Andrew Reid

In the end, the results speak for themselves.

Did you ever try the Voigltander 50mm F1.1 as well? I am curious how the 7artisans compares to that. I have a Leica Noctilux F1 But travelling with it is not the best feeling. Scares me to death, dropping it or having it nicked. WHY?

it's the worst I've seen for 2 years straight.

Yup. When Sony went to the more utilitarian style body with the A7 II and onwards, they lost something. The original, slim, sleek, shiny aluminium bodies were lighter, more fun. They just needed a button layout revision, deeper button presses, better dials and a different screen articulation. However, Sony bulked up, perfected, refined, and came out with something completely and utterly charmless. As charmless as a German pudding. Check out the Speed Master 35mm F0.95. Expensive for a Chinese lens but a real keeper for X-mount. It has the super-high contrast bokeh of a Canon 50mm F1.2L together with a non-clinical rendering. Nice mix. Yeah, but you can step up from the 6D Mk II and M8 while keeping the pleasing part of the image. The EOS R is definitely a step up from the 6D II and the M9 of course a step up from M8. Both more expensive though!

We wonder why Canon continue to sell more cameras than Sony and Panasonic? Read the full article

Let's call it a Tarantino mode then - every camera needs one - something that's fun, addictive, imperfect, stylish and to be honest slightly ridiculous. If a camera is too well educated and too much in a straight jacket it fails at being fun to shoot with. That is a Sony. I have only really ever enjoyed the RX1R II, and the rest stays in the bag. Whenever I talk about that elusive "camera-personality" I always seem to bring up imperfections a lot, so maybe Sony is just too good. I always seem to talk about grain or the Digital Bolex, but it's really more about how high image quality expresses itself - emotionally, rather than the numbers, and it is the same with ergonomics and functionality - less about specs - more about personality. The X-H1 I have as well, and I like it a lot. There is however a very slightly clinical soul to it because of how damn sharp the 4K is and how utilitarian the body is. It could actually be too perfect? IBIS too stable. Image too detailed. Just too...... good? Whereas the EOS R has serious limitations and deserves a lot of criticism for what it "could have been", it feels in-hand the closest to a full frame GH5 I've yet known, and when you put your palm out under the articulated screen offset to the side of the body, it's almost as if a C200 or 1D C image is unfolding in the palm of your hand like magic, and everything feels in the right place, and you know it "just works" and is in focus... And you know it can transform into a mirrorless 5D Mark IV at any moment for stills shooting. Then you remember the specs - slow 30ms sensor readout with rolling shutter skew, no 10bit internal, 1.8x crop, so on... And it doesn't make a damn difference to the shoot which is unfolding on that screen or in the EVF. Reality is almost divorced from the specs sheets. It's very weird. The colour. Canon have it very close to Kodak film, or a Leica M9 with the Kodak CCD. The way it handles two extremes of light temperature in the same frame is uncannily like film. There is no tricky wire-act between green and magenta. Warm tones and wood don't have a magenta cast, as if the camera is trying to avoid a green cast. It seems to have a wider bandwidth of colour temperature, in which it sits almost perfectly in the middle - neither too far one way or the other - just beautiful. Same with the 1D C, yet now we have the choice to drop to 120Mbit instead of 500Mbit MJPEG, but the colour magic is still there. Also in handling the blacks, they never seem to completely crush. There is always a creamy, milky look to a dark window at night on the EOS R and 1D C, whereas on other cameras with superior specs, you might see sharp edges or noise or too much detail or too much absolute black. Talking about defying the specs sheet - the Leica M9. Now it's 10 years old yet still has a more filmic nature and addictive shooting quality than most top of the range 2018 cameras. It does not have the perfect plastic still-life feel of a CMOS camera, it has a silk-like grittiness... a contradiction but it's true. Now we have the Nikon Z7 which I am getting on with quite well, but again something is lacking. The outright paper specs are the best on this camera of all that I own (full frame mirrorless wise). But it feels a bit like a consumer gadget, with again a clinically perfect modern image. I can't wait to rough it up with some older lenses via an adapter. The 35mm F1.8 Z is amazing but it's so cut-glass posh. It's like a perfect blonde super model, when you know you'd have more fun with Emma Watson. I need to add some things to my Z7, to get it to show some personality. Maybe a cage, a lens adapter, and turn the IBIS off... Add some imperfections into the shooting process. Otherwise it's just too seamless. Where's the challenge?

Haha that's all true, it's a pragmatic way to look at it. There are two hats the same filmmaker can wear. His work hat where he wants to get the shot and go home. The client is satisfied. The audience is satisfied. The filmmaker gets paid. His Kubrick hat, where he wants the look of film, without issues, every shot has to be perfected, a certain look is desired - that's art. The misconception is that pros care about image quality to put it number 1 on the list of camera features. Most don't. Even at the very highest-end of TV where you'd think a pro camera is most needed, most flick a switch and enable a compressed Apple codec instead of RAW, like on the Alexa. I too would rather have a flaw in the image rather than a camera I don't enjoy shooting with, specs aren't the end of the story. With my Kubrick hat on, the rolling shutter really pisses me off and I couldn't care less about whether a popular audience notices it.

Personal taste does exist, yes correct. I don't like plinky plinky happy hipster music. It's not a proper cinematic score or film soundtrack, it's just elevator music. Give me Vangelis over The Music Bed any day.

YouTube's music library is dire. It is fine as elevator muzak! How, in any way, does it compare to Radiohead for cinematic images?

I could understand if the C-LOG limits were auto-ISO related - it doesn't work well under ISO 400 (banding goes through the roof) - but to restrict it so you can't use an automatic shutter speed seems a bit mental to me. No technical justification. So probably just another thing to nudge pros in the direction of a Cx00 instead. Canon still seem to have a lot of the noisy circuits up-front. They don't seem to have BSI sensors. EOS R and 5D IV are FSI. Same with M50 I believe. That one is the worst for the fixed pattern banding. It is horrendous in the shadows in 4K on the M50. Something to test. Actually Canon pulled a little trick in EF-S lens mode - which is the AUTOMATIC crop mode that happens when you attach an EF-S lens. They made the 1080p the same crop as the 4K - so around 1.8x - so there is no change in FOV between 1080p and 4K in movie mode. With 1.6x crop mode enabled, and a normal lens, there is. So Canon seem to think their EF-S users are too stupid to realise what's going on No 1.6x 1080p for them! All to do. I'll work on it.

A combined 1.7m views and not a single mention of serious rolling shutter in 4K. And we wonder why Canon continue to outsell Panasonic.

If the Cinema EOS line comes at the expense of the EOS line, it should be straight up cancelled. Pro video has high margins but it's a niche compared to mirrorless and DSLR. For every C200, Canon probably sells 10x more 5D Mark IVs. If having crippled video on their hybrid cameras is going to continue for another 5 years, and half their market vanishes, then the extra profit from the Cinema EOS is nowhere near going to be a stand-in for all those lost sales. Canon should accept the fact that they may lose some pros from the C100 and C200 line, who will buy a full frame camera. They are losing these pros no matter what, because some of them are buying Sony, Fuji and Panasonic mirrorless cameras. I'd say no more than a small proportion of pros are leaving behind cameras like the C200 for mirrorless cameras, because they're happy with the form factor of the C200, the interface and the audio side, as well as built in ND. All the same reasons they left stills cameras behind in the first place - as well as appearing with pro gear on a paid job, rather than turning up with a 'toy' in the eyes of a client - stupid though it is to the professional and us - it's still sadly the case that some clients don't trust 'small unprofessional consumer cameras', or would question the capabilities of the shooter based on their misinformed gear views. If anything, Canon can sell a second body to these users and make even more money - but not if it has rolling shutter like the leaning tower of Pisa. I just think a big company has huge inertia. The decisions taken around the sensor technology go back a long time. Maybe even there is extra colour processing which slows down the output. Maybe even Sony holds a vital patent for cooler running, faster running BSI full frame sensors. So the EOS R video limitations might not even be at all related to Cinema EOS and market segmentation. My best guess is... Yes Canon wants to keep pros on the high-profit margin Cinema EOS cameras, they want a range of separate video tools for them, they want pros to buy BOTH video cameras and stills cameras. They even want some people to buy an XC10 or an XF705, you name it, Canon want to sell it you. Yes Canon is aware of the backlash about uncompetitive video specs on DSLR and mirrorless cameras, but due to the inertia of changing the direction of such a big ship, they have to live with decisions made a long time ago about technology, sensor specs, readout speeds, heat dissipation, etc. And on top of that they are more conservative on reliability than Sony, so will underclock things even further to prevent any heat issues in 4K over long continuous recording stints. So add all that together and you are not going to get full frame 4K from them yet. What confuses me is that Canon makes a GREAT deal of their profit from glass. Some have even described Canon as a lens company first that also sells cameras. The bad news for Canon is that I (as a representative customer) was ready for a 28-70mm F2.0, I had it on my radar even since the first Sigma rumours. It would have been an instant buy for one of my other full frame 4K cameras. The EOS R 1.8x crop made it NOT an instant buy, so right there with me and a LOT of other regular full frame 4K shooters they just blew a TON of profit. It's a £3000 lens! I want Canon to put the 1D X Mark II sensor in a mirrorless camera, with full frame 4K and Canon LOG otherwise their C200 users will buy a Sony and their EOS R users will not buy as many lenses. That sensor in the 1D X II is the only full frame one they have which is fast enough to do full frame 4K. 4K/60p on that camera in 1.4x crop... Even if that is the absolute speed limit of the sensor, Canon have room to halve the frame rate to 30p and under, but extend the sampling to full width. It's simple maths. The total data per second coming off the chip remains under the speed limit at the lower frame rate but comes from a larger area. Final thing to consider, is that Canon want to stagger the release of new technology as far into the future as possible, so that we keep on upgrading and Canon keep having a reason to sell you the next model. If the EOS R had this amazing 4K image in full frame without rolling shutter issues, there's two BIG reasons LESS to buy the more expensive EOS R2 or whatever it will be, whenever it will be!! They are leading the market, so why give you everything NOW for CHEAP just because Sony is? Sony is chasing and they NEED to gain market share. Canon arguably does not. I am not saying I agree with this business strategy or that it's right in the long-run (clue - it will probably hurt them) - but it could be yet another reason why the EOS R is the way it is. Also the 3 top EOS R reviews on YouTube don't mention the rolling shutter problem on the camera in 4K, which I think is letting down a combined total of nearly a million viewers. These 3 guys (Peter, Caleb and Jordan) are all wonderful people and I have nothing personal against them, but I think it's a major failing not to mention it.

It might vary depending on heat and other conditions or even how long the sensor has been switched on for in live-view mode.

The crop 1.8x is maths, and reality has yet to be measured - I'll compare it to the C500 with the same lens, and to 1.5x APS-C cameras and other stuff we know the exact crop of and show visually how it compares. I said in the article that it may even be doing a 4096 pixel wide sensor readout to maintain the 1.74x crop of the 5D Mark IV in Ultra HD. Takes that, and downsamples to 3840 pixels wide, rather than crops more into the image. We don't know for sure, but when you're in 1.6x crop mode, it certainly doesn't FEEL like 1.8x crop when you hit record.

I think you will really like it Mattias. Can't fault it for stills. The video offers the nicest cinematic feel I have had for a long time - 1D C-like, but the rolling shutter will kill it for some things. Canon are still weird.

I am perplexed! Read the full article

Yes so that is in reference to the firmware development partnership for the 4K Leica cameras - SL, CL, Q (ok that is not 4K but hardware, firmware and sensor are pretty much the same as the SL). Yeah, just sounds like Olympus wants to sell their own lenses for their full frame system and not have competition from Panasonic and Sigma undercutting them on price or bringing out very similar optics. I can't count the number of times I have nearly bought an Olympus Micro Four Thirds lens only to decide to go for the similar Panasonic one, or visa-versa! Olympus will have to bear the added costs of developing their own mount and of course it greatly restricts the number of optics available for their system at launch, but there are upsides to this approach too. That is if they DO enter full frame, which is far from confirmed! In manual focus it's a very good system, thanks to the detailed live-view and huge EVF, plus M-mount adapter, or others. Leica's native SL lenses are too chunky for me. That 24-90 is nuts. Also I think it needs more film profile choices. There's only one And I prefer the M9's colour science, from that Kodak CCD. The SL is a bit squeaky clean and modern, and it needs that Leica 2008 colour mode, plus a M typ240 mode, so we have the choice of modern or a more film-style look, which Leica did THE BEST out of anyone with the older M cameras.

Isn't it strange how lens aesthetics work!! The funnel ones remind me of a compact camera with the extending optics. It ruins the look of an LX100 when that lens pops out, small willy style. The Nikon 35mm f1.8 Z housing happens to be exactly the diameter of the mount, and it's not a small lens. So they have fucked themselves there if they ever want to make smaller optics like Leica. Looks like I will be keeping hold of my Leica SL for longer than expected... Even with fancy Panasonic S1R on the way, that minimalist metal body is quite something. By the way here is the smallest Nikon Z lens vs the smallest Leica SL lens... Quite a difference Albeit they cheated and the SL lens is APS-C... And probably made entirely by Panasonic!

Since Photokina there have been a number of interviews with Panasonic, Sigma and Leica regarding the L-mount system and the alliance behind the new lens mount. Read the full article

So why does Canon stick to 709? Is it because they believe the benefits of a wide colour gamut are reduced in 8bit LOG? I have experience of both 709 and 2020 on the Sony cameras in developing Pro Color. 709 gives the better colour and 2020 stops highlights clipping - for example bright blue neon lights clip less early on my Sony A7 III in BT.2020 than on the Canon 1D C in 709. I can't help thinking Canon stay for a reason to narrower colour gamut in 8bit...and they have made it deliver. A classic case of 'ignore the specs sheet'?

Yes, it's extremely weird. Maybe Canon have a technology we're just not aware of in-between sensor and processor, that does wonders for the image.

At ISO 1600, again surprising. Canon LOG on the EOS R is virtually noiseless, very smooth indeed, with abundant colour info. The X-H1 shot, same ISO, F-LOG, has more noise in the blacks and a harsher look overall. Why does Canon LOG keep so much colour info and the warmness of the light, whereas F-LOG washes it out? EOS R: Fuji X-H1:

Something tells me it's a lot more complicated than a driving analogy.

Does that mean you have the latest glass, or old glass? By the way I actually really liked the swirly bokeh

Surprisingly I find Digital IS pretty capable on the EOS R so far, with only a small extra crop but a LOT more steady compared to nothing... And competitive with IBIS... which is the most surprising thing. There aren't any artefacts from micro-jitter. It's pretty well locked down. Even pans work out well. IBIS on the Z7 is superior, but yes the floaty look is there and not very cinematic. The lazy temptation is there to use it and leave your handheld camera skills and tripod at home The Z7 IBIS seems in-between Sony and Panasonic for effectiveness, so it's an improvement on the A7 III but not as good as a GH5. I'd put the EOS R DIS in between the two as well. So actually more locked down than an A7 III. So far the EOS R is earning a bit of a niche for itself in my crowded camera bag. And that too is unexpected. It's a bit like a Canon GH5S. That also has a 1.8x crop and no IBIS. On the EOS R we have 480Mbit ALL-I or 120Mbit IPB codec so pretty similar to the GH5S as well. The 10bit vs 8bit issue is controversial and needs proper testing, because the Canon colours appear at first impressions to bridge the gap or even exceed how pleasing the 10bit files are on the GH5S. Even the ergonomics feel similar between the two cameras. Both have very similar screen quality, same articulated design, similar EVF resolution and size. The one area the GH5S is definitely superior is rolling shutter. But the EOS R is FAR superior for video AF and tracking. Also it is a 5D Mark IV standard full frame camera with your EF lenses for stills and 1080p, whereas the GH5S requires a Speed Booster to get close to that look and it is not 30MP. Stay tuned for my EOS R review tomorrow, it may surprise.