?

I like what I see with the screen. But £4000??!

WEX showed it in-stock for all of 10 seconds yesterday. Apparently a lot of shipments going out at the moment, but apparently not enough to satisfy the hordes! Even I want one, and I have 200 cameras! That clear-image zoom is going to be great for c-mount lenses.

The OG BMPCC is hugely different again, compared to the Digital Bolex and Ikonoskop. The Ikonoskop had the same Kodak sensor as the D16. I shot with both side by side (BM Pocket and Ikonoskop) in Berlin. Whereas the D16 and Ikonoskop have a very particular low-fi look and a lot of "imperfections" in certain conditions from the CCD sensor, the original BM Pocket was far more modern and clean looking, just all round a bit more normal. Still very nice, but it was its own thing and separate to the DB. Joe ran the sensor hot in the D16, basically overclocked it. It also had a much more appealing look undercranked to 16fps in post than a modern CMOS sensor camera. So if we can get even a bit closer to this look, with the help of some tricks and post production I'd be a happy bunny. Yeah. It's very much uncompressed. Cinema DNG is the key to the Fp. Even in 8bit. It doesn't have the squeaky clean and processed look of BRAW and ProRes RAW. I may try the 2K on the Fp-L and see if it's any good. The file sizes in 4K are a bit of an issue. But so is finding, maintaining, keeping and shooting a Digital Bolex lol. I am also curious to hear more about that. The CMOS 'plastic' look could well have something to do with that. I also think it handles white balance and colour temperature completely differently to CCD. There is always an overall slight veiling especially in warmer scenes.