Emanuel

A couple of years ago, I was saying on Forums that Arri would fail, and people were calling me stupid. Ohhh its image is so special, etc etc how peasants could understand this. But the problem is you can't sell a lot of 70-100 000 usd cameras, the market is what it is, even more so when you have very capable cameras coming for much less. You reach a level where that 5% more cannot justify the 10, 20x the price. Before you had the highend market where camera cost/rent is peanuts compared to the overall cost, but that secondary market, the people that used to rent those highend cameras, can now buy a camera that will do 90% of what they need, and will rent only 10% of what they used to do.
Arri and most US/german companies are going to be eaten by the Chinese ones. They still live in the rental business, for camera and other gears light lighting etc. The principal of the Chinese is that they will produce affordable equipment for the many, that will help them also produce for few highend that they will sell. You will find Aperture/Godox/Nanlight models that will cost less than a hundred dollars, to 4k led light costing more than 10 000 USD. They will sell a thousands of the 300 USD 300 watt cob monolight, for perhaps every 10 000 USD 5000 watt one. But those thousands of 300 USD lights will help them for R&D for those big lights. same for camera, imagine if Arri had repackage the original Arri LF in a more affordable casing, taking out some features of frame rate and sell it for 10K. They would be selling thousands of them, perhaps at the detriment of their higher ends, but those thousands of 10k models would overall bring so much money. 

Yeah the whole nature of the business is changing rapidly. It's easy to keep pace when you're working in the YouTube world, but I can't imagine how tough it must be in the Hollywood circles. 

They're already closing down their pro services, and no way they invest in a zero growth business when they kill their own zero growth businesses.
Canon can't do it. That would be all against their ego. They and their customer base believe Canon color science is best in the world, and thats why they have 50% market share. They're like "we ain't need nobody". 
Sony will have a integration nightmare if they do it. Arri systems are in conflict with the whole Sony line up. Also it would be an official admission that the electronics/AV giant couldn't get the color science right and eventually had to go shopping.
Nikon acquisition of RED unintentionally made this perception that its a preferred approach in Tokyo. But it isn't. Nikon had to choose between two costly options and the acquisition was cheaper.
In China, its only DJI who can gain a lot with Arri reputation in its arsenal, but I don't think Germans are comfortable with giving away this German icon to Chinese.
Zeiss would be the perfect owner. A German brand with enough money, so the brand stays in the country, and they're heavily invested in high end part of the cine market. 

"You reach a level where that 5% more cannot justify the 10, 20x the price."
 
true

Scary image.

In an alleged board meeting, it was suggested but in the end, ZR narrowly got the vote.

I had an Alice cam on order.
they are scammers, I have zero proof of Alice cams actually delivered to buyers. My second wave cam was never ready to be delivered, even when wave 4 funding was being done.
At one point they asked for a full payment to get on the delivery list. Never was I contacted to pay the remainder for an existing, ready to ship unit.
now prominent Youtubers are posting about the new cam with Zero reference to the previous gen, as if it never existed. So there was no scam either…
 

Yeah good move approaching indie RED shooters rather than your usual hybrid / YT influencer.
Great review with strong footage. More I think of it, ZR is the perfect travel cam, street shooter. 

Yeah, they are the Alice people rebranded. A project that leaves their original customers behind and launches a "new" one. Lots of cases in Kickstarter, or in case of software it could be called "Luminar move"...

Very different from, like, the Pixii project.

1) This didn't go well for Sony when they released the QX100 and QX10 years ago.  It also didn't work well for Olympus with the Air A01.  Of course, none of them stuck a stupid bullshit "AI" label on the end of the camera name so who knows, maybe that's what was missing.
2) Fuck GenAI.  Of all the things I want integrated in my camera, that's at about the rock bottom of the list.
3) Note that at least 3 of the 6 testimonials that they include (screenshot below) don't actually say anything positive about the camera. "That's very different" is not an endorsement.  In fact, where I live, saying "that's different" is usually a form of backhanded insult.
4) It looks like it only supports wifi connection to the phone without a wired option.  In a best-case scenario, screen lag will be tolerable.  Go to any reasonably-crowded urban area, though, and enjoy the slide show and/or "connection lost" messages.
5) Even though they say you can choose from over 100 M43 lenses, I'd be worried about magsafe supporting any moderately heavy lens.  Even if it does, the camera will be really unbalanced.
6) When Caira goes out of business, there will be nobody left to update the app and the camera isn't usable without it.  Cross your fingers that Apple doesn't change some necessary API during an OS update.
7) Super early bird pricing is $695.  You can go buy a used Panasonic G85 in like new condition for about $430.  You can get an OM System OM-5 in like new condition for about $760 or in excellent condition for about $690.  The G85 is cheaper and pretty good - at least on a spec sheet, they seem similar - a little bulkier, maybe.  The OM-5 should be at least as good of a camera, also is quite small (not as small, of course, but very small by modern camera standards), and will keep working whether or not OM Systems stays in business or decides they want to stop making cameras.
8 ) Phone cameras are already very good these days.  Mine is more than good enough for any of the sort of images/videos that they seem to be promoting on their site.  If not, I'd probably just get a newer/better phone and not some janky add-on.  🙂 
9) Small company + Kickstarter means you'll probably be waiting a good long time and/or never actually receive the order.  Even though they say they have 500 mainboards already in stock, actually building and shipping hundreds of units is a really hard challenge that a lot of kickstarter projects don't take into account - and sometimes not even due to fault of the creators.  My 4x10 film camera that I ordered from an established brand (Ondu) who already made/shipped lots of pinhole cameras for years beforehand took WAY longer than expected, at least partly because suppliers kept sending out-of-spec parts to them.  The owner is a really great guy and we had some nice conversations when I asked my camera hadn't come despite that he said they were caught up on orders (turned out that their tool to collect shipping information lost a bunch of responses so he had to go manually collect them from a lot of people).
 
So anyway - for me, Caira is a hard no.  I'm basically the opposite of their target market, though.

The polite version is “no thank you”.

Finally got ZR yesterday. After changing all the settings like I have them in Z6iii, except Zebras and Vignette for R3D, got to test it a bit too.
1st, the screen is really good, you can change almost everything needed via the touch id and new menus quite quickly and intuitively. Need to figure out still what I need to set on those 4 custom buttons really.
The grip is tiny but feels ok in the hand. Still, with heavier lenses like 1kg 50 f1.2 and 135 f1.8 having the L shaped gage’s bigger grip seems to be a must, as it also has the Arca-swizz base plate for easy tripod use too. 
Quickly tested R3D NE vs NRaw to R3D hack with ISO 800 and 6400, and R3D NE was a bit cleaner in the shadows and seemed to hold the colors better too. 
The Z6iii EVF and all of it’s buttons in muscle memory seems still of course more convenient to use, but there is no going back to timy 3.2” screens after this. In various Panas and Z6iii I almost never used the screen.
Cinema tools has made a false color LUT, propably have to buy and try that too, if setting the zebras to 245 for R3D highlights does not work like zebras at 255 for NRaw.
The build quality seemed robust, but the shutter button needs a bit heavier press. Could not find the focus limiter in the menus either. Hopefully the weather allows to take both ZR and Z6iii outside, and see how the ZR handles, and what the footage looks like.
 

No reason that the iJustine channel can't publish a great video.....
Well done to the film-making team that created it:

Strange that there's no credit for editing.  Maybe that was also Nathan.
Well done to Apple for creating a phone that can produce results like this when used competently.
Any YouTuber with the desire and sufficient resources should be able to replicate such a thing.
It is a nice example of what the tech can do when used correctly by competent film-makers.  The night shots were pretty good.  I've found it to have impressive DR and low-light capabilities, but this was slightly more than I was anticipating.  Those areas of Tokyo are probably quite well lit though, and I bet there was a healthy dose of NR in post for select shots.  The results are still good though.

It's time
https://www.eoshd.com/news/why-its-time-for-fujifilm-to-go-full-frame/
And a full frame X100 without the RX1 III or Leica Q price tags would be fabulous thank you.

Seems there's something new to arrive (from t)here:
NDA is leaked here (for more details there and over there). This November, they say. (Actually, not totally exempt from pure nonsense, oh boy!)
It would be nice @MILCs side too! ;- )

Unboxing here - I should say that it looks amazing.

 

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809809423132.html
I think it's newer than the one I got and I guess it's closer to $30 than $20.  If you look around, you can also find some cases that work well with it.  It can also work with some cases, as mentioned in this video by DP Journey.  I got one of those cases too, but I'm not planning to switch to it until the Apple case that I got with my phone is falling apart (should just be another 3-6 months or so, based on the lifespan of my other cases and the amount of damage I've already done to it.
The main change I made from his setup is that I went with a magsafe CF Express adapter that I can put on the little folding tripod gizmo.  He also just made a video about an upgrade tripod gizmo which looks nice, but didn't seem to have anything compelling enough that I'd upgrade from the original.
 

Seems there's something new to arrive (from t)here:
NDA is leaked here (for more details there and over there). This November, they say. (Actually, not totally exempt from pure nonsense, oh boy!)
It would be nice @MILCs side too! ;- )

At least for the 16 Pro, there are Magsafe threaded filter adapters.  I have one that takes a 67mm filter (or is it 58?).  The only real bummer is that it can't go on with my phone in the standard Apple case so I have to pop the phone out to use it.  Mine cost $20 or so IIRC.  Maybe something like that exists for the 17 as well?

The DOF adapter still seems like a crazy / borderline broken vintage lens emulation, but if that's the look you're going for then it's a good option to have.
What seems much more useful though is using it as a B or C camera, fitted with an ND and shooting manually.

Is this something? ; )
To me, this outcome doesn’t seem negligible at all. Quite the contrary.
No one invented the wheel this time. But it seems that has now been perfected, evolving in a way even the most oblivious cannot miss.
To me, it would/will likely be the 1st round :- )

I like the colors and overall image of this camera, especially for the low price, but Nikon definitely sacrificed DR for a faster readout. This is from G. Undone's test:

10.9 usable stops in 6K R3D NE is not great for a modern cinema camera. NR will get you another stop, but it's not an ideal starting point. By comparison, the Komodo 6K scored 12.5 usable stops in 6K R3D and the Komodo-X was at 12.9 when tested by CineD.
CVP's latitude test was also fairly extensive as it tested both native ISOs:


The good news is that you don't lose much DR when switching into the higher base. The bad news is that, no matter which base you use, most of its competitors have an extra stop in the highlights:





As for under exposure, it is usable to under 3, but no more. It is RAW after all, so this poor result is understandable when compared with the Sony cameras.




 
 

Tianluokeng Tulou clusters, Fujian Province, China.
These buildings have a very thick outer wall of earth and a 3-5 storey inner wooden structure that houses dozens of families.  The structure is designed to be stable during earthquakes and secure against bandits.  The oldest if the ones we visited was built in 1796.
These are just with a quick grade, mostly Resolve Film Look Creator. The DR in the scene is extreme, and while all the required info is in the files, I'm going to have to go heavy on the power-windows when I grade these properly.
Grabs from GH7 + 14-140mm zoom.








Grabs from iPhone 17 Pro shooting Prores Log with default app.
The Prores HQ Apple Log files grade really nicely, have heaps of DR, and are great to work with. The DR isn't quite as much as the GH7, but it's more than enough for these scenes.  These were graded at a different time to the above GH7 shots so probably don't match.





All-in-all, the iPhone well and truly punches above its weight when you take into account it's pocketability, the size of the sensor, and the incredible range in focal lengths.  Imagine how much you'd have to pay to get a lens that can do 13-200mm FF equivalent FOV and has exposure levels between F1.78 and F2.8 across the whole range.

For sure.
The “18 stops” claim comes from the manufacturer (sensor-level, special HDR mode). It’s plausible as a sensor specification under controlled conditions/multi-exposure HDR — but practical DR measured in real cameras has been substantially lower due to optical and pipeline factors.
Although the sensor itself has a “theoretical” 18 stops, many other factors (noise, analog-to-digital conversion, image pipeline, compression, amplifier architecture, pixel readout, linearity, saturation capability) limit the actual practical performance.
 
Manufacturer's claim = sensor under optimized conditions (two/more readings, dual-gain, on-sensor HDR, internal measurements). This isn't necessarily the DR you'll get in a final phone/camera.
Actual limits: optics (flare/veiling glare), amplifiers, pipeline noise, compression, RAW/JPEG processing — all of which reduce useful DR.
 
https://www.imatest.com/docs/full.html
Imatest/DxOMark measure the system, not just the sensor die (photodiodes (light-capturing pixels), transistors, amplifiers, readout lines, A/D converters, etc.). 
Lab values applied to cameras tend to show much lower useful DR on sensors of this size — hence the large difference between manufacturer claims and practical DR.
 
However, if this OmniVision sensor actually comes to fruition with 18 practical stops, that will be revolutionary for such small sensors — it would be worth watching for announcements and technical tests.

The best camera is the one you hold ; )
...and that's the "toy" when in good hands! :- )