Andrew Reid

It makes zero sense to rent a camera as cheap as a DSLR most of the time especially considering the price of a used GH2 or 550D.   If you do more than 5 days shooting a year you will spend more on renting a camera body than on buying a camera body!

Great follow-up article thanks!

  It is actually the movie studios who are responsible for bankrupting post houses. There are many doing their jobs well for the movie studios and getting the best deals on VFX jobs. The houses are competing against each other and there are a lot of them. The rates tumble and the studio gets a great deal, the VFX house not so much. It is nothing to do with the management of the VFX house. They have to compete on price, and then at the same time, produce a masterpiece like Lie of Pi which is incredibly labour intensive.

We're clearly not getting what we pay for and we're being ripped off.   4K raw clearly does not cost what filmmakers are currently being charged for it, because a mass produced CMOS sensor can do it in a $300 camera.   I just want to see an end to the profiteering and lack of progress. The Japanese have been sitting on their hands and have had a monopoly on the DSLR market. Where is the American photographic giant, apart from bankrupt? Where is the British camera manufacturer? Germany has one but they don't play in the consumer market. I find it incredible that Japan is the only big player in this. It is time for a Blackmagic to do for DSLRs what they have done for raw digital cinema cameras, but at considerably higher volumes.

  They were an innovative company up to the point of the world-wide recession and global financial troubles in 2008-09. This scared the Japanese corporations into being more conservative and consolidating what they had. They've also had to contend with a dying compact camera market, natural disasters, unfavourable currency rates and in the case of Sony & Panasonic, a dying TV market.   For an entire generation of people compacts and TVs have given way to phones and computers.   Canon and Panasonic should be providing their optics and sensors to smart phone makers like Sony. The cameras should be refreshed every year to take advantage of doubling CPU speeds. They need to get their house in order and stop acting like photographic companies and more like the computer companies they'll need to become in order to compete in the future.

  That's a crazy thing to say, nonsense. Without innovation you have no product.   Canon have the same products they had 4 years ago and it is only through a lack of competition, good marketing and people being locked into Canon lenses that they are still market leaders with those same products.   It is innovation that has lead to the smart phone market taking over from the compact camera market in terms of point & shoot photography. How often do you see Ixus snaps on Facebook these days?   I also expect Apple made a bit of money from innovating with the iPhone!! So yeah - innovation doesn't make money right? Christ.

Got my V2 today... Some observations...   The good: Full manual control in burst mode Adaptable lenses in burst mode Stores up to 40 frames instead of 30 in burst mode Handling is better Drastically improved write times to the card (around 15 seconds for 40 raw files instead of 1 minute for 30 on the V1) 4.6K vs 3.8K sensor The bad: It is noisier at high ISOs than the V1 Battery is smaller (1450mAh vs 1900mAh) Slow mo only records to 3 seconds, down from 5 seconds on the V1 Slow mo quality is not as good - noisier and very slightly softer I like the camera but it is a real shame the new sensor wasn't kept at 10MP and the slow-mo improved. It is a bit of a backward step for high ISOs and slow-mo, which is a surprise.   For bust mode 4K raw it is much better though.   Haven't tested HDMI yet, will be interesting to see if that is clean this time. It wasn't on the V1.   The auto-gain of the screen is still there and you can't turn off the eye sensor on the EVF. Slightly annoying aspects.   Also the manual focus aid only works with CX lenses and even crueler - they take away the exposure meter when you attach a non Nikon CX lens. Fools! You have to use video mode to simulate exposure and take stills in that mode. No problem until you realise it only shoots JPEG in that mode. Pain!

  Listen - 70D will have the same sensor as the 100D according to reports. 700D is the same sensor as the 650D right down to the phase detect AF points on it.

  I'll eat this blog, eat it whole if the 100D's 'new sensor' gives us a significant improvement...And yes the 70D has the SAME sensor as the 100D according to reports. 7D Mark II - I'm expecting it to be slightly behind the 5D Mark III and similar to the Nikon D5200, and therefore not very exciting now we have raw shooting cinema cameras for $3000, and mirrorless cameras like the GH3.

  Innovation is what makes money. Canon's profits are down 42% at the last count. So some plan that is!

  Seriously??

I know - ridiculous isn't it. Clearly the incremental upgrades are marketing driven, and provide a short term sales boost because Gizmodo will rave about it and everyone will rush to buy it because it's new, without thinking what it actually offers.   To be fair to Canon they are not the only ones trying the same thing - look at Panasonic and their GF2, GF3, GF5 and Nikon with the D3000, D3100, D3200!   For me the incremental improvements build up to a massive failure to deliver, in the last 4 years people loyal to this particular line have had almost zero innovation to look forward to.

The Canon 700D / T5i is more a firmware update than a new camera. Indeed the only new feature in the hardware is that the mode dial now turns 360 degrees. If you are wondering whether to upgrade from your 60D or 650D, the answer may well come down to whether you find a use for that 360 degrees mode dial. You can now go from the M mode on the dial to Scene mode in just one click! Amazing I know. Though cute, the new entry level 100D offers a 25% reduction in size at the expense of handling and no articulated screen. There's seemingly no new functionality on this camera either in video mode, not even for stills! Owners of the 4 year old 550D from 2009 could be forgiven for not rushing to upgrade.   http://www.eoshd.com/content/9829/new-canon-sl1-100d-and-t5i-700d-fail-to-excite  

Weirdly it goes further at the lower rates - to 45 at 15fps and 50 at 5fps.   But yeah, 40 frames at both 30fps and 60fps. Raw, JPEG, it doesn't matter still the same number.   I'm seriously considering the V2 - just the faster write times to the card and the manual controls / adaptable lenses in burst mode are great features.

You can now download an MP3 version of the 75 minute interview here http://www.sliated.com/kubrick.htm

I bought Don's stuff on DVD, I'd pay to download it on Vimeo all the same. I also rent movies on iTunes and I'd pay to rent stuff on Vimeo as long as it was good content and entertaining.   Yeah there's a lot of free stuff out there, and most of it is 12 seconds long and of novelty value.   Vimeo On Demand will work with the longer form stuff.

Can confirm all of the above. V2 is so fast at writing images to the card you can do a burst of 4.6K JPEGs and almost immediately do another one straight afterwards.   I'm considering upgrading too. Just wish the battery was as large as on the V1 and that the camera wasn't so damned ugly.

  Yeah 1080p is above average on this camera, just a shame there's no high bitrates or 24p. Detail is above NEX and there's very little moire or aliasing.

  The sensor outputs 4K raw at 30fps or 60ps, and the limited consumer Nikon image processor can do as follows:   A ) Store 30 frames in a buffer at full res, then slowly write to the card B ) Downscale to 1080p for video at 30p or 720p at 60fps   And there's also the 400fps and 1200fps mode. The 1200fps is very low quality and a small window (crop) of the sensor.

  No the stair stepping (aliasing) is on the original file. To get 400fps the camera line skips like crazy. Still amazing for $300 though.

I love the low-fi feel - lots of aliasing and pixillation in this mode because of line skipping but the blue / red errors in her eyes when they glint in the light adds a really eerie feel.

People are willing to pay for original content they can't get anywhere else. As long as it is high quality, quick and convenient.   One of the best things Vimeo did here was have Don Hertzfeldt animation It's Such a Beautiful Day as a launch title. If you haven't seen it yet, get it. I love the minimalism of the animation and how much personality and dark humour is in it. It is completely blessed of the hand of an artist.

http://vimeo.com/62177101 High speed shooting hasn't been possible on DSLRs until now. Again it is the much dismissed Nikon V1 providing the creative inspiration...   http://www.eoshd.com/content/9821/radioactivity-my-400fps-shoot-with-the-nikon-v1

An early self portrait of the young Stanley Kubrick, photographer - Image source: British Journal of Photography In a 77 minute interview recorded over chess between takes on 2001: A Space Odyssey in the mid 1960's Kubrick describes selling his first photograph, his first short and making his first feature.

Any link?