Andrew Reid

There's no currently active Sony or NEX hacks, so long dead I'm afraid.

And it isn't very useful. I don't think it went very far beyond the menu language hack.

There are much better areas to focus on if you're interested in camera hacks, like Magic Lantern, ML RAW and of course the GH1/GH2 with PTools. Also the Samsung NX1 with the Linux based hacks and high bitrates in H265.

7 hours ago, JulioD said:

It’s my view that 24 FPS is the goldilocks temporal resolution for listening to a story.

I agree, 24fps is more abstract, less in-the-face, and this means it is a tool to deploy with a logic behind using it. At this sweet spot frame rate it lets the audience's mind wonder, they will have more capacity for the emotional impact of the story rather than sitting there like hypnotised chickens or a droog in A Clockwork Orange with matchsticks in his eyes.

It is more melecony, more wistful and poetic, can you imagine converting a Tarkovsky film and all that visual poetry and symbolism to an in-your-face documentary/reality style at 60fps, it just wouldn't suit it.

A quiet scene of dialogue and suspense is not supposed to be a visceral hypnotic rollercoaster either, and the camera is there simply to observe and not supposed to snap you out of the story, cinema is supposed to immerse you in it and 24p does that very well.

On the other hand if I want to feel like I am watching reality through a window, then 8K 60p would do the job perfectly but the higher the resolution, visual fidelity and frame rate, the more the emphasis in your brain changes towards the visual stimuli and your mind has less capacity remaining for everything else, such as feeling emotional impact of the story and so on.

This is why the Hobbit was such a bad fit for 3D 48p, it became hypnotic as if you were standing on a film set looking at props, rather than escaping into a fairytale fantasy. Nobody laughed, nobody engaged emotionally in the screenings I went to of it. Although that was partly the fault of it being a bit rubbish, the format didn't help at all.

12 hours ago, zlfan said:

i have a youtube channel, kind of news oriented. i use all kinds of cameras i have at 24p 30 60p and aspec tatios of 16:9 and 2.4. no viewer complains. with thew new platform like youtube, the old hierarchy of distribution of theater, network, etc does not rule. and youtube etc is very tolerant. 

I found with my own YouTube stuff that 24p and vintage lenses don't suit the content!

It is better to film it as reality, with a clear view on the studio and myself.

So this is why blanket statements don't work... It all depends on what you're filming.

The display format and venue also matter. Oppenheimer doesn't look dated in the IMAX theatre in 24p. Looks incredible, to old and new generations alike. So to say 24p is outdated is just a blanket statement really. And equally, to say 60p isn't cinematic is also a blanket statement. It can be.... All depends on a lot else, other than just frame rate.

30p is TV and YouTube

60p and 120hz are for gaming

24p is for cinema and film.

This is not an opinion.

The subjective part of it is what one's definition of 'cinematic' is.

Is the big dome at Vegas cinematic, probably is. Sitting in there, with panoramic vision, amazing,

But it is simulating reality.

Cinema is not restricted to just simulating reality, it can also simulate emotions and dreams. And for that you need 24p.

4 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Unless I'm mistaken, GFX 100 and II are both based on IMX461 AQR.  The maximum readout speed in full resolution is 10 fps with 12-bit color.  Lines up nicely with the GFX 100 II dropping to 12-bit mode when shooting at 8fps.  If there's an 8-bit readout mode, maybe they could get close to (or even reach) 12k readout from the sensor at 24fps, but what's the market?  People who want enormous files, but shitty dynamic range?

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.

15 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I’d really like one for stills but would rather have the Hassie X2D

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.

7 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Kay would be able to come up with a funny reply I imagine.:) BBC rocks and so did the Kay era on DigitalRev. Anything after him was like Teletubbies following after a Studio Ghibli film. 😊

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.

8 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

To delete that treasure is not only dumb but in a way crudest cultural vandalism the way they did it.

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.

17 hours ago, Al Dolega said:

Seems like pretty typical new-camera-release hyperbole to me. Full-time YouTubers have to play that game to stay afloat, doesn't bother me and is pretty easily ignored.

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.

15 minutes ago, horshack said:

The link to PhotographyBlog only shows A9 III raw samples for that given shoot. Where did you find the equivalent A9 II raw taken at the same location / time?

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

53 minutes ago, androidlad said:

Some of the features not mentioned during the press release but appeared in Chinese marketing material:

• Multi-frame RAW noise-reduction (Combining up to 32 RAW burst stills for one noise-free RAW still)
• Custom LUT import for video
• Lens breathing compensation in video mode

It's expected to ship in China around end of January 2024. Early testers commented on the dynamic range to have taken a "slight but noticeable" hit due to global shutter design, hence the limited native ISO range of 250 to 25600.

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?