zerocool22

No way it has all the best features and also undercuts S1ii price. My guess is no ibis, not class leading af, and the evf is sold separately to make the total price higher than the S1ii. However, if it delivers on good image quality, low rolling shutter, small body with evf option, I would still be excited. It would be great to have a tiny, light body for hiking but have the option of an evf.

The rumours seem promising. Still no word on IBIS though.
I owned an OG Fp briefly as I fancied experimenting with Raw video, but ultimately didn't have the patience. It was quirky, small and light but the lack of IBIS and a tilting screen frustrated me.
It'll be interesting to see what Sigma do. If it uses the S1 II sensor, I certainly hope Sigma's processing for any compressed codecs will be better and more organic looking than Panasonic's current offering.

Not film specific, but a great way to think about business things is the sales funnel.  There's lots of versions of it, but the one I like is this:
1) Marketing - making people aware of your business / services / products
2) Sales - actually selling something to someone
3) Delivery - giving the customer what they paid for
4) Invoicing - getting them to pay you (assuming they don't have to fully pay up front)
5) Re-sales - selling something else to your previous customers (they bought from you once, so may well do-so again)
The reason I bring this up is that there's a critical difference between marketing and sales.  Marketing is generally done in bulk where whatever the customer is seeing isn't customised for them (think ads, fliers, etc), whereas Sales is often done person-to-person and so can be customised to what will help them specifically.  In this sense, the job of Marketing is to make contact with potential customers as quickly as possible, because only then can you start addressing their specific needs.
The purpose of social media in all this is Marketing, which is generic, and should do whatever is required to get them to contact you and not do anything else.  For example if you say you provide corporate videos but don't outline the details then maybe they contact you to discuss, but if you provide tonnes of info about it then maybe it's not quite right for them and they think you can't / won't provide what they want specifically and they never contact you.
In this sense, having an Instagram that says what you do, gives a few examples to show the quality, and encourages them to contact you, might be far superior to an endless stream of great looking images that aren't quite what they want.

With 10 years experience in the industry, you should start by reaching out to all the clients you worked with in the past, who you feel like you delivered great content to, and who you have built a good relationship with, no?

If the h265 is still 4:2:0, of what use is this slightly different log profile?

Funny that sony raises prices and blackmagic cuts prices. Allthough for me with the storage space costs at the moment. Braw isnt cutting it. It is better then h265, sure. But I just cant justify the storage costs. I wished they included compressed prores again. 
Love blackmagic though, it has an amazing look. I think I owned lost of their cameras until the pyxis. But its shitty on gimbals, and storage adds up, not as much as the nikon zr though. I hope nikon announces good news on IBC in a couple of weeks. My c500ii will do for now.

Funny that sony raises prices and blackmagic cuts prices. Allthough for me with the storage space costs at the moment. Braw isnt cutting it. It is better then h265, sure. But I just cant justify the storage costs. I wished they included compressed prores again. 
Love blackmagic though, it has an amazing look. I think I owned lost of their cameras until the pyxis. But its shitty on gimbals, and storage adds up, not as much as the nikon zr though. I hope nikon announces good news on IBC in a couple of weeks. My c500ii will do for now.

Do a ‘spec’ job for a non-profit that has board members with deep pockets and active businesses.
Do something simple and over deliver.  Make a great first impression.
It’s just networking and word of mouth. 

Hi guys,
So I finally quit my job and decided to start my own video agency. After 10+ years of experience in video (allthough the last 6 years or so after having children the pacing was lower then before but I’m taking the leap and going all in.
There’s just one small problem:
I currently have 0 clients.
I’ve got the experience, the gear, a maybe dated portfolio and I know how to produce videos from start to finish. But now I need to turn that into an actual business, and preferably make it work pretty quickly.
So I’m curious:
What actually works in 2026 to get your first clients? Cold outreach? Networking? LinkedIn? Instagram? Agencies? Referrals? Something completely different?
I’d especially love to hear from people who recently started a creative business or agency and managed to get clients without already having a massive network.
Thanks a lot!

I love the sigma 30mm f1.4. When I was using the GX80, it was pretty much the only lens I used. 
 

Thanks, yeah I can fix it in post with optical flow in davinci resolve, but I often just deliver my footage to production houses, so I sometimes even feel emberassed as I can see it. And I am afraid it may hurt my business. When walking forward I almost never see the issue. Only when doing a kind of slider shot. Moving left to right  without even taking a step.

Hi,
I am thinking if I need Ibis or not in my camera's. I think it introduces some kind of jitter when panning the camera or when on a gimbal doing slider movements.(even when ibis is turned off, the sensor might correct/wiggle).
Anyhow it is driving me crazy. I see it on a lot of online videos as well, and they all say it is perfectly stable while it def is not. Or might be stable but there is some kind of jerking going around.
I don't have an non ibis camera around that I can mount to a gimbal to compare directly (c500ii is too big).
Can someone confirm this is the case? And this is the reason why there is no ibis on most cinema cameras, as the sensor will always be floaty?
 
Thanks!

Thanks for the honest take and rig photo.  I can see how ZR probably isn’t ideal once you build it out like that. 
I’m also a bit skeptical about the cinema positioning. Nikon pushes R3D hard, which is great for high-end grading, but H.265 should be solid and dependable at this level, not an afterthought.
Hopefully some of this improves via firmware. Better bitrates, cleaner encoding, more mature UI. The FX3 launched pretty bare and evolved a lot over time, so there’s precedent.
For me, the appeal of the ZR is the ultra-compact body with that big screen. I wouldn’t want to over-rig it. On bigger sets with serious monitoring needs, I'd say something more modular like the C50 makes more sense.
I've decided to rent the C50 to see if it really meets my needs in client situations. Wish I could do the same with ZR but it isn't available for rental around here.
Really appreciate you sharing the unfiltered experience. It helps a lot. 

Lately I’ve been thinking about how fast new cameras and lenses come out, and it made me wonder, do these companies actually realize a large portion of the world (especially here in the U.S.) is feeling some real financial strain right now?
Between rising living costs, inflation still lingering in daily budgets, and shoppers saying they plan to cut spending because things are less affordable, people in many income brackets are tightening their belts rather than splurging.
At the same time, camera gear prices keep going up, with manufacturers leaning heavily into higher end products and even having to increase prices due to tariffs and costs and used gear demand is surging, which suggests many photographers are turning away from new purchases and toward more affordable options.
Meanwhile the constant cycle of marketing, hype, and new products can get overwhelming. It starts to feel less like “new tech we need” and more like noise pushing us to buy things even if budgets are tight.
I’m curious, do you think camera companies are aware of this, or does it not matter to them because their target audience is high end buyers? And has the constant churn of new gear given you a kind of “second hand fatigue” not necessarily because you want nothing new, but because it feels relentless and disconnected from what most people can realistically afford?

I will wait until nikon fixes the h265 codec on the zr. Then I will buy it, I just can't shoot RAW video all the time.  the ibis I can work around, the AF seems pretty good, the image is gorgeous, not the fastest for photo's but for travel it looks like a dream camera (if they fix the h265 codec). 

Well for me it is taking me out of the film right away. I feel there is something off in each shot. ( color, dof, detail, dynamic range, bad lighting,...) So for each their own I guess, but this is not for me. As I am constantly wondering why each shot looks off and that is keeping me off the story.. (not sure if people with no film experience can spot it, I think they can). But just my 2 cents. The only film I ever saw that kinda worked that way was "the blair witch project" but they tell you in the first minute. This is the footage of some students that went missing in the woods" so I could give it an place.

Oh shit, I have too many cameras.

I'd still put the Lumix S5 as one of the best values when it comes to used full frame cameras. I know with the S9 being so cheap, and having notable benefits like better AF, some might opt to go for that instead but I think the image quality is nicer, and I prefer the size for handheld shooting, especially with larger lenses. It's also compatible with the XLR1.

A lot of this criticism assumes that value only comes from personally inventing things or never having bad ideas. That’s not how execution works.
Ideas are cheap. Execution is what matters.
Plenty of people had ideas about reusable rockets, EVs, satellite internet, or brain–computer interfaces long before Musk. What almost no one managed to do was turn those ideas into working, scaled systems in industries where startups usually fail.
SpaceX didn’t win because Musk designs fuel tanks. It won because it executed faster and cheaper than legacy aerospace giants with decades of experience. Tesla didn’t invent EVs, but it forced the entire auto industry to electrify years earlier than planned. Starlink is the largest satellite constellation ever deployed, providing connectivity where no real alternative existed.
Yes, he has bad ideas. Every aggressive executor does. The difference is that his companies survive them and still outperform competitors.
You don’t have to like Musk — but dismissing his role because he isn’t the inventor misses what execution actually means.

I think people see politics these days as a form of show-biz entertainment soap opera drama, what a surprise they are going to get when the frogmen smash their door in next.

Yeah I hope canon, sony or panasonic would just buy up ARRI just for its patents. Like Nikon did with RED (the nikon ZR looks amazing). If somebody would buy up ARRI and trickle down their patents in a 2K body they would own the filmmaker space and these camera's would fly off the shelves. (Event video etc might be a different game, where fast AF is more important, but heck these big 3 companies already have decent enough AF today as is). 

But sadly also a sign that the old ways of working is done for. AI will eat lunches, social media has killed traditional video jobs (artfull and skillfull). watching TV has declined, watching slop filmed with an iphone with crazy transitions and bad lighting has become the norm. (as it feels more real to the consumers, and I get that, but also sad to see jobs, careers and also art plummet). Even the actual movies that are being release over the last 15 yeras have been disneyfied. (cute animal, jokes, woke characters, ...) Not sure if anyone watched the new predator movie. The beginning of the film was great, and the ending was great, but man the middle part with bud, woke synthetics and the friendship arc just sucked. 

If Panasonic would wake up, they could be the ones to get their hands on Arri.
They already have a collaboration for the color profile, and Panasonic no longer has the professional division.
But, as you say, the old Japanese guys have completely lost their minds.
Could it be a Chinese company that pulls off the big coup?
 

R63 is looking good here in terms of colors and texture. It is not going to set any records for DR, but it has a nice filmic noise pattern and the DR is perfectly fine for its class. It would be a great camera to carry around town, especially if you are already in the Canon system:




 
 

Wedding seems like of one the safe plays right now. People who want to get married still want actual photo/video.

Ticking along but still here after 25 years comprising approx the first 10 as a photographer and the last 15 as a hybrid shooter in the wedding industry.
5 more years to go and then I will be packing it in out of choice.
In the meantime, just have to make sure I keep my head above water and not overly concerned in that regard as neither AI nor the wannabes can do what I do. Yet, as far as AI goes anyway...
Seen a lot of changes but no real challenges as such and for whatever reason, I just seem to have been in a place where I can just tick along and by 'tick along', I don't mean cruise, because I am always working at it and on it. Rather I just don't feel the need to follow every trend and possibly because of that, why I have remained pretty constant whilst I have seen so many come and go.