mercer

I really liked the mark II, but felt the camera jumped the shark with every subsequent release. And this one is no different. Although I appreciate the bump to 10bit video, I kinda hoped they would bring back internal NDs and the constant zoom. I would love a cine-bridge camera, and for a while, about 10 years ago, it seemed like a strong possibility with the RX10, FZ2500 and XC10, but they were all quickly abandoned... I suppose the market didn't agree with me. The really offensive aspect of this release is the price... $2300... I recently purchased a refurbished Canon V1 that has a larger sensor, and internal ND for $650. So far, it's been one of my favorite camera purchases to date. It's a shame, I really liked the image and form factor of the RX10 II and have been looking for a reason to try Cinetone. Right now, it seems like the ZV-E10ii is the cheapest way in.

Some kid will use that camera and make a short film and upload it to YT, then he'll get a Hollywood deal. A couple will buy 30 of them and put then on the wedding guest's tables for people to snap photos and take some video. The groom will edit them all together on his phone while sitting on the beach during his honeymoon. He will also upload it to YT and probably get a Hollywood deal. lol.

I assume some of you have heard this story... when Stanley Kubrick got his first Hollywood job directing a movie, he asked the cinematographer to switch to a different lens for the next shot. Instead, he moved the camera to get the shot. Kubrick asked him to put the camera back and switch the lens like he asked. The cinematographer told him it was the same shot if you moved the camera or changed the lens. Being a photographer in his previous life, Kubrick disagreed and said the perspective changed. Unless I'm remembering this story incorrectly, the man vehemently disagreed and refused to do what Kubrick asked, so Kubrick was forced to fire him and throw him off his set. Of course there's a lot to lensing than just FOV, the question becomes how important does the perspective, in this case, matter? Kubrick was right, the shot changed and it mattered to him because it was his film. Would the audience have felt the difference in what he was trying to communicate with that specific lens, from that specific distance? Possibly. The question becomes how much does it affect yours. I remember when I first got my 5Diii and the 24-70mm f/4. I was checking the light on the talent and lining up my shot and the image looked a little flat, so I zoomed in and stepped back and the talent popped. In that instance, I used a little bit of 1,2 and 3 I suppose. I can't lie and say I did this to emphasize any theme or symbolism, I was merely looking for a shot with a bit more dimension so I zoomed with the zoom and zoomed with my feet... it was that moment I knew I was a pro in my own mind.

Yeah there's definitely an "I don't care what you're doing" thought process in NYC but I think it's more of a survival instinct than anything else. It's actually quite odd. You can walk by someone, make eye contact and nod or smile and they will completely ignore you. I'd imagine if you lived there you'd get used to it, but it seems like you're alone in a sea of people. But for filmmaking on the sly, that's great. Without knowing the exact concept (I'm picturing a Before Sunrise kinda thing) I stand by the idea of keeping a small footprint and understanding the POV of the camera in the story. As @Bioskop.Inc said, if you can keep the dialogue minimal, by utilizing the mood and tone of your locations, then all the better. Also make sure to get clean dialogue takes so you can cut to a different take and use the dialogue over it... eventually people will look at you as they pass by. Otherwise stay small and nimble and flexible with your locations. If you can make a scene work on a park bench instead of walking... even better.

Same. Well I only have one body but I'll never sell it. If not for a few modern conveniences, none of which being higher resolution, I wouldn't even bother with any other camera. I bought and returned the R50V. I actually really liked the camera, especially for the price, but its inability to display exposure tools and the View Assist LUT at the same time was way too frustrating and the Histogram wasn't accurate enough for me. But I did see they updated the firmware to allow the LUT and False Color to be turned on at the same time, so that's pretty cool. Of course that happened exactly 3 days after I returned it. I picked up a refurbed V1 directly from Canon and I like it a lot. Am using it, and the 5D3, for a short film I'm writing. That's exactly what I thought about the FP and when it arrived my jaw dropped seeing how small it is... but... then you quickly realize how big the thing gets once you add a cage and an SSD on top. I spent hours upon hours researching and testing different configurations to keep it compact. I looked at the Dark Power stuff, but I was trying to keep the camera package as cheap and small as possible. The best I could come up with was to shoot it in 8bit cDNG mode with an SDXC card and a NiceyRig handle. The 8bit quality isn't bad at all in CDNG. But the cards are expensive and you can't get much footage onto a 128gb card... plus I'd rather shoot 12bit so I got a generic cage off Amazon and bought a couple SSDs and just attached them with a phone tripod clamp. I also bought a SmallRig drive encasement and put a Samsung drive inside and that kept it fairly small. Last summer I finally had a project to shoot with it and with all my tests, I didn't really realize how quickly it ate through batteries until I was on set. Luckily, I had just enough power and drives to make the day, but I was starting to get nervous. That's a great price for the FP if you can find one. I'm probably going to trade mine in to take advantage of the ZR $100 trade in bonus through B&H. I'll get a little less for the camera, but not that much less when you add the fees and headaches of eBay, private sales. I was wavering between the ZR and R6V, I really like the idea of the 3K S16 crop mode on the R6V and I love the body style, but the ZR just offers to many other shooting options internally and the internal 32bit audio... no brainer for me for now. All that said, if you like shooting raw video, which you obviously do, then the FP is a fun camera with a bunch of little quirks that aren't necessarily deal breakers but can be frustrating sometimes.

You may have read me post before that I came to the FP, due to my love of 1080p (actually 1920x818) ML Raw on the 5D Mark iii. I seriously love the image and it still reigns as the best image and favorite camera I have ever owned, but being 1080p and an EF mount camera, it could be "soft" with certain lenses and I couldn't use some lenses I have collected over the years. That said, in some ways, the FP is the spiritual successor to the 5Diii ML Raw because both are "uncompressed" raw and both have, or lack, a manufacturer designed post production workflow. Coming from ML Raw, this never bothered me. With the FP, I set the picture profile to OFF and used the camera meter to judge exposure... as long as you hover +/- 0, you will be able to finesse the image in post however you want to. So I never worried about seeing an accurate representation of anything with it. I made sure I didn't clip the highlights, used False Color to check skin and hit record. As far as EF mount lenses go, I have 4... the Canon 28mm 1.8, Samyang 50mm 1.4, and two modified lenses... a Minolta 58mm 1.4 and the Canon FD 50mm 1.2 L. I have so many other vintage lenses that I didn't even get an EF adapter. However I was planning to bring out my 5Diii more often, so I looked at purchasing (repurchasing) a couple lenses... the 24-70mm f/4 and 35mm f/2 IS, so I did glance at a few of the electronic adapters for L Mount thinking they could pull double duty. At the time I was more worried about IS translating over to the FP than I was ND, so the Sigma adapter seemed like the safest bet. The FP was intended to be an inexpensive and tiny raw camera that I could walk around with and grab shots for short films, so I wanted the footprint to be as minimal as possible, which unfortunately is near impossible with the FP and eventually frustrated me. I later bought an inexpensive GH6 and the Arri LogC3 upgrade key, with similar intentions but the crop annoys me. Now I think I'm going to sell both and get a Nikon ZR, and be done with it. I have my 5D3 and a Canon V1 for one film I started working on and the Nikon will be for the other film. All that said, the FP is a fine camera and the image is pretty damn good, it's just too quirky for my run and gun incognito sensibilities, but if you don't mind rigging it up a little, I can't imagine the S9 could come close to the FP in pure image quality. In fact, I was thinking of waiting to do a major camera upgrade and getting the original S5 as a stop gap for my second film and then reevaluating my cameras this time next year, and I may still do that for the IBIS, but in reality, the image is more important to me, and the flexibility of a raw workflow, so I'd probably just keep the FP for that scenario... even though the GH6's IBIS may have spoiled me a little.

What are you trying to do? As long as you don't have a big rig with lights and a shotgun mic, then you should be good. I've walked around Philly and NYC and see plenty of people shooting video everywhere with gimbals and even tripods sometimes... although I wouldn't recommend that. The key is to look like a tourist and find locations where there aren't many people passing by, or it's so busy, people don't even look twice at you because you look like a tourist. And be prepared to move to a different location if you have to. Philip Bloom, hardly a narrative filmmaker, but his use of super long lenses gives him the freedom to be a little far from the talent. Separation between camera and talent can be a good thing if you're trying to steal shots.

I'm thinking of selling mine. I have had mine for a couple years and understand the camera's ins and outs if you need any information. As far as your question, I'd be most worried about the usb-c port. Most of the available cages do not have cable clamps, so I'd imagine most FP users haven't used them with the camera. So I'd verify with the seller that the port functions and the connection is tight.

I'm still a weirdo because I just bought a Yashica ML 50mm 1.7 hoping it will give me 80% of the micro contrast Zeiss offers in their 1.7 50 for 80% less but the catch is I want to use it to shoot 1920x818 on my 5D3. So the idea of shooting 8K sounds so alien to me. Of course, I am liking the 5.7K on my GH6... go figure.

Sounds like you should be on the lookout for a used LX100?

Do vintage lenses even resolve enough for 8K?

It seems to be the case. Pretty amazing what Nikon has accomplished in the past few years. That is a pretty cool feature, even though my mind cannot grasp how the Techart is accomplishing it. I had a quick look on BH and they only seem to have an EF to Z and a Leica M to Z... do they make an F to Z? The M mount one is kinda interesting because the more I get into shooting film, the more I have become interested in an M6 or earlier model... again completely perverse for my needs considering I usually shoot with an FE or the random Pentax/Canon/Minolta camera, but there's just something unique with a rangefinder. Speaking of the FE... the FE/FM variants are damn near perfect cameras for stills for the type of stuff I shoot so as I started researching Z mount cameras, I almost forgot about the ZF and I instantly got a little excited about it... even though it lacks a lot of the video requirements I want for a hybrid... but so does the ZR... anyway after a quick search I found this... Then I searched for a size comparison of the ZF vs. the DF and other than the grip, they were basically the same size... I thought mirrorless was supposed to give us smaller, lighter bodies. I mean my GH6 is only a little smaller than my 5D3... What a joke in some ways... Rant over. The Z8 would be amazing, but I don't know if I could do it. I think I'd rather have a ZR/ZF combo or just a Z6iii. Maybe if I could figure out a way to make some money from this stuff, a Z8 could be in my future... but then that would open a whole new set of possibilities... an R6iii/C50 or C70 combo... And this is the problem I have been dealing with since I started this hobby. No camera meets all my needs (wants) but it's obscene for me to really have more than one camera. Another off topic rant... I've been seeing social media posts from the filmmaker Pete Ohs... I posted about him a long time ago because he made a film a year with a 5D Mark iii with ML Raw and his films were screened at SXSW and Sundance and they all got some type of distribution deal... well he's still making at least a film a year... his films are still being screened at SXSW and Sundance and he still gets distribution deals and he still makes his films using his 5D Mark iii with ML Raw and when asked, his reason is... "that's the camera I own." I immediately feel like an a complete asshole for chasing these other cameras. Of course, he's a tripod guy with very static shots that he shoots in basically one location (or very few) whereas I am trying to shoot more run and gun and stealing locations whenever possible., so I've realized how important IBIS is to my style of shooting and AF on some level... but not as important... END RANT. Anyway, I'm still in my early phase of thinking this through. I guess if I was smart, I'd dust off my tripod and shoot with my 5D or FP... or learn how to grade Log footage and use the GH6... but I really want 32 bit float audio and R3D/ProRes files... or nRaw/ProRes files... and IBIS in FF with some halfway decent AF... is that too much to ask? first world problems... Do it!!! You're a Nikon guy at heart it seems and you've been taking about it for a while... how nice would it be to have your "forever camera?"

Good to know, thanks. All of my Nikon lenses are non-ai/ai/ai-s but I did see that the special edition of the 50mm 1.8G is available refurbished from Nikon for $199... so that's kind of interesting. Of course the 40mm f/2 Z is only a little more, so it'd be a little redundant. Either way, it's good to know that option is available. Do you know if the EF adapters for Canon R cameras have the same level of consistency as the Nikon adapter does? Also are there good portrait, AF-S G lenses that are relatively inexpensive but still good lenses... say 85-105mm?

Thanks for the reply. It looks like I'll probably go Nikon or Canon, but if I was thinking about this at this point last year, the FX30 and possibly an a7c2 would definitely be in the running. I love the output from the FX30 but the media and the price isn't worth it to me. If the FX30 was $1200 or less, it would be a contender. As far as the BM 6K FF... just not a fan of BM cameras for what I do.

Being a Canon fan over the years, obviously I drooled over the R5 since it was released, especially after the overheating got sorted out (thanks to the fine folks on eosHD) but it was waaaay over the reality of my life. Since my interest was once removed, I'm a little unsure of the specs but believe that the 4K raw is cropped, not downsampled, right? 8K is complete overkill for what I do... in some ways as I started thinking about this, I've gone back and forth that the 1080p raw on my 5D3 is probably plenty good enough for the short films I don't finish (HA) so 8K is just perverse for me. Unless I misunderstood your first sentence here... I believe the Nikon ZR does have IBIS? My real concern with the ZR is the 4K R3D crop in 4K. I'm sure I can live with S35 crop for video or maybe the 6K is soooo good that I will get over my analogesque snobbery. But the Komodo suggestion is tempting... another camera I have drooled over. Z8 is also a dream camera... basically any camera with internal raw and IBIS is a dream camera for me, so the Z6iii fits into that equation as well. Shit... just checked BH... the Z6iii is on sale brand new for $1999... Hmm... that complicates things a little. Not interested in BM products. Thanks for all of the suggestions, a lot to think about.

Hey thanks for the reply. More than likely yes, but only one prime to start out with. For instance, with the Nikon or Sony, I would go with their 40mm prime. With Canon, probably the 35mm or that new 45mm.

Hello all, settle in for a long post... For the past 10 years I have mostly shot with my Canon 5D Mark iii with ML Raw. Other than a couple short stints with some native lenses, the only one I kept was a beat up 28mm 1.8 because it was cheap and I really like the rendering. I also have a Sigma FP which delivers a fine raw image but I've always found it to be an awkward camera to work with... especially with its horrific battery life and annoying SSD tethered to the camera. For the past year I've been using a GH6 a lot I bought on the cheap. It has the Arri LogC update, and I've been fairly happy with it except for my normal distaste for crop factors... although I have found the cheap 7artisans 24mm 1.4 lens to be a treat. For the most part, I think the GH6 could be the ultimate low budget filmmaker's camera. The LogC curve/color science mixed with 4K/5.7K ProRes HQ codec truly is remarkable... not to mention the IBIS which is nothing short of miraculous. Even the 1080p, with its small ProRes file sizes looks pretty amazing to me. Otherwise, I borrowed a friend's Canon R7 for a few weeks and found it to be a pretty amazing little camera. The h.265 files were way better than I thought they'd be. The cLog2 was a treat to grade, the AF was practically perfect and the IBIS was better than I expected. Since the pandemic, I've gotten into shooting stills a little. I first started with film and loved it. I still shoot some, but they're a little expensive since I don't have the capability to process/scan them myself. I then picked up an Open Box Pentax K10D which I enjoy taking out and getting some random shots with the beautiful CCD sensor, but video is more important to me than stills and I don't want to maintain multiple systems so I am thinking of starting over and investing in a new camera and a lens or two... So... I was looking for some advice from anyone who has first hand knowledge about a few different systems. My criteria for stills is basically nothing... shoots decent stills. For video, I'm looking for a full frame camera that shoots internal raw video, or ProRes, has decent IBIS and decent AF. I'm a few months away from a purchase, but I'd like to keep it below $2500 for the main camera and then possibly pick up a second, lesser model, camera in a year or so. Right now, it seems like Canon or Nikon are the two obvious options, but after reading Andrew's mini review of the FX2, I'd be open to going Sony as well even though there's no internal raw. I have ruled out Panasonic and the L Mount. I have extensively used an S5iiX and have meh feelings about it. I just didn't jive with it. I'm kinda leaning towards Nikon due to the ZR, but it doesn't seem like the best hybrid camera. But in a lot of ways, it's kinda my dream camera... even though I think 6K is a bit of overkill. I'm also interested in the Z5ii because it seems like it gets me a good bit of my list and gets me into the Z ecosystem for a fairly decent price. But since I started shooting video with a ZR65, I've always gone back to Canon and have always been relatively happy about it. And finally, although lenses are important for stills and those times I'd like to track an actor in a short film or something, I'd probably use my vintage lenses more often. Anyway, I know this is a lot, but any insight you guys might have would be much appreciated.

Highly unlikely they'll produce two versions. More than likely you purchase the base kit which is basically a GoPro and then for X dollars more you can purchase the cinema kit which will be a new faceplate that has some type of mount. Probably a weird bayonet or c-mount. From there, they'll sell you adapters to PL, EF, etc... The screen will go away on the cine plate but they may leave an hdmi port for a monitor. Once you unsnap the faceplate, you can unplug the screen which you can reconnect to the hdmi port... or whatever. Either way, interesting camera.

The Duke and Dorkess of Dividends

replicate the simplicity of iMovie HD with some modern tools.

Haha, "paid promoters of newness."

Been using the GH6 with the cheap 7artisans 24mm 1.4. I really like the lens, are there any other 7artisans hidden gems?

I've never had a reason to research this, but I would assume someone makes an adapter for EF (or whatever) to Arri Standard mount. Use your favorite old lens and buy more film. Who knows you could be opening yourself up to a niche market that's very popular right now... the actual film look.

Even mushy 1080p from the t2i looks better than 8K/12k except for DR. The best tech from the past 5-10 years is IBIS. Any new full frame cameras have good 1080p raw without a crop?

@maxJ4380 love this shot. Nice color and sharpness. I like how you used the fence rails to add an even tighter window into the frame... especially with how busy the frame is... A window into chaos. It also looks like a frame right out of Yellowstone.