Andrew Reid

I've noticed a bit of a trend with Gerald... Provoke the nerds for clicks and then back pedal furiously when the PR team get upset.

What the fuck is the skipping rope test telling us?

I remember when Apple made the Mac Pro in Texas because it had such a high price tag and massive margin they could afford the American wages for the factory. Same doesn't work with smartphones, consumer electronics, cameras, and so on. Not anything under $4k anyway. Imagine the number of people you need to build 2 million smartphones a month? Wage bill if they are all on $50k+? I think the only intelligent American is an embarrassed American at the moment. I feel for them. The amount of people who have been hoodwinked by propoganda, Fox news and social media is incredible. And the rest of the world is just angry. The UK, Canada, Mexico, Germany, and so many others are allies of the US. We are being treated very very badly. But that's not really surprising if you read the Christopher Steele report into Trump's Russian holidays, with FSB filmed prostitute Kompromat, golden showers and all the dodgy dealing.

These Trump voters, they are all for manufacturing in the US but I doubt any of them actually wants to work in a Foxconn factory... let alone have one next door and the same air quality the industrial areas of China 'enjoys'. None of them want to pay double for their next iPhone either. Never has the disconnect between reality and opinion been so wide as it is right now. Tough times coming.

I'd rather have the Z6 III sensor than FX3 sensor actually. 6K, open gate, maybe 4K/120p without a crop if they have active cooling on it. 12 megapixel is a bit old hat now.

It will be 4 years trying to bully everyone into manufacturing stuff in the US not realizing that they will have to pay the factory workers US wages instead of Chinese or Thai, and the increase in costs for the manufacturer from what will make 50% tariffs look like peanuts. I hope the US consumer enjoys their inflation. Having already crashed the stock market and let Russia off the hook, soon with the sanctions lifted, there's a lot of other unintended consequences to come from voting for a convicted fraudster that people may not have realised at the time when they voted for a senile Russian asset. Of course there's a ton of Japanese cameras made or assembled in China and certainly shipped from China, Thailand or Vietnam rather than directly from Japan so the US will be seeing massive price hikes on all that as well, and that's the best case scenario for the US - as at some point importers may choose to prioritise other markets over them, and there's plenty of stuff in short supply like Fuji cameras which will be withheld and sent to the many other markets without tariffs. There's also the problem of raw material resources if MAGA want to make manufacturing great again and do large quantities of modern electronics on a farm in Alabama, they will have to import a ton of it from China or plunder Ukraine (maybe snatch a few gold watches and gold teeth from dead bodies whilst they're at it?). The whole bullying of Canada and Greenland thing is all so these nazi crooks can dig them up for raw resources and access Canada's hydroelectricity on the cheap. It isn't going to happen, not if Mark Carney wins. I hope people who voted for the nazi party feel the hit in the bank accounts. YOU DESERVE IT 10x.

Totally agree!

If you only plan to go with an adapted cheap 50mm prime, the S1 is better due to the better EVF and less fiddly control layout. The EVF on the S5 and manual focus is a horrible experience.

Scratch the maybe... it is practically broken for autofocus whereas the a7 III and Z6 are very capable indeed. There's not as much difference as the specs suggest between 8bit H.264 and 10bit H.265 even in LOG. None in the standard colour profiles and barely any difference shooting in flat profile. The S5 video features it's true there's some bells and whistles added. But the Z6 doesn't lack for anything major, just the smaller assists and things - and the IBIS is just as good too in 4K. I don't think he's shooting anamorphic so doesn't need the extra S5 modes there?

You'll be amazed at the quality of 10bit H.265 LOG at low bitrates, even as low as 50Mbit/s Unless you're doing very heavy VFX / grading / lifting shadows 5 stops for HDR puke look - it looks excellent. The Z6 and a7 III have a similar image, similar spec, same sensor, it comes down to price, lenses, mount, and if the a7 III is as high as $1k I would choose the $750 Z6 instead. The s5 has 10bit LOG, as long as you're happy with a much worse EVF and autofocus than Z6. One of the cheapest and most capable 10bit cameras under $700 is the Fuji X-T3. The Z6 has no N-LOG but you can install my own EOSHD Z-LOG profile and use LUTs. If you absolutely need 10bit LOG rather than 8bit Panasonic is pretty much only full frame choice for very cheap under $800.

Curious about the wish to record externally. The internal codecs are so good these days and SD cards so cheap that you don't need to. What continuous run-times are we talking about, will it be many hours? I would try and find a used Panasonic S1H for under $1k or cheap Sigma Fp deal. Nikon Z6 is a decent choice and best value. Sony a7 III? OK it's not 10bit but S-LOG2 grades well in 8bit, small file sizes in 4K and it has decent low light too. The older a7s II is also worth a look. But the cheapest 10bit camera is the Panasonic S1. Also worth a look but check the recording time limits!

Nikon / Vimeo have joined up to hand out $30k funding each to lucky filmmakers. https://vimeo.com/shortfilmgrant?utm_source=MKT&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=en_CA-vimeo-grant-3-12-2025&utm_content=btn&utm_term=ApplyNow&ET_CID=5558147&ET_RID=1080819395 You get the use of a Nikon Z8, Z9 or RED cameras too. Will be interested to see what comes out of this.

I can tell why he doesn't shoot now.

They are pretty silly not to have a reduced rolling shutter 24p mode straight off the bat to avoid the bad publicity. Just run the sensor in the 6K 48p mode with 1/48 shutter and conform in-camera to 24p. Job's a good-un.

It was similar to getting my residency in Berlin 🙂

Any tariffs on Canon yet? To think people voted for this 🤯

He handed over to the intern at DHL who handed the paperwork to the part-time postman who handed it to his dog, who ate it and bit his leg, and now he has to go to hospital and will be off work for 3 months due to rabies concerns, but not to worry if i just send the form again via Adobe sign someone will pick up where DHL left off but in a different building without some key information, and the claim will go ahead but wrongly, which is where management have to step in and take over, but it's not that simple because there are legal steps they must take to avoid any more postmen being bitten by their own dogs, some of whom may indeed have rabies and now the doctors are all on strike, so it might be another 6 months before the DHL claims person is back at work but pregnant, and bitten by a nasty squirrel which invaded her balcony the week before, but she has long ago soft quit anyway so maybe it's best that MPB just refund me first before waiting for DHL, but that might not be possible either as the legal department are on holiday, and the only one in the office at the moment is being deported back to Afghanistan by the Conservatives who have all definitely, without a shadow of a doubt also got rabies but have never been properly tested due to an administration issue at the office for responsible governance.

Have you thought about a full frame camera to replace those Nikons? D700 can be had for $200 these days. A Canon 5D Mark II for video perhaps? Magic Lantern Raw still very nice looking today. I would also sell the GH4, X-A3, X-T2 and get an X-T3 which is a big step up from both and under $600 used. Not sure what the price is in Aussie dollars though 🙂

Done. Let's see what happens.

Here's the thing about this... Yes it is showing the fuck-up scenario. And people look at it as some sort of ultimate performance metric! The real world footage all looks the same as the flagship cameras are all capable of image quality that far exceeds the capabilities of our displays and the YouTube delivery network. There needs to be a new Zacuto challenge screened at a cinema, which really gets under the skin of the different cameras and how straight forward they are to expose, grade and whether getting totally optimal results means a lot of faff or a few easy tweaks, as that's what really matters isn't it? I could have 1% less noise in skintones accidentally exposed 5 stops too dark but what good is that if C-LOG2 is a bitch to grade and takes hours? And that 1% becomes less than 0.000001% in footage which is exposed correctly, less than 0.000000000000000001% in footage which has been lit well, and if the footage is going to end up on YouTube in 4K with web compression you can reduce that to a big fat NAUGHT. I did consider the Zf but decided there's more fun factor in an X-Pro3 or something a bit weird. Still a bit put off by the fake-ness and mixed build quality of it. In some ways it's really nice and a bargain, but probably not needed alongside the Z8. The Z8 does everything I need on a high-end camera and was a better option than EOS R5 II due to price and lens mount, and a better option than S1R II due to overall capabilities and a better sensor, plus again a more flexible mount.

So meanwhile let's look at what that means in the real world away from pixel peeping tests and number of stops. 14.2 stops so you can get an unusably bad image 5 stops under exposed? Or does it have a genuinely big creative impact / image quality benefit. After all it is "class leading above all other mirrorless cameras" so it must be pretty special and not just 1% better dynamic range than a 3 year old Nikon Z9, right? And just because it has 1% more "test setup" dynamic range does not make it a better mirrorless camera than the Nikon Z8, because it's a lot more expensive than one for a start and with a far worse range of native lenses, and a less flexible system mount. I do like the sRAW codec for 4K/60p, smaller file sizes, huge EVF, and the body design is a decent evolution from the original. But the DR and C-LOG2... Meh. Many more important things to consider overall like the system mount, codecs, handling, prices used and new, and so on.

Press enter to break up quotes my friend.

This is why they need a drop off or store like WEX. I don't mind DHL handling 500 euros worth of kit but when it's many thousands, going two ways potentially, the thought of that just fills me with dread. Especially since the start of this year they have been on and off with strike action in Germany. The guy at MPB let me drop off one box and that was it - said no more would be possible even though I live down the road. So here we are... I knew this would happen!!

The UK team respond pretty quickly, when mistakes do happen. Feeling pretty desperate with the Berlin side, may have to turn to the management for help. The problem is that the person dealing with me just doesn't really seem to communicate and is happy to let things drag on. Does he not think...hmm... This has been going on since January now, shall I bring it to a close or continue to sit on my hands for another 2 months whilst I do without my gear and refund? All the impression I get so far is that he is happy to do that. And that's what makes me angry not the non-delivery.

So March 11th and still not resolved... In fact Max, the guy at MPB "dealing with it" forget entirely about the other camera in the lost shipment and not only did he forget (it's not on the DHL insurance claims form) but he claims it was delivered in January. So I had to re-send him the tracking number and order info. Each time I think I am getting somewhere, it's as if the part-timer goes away for a week and comes back a new man. Only less and less helpful every time. Indeed, DHL allow you to start the claim for lost packages just 2 weeks after the tracking freezes with no movement. However MPB forgot to do this too which is why I only just got the DHL claim form last Friday. There's no refund for the order of the new item, and of course no compensation for the lost property of my own camera returned from the trade-in (there were 6 or 7 cameras on the trade-in and I sold them all, only taking the one back). This could have been a 3000 euro camera, or multiple lenses, or worse. Stuff going wrong with MPB is not that rare. But I accept that mistakes happen. It's all the stuff that's happened afterwards that troubles me. Part-time staff that don't seem to give a crap and don't do a good job. The waiting. Sometimes it takes a week or more to even get an email response. Never had this with the UK team.