Andrew Reid

Nope, depends on the flavour of ProRes. ProRes LT for example is considerably smaller than MJPEG 500MBit/s, yet is 10bit 4:2:2. MJPEG is only 8bit! It's a shit codec. It truly is!

RED are set to release their first smartphone, Hydrogen, in 2018. As things stand, this is the first ultra-premium device in a new market for phones, priced ahead of any of the current flagship smartphones. I think it's an area that is going to see explosive growth. Read the full article

It's clearly going to be a lusted after phone in stand-alone form for the branding and eye catching design alone. My qualms are with the modularity. The thing is by the time you've put some decent modules on it and turned it into a cinema camera, it's going to lose some of the advantages of being a phone and you may as well have bought an Epic. When you put a phone on the back of a big chunky camera, it becomes a screen. Nothing much more than that. A touch screen control panel at best. The rest is all apps... If they get the apps right, then they should be on their normal cameras any way and not just Hydrogen. So it remains to be seen whether the entire concept makes sense... I certainly think they will sell a lot of phones... Not sure if the modules will sell as well. They haven't so far in the normal field of phones.

So I see with the Canon live-view picture, having 12bit enabled in the raw video menu, darkens the image and 11-8bit considerably so. This makes exposure quite difficult with the standard Canon preview, which is why Magic Lantern have the new Framing mode, with the slow fps. I find the slow-fps really bothers me. Although it is amazing they have this at all. Are there any work-arounds to boost the live-view exposure back up to 14bit even though you intend to record at 12?

You can pop the rear cap off some of the Canon EF-S lenses and they'll work. Not all though. Sigma crop lenses do work on EF. 18-35mm even covers the full frame sensor at the long end Of the full frame lenses, the Sigma 20mm F1.4 will still give you a full frame look on 1.6x crop, it's beautiful. Anything fast aperture and you are set to go although a 50mm can feel too long for a standard lens and not long enough as a useful telephoto (prefer 85mm on crop sensor) - so be sure to pack a good 35mm for an all-round focal length.

I think it's easy to be pessimistic about young people's obsession with phone cameras and snapchat but before that it was television and of the TV generation an awful lot still found the time to become passionate about photography. If anything the abundance of phone cameras should allow more people to discover if they have an interest in it to take it further. The problem is not the device though, it's the narcissism. That element is having a subversive impact. People take pictures for different reasons now. Mainly to show off on social media or to offer a commentary on an aspect of life. Before the internet, photography was for yourself and maybe your friends if they could be bothered to look at the prints and family albums afterwards. If the main purpose of the camera for the masses is social media, then of course a non-connected camera is going to be a dead dodo to the vast majority of users, or indeed any non-phone camera. I really think image quality is good enough on phones for the consumer not to bother looking at alternatives, so even if a Canon branded phone came out, it would have to be a better phone than what Apple do and that is just not going to happen. They couldn't sell meaningful quantities of it based on the camera quality alone. I agree that cameras could all end up costing more as a result of what's happening. The shift has begun already and there is definitely a trend for enthusiast and pro models to get more focus and less of the consumer stuff... A6000 was a long time ago. Since then, it has morphed into a prosumer camera. Same with Panasonic G85 if you compare to G5 era stuff. Serious pro camera market is a good place to be because you're not marketing to indifferent teenagers at $300. I think the enthusiast market is actually big enough to support profitable efforts from the major companies... it is the low-end $800 and under that is going to go away because they can't sell enough of it. High added value models don't need to sell as many because the margins are much bigger. Let me know if you're in town again. I was in the UK when you were last here getting rained on! The camera section at Saturn used to be really busy and it is only in the past 2 years it has tailed off... It is a dramatic difference. Sometimes it is entirely empty at peak shopping times and there are more people browsing light bulbs than lenses.

The image is indeed the best you can get for the money, in an all-round sense. Although the GH5 has higher frame rates, 4K 60p, less rolling shutter. It is a very special look from the 1D C and even in 1080p I quite like it, in full frame with Canon LOG it's a more cinematic 2K image than everything else as long as you don't expect a boat load of sharpness like a GH2. The build quality is stunning and as a stills camera I still rate it the best around. The 1D X II doesn't beat the image in stills mode or video mode. It only really offers autofocus improvements. The only considerations are practical. The image is almost perfect. The file sizes are very large in 4K. You cannot quite edit MJPEG smoothly, even on a high end machine. You need to transcode the files to ProRes and that takes some time out of your 'flow'. The MJPEG files can safely be deleted once you convert to ProRes but you'll still need huge amounts of hard drive space to store a year's worth of work either way. Converting to H.264 is still an option though. Yep. That 1080p 1.3x crop image in 4K mode out of the HDMI by the way is very nice by-itself if you ever want the best 1080p from this camera direct to ProRes with a Ninja Star, smaller file sizes than 4K and no MJPEG transcoding, this is the way to go. The form factor isn't ideal for video with no articulated screen and it's quite a heavy camera with no in-body stabilisation, so start from those 'problems' and find what suits your needs. I am warming a bit to the 5D Mk IV for DPAF and 1.64x crop can be very nice with certain lenses like the Sigma 20mm F1.4, but it does kill the full frame aesthetic whereas the 1D C's 4K is 1.25x crop horizontally so you see much more of the full frame look of the lens (although the crop is more extreme if you measure diagonally).

So in my personal experience... Just in Berlin two great stores I regularly visited have simply disappeared in the month I was away! So sad to see Photo-Stade go. He was always a true enthusiast and owned an FS7 In the bigger retailers for the first time the camera sections have been shunted to the back of the floor or in some cases an upper floor instead of ground/first. Even at Manchester airport I noticed the cameras had been moved to the back. If Canon and Nikon don't get their finger out soon and start innovating and winning back smartphone users the whole industry is going to suffer, not just the corporate giants (who can move into medical and other profitable sections and survive just fine). It's the whole ecosystem that's at stake.

Just bringing this up again because there's a new kid on the blog, the EPS range http://www.sirui.eu/en/products/monopods/eps-series/ This replaces the feet from the PS range with small tripod legs, has anybody used it? Is it as good? Better?

The Q has a lovely look. In the end I took it back and stuck with the RX1 II though. Just wait till that thing starts doing 4K The T is very nice but it is basically the guts of a Fuji X-T20 in a very very expensive aluminium unibody. The original is still great if you want it just for stills, for £600 it is much much cheaper. Ergonomics are very nice. The AF lenses for it are VERY expensive but if you use manual focus stuff on it then tons adapts to the mount. I'd be more tempted to go for the SL with manual glass than the TL2 with a couple of Leica AF primes for same price.

Ah yes it depends on ISO. What's the optimal 'native ISO' for the best DR or isn't there one?

Get one, it's a much nicer body than the GH5 for stills and the video IBIS makes shooting easy, no lugging around heavy crap or extras, just shoot from the hip. It feels very much like a photography tool but the video mode is far better than it has any right to be, and lovely Olympus colours. John Brawley would agree

If I were Sony I'd make the A7S3 the first camera to be fully electronic with no moving parts, reap the good publicity, and leave us with our lovely E-ND and photographers can go away and use a A7R

They are very similar in 1080p if you have the VAF moire filter installed on the 5D2, so you can save some money there but the big difference is the 5D3 can do the stunning 3.5K footage in crop mode and lossless compression. 5D2 is 14bit only. Also it doesn't do 60p 3x3 binning. Dear peoples... Can you test something for me? Who has 10bit lossless in 3.5K? I did. Then it went away without explanation (same build, same card). Now the minimum is 11bit.

Find a better test that doesn't involve a big pair of tits. Depends on the store. Berlin and Sony's own store quite different to Best Buy, so who knows... Try it? There's an idea?! They are hardly going to arrest you.

Don't worry about the codec on the E-M1 II, it's very good. Minor differences between that and the superior 10bit on the GH5. And that price is very good indeed. The flat profile can actually be graded quite a lot before it falls apart. I should get my GH5 vs E-M1 II comparison shootout article and footage out, it's been a while and I haven't got round to it!

I'm not seeing that 10bit lossless is larger than 12bit lossless.

Sony have stopped all rumours and leaks quite successfully. There's no more farming out info to leaky external marketing companies, until the camera is announced by Sony themselves - then the review units and PR events invitations start going out. Camera companies are slowing down the release cycle of their products. I would think the A7R 3 would come first, if it is a 2-year cycle it could be announced within months, but if it's been switched to 3 years it would not surprise me. However the current models have had a price drop, so maybe the replacements are imminent after all. I hope they announce the a7R 3 and a7S 3 at the same time so we are not tempted to get an a7r and then regret it when the a7s comes along like the previous two times. I also hope it has the electronic ND filter from the FS5

Good to know! Thanks

EOS M with Magic Lantern I take it? The raw picture is what I'll be using it for. The image quality in stock mode for video is crap. The stills are lovely though.

3072 x 1308 is 95.5MB to the card with 14bit lossless. What card are you using that gives you such a high sustained data rate? I thought it maxed out at around 85MB/s on the 5D3? It is a shame they have not got live-view working yet with the 3K/4K mode, it's impossible to frame a shot.

What about trying EOSHD Pro Color?

I like the design of the handset, it looks like RED will build an ecosystem around it but will just put out the handset first and the rest is still far off. The start of something I think.

Right so it seems like an Android phone with no specs, but we do know it probably has some kind of lenticular screen like the Nintendo 3DS for a depth effect that will make you cross eyed and it has contacts that back onto other modules to give it other functionality like as a screen for your RED Epic. Props to red for trying something different at least. However, I'd need to see at least the basic specs and exactly what screen tech is in it before stumping up $1500

Apple are going backwards in so many ways.