Andrew Reid

The thing is they are right about PDAF though aren't they? Who is going to want a GH6 now, with crap AF and $300 more than the G9 II? In the same price range as an S5 II? It's toast. They will probably have to do a GH6 II with PDAF now to keep it selling. Which begs the question, why did they bring it out last year at all, better they had waited and got a strategy together that makes sense. There is nothing about the S5 II, GH6 and G9 II that makes sense. One is too cheap, one is dead, and the other is a full frame camera with the wrong sensor in it!!

BUURANOOOO 🙂 As small as a Venetian island and almost as expensive as one. The a1 sensor is a very nice thing indeed, and some sort of end-game (until the next one) for full frame video. I do like that nifty Auto ND in the Burrito though. I wonder if it is the same thing they had on the FS5? It was a bit cheaper back then. Honestly that 10bit 422 500Mbit codec in 8K on the a1 is so good you don't need no raw.

This is the blog that got me started on my GFX 100 lens adventures. https://jonasraskphotography.com/2017/08/16/minolta-x-fujifilm/ I have tried a ton of stuff and nearly all of it is more interesting looking on GFX vs FF, but it depends how much you value clinical perfection, light fall off in the corners and corner sharpness for landscape shooting. If you value all that then best to stick with the GFX stuff or crop a bit, or put some vintage medium format glass on it. Hopefully AF is improved as that was the only thing on the GFX 100 you could consider let it down.

X2D is a bit rubbish though isn't it for the price? It doesn't have a proper shutter and doesn't even shoot video, not even 480p GFX100 original gangster (is that the phrase kids use now?) is the one to get used as that will soon be under £2.5k I was never keen on the GFX100S, it didn't do it for me. By the looks of it the GFX100 II makes a very good full frame camera as well, with all those crop modes in DCI 4K and 5.8K, plus anamorphic modes too. It is about time we finally had a Fuji full frame mirrorless cam.

As you can see here with this Sony rep and his Zeiss CZ.2 lens, shaving those precious millimetres off the camera has revolutionised the way he shoots. And that is before you even get to the main raison d'être of a 1.4kg weight saving vs VENICE 2. That 1.4kg is crucial and a game changer when you have 35kg of tripod head, rails, cages, matte box, monitors, EVF and lens attached. He must really feel the difference in his back all day long. Here is one of our most adventurous and creative shooters, Nino. As you can see the size of the BURRITO is once again a total game changer here as it allows the lovely new Cooke to move back a few cm making it necessary to break your wrist to reach it. The added advantage here is that your hand forms a lens hood, reducing that nasty flare from the single coating! And as we can see, the ENG style rig high up on the body definitely isn't unbalanced with a high centre of gravity from all the shit mounted on the top handle! Finally we have the more minimal rig here. The 2.8kg BURRITO clearly needs the 68 rods under it and a tripod head the size of a bus. Otherwise the whole thing would collapse, giving an unprofessional aura to the shoot. I think that is an absolute brick of a battery on the back which is all part of the absolute game changing form factor as a cinema camera. Have you EVER seen a rig like this before!? REVOLUTIONARY!!! Yours for only $25,000! *Or just get a Sony a1 with same sensor from cash converters

SONY BURRITO

That 20mm Lumix pancake was a gem. It isn't all about size of course, but about differentiating your toolset from the others. There's a market for all sorts if it makes sense. Shoehorning a M43 mount onto an S5 II speaks of a lack of ideas or clear differentiation. A competitor like Panasonic on 4-5% market share vs Canon at 45% needs those unique selling points. They can't just copy Canon and Sony. It all goes to show that Panasonic have completely lost sight of what made Micro Four Thirds special. It's one thing for the S5 II to be full frame with large lenses, and a body that isn't nearly as compact as the full frame cameras I've pictured above alongside! It can get away with it because insanely good value for money is on offer, and you're getting the largest possible sensor for the money and best image quality. Lacking in the charm department though. Let's take a look back through memory lane to when Panasonic was one of the most creative and differentiated manufacturers vs the boring samey DSLRs. This thing was a true one off, a thing of beauty and speaks volumes about Japanese design culture. It does not kowtoe to the Americans in the slightest bit. Once LUMIX in the US realised their customers just want to turn up in front of a client with the most "PRO" and biggest intimidating piece of kit imaginable (think RED), all that went out the window. You have to partially blame the customer. People do not value the more interesting designs in significant enough numbers, at least not in the same volume as they value BIG PRO DICK SWINGING COMPETITIONS I could think of a GAZILLION designs of camera that GH6 sensor would be more at home in and more interesting in. At least Fujifilm continue to stick to their guns and bring out systems that make sense. Hell, they even have a medium format PANCAKE! I absolutely love the design of the GFX 100 II and that thing is tiny compared to what medium format used to be or a large format cinema camera. If you're going to go DSLR size then it has to either be all out like the GFX 100 II or a Sony a1, or good value for money with sensible compromises. What I don't get with Panasonic though is a sense of culture in their products any more. The S5 body was never that well designed in the first place or satisfying to pick up. It felt like the team behind the G100 got a promotion. That thing is basically a Canon G5X knock off in the design and ergonomics department. It has no soul. You only see the abyss when you look at it. The capitulation of Micro Four Thirds as a system. When I look at the S5 II and G9 II I see a well meaning intention and to deliver to a certain price. It is by no means a bad deal, but what happened culturally at Panasonic to go from a GH1 or LC1 to a fucking G100!?

They seem to have got into the way of thinking that crop sensor = cut price version of full frame, rather than having them offer portability. The lenses are also getting too big as well! They showed all the way back in 2014 that a Micro Four Thirds sensor could go in something as small as a GM5 or LX100. Since then, it's all about capitulating to the American market which doesn't really go for small cameras. The GH1 and GH2 were typically Japanese and quirky, lovely to use. Then the American Panasonic team got involved and we got the stale GH3. As well as a new GX80 with latest gubbins and a new LX100 I'd love for Panasonic to give us their version of a Leica Q. Sony has the RX1. Panasonic with full frame camera the size of a deck of cards would be great, but their absolutely-not-a-cartel L2 partnership probably puts paid to that!

Yeah, so why buy a GH6 now? It's f***ed! It's a nice tool, but also something of a strange move unless GH7 coming with PDAF just around the corner.

I really dislike that they rehashed the S5 II body for this. It has no personality or unique appeal, and it isn't smaller than a full frame camera. Bring back the GH1 days Pana!!

https://www.newsshooter.com/2023/09/12/fujifilm-announces-gfx100-ii-large-format-mirrorless-digital-camera/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fujifilm-announces-gfx100-ii-large-format-mirrorless-digital-camera I am impressed Aggressive pricing for what it is too. Perhaps the best mirrorless camera ever made, from a technical standpoint. Also you don't need the expensive medium format glass... A lot of full frame SLR stuff adapts just fine, although still trying to find out if there are crop modes in video this time... Full frame crop mode would be handy as would S35. It has the spare res!!

Nice body design Price will be at least $10k though!

Just to get back on topic... The trend isn't limited to photo, video or filmmaking forums, it's all forums... A friend recently reminisced how he used to talk to fans of his favourite band online all the time and do meet-ups. The band's unofficial forum was a hub for this, but now it doesn't even exist. It is just people on a Facebook group now, posting pics and pressing like. This is due to smartphones and the fact they lack a proper keyboard for longer form content and interactions. Plus a few social media apps have replaced .com websites. Hope to see a reversal of it as this is not using the internet to its true potential. People should put the phone down and get back online via a laptop or desktop machine instead!

Here are my thoughts https://www.eoshd.com/news/oppenheimer-review-70mm-imax-screening/

I had a tip off by a man who should know, that a certain Leica SL3 is coming in March next year, which will be a huge updated based on Panasonic's latest tech, which means we should see an S2H or S1H II whatever it will be called before then, perhaps even this year. The S1 and S1R will get an update too, so not long to wait for some excitement in Panasonic land. By the way I just noticed that WEX in the UK have an S1H for £1399, which is simply ridiculous. This was a 4 grand camera when it came out and is Netflix standard!! It is amazing how the market punishes Panasonic for such a high quality piece of kit. In fact I felt sorry for it and bought it. Autofocus be damned. The S2H is sure to have PDAF but will it be an 8K overkill monster and lose some of the low light creaminess that the S1H is well known for? That is the question.

I tried that phone, it's really good... Redmagic 8S Pro? These things are doing ProRes and 6K RAW video now and of course no overheating. However they have much smaller sensors vs a mirrorless cam. Which makes me think it is the sensor that gets too hot in something like the A6700, or that they are using an inefficient old LSI to cut costs... Or it is both. Either way, it ain't cricket is it?

It's being hoovered up by Meta and X. Facebook Groups especially. Most of the content on the internet is now on just a few major social media networks. Smartphones are partly responsible as a desktop website doesn't work as well as an app on a small screen without a keyboard. Yes definitely a shift to video informercials. The enjoyment they get out of cars and hifi is huge. But a car without a road and hifi without music isn't very much fun. With cameras it's the same, they are only fulfilling when you have something worthwhile to shoot, or at least the expectation of something in the future, other than just testing, but unfortunately there is less stuff worthwhile to shoot around at the moment. Fewer actors, writers, communities of artists, and less beauty in the world full stop. Yeah a lot of the leading pros have withdrawn back into their careers and don't give as much input into the community. When it was an emerging area they were all over it, but I guess the use (and knowledge) they can get out of us peaked a long time ago. Yeah this is a good point, have noticed that. This comes with the hyper-subjective and ultra-personal perspective of most people today rather than being part of a collective and objective whole. Each person has their atomised 'version' of the truth. Very relevant thoughts. I feel the same way. Hopefully things take a turn for the better soon and people go back to being more productive and spend less time on their phones.

Of course the buck stops with the studios, but the unions also have a responsibility to the wider ecosystem of the film industry, because without them, there is no industry. As far as I can see they didn't even consult with the non-union freelancers, they just went and did their own thing and put them out of work. The polite thing to do, surely, would to be to at least consult them and support them financially during the strike. But of course, the knock on effect of it is so huge, the financial support would have to be unfeasibly big. The studios know this of course, which is why the strike will fail. The studios know they can't afford to have it go on for very long. Someone has made a very large strategic error, and it ain't Netflix.

Filmmaking is an art form. In the realm of creativity, people often crave the authenticity that only real humans can provide. This is why blockbusters often enlist well-known actors to generate interest and why, despite our daily reliance on them, our personal computers don't make headlines in gossip columns. https://www.eoshd.com/news/dont-panic-about-ai-its-just-a-tool/

“Today we lost our jobs for you” https://www.eoshd.com/news/film-support-crews-hit-out-at-sag-strike/ The strike is only ok for those who can afford it!

A new blog post: https://www.eoshd.com/news/oppenheimer-why-christopher-nolan-uses-a-flip-phone/ It is interesting that the same technology that enables modern life, also at the same time destroys us.

Panasonic GH2, 2023 edition Very nice.

The 8K is really quite surprising isn't it? Usually in such a stills orientated camera, this small, they don't push the video spec to the maximum. I doubt it will do long record times, but hopefully it will be unshackled from 30p-only and do 24p this time with a decent codec. Any mention of L-LOG? Sigma should definitely get in on the premium full frame compact market. The Leica 28mm has a lovely look but it relies on a lot of digital correction. The "optical masterpiece" is pretty terribly optically. Sigma can give us a small 35mm F1.4 full frame compact for half the price.

Very mixed. I am not dependant on ads and never have been so that side makes no difference to me, but there is definitely a shift to YouTube and social media. People aren't researching Google or reading long articles as much as before. YouTube is a grind and I have mixed feelings about that too. I enjoy it when I have some ideas. But the thought of being on a treadmill of content is horrific. Don't post for a week and you may as well be dead. On the other hand, EOSHD is great, having your own site independent from the algorithms of social media and YouTube is much more relaxed and I can do what I like, post what I want, when I want. And then there is this lovely forum, which is pretty unique. Never was close to the PR side of the camera industry and rejected a lot of advances. The site is not in a better position to cuddle up to the manufacturers, they are putting their free loans and exclusive invitations behind social media influencers instead now. Bloggers with articles are the previous gen of social media influencers. Now it is clowns and show offs on social media. They are perfect for one another and I don't want to be involved to be honest. I am looking to the future now and that is keeping EOSHD updated, at the same time as moving onto two new sites: Full Frame AI (making most of AI for photographers) and Ultra Camera Review (smartphone cameras and apps) There is much more future development in these areas than in mirrorless cameras, or filmmaking. Video on stills camera has kind of been "done" hasn't it?