Emanuel

 

 

I think that word “affinity” is actually more important than people sometimes admit : )

On paper we can reduce everything to specs, codecs, lenses and prices, but after a certain point a system also has to make you want to pick it up and use it. Sony can tick practically every box and still somehow not be the answer (I know exactly what you mean there : )

Since you are very much a hybrid shooter, and stills seem to matter at least as much as video, I would probably look at this slightly differently.

 

On the L-mount side, before changing anything, I would certainly try the Lumix S 24-105mm f/4 Macro O.I.S. It is not an exotic lens, but for somebody moving constantly between stills and video it is exactly the sort of lens that can make a system considerably more useful: sensible range, stabilisation, very useful close focusing and one lens that can stay on the camera for most of the day.

 

Sony is tempting for a different reason. Beyond the enormous stills AF lens catalogue, E-mount also gives you an unusually broad selection of genuinely affordable full-frame AF glass (the AF-AFF route, AutoFocus to Affordable Full Frame ; )

And then there is the increasingly interesting cine side.

The compact Samyang V-AF primes are a good example. They are relatively affordable, matched as a family, and the 24mm in particular is interesting because it makes perfectly good sense on full frame while also becoming a very useful lens on something like an FX30 (a cam I am particularly used to : )

Add Samyang's 1.7x anamorphic MF adapter and AF becomes MF. But put something like DJI Focus Pro LiDAR [ 1 | 2] into the equation and you can effectively bring automated focusing back again (the AF-MF-AF route ; )

And you no longer even need to go through that slightly mad route if you simply want AF anamorphic.

Blazar now has the Apex 1.33x S35 AF lenses and the Talon 1.5x full-frame AF line, while Sirui has its 20mm/40mm T1.8 1.33x S35 AF anamorphics plus the new Astra full-frame AF series. So E-mount is beginning to look less like a one-off anamorphic experiment and more like an actual affordable AF-anamorphic ecosystem.

 

The interesting part is that some of this does not necessarily lock you into Sony either.

The Samyang V-AF 24mm has already been shown working with AF on the ZR through the Megadap ETZ21 Pro+, so at least part of that E-mount investment could potentially follow you across.

And Sirui already offers native Z versions of its S35 AF anamorphics. Blazar had actually announced Z-mount for the Apex originally too, although the production lenses have so far remained E/L.

So for me the real attraction of Sony in your case would not simply be "better video AF". It is the combination of the huge hybrid/stills lens ecosystem, lots of affordable AF glass, the possibility of adding something like an FX30 without changing lenses, the Samyang V-AF route, and now a growing choice of genuine AF anamorphics as well.

At the same time, the ZR increasingly looks capable of borrowing some of those advantages without necessarily committing yourself completely to Sony.

Which, unfortunately, probably makes your decision harder rather than easier... ; )

Well, two years after the X4 and one year after the X5, here we are again : )

This time it actually looks like a proper generational jump rather than the usual yearly refresh:

X6 brings dual 1/1.1" square sensors (33% larger area than X5), 8K50p (for smoother capture 'cause this is 360º shooting, folks! ; ) 10-bit I-Log and even native in-camera Dolby Vision.

There's also a new 2600mAh battery design (finally no longer doubling as part of the actual camera body : ) rated for up to 140 minutes at 8K30.

https://www.insta360.com/blog/insta360-x6-launch.html

 

Funny enough, going back to the beginning of this thread, we were already asking for larger sensors, 10-bit LOG and better DR back in 2024... so they have been reading us after all? ; )

For me the really interesting bit is not the "action cam" side of the thing anyway, but how far 360 acquisition has now come as a tool to shoot first and decide framing/camera movement later. 8K was already making that increasingly usable with X4/X5, but larger sensors + 10-bit I-Log is another story for post.

8K50 is not exactly bad news either : P 

U.S. shooters will have to go down to 6K for getting 60p if needed.

 

The usual guy.

Looks like the X-series finally got the upgrade we were waiting for : )

 

Comparatives against the current 360º contenders or merely dethroned now? And against the other current action cams.

 

Introducing auto editing features by AI, no less ; )

Their new PanoMind model is actually built around understanding the whole 360º scene rather than a conventional flat frame, powering AI Director, Auto Edit 2.0 and Moments Pro. AI Director can even go through your footage inside the X6 while the camera is charging, pick the highlights and have an editable finished cut waiting in the app afterwards (now that's actually useful AI! ; )

Auto Edit 2.0 can take one or several clips and handle the reframing, virtual camera moves, cuts, transitions and music automatically, while Moments Pro takes it another step into the cloud: give it the subject, mood, style and duration you're after and let it build the edit from there. In other words, the whole old 360º idea of "shoot everything now, decide where the camera was pointing later" is increasingly becoming "shoot everything now and perhaps don't even have to decide that yourself later" : P 

That's precisely where AI actually makes sense here: it addresses one very specific 360º problem: the absurd number of reframing decisions you can end up making in post.

Maybe not yet refined but the concept is here : ) Computational cinematography has just landed...

 

Photo Mode X6 vs X5 (who said higher resolution doesn't count? ; )

source

(here's a new interesting tool to compare 360 cameras from this same guy, on topic)

 

- EAG

 

Same here :- )

I have one URSA Cine 12K just waiting for... ;- )

28 minutes ago, QuickHitRecord said:

Canon EOS-M with Magic Lantern in 1:1 mode. These are the resolutions currently available:

• 3072 × 1308
• 2880 × 1226
• 2560 × 1440
• 2520 × 1080
• 2160 × 1620 (doesn't work with a monitor plugged in)
• 1920 × 1280

Yes, there's a major crop. And yes, it is possible to overload the buffer with the 3K and 2.8K modes when shooting 12-bit. And rolling shutter is pretty terrible. But it's a digital 16mm camera with 1:1 readout that shoots raw. Practically no moire or aliasing. And a beautiful image (one of my favorites right now, bar none). Plus, one developer has been making major updates to the UI and simplifying the menus in the past 2-3 weeks. It's like a whole new camera.

One of my fave ones ever! : ) I have 4x units of them (the perfect steal for 100 bucks each ; ) and am usually recommending it as a primary cine camera for every newbie willing to pursue a career in this industry ;- )

- EAG

1 hour ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Mission 1 and Mission 1 Pro are now $100 off everywhere.  It's still on the pricey side for an action camera, but my Insta360 One R/RS's are getting older/a little beat up and the batteries seem to be showing signs of age too.

Yeah : D Get a good excuse and go for it! : ) And let us know what you think about it afterwards! ; ) We are all ears...

Quite a temptation indeed, to say the least :- X

Sure : ) That's actually how this thread started back in January, and I updated it again in March with the 9.9.2 firmware update : )

So yes, PDAF itself isn't the new part here. What I meant by "quite an update" was 10.2.2 as a whole (and AF finally graduating from beta), especially "10-minute pre-record" and all on the "Same hardware" (which is why those were the two bits I put in bold), that's the news! No need for a new camera ; ) alongside 4-channel audio, Cloud Streaming and the rest.

And yes, you were already asking for the URSA Cine 12K LF back in January... let's see if that one comes next ; - )

Now this is quite an update...

Blackmagic Camera 10.2.2 brings PDAF, continuous autofocus, face and object detection to the Cinema Camera 6K, including adjustable AF transition speed and the ability to pause continuous AF by holding the focus button.

But 10-minute pre-record is probably just as interesting (and maybe even more useful in the real world).

Up to 10 minutes before you actually press REC... : -)

Also added:

• 4-channel audio recording
• Blackmagic Cloud Streaming
• AF mode shortcut assignment
• selectable pre-record duration from 5 seconds up to 10 minutes

What I find particularly interesting is what this does to the value proposition of the original BMCC 6K. Same hardware, but it is becoming a considerably more capable production camera than the one people originally reviewed.

Blackmagic seem to be doing something quite clever here: features developed for PYXIS and their broader production ecosystem are progressively finding their way back into the Cinema Camera 6K.

Firmware extending the useful life of hardware rather than giving us another body every year... I can live with that! ; )

EAG :- )

 

article

BMD support page

 

PS: And I even paid about half thanks to that promotional price mentioned on these same pages... remember? : P 

 

4 hours ago, ArashM said:

You are totally correct, however a fair bit of what I (we) shoot is delivered at the end of the the day, and TBH I can't bring myself to delete OG files when our productions are in the six digits. I ended up buying two 1TB owc cards, but still download and backing up to hard drives for a client and or producer end of a shoot day and asking them to hang around for another 40 min after a 12-15 hour day is not pleasant.

Also I've seen this a few times on set where they shoot Raw and convert over to PRR LT without utilizing any of the raw capabilities and then deleting the raw, which makes me always why shoot raw in the first place!!!!

This has to be fixed! I'll ask Jarred about this (particularly about the possibility of a lighter R3D NE option) and see what he says (E. :- )

There is one important point here : )

A Japanese decision invalidating the Japanese patent does not, by itself, kill equivalent patents in the US, Europe or anywhere else (even if they belong to the same patent family). Patent rights are territorial and each national right has, legally speaking, its own existence within its own jurisdiction.

So no, compressed RAW has not suddenly become free for everyone everywhere : )

What is interesting is something else: if the claims are substantially equivalent (and that is obviously the important bit), the reasoning used in Japan may well become useful ammunition in other validity challenges.

That is why, for me, the really interesting question is what Panasonic (or anyone else) does next.

If equivalent RED claims start falling elsewhere too (particularly in the US), then yes, we may be looking at a very different landscape.

- E. :- )

  

10 hours ago, Davide DB said:

At least so it seems

 

8 hours ago, mercer said:

I may be up for an 8bit challenge! Can I use the 8bit cDNG from the FP? 🤪

The funny thing is that 8-bit cDNG on the FP would actually make the challenge more interesting, not less : )

Sigma really does offer CinemaDNG internally in 8, 10 and 12-bit, so “8-bit RAW” is not an oxymoron here. The FP even uses a different dual-base ISO behaviour for 8/10-bit CinemaDNG than for 12-bit RAW.

Which could make a nice test in itself: how much of what we normally attribute to “8-bit limitations” comes from bit depth, and how much comes from the usual baked codec / chroma / processing pipeline?

Go figure, I still have a 4K BenQ TK800 gathering dust 'cause, for what I actually need most of the time, our little 1080p GV50 units do the job perfectly well ; )

And then there are our 1080p XGIMI MoGo 2 Pros too. We actually bought several of them for our facilities instead of going for the newer MoGo 3 Pro or even the MoGo 4 (the latter even comes in a Laser version), although both were already available by the time we acquired ours.

And yet, I religiously keep my good old 22-year-old XGA (1024x768) BenQ PB6200 in my office! LOL : )

BTW, 768p has pretty much become our new norm for the MiniMax H3 work we've been doing locally on our Olares system, even though 2K is available in the cloud.

And there are some pretty good ways of bridging that gap in post anyway:

Topaz Video with Starlight Precise 2.5 when maximum quality matters, SeedVR2 through ComfyUI when we want to keep the whole workflow local, or simply Resolve Studio 21's Super Scale when we want to stay inside the NLE.

Different tools, different trade-offs, same principle.

 

For me, in the end, what matters with every new tech development is simply what we can actually do with it. Horses for courses. Nothing more.

No need to be fanboys of any particular brand, format, sensor size, resolution... or even of any poster here! : D

Brand-agnostic, format-agnostic, tech-agnostic ; )

 

Use whatever gives you something useful, for the sake of the art and whatever the state of the art happens to be. (E. :- )

This is turning into quite an interesting rabbit hole, good call starting this thread : ) Well, at least we have one thing in common this time ; ) the GX85 is in my arsenal too!

...

That also makes the format issue particularly relevant. Since the GX85 records video in 16:9 rather than genuine 4:3 open gate, a 1.55x adapter would produce a rather extreme 2.75:1 image. The more practical 2.07:1 combination would require an open-gate body such as the GH7.

A potentially more practical option might also be one of the smartphone anamorphics with a standard 37mm rear mount, such as the Beastgrip 1.33x or 1.55x MK2. These could be attached to lenses such as the Panasonic 14mm or TTArtisan 17mm with ordinary step rings, making mounting and alignment considerably simpler than with the 17mm-threaded Neewer.

22 hours ago, kye said:

This is a forum for people that shoot with budget hybrid cameras.

None of the above points relate to what anyone here is actually doing with their work, or whoever they're showing it to.  Completely contrary to that, Dynamic Range is something I struggle with in real-world shooting for a large percentage of the shots I take.  
The idea that they're somehow equally important is beyond imagination.

I'm done.

Feel free to continue the discussion about pocketable 8K gimbal cameras, 17K sensors, 150MP doorbells, 5000fps smartphones, or whatever theoretically true but practically irrelevant things you want.

Again? : ) Nobody said they are equally important. Not even close. That is not the position anyone here has argued at all, but a dismissive caricature of it, no less. And misleading. Period.

 

What has emerged from several contributions here, including yours and mine on the importance of DR, is simply that their practical value depends on the shot, purpose and workflow.

Extra DR matters in both controlled and uncontrolled high-contrast scenes, perhaps even more so in the latter. Fair enough.

In other cases, reach, reframing, stabilisation, VFX or high-resolution frame grabs may matter too. Budget hybrid cameras, you said? ; ) Correct.

Those are real-world uses as well.

So saying that none of this relates to anything anyone here actually does is rather sweeping, given that more than one person here had already pointed to practical uses for higher-resolution capture while also acknowledging its limits.

Nor is this only about one camera. More will come, including the Pocket 4 Pro with those extra stops, and naturally we will discuss where such advances matter and where their limits begin.

 

This is a camera forum : ) It is the right place for disagreement about cameras, specs, footage and real-world use. Not for theatrics, personal point-scoring, showing off or ego contests. None of us needs to perform as the final authority here, as so often happens on internet forums.

“More useful for one workflow” is not the same as “practically irrelevant to everyone else”.

Either way, life goes on, and so does this thread. Your contribution has been useful, as have those of others. We do not need to agree.

You are one of my fav contributors here, and clearly one of many people’s favourites too. That gives your words more weight, but also more responsibility.

Being a valuable contributor does not give any of us the right to be unpleasant to others. And that last reply was unpleasant. And unbalanced. Prima donna behaviour is no more attractive on a forum than on a professional set. In my work, I simply cross prima donnas off the list. I have neither the time nor the patience for them.

That is worth remembering for all of us. You, me, everyone.

And there is no drama here. This is only a disagreement about cameras. You were the one who announced you were “done”, as though an ordinary disagreement had become rather more serious than it really is.

Perhaps you're simply in a bad mood today (it happens to all of us). But your interlocutor should not have to pick up the bill & pay the price. Almost impossible to take a different position from yours without it turning personal (if not at first, up there you kept escalating until it did, at least this time...), as if disagreeing on a point meant challenging a supposed “authority” : X (phew)

No hard feelings anyway, count on it :- )

Mike Vogel’s riding high with this new series : ) Good to see him doing so well — a true pioneer and one of the indie AI filmmakers producing some of the most interesting work across YouTube and related digital platforms today. It also proves that solid project development remains fundamental to filmmaking, whether old-school or cutting-edge:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pixverse_a-luxury-mars-resort-no-return-shuttle-activity-7469342407965241344-G5Of

 

17 hours ago, kye said:

What CAN you do with an 8K image that you CAN'T do with a 4K image?

That is precisely the point about limits, already laid out rather extensively in my post on the previous page... although I may have to start charging royalties if we keep returning to it ; )

  

17 hours ago, kye said:

The problem with such discussions is they're unconnected from reality.

No way : ) This discussion is precisely about how measurable advantages translate, or sometimes fail to translate, into real-world use.

Additional dynamic range matters when the contrast of an actual scene demands it. Additional resolution matters when a workflow requires cropping, reframing, stabilisation, VFX work, digital reach or high-resolution frame grabs. None of those are imaginary specification-sheet exercises. They are perfectly ordinary practical uses.

You may not need any of them in your own work, which is perfectly fair. But that is quite different from saying that 8K offers no valid practical advantage over 4K at all.

Reality is precisely where those limits are established ;- )

2 hours ago, kye said:

You make excellent points, but it really comes down to your perspective.

The detail from the 8K will be completely irrelevant, except in cinemas, where exactly zero people will ever watch this footage.  The extra DR will absolutely be visible, even on smartphones, even with a film emulation applied, and especially because these cameras are designed for wide FOV shooting outdoors where there is a high probability of having huge DR (and even the sun) in the frame.

We can look at images in controlled lighting, this is true.  However under such conditions the vast majority of cameras from the last decade will look just fine.  In fact, if the older cameras have the same bit-depth in their codecs but less DR then they might look BETTER than the modern cameras as the bits will be less stretched!  
So if we're going to compare modern cameras in very controlled conditions then the comparisons should include the vast hundreds of models released in the last decade or so, but if you do mention them then people go berserk because these older cameras fall short in other areas, and you can make a good argument that the controlled tests are nice but not entirely sufficient for evaluation.  In which case, the stunning differences in DR between these cameras is now back in the consideration and the DJI is miles ahead of the Luna.

To summarise that a bit, if you're taking everything into consideration then the DR really matters and if you're not then why aren't you comparing dozens of older cameras, and if you desperately want a tiny gimbal but only shoot in controlled conditions then isn't that a niche application so narrow that it really can't be justified to evaluate the cameras overall?

In terms of me reminding people that lower DR 1080p cameras are fine for many practical tasks, this is true, but modern camera releases have basically nothing to do with practical tasks at all.  There is no justification for 8K codecs.  Period.   The justification for 8K sensors that let you crop 2x for a 4K image is borderline but fine.   Then there's 17K - seriously...   Most camera discussions departed reality long ago and the discussions about this or that camera have the same rigour as discussing which super-hero can win against which other super-hero.

Fair enough, and I think “it really comes down to your perspective” is already much closer to what I have been saying from the beginning : )

 

I would only question “completely irrelevant”, 'cause and when you immediately acknowledge the principal practical justification for an 8K sensor:

Cropping twice into a 4K image ; )

That is precisely where the additional detail becomes visible in the comparisons posted above, particularly with the tele shots and whenever the image is cropped and magnified.

8K is also useful for extracting high-resolution frame grabs : P

 

So yes, I concur that the Pocket’s additional latitude may be much more valuable in a wide, uncontrolled, high-contrast exterior scene. The Pocket 4 Pro remains high on my wish list, of course : )

But in a shot requiring additional reach, reframing or magnification or yet, genuine DSMC use ; ) the Luna’s resolution may be the advantage that actually matters too : )

Which brings us back to perspective, purpose and the particular shot, rather than to any single universal verdict on the two cameras.

 

Let alone the POV Head Tracker, detachable screen, internal 32-bit float stereo audio (all game-changers) and the rest of the Luna’s modular shooting concept ; )

 

E. :- )

18 hours ago, kye said:

One has 16 stops of DR (or 17.2 with SNR=2) with little if any NR, and the other has so much NR that the DR is measured as 13 stops for both SNR=1 and SNR=2, which is a completely ridiculous result.

One has 10+ stops of latitude and the other has something like 4-5 stops of latitude.

Considering that the primary purpose of these cameras is to shoot wide scenes in uncontrolled situations, DR is always a major challenge.  NR is normally the issue with cameras like this too, and one has results that are remarkably good for cameras of any price, and the other is remarkable for how heavy the NR is.

When the one that scores better in all of the above is the cheaper one, that's also saying something.

I don't think that "completely and utterly" is overselling it at all.

Hey, if someone else wants to publish lab tests on these things then I'll link to them instead.

Unless you think they're lying about the lab test results, then the discussion is normally better when it involves actual objective measurements than if it doesn't involve any at all.  

I'm not saying that measurements are the only thing that matters, but if you're comparing two cameras that have a difference in performance of 4 stops then that's an incredible amount and when shooting outside in available light on wide angle lenses then that is something that really matters in real-world situations.

No, @kye I do not think they are lying. Where exactly did I write such a thing?! : )

 

The reference to Andrew’s forum rules was precisely what I called it: a slightly amusing, good-natured bit of irony meant entirely in a friendly spirit! Nothing more than that : )

 

BTW, one small correction: the result is 16 stops at SNR=2 and 17.2 at SNR=1, not the other way around.

The Luna’s supposed 13-stop result is not really a valid 13-stop measurement either. CineD explicitly says that the aggressive NR prevented IMATEST from distinguishing the different patches correctly, thereby invalidating the result. They will not even include those figures in their database.

 

So yes, their test demonstrates very clearly that the current I-Log implementation is seriously problematic. No disagreement there.

 

But charts and real-world footage are two very different things.

A chart isolates one particular variable under one very particular set of conditions. It does not shoot a street, a face, movement, changing available light, colour, texture, skin, foliage, fine detail or an actual scene. This is precisely why the comparative footage posted above matters.

Objective measurements are useful, of course. But only for as long as they help us evaluate an image rather than begin evaluating it on our behalf.

There are limits to everything, including measurable advantages and human perception.

Someone worth $1.6 billion is sixteen times richer than someone worth $100 million. A huge objective difference, no doubt. Yet if both go out to buy a pizza, chances are they will end up buying exactly the same pizza ; ) The extra wealth only begins to matter when what they want to do actually requires it.

What about someone worth $160 million vs $10 million...? The same : P

And so on ; ) Likewise, an 8K image contains roughly sixteen times as many pixels as a 2K image. Another enormous and objectively measurable difference. Yet once both are projected onto a cinema screen and viewed from a normal seating distance, many people may struggle to tell them apart at all. The additional resolution only becomes meaningful when the screen size, viewing distance and image content actually allow us to see it.

And @kye this is especially worth remembering in your case! LOL ; ) Considering how often you have quite rightly defended 1080p as being more than sufficient in the real world : ) Which is precisely why you know that a measurable advantage does not automatically become a meaningful real-world one. Probably better than most camera lovers : )

 

More is more. It is not automatically more relevant forever.

Four additional stops can obviously be extremely valuable when a particular scene actually requires them. I have never denied that (take a look up there! ; ) But a four-stop advantage on a latitude chart does not mean that the resulting image will look four stops better, or even necessarily better at all, in every real-world shot.

 

And this particular latitude comparison was not even entirely like-for-like. The Luna was tested in 8K25 I-Log at around 120 Mbps, while the Pocket’s headline result came from 4K25 D-Log2. CineD did see the same aggressive NR in the Luna’s 4K wide modes, correct, but they did not repeat the complete latitude test in 4K. Nor did they test the standard profiles, which they themselves suggest may currently be the better choice.

It is also worth remembering that D-Log2 is only available on the Pocket’s 20mm wide camera. The 60mm module falls back to regular D-Log, where CineD measured 11.6 stops at SNR=2 and 8 stops of exposure latitude.

By comparison, the Luna’s tele camera in its valid 8K25 I-Log mode measured 9.7 stops at SNR=2 and 5 stops of exposure latitude. So the gap there is about two stops in measured dynamic range and three stops in latitude.

Still a clear win for DJI, certainly, but rather less apocalyptic than the headline comparison between the two wide cameras ; ) The digitally extended 120mm view naturally derives from that same 60mm camera too, so the Pocket’s spectacular D-Log2 figures cannot be extrapolated across its complete 20mm to 120mm shooting range.

So the honest conclusion is still that DJI’s 20mm D-Log2 implementation completely and utterly defeats Luna’s current I-Log implementation in this particular lab test.

 

That is not the same as saying that one complete camera system completely and utterly defeats the other.

Sometimes all the technical blah blah blah is extremely useful. Other times it is worth close to zero and can even contaminate the evaluation, especially once people have already been told which image is supposed to win before they look at the actual footage.

At that point, the chart is no longer informing the eye. It is replacing it ; )

 

Take another look at the real-world comparisons above. The difference is certainly not “complete and utter” there. 

In fact, the Luna’s 8K image often appears to resolve visibly more fine detail than the Pocket’s 4K, particularly in the comparisons of tele shots or whenever the image is cropped and magnified.

That may not be attributable to pixel count alone, since lens performance, sharpening, noise reduction and the complete processing pipeline all play their part. Even so, whatever the precise combination behind it, the visible result is there, and in some of those shots the result may even go the other way, depending on what each of us values in an image. In these comparisons, the Luna’s additional resolution is not merely a spec on paper.

 

So I think we are not very far apart on the measurements themselves.

We simply disagree about the amount of territory those measurements allow “completely and utterly” to occupy ; )

 

E. :- )

Unfortunately, not everyone cares.

- EAG :- )

1 hour ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

I noticed when watching various videos made with the Pocket 4P using my TV that the images had a processed appearance, especially faces seemed overly plasticky in appearance, like they were not of real people. This could be due to image processing (noise reduction & sharpening) and partly due to the characteristics of the lens. However, the dynamic range did seem spectacular and it is only this processed appearance of the main subject that bothered me. 

Have you actually shot with it?

Sharpening, noise reduction and the other image-processing settings can obviously be set to the minimum ;- )

On 7/31/2026 at 7:54 AM, kye said:

CineD tests are published, and the DJI kicks the Insta360s butt completely and utterly.

https://www.cined.com/dji-osmo-pocket-4p-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range-and-exposure-latitude/

https://www.cined.com/insta360-luna-ultra-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range-and-exposure-latitude/

 

I think “completely and utterly” may be doing a little too much work there @kye : P

There is also a slightly amusing irony in relying on CineD here, given that Andrew’s forum rules have historically discouraged linking to the site whenever possible, although, of course, he also made clear that such links would not be censored.

That aside, the DJI result is undeniably impressive. The 20mm LOFIC camera in D-Log2 seems to be in a different league when it comes to measured dynamic range and exposure latitude.

I’m just not sure that this particular test supports such a definitive verdict on the two complete camera systems. Those spectacular figures apply specifically to the 20mm camera in D-Log2. The 60mm camera does not offer D-Log2 and produces considerably more conventional results.

On the Luna side, the CineD test seems mainly to reveal that its current I-Log processing is seriously problematic, particularly because of the aggressive internal noise reduction. They did not test the standard profiles, which they themselves suggest may currently be the better option.

So, to me, the fair conclusion is that DJI’s best sensor and profile comprehensively outperform Luna’s present I-Log implementation in these specific laboratory tests. That is still a major win for DJI. Just not necessarily a complete and utter defeat of the Luna in every respect.

In these comparative tests [A | B] though ; ) the result is rather less one-sided : )

Now compare the Luna’s 8K with the Pocket’s 4K [1 + 2 already posted up there or directly here] and judge for yourself ; )

Lab tests are extremely useful because they isolate specific variables and give us repeatable measurements, but they are not the same thing as real-world shooting. They cannot fully account for colour, detail rendering, motion, sharpening, texture, highlight roll-off, subject separation or simply which image looks more convincing in an actual scene. As these comparisons and the footage itself demonstrate, a camera that appears decisively superior on a chart does not necessarily produce the preferable image once we step outside the lab bubble and look at the actual footage.

LU I | LU II | LU III | 4P I | 4P II | 4P III

Part of it has already been posted, among others, for instance right there.

 

Both are irresistible to me.

Whichever one comes out ahead in any particular test, I think both cameras are genuinely worthy of the OOAK label.

The Pocket 4P is unique in what it achieves with its 20mm LOFIC sensor and D-Log2 in such a small body, while the Luna Ultra is equally singular in its modular design, detachable remote screen, internal 32-bit float stereo audio and overall shooting concept, particularly with its innovative POV Head Tracker.

They are not merely two versions of the same product competing on a laboratory chart; each offers something that currently exists nowhere else.

On 7/28/2026 at 3:22 PM, newfoundmass said:

Sorry if I misread!

I have! And it's TOO smooth for my tastes. It's very impressive, but I still want some natural handheld movement. It helps with the immersion. It's why I have never used a gimbal for the ringside action. The biggest issue with action cameras, even the new ones, is the low light just isn't great in most of these venues that don't have professional lighting rigs set up. 

No worries : )

 

On a slightly different note, this new generation of pocket cameras, such as the Insta360 Luna Ultra and DJI Pocket 4 Pro, may well point in another direction altogether...

They offer impeccable stabilisation ; ) Granted, it is not exactly the handheld look you seem to favour, but that is precisely the kind of character Sony’s less effective IBIS can give you, especially when paired with a lens without optical stabilisation ; ))

And very strong low-light performance too:

LU1 | LU2 | LU3 | LU4 on a film set | LU5 + LU6 shot in exactly that kind of venue by someone who, like you, says he had never been particularly keen on using pocket or action cameras. Well, until this one came along...

& 4P1 | 4P2 | 4P3 

There is far less need to worry about professional lighting rigs today.

To put it very simply, both have changed the whole game IMHO : )) especially at such an affordable price range nowadays : X

What a time to be alive and kickin'! :- )

Actually, I was making exactly the opposite point from the one you made it sound as though I was making : D when I mentioned Lumix alongside the Oly case ; )

The other point is simply that one lens isn’t necessarily the same as another ; )) While much also depends on the way the operator handles the camera, a lens with optical stabilisation can make a night-and-day difference... speaking as someone who uses glass with and without it every day on the FX series :- )