dan

I just scanned the article but iirc he says he was spending $50k/yr on polaroid, if he's primarily using it for the test and it's cost effective why not. We used 5x4 and 10x8 polaroid for years to check the shot and that certainly wasn't high resolution either. dan

​+1. the market for these wont mind the price and the body wont need much in the way of rigging. will this camera run ML? probably not relevant given canon's new codec.

i know this thread is mostly preoccupied by the c300ii but i think the form factor of the XC-10 is really good and could/should be a template for cameras to come. not unlike a hasselblad or pentax 645. no evf could be a mistake but there is an eyepiece for the camera.

the rycote - effective, strong, good value. don't forget wind protection.

​Aside from your verbose bragging, littered with ad hominem and accusation, the jouissance you obviously get from convoluting and conflating facts and arguments really seems to keep you going (long after it was relevant). Care to post the name of your blog so we can follow your homilies unadulterated (and maybe save a bit of Andrew's bandwidth for 4k video)?

​No. But respect to you for sticking with your polemic and even though you've thoroughly failed to defend the indefensible, trivialise the important, beatify the abject and turn our worlds upside down etc etc i'm sure you were good for site traffic, so your extensive efforts were not entirely pointless.

Not sure if its been said already (but despite many things i don't like about the institution) the bbc they have handled this clarkson melt down quite well in the circumstances: ~ Conducted a thorough and professional investigation into the incident. ~ Let tank driving clarkson fan boys blow themselves out with their misplaced rhetoric while keeping mostly schtum. ~ Then drop the facts and make the correct action. TV shows change and finish, people will move on. The sky wont fall in, the bbc will keep going. For those who think he is a troubled anti-establishment comic genius and/or offers some kind of satirical critique of our 'PC' times or whatever, we could argue forever about how sadly confused i think you are but there is no need - he's gone, it's over. The people charged with disposing of large sums of public money for on-screen talent have correctly decided even money making fictional cult figures need to keep their fists to themselves to stay on the payroll. This isn't crazy "PC world gone mad" kind of stuff - it's called the modern 1st world where people with money, power and connections still quite often 'get away with it' but in any given time and place there are some limits and the limits (and principles) in this case are widely understood and accepted. The outcomes were inevitable the moment clarkson acted out in the way he did. Why he or anyone else would think there could be another outcome is a mystery to me and maybe represents some kind of wider cultural dissonance but probably not and its all just been a wonderful opportunity to learn a bit more about each other :-) Andrew, I can see these threads have been popular, thank you and well done for hosting them.

It is funny to laugh at your employer especially when they pay you £4m/year (and what employer should not be laughed at, especially a public sector 1 paying £4m/y.) But it's not that funny trying it to do the same thing about an ex-employer, it just looks bitter and angry. So some new material for JC's new show or a broadcaster who'll want to make him the poster boy for faux anti-establishment rhetoric?

​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mzungu

The only person who has jeopardised the show and these jobs is Clarkson. Stop blaming others for calling his unacceptable behaviour unacceptable. He's had a few warnings, has any of them prompted him to consider his responsibilities and what is at stake in this regard? If this well educated and remunerated person did, the outcome is clear, he doesn't give a fuck. He prefers to take the money and present himself at odds with the job requirements.

​Uggh, yourself. "'multi kulti' bullshit". I guess Berlin really missed out on something when you left - but the history of that city as a centre for progressive politics, the avant-garde and artistic movements would suggest what they've missed on with you they have seen before and can live without.

If jeeza does get fired, i'm sure he'll get snapped up by someone. But i wonder how many prime-time brands will really want to be seen sponsoring his crass attempts at edgy humour. DAVE is 1 thing, ITV/CHANNEL4/SKY is quite another - he'll be on a much shorter leash and will blow it sooner or later at which point he'll need his own TV channel to deliver witty insights/incites to his fans - Al JEZeera anyone :-)

lens flare and adapters? Nikon e series 135 2.8 (built in lens hood) onto A7s. Chronic lens flare in daylight and not good looking either, not as ugly at nighttime but hard to avoid. Solved the issue for now with a black masking tape hood but i'm wondering if lens adapters have an influence here. dan

The irony is Clarkson told the producer he was going to have him fired. He can make offensive class, gender, sexuality and race based jokes and statements (in and out of character), verbally abuse a co-worker, psychologically threaten a co-worker but it's ok because some people think he is funny. But if someone can't supply the dinner he wants they should get there matching orders. No wonder he looks so sheepish about this given all the second chances he's had. The BBC probably spend a fortune trying to keep him out of trouble and scooping up when he does make a mess. I don't think anyone is abusing the site owner or JC, it's not like anyone has made the 'joke' of having you or him shot in front of your family, or suggested your sexuality is questionable, or your place of birth makes you inferior, etc etc etc. This is run of the mill material for this hero of free speech and authenticity.

maybe he wants to get fired. someone has offered him loads more money but BBC have him under contract. every few months he tries to think up some new way to be fired without destroying his brand. if that's the case BBC should keep him and force him to do his own reality show where he rides bicycles up hill till his contract expires, preferably in a country less enamoured to his style of class, sex, race and cultural put downs than we seem to be :-)

​your name is jeremy clarkson and i claim my £10.

​Rest assured you did not waste your time in making me laugh. You need to read the "angry white man" sentence again but i don't mind if you want to identity yourself as the person who wants to speak for me, even if you don't. Had I (mis)identified you as white (which i did not) its hardly racist is it? To imagine from the style of someones online rhetoric that they self identify with as a particular race/ethnicity? Its not like i casually used a word associated with the oppression, exploitation and abuse of 1 group by another (and then give a disgracefully insincere apology claiming to have done my best not to say the word, whoops). I'll leave the name calling of forum members to you, more your style or have you just run out of material.

the easiest thing would be to have a rotation of guest presenters like HIGNFY and NMTB, people would love that. Coogan would be great, Charlie Brooker, Reginal P Hunter, Dame Edna, Jo Brand, Jack Dee, Jimmy and Alan Car (haha). And maybe after he's rehabilitated himself through a particularly gruelling reality show and winning the vote for president of the Universe, Clarkson could do a xmas special as a guest presenter :-)

overreacting? The least reactive response to that is maybe he is a genius. He identified a fault line within our society (power, ethnicity, otherness, immigration, race, class, stereotypes, cultural values etc) and has created a character who explores these issues through the lens of a SE England upper middle class buffoon. He is so committed to this satirical pantomime villain he is in character across all his bookings and on his time off. Larry David eat your heart out! If this is true, would the point not be then to be the catalyst and conduit for debate and argument? Perhaps you're overreacting when you suggest i'm beating up his character, or maybe missing the point when you advise against moralising about such entertainers. In this satirical realm the show is energised by audience response; good (500k signatures?) and bad (people like me who think he's not good value), it's all very theatrical no? If he's half as edgy as you and he think's he is then this is what it's all about. The problem is his material is so worn out it's now just another drop in the ocean of noise created by certain other SE England upper middle class artists/buffoons/politicians/banksters/scaremongerours/'journalists'/etc and this is all a distraction from culturally and economically much bigger issues. Maybe the fracas is just another stunt to grab some attention because they've so little else to say, but whatever this one is there are many more talented people out there to front this BBC flagship with much less risk of making the BBC look like it has a new untouchable.

I'm reading your words and they sound like the sort of things people probably said about their favourite BBC DJs at some point. ​I neither know nor care about whatever ethnicity you want to present here by way of making a case for keeping your favourite violent racist on TV. Racism is a form of violence and so is the threat of violence so I stand by my use of the word 'violent'. Btw Nigel Farrage is married to a German woman but it doesn't stop him from telling the world that he assumes a person on a bus speaking a foreign language doesn't speak english (and he doesn't like that). The bottom line you seem to be missing is; the guy is toxic. He's not funny, edgy, clever, talented or right. He's just a big mouth, with a big ego on a big show and he's toxic. His toxicity has been part of the show's concept, it (the concept and delivery) has been funny (like a real life Basil Fawlty) but it has long gone to his head (Basiill!!) and it's played out now, time to go. It is truly ridiculous when people make out he speaks for the 'ordinary man'. He's not an anti-establishment figure fighting the middle managers and bureaucrats. He's part of the establishment (like Farrage) and had access to some of the best education in the world, gets seen with powerful people, been one of the highest paid people on British TV, working for a worldwide brand and a public institution of the highest regard, yet he's been un-able to contain his anachronistic on-screen character and there is reason for that and it makes him a liability. I'm sure within some of the rhetoric of free speech there is room in the world for him to be on TV. Maybe he, Farrage and the others who still want to give the impression they believe in a benign colonial past could have their own TV channel - a containment strategy. As it would be something of a museum piece maybe it would be something for the History Channel people. Although it would be more ironic if were a conspicuously foreign broadcaster like Canal+, Rai or Tata Sky (with their Fox connections). 3 more thoughts: £500k per episode not including presenter fees. £14m a season plus the stars, a lot of other things could be made with the money, you never know people might buy some of this too. The BBC already exploit the brand in other territories with TV shows not starring our beloved presenters, no reason not to expand this operation just cos the pressure got to Clarkson. Perhaps we can watch these shows instead - maybe the 'banter' will include snide remarks about brits instead of the usual. Clarkson will be on a reality TV show within 18 months, have fun imagining which 1. atb.

​This Dan's of this world did no such thing, but i'm sure that small detail wont inhibit the raging angry white man that thinks he can speak for me. Perhaps in your world its acceptable to beat the staff when not up to scratch but in a modern civil society you'll get a criminal record, hopefully. You seem to forget just how long this guy's record is and imagine some senior manager at BBC HQ flippantly allowing this story to escalate into the red top headlines, despite the show grossing c. £150 million? Dah! I've worked in production for c. 20 years and my experience tells me if this went public then something definitely happened and the BBC didn't want to get caught out with others reporting on this before they did. So Will, reading between your lines, maybe you'd like to keep him on, perhaps you identify with him a bit and think case not proven and racism is no where near as bad as the sexual assault of minors (while on BBC property) for example. But then that's a distinction more easily made if you or your loved ones are not from a visible minority with long painful experiences of being racially abused and mistreated. And you probably don't make a correlation between the casually expressed racism of establishment figures (like Clarkson) and things like the experience of the Parisienne violently stopped from boarding his train home by racist chelsea fans. If indeed it even showed on your radar, it hasn't impacted you so what can be wrong? Time for people to have some imagination, the world will keep spinning without jeeza and his mates, formats don't last forever, and despite a few retro racists floating around in the media currently their time is done and if you can't get your head round that then may be yours is too. atb.

Andrew and friends, i just about made it through the rant, and some posts, well done everyone :-) my 2 pence: ~ For the BBC not to have a plan 'B' for replacing the serially crass buffoon that is J Clarkson is crass in its self - the guy has been a slo-mo car crash, years in the making - every time he's got away with something most other would have lost their jobs for he's got more powerful, more arrogant and more secure. They have to get rid of him now. Time to put him out to pasture on ITV and let the advertisers spend their customers money on a platform for this insincere, casual racist. It's do that or make him DG. ~ I do watch the show and quite like it despite JC not because of. TopGear is about coming to terms with a passing epoch, that's why the current concept is a show presented by some 'chaps' from a 1950's 'Ukipistarn', about expensive, dangerous objects of fetish about to be made obsolete by google's driverless technology and growing concern for the environment. The broadcaster and producers had the gumption to re-invent the show from its 'car review' days and now it needs to do so again. There are many talented people to present this show, genuine comedians for example, who know how to be edgy, popular and funny without repeating tired, played out notions of the 'other' for cheap laughs. Frankie Boyle springs to mind as does Rowan Atkinson. Sack all 3 of the current 'jokers', the other 2 are just yes men/fall guys anyway and have effectively condoned his behaviour by standing around laughing when he does it. BBC should use this as an opportunity to change the format again - lets have a woman, a person of colour or LBGT presenter help us explore the changes in our culture though satire, parody and irony. The genius of the show is the concept and the writing, combined with the biggest budget for factual or LE on the BBC, and it's definitely not JC. Get over him already, he's not your dad or uncle, he's just a very rich guy, who's been violent in the workplace to a colleague and repeatably offensive to many people who contribute to his huge salary. ~ Last thought: generally huge salaries are perceived as compensation for great skill and responsibility (hence city bonuses). Why would someone so well paid by licence fee payers have so little regard for the institution he works for and represents. Unless of course we live in place where the most powerful and privileged can get away with bad work practice, impacting millions of people, but somehow manage to point the finger of blame at the most disadvantaged, disempowered groups amongst us. dan.

really like seb's video (lens test). nice to see something on your site with some sync sound (albeit topmic), for me it adds to the cinematic quality and further embraces the everyday with the sublime. perhaps more opinion than insight from a sound recordist. best of luck with the anamorphic endeavours. d.

Hi Blanche,   I've heard good thing about the rode lavs and priced quite competitively but i've not used them myself. 1 of the selling point being the micon connector which is similar to the microdot connector used by DPA. These connectors allow the capsules to be used with different wireless systems which mostly have their own type of connector to plug into the transmitter. However some users prefer to cut the micon/microdot connectors off and solder the connector needed directly onto the wire because the micons/microdots can cause problems. OSTs (oscar sound tech) are also very good value. My personal favourite is sanken cos-11 and DPA 4060. These are both quite expensive but have their advantages. All of the above mics can be bought with their own power supplies OR a connector for your wireless system (which you can also plug into a seperate power supply (this starts to add up but does give some contigency). A Sony ecm 77 can be picked up second hand fairly cheap and when new have nice long wires (try bblist.co.uk). If the capsule has an XLR connector on it you will need to get an adapter cable (XLR female to minijack male) to plug into your zoom or panasonic.   Something else to consider: A reasonable but cheap wireless mic system (like sony UWP or sennheiser g3) will introduce some transmission characteristics (compression artifacts and reduced bandwidth and will need batteries) BUT they have limiter circuitry and more importantly will allow you to monitor the recording (they both have HP O/Ps) in a way that placing a zoom recorder in the contributor's pocket will NOT allow you to do (unless you have a very long H/Phone extension lead).   I suggested on your earlier thread (Searching the ultimate versatile microphone (Panasonic GH3)) that the Soundman binaural mics might do a job for you and i still stand by that. They would NOT be easy to convert for wireless use (and i'm not recommending that, but if that is what you decide to do you will loose 1 leg/stereo), but if did go with the 'zoom in a pocket solution' (cheapest and lightest) you would at least have some redundancy and you could record 2 different sound levels by placing one of the capsules nearer the mouth (if they like to whisper or its a noisy environment) and the other capsule lower on the torso in case they shout or you want more ambiance. Or you could place in a similar position and give yourself 2 chances of avoiding clothing noise etc. And as their primary use is to record stereo ambiances (in a very stealthy way) you can go about the rest of your filming (GVs etc) with the minimum amount of junk attached to the camera.   Not that this qualifies my opinion any more than the next person but i say all of the above as an owner of (disclaimer): 6 x sanken cos-11s 2 x lectrosonics 411 wireless channels 2 x sony UWP wireless channels 1 x pair of classic soundman OKMii A3 xlr (binaural mics) 1 x sennheiser 416 1 x sennheiser mkh60 1 x sanken cs3e 1 x sanken cub-01 1 x pair of matched AKG cardioids 2 x pairs of sennheiser hd 25s 1 x pair of sony 7506s 1 x pair of etymotic er4s 3 x rycote windshields and suspensions 1 x sounddevices 302 mixer 1 x busman modified tascam dr-680 recorder 1 x zoom h2  1 x roland r26 1 x sony pd100 1 x sony nex 6 3 x nikkor ais lenses 1 x tom board track bike 1 x giant cyclo-cross/touring bike 1 x 20" wheel tandem 1 x burrows ratracer SL (recumbent) 1 x very full garage 1 x very patient partner :-)   YMMV

Hi Blanche,   i'm liking your travelogue videos and thought i'd offer a different perspective on the acquisition of audio.   A camera mounted directional mic will give you some 'reach' to a subject you want to hear if it's directly in line with the mic but it will also 'suck' in sounds from things behind the subject that you may not want to hear (this is the reason why when directional (cardioid / hyper-cardioid / 'shotgun' / interference tube) mics are used for recording speech for film and video they are best used by another operator on a boom with the mic pointing downwards and following the direction of the mouth. If you are filming outdoors (which you are) you will also need to consider protecting the mic/sound from wind noise (and i don't mean the hefty base cut available on some mics and cameras), this will mean putting the mic  in a furry windjammer and in more exposed places, a more effective wind shield (http://www.rycote.com/). This is all getting very bulky for cycle touring.   As an alternative i suggest using a set of binaural microphones (http://www.soundman.de/en). They will give you a nice stereo atmos/ambiance tracks when placed in your ears but they can also be used as personal/lavalier mics for interviews etc. They are small and light, as wound be any wind protection you decide carry with you as well.   dan.