Andrew Reid

8fps is not the main reason to use the GFX 100 II though. Plenty of faster cameras for burst shooting. It is 14bit when it matters.

I would rather see a Super 16mm Digital Bolex CCD type camera than Super 8mm film bodies, but yes it should be kept alive. Kodak will do a good job of killing it with products like this though.

Why would you rather have that, even for stills? 🙂 Apart from the lack of any video mode (which is completely nuts) No mechanical shutter, and a very slow electronic one, which rules out so much nice glass and adapters. And the price is also a bit nutty. The GFX 100 II does so much more, with better ergonomics and lenses too. I can't think of a single area where the Chinese DJI X2D is better. It looks pretty though!

$5K Lol.

Obviously the price makes this more a dream than reality but goodness me am I impressed with it. Some observations: Very light, much smaller than GFX 100, much better build quality and top screen vs GFX 100S, feels like the sexiest camera ever made to be quite honest and really has a beautiful look and finish. Autofocus is much improved over prior GFX cameras especially original GFX 100, it seemed closer to X-H2, maybe not quite as fast but MUCH better than before, although I only tried it with the 50mm pancake. Video mode has so many crop modes. Rolling shutter in 8K is not great. 5.8K mode is interesting. 4K mode is plenty detailed even though it's pixel binned. There is a 2.35:1 crop mode, which looks like cinema on a stick. Anamorphic modes. Fantastic codec too with ProRes. I was able to try out the Full frame 35mm crop mode, also a PREMISTA one for your 40 grand cinema lenses from Fuji. Didn't see Super 35mm? I don't think I did anyway. EVF is still detachable. Very very good view of the action through it. Ergonomics and outstanding. The chunky high quality feel of everything about it and that top LCD panel is just incredible. Absolutely enormous and dominates the top plate of the camera. I want to pick one up but at 8000 euros, will have to wait. The Sony a1 does have a few advantages but I do love the look of the larger GFX sensor especially with vintage glass. The a1 has a faster rolling shutter at full resolution, and in 8K. It has a more flexible lens mount with a wider range of adapters including the lovely Leica M Autofocus adapter. In general, it is the autofocus king really, whereas GFX 100 II I would be mainly sticking to just one or two Fuji lenses for autofocus and the rest manual focus Canon FD / Minolta MD / etc. You can now pick up a Fuji GFX 100 about 4 years after it was released for $3500 / £3500 and going down further with the release of the new one. This was £10k when it was announced! So hopefully in 2 years we can pick up a GFX 100 II for around £4k or something, which is still a lot for most people, but it absolutely will make sense for many, it's just so good.

I never really rated it that highly TBH. The format was a good idea... Top Gear of cameras, but it wasn't really was it. Kai is no Clarkson. Half the time he was just mucking about and he couldn't shoot, didn't have the eye for it. Style over substance. Whereas if they had executed on the format in a more creative way it would have been fantastic. Some proper jokes and personalities, not just the innuendo and mucking about, would have helped. Look at Conan's capers abroad. Hilarious. (Not bad for an American!)

When you say Preview the exported file are you referring to Finder's preview on a Mac, or are you using a player like VLC? It looks like either the NLE or your OS is misinterpreting the full 0-255 luma range of the file. This can also happen in 10bit. This is the fix: https://www.eoshd.com/dynamic-range-enhancer-H264-H265/ To see if this is the case, export as a .mov and see what happens. If it is still lighter looking than in your NLE, then the culprit is that your NLE is crushing the blacks and chopping down your dynamic range. Once that is sorted you can more accurately grade the files and reintroduce however much contrast you prefer.

I don't know about cultural vandalism. That's a bit like saying if BBC accidentally deleted 2 episodes of Teletubbies, culture takes a knock 🙂

Might be Kai wanting to pull it?

Indeed, being untruthful is never a good look is it. Standard par for the course in marketing land though.

Sports is the main target for the A9 III for Sony and the reason they went global shutter. Lots of pesky LED advertising signs which can cause banding, lots of fast action at the end of long lenses, fast pans, and also sometimes the need for complete discreetness and silence, no mechanical shutter or flash. So for sports photography, they are getting ahead of the Canon EOS R3. Also the very fast burst rates, small size of the body, smaller lenses (sort of) put it ahead of any mechanical shutter camera or 1D X Mark III. They want to challenge Canon's dominance in football, F1, olympics and so on. Big money riding on it. I think in this regard it is really well targeted and innovative, it's just a bonus that they eliminate rolling shutter for filmmakers as well, but not as big a deal for us as it is for sports shooters.

It bothers me to be honest, lowers the level of discourse. The standard of media and debate is already at an all-time low generally, which leads to a lot of odd behaviour and bad decision-making on behalf of the public. It's no different with cameras. If we could raise the intelligence level of our entertainment, we'd all be better off for it.

Sony are saying there's no image quality impact from global shutter, which is of course not true. The base iso 250 and lowest ISO of 2000 in S-LOG says otherwise, and it is a bit disappointing from Sony's marketing people to suggest otherwise. I'd rather they just be honest! Still a great camera though. The Starvis / Pregius S - I am not too familiar with. If it is also a stacked sensor similar to the A9 III then it's a valid comparison though.

I looked at the images and one is clearly noisier than the other. Works for me!

By the way the A9 II native ISO is 100-51,200 Which means the 250-25,600 of the A9 III clips a stop and a half of dynamic range early in both highlights and shadows. Around 2-3 stops lost... So we're talking maybe 12 stops at best. As for noise, it does look to be about a stop and a half worse.

It doesn't need to be from the same time, just the same exposure relative to middle grey and same ISO

With such a fast sensor they have a lot more temporal resolution, so higher ISO performance if they use multi-frame NR. In the future, we won't be looking at single frame, despite The Power of One Frame ironically being the marketing slogan for the a9 III 🙂 The power of 120fps more like.

Interested to see more on this subject. Let's see how far Sony has come from the early global shutter sensor Blackmagic Production Cam 4K which couldn't do ISO 800! Here's my findings so far: https://www.eoshd.com/news/sony-a9-iii-high-iso-raw-test-a-noisier-6k-sensor-than-predecessor/

The way to fix any dynamic range shortcoming with global shutter is to use multiple frame HDR RAW like a phone. 120fps at full resolution is easily enough to enable 6 or 7 frames, merged into one, without a noticeable hit in terms of shutter lag, or processing time

Hopefully the multi-frame RAW NR and custom LUT features will make it into future firmware updates for the a1. Maybe that's the plan with the a9 III as well, not quite ready for release day?

https://www.eoshd.com/news/thoughts-on-the-sony-a9-iii-first-global-shutter-mirrorless-camera/ Here's my take on it. I love it, great camera... But... a1 is cheaper used, and does 8K at 500Mbit/s 422 The global shutter is capable of 6K at 120fps, but Sony didn't implement any 6K modes, no open gate, or anamorphic, and no Cinema 24p in the image processor. I have heard the image processor is not capable of oversampling at 120fps from 6K-> 4K so the 4K/120fps is likely pixel binned from the 6K. I believe the 4K/59.94/29.97/23.98 are oversampled from that full 6K output. I like the new grip, looks more comfortable and is to be honest more stylish as well. Can't really see a use for 120fps stills shooting, it's not a scientific camera.... although it could be used as one!!

They are holding back on the video side but it's still a big step up from the original a9 and 9 II. It has S-LOG for starters! 🙂 The sensor does 6K but unlike Fuji, Canon and Panasonic, Sony have chosen not to give us it. Codec is capped to 4K, oversampled. Surely with a global shutter design, the sensor is destined for cinema cameras, which could be why we don't see the full capabilities of it in the a9 II. Market segmentation, and battery power / heat management / image processing limits all at play here. It's still a very exciting tool and clearly a step up from the a7s III. However I am keen to see whether global shutter hurts low light performance, and dynamic range, when the first reviews come out. PS - this is the sensor I think the Panasonic S1H II will have

They certainly are that. This technology is the future and will result in the end of mechanical shutters once it becomes more broadly available and common. The only thing is, I feel we have peaked a bit. Sony a1 still does everything I need and it's hard to see what on the specs sheet needs to change. Of more value to me would be a big change in shooting concept and more imaginative design, rather than this game of constantly escalating numbers and speeds.

Sony a1 for documentary.

£9.99 to unlock the full app. £3500 for a decent mirrorless camera. You choose 🙂