John Matthews

Redcode RAW was initially implemented in the early 2010s, but the filing was December 28th 2007. I imagine the patent will only last a few more years. This must have also played a role in the acquisition. Nikon will have a very short window to leverage it.

This or Jannard had really a short window to cash out his market advantage now .

Redcode RAW was initially implemented in the early 2010s, but the filing was December 28th 2007. I imagine the patent will only last a few more years. This must have also played a role in the acquisition. Nikon will have a very short window to leverage it.

I also read that Sony was fabbing their new sensors at TSMC, so its most likely a matter of patents, and not so much anything else.
These kind of monopolies, in general are bad. I suspect that they are among the reasons for the downfall of many companies that rely on such sensor makers, who restrict patent use (remember the debate, for the longest, that suspected that Panasonic was restricted in its access to PDAF, since it made video powehouses, and that's why we had the terrible Depth-from-Defocus (DFD), for the longest).
 

This is actually a great point. Maybe Nikon hopes to have more leverage in sensor negotiations with Sony or anyone else.

I think I know the reason, why Nikon bought Red. I'm very sure they did it just to piss this guy off. He sounds like someone just cut his mullet off. 😊 I like Mike. But seeing and especially hearing him was hillarious. "I am pissed."😂 He just bought an Epic btw.
 

No way is Nikon making a Burano type camera.  
 
Nothing will change at either company.  
 
A few years from now RED fold from stagnation or gets bought back by the owners and re-launches.  
 

RED's patent has stood up so many times in court, it is pretty much beyond doubt that it's valid for raw recording.
Nikon will be pleased to get that, as they can now force Canon into paying them royalties or choose not to license it at all, meaning Canon RAW has to come out of the entire Cinema EOS line and EOS R cameras, as it is internal compressed RAW.
Nikon also get their own Cinema EOS line now, a big presence in video and cinema with RED.
So the purchase makes sense, but it remains to be seen whether they will gain long term sales due to the threat to real-life filmmaking posted by AI production and cinema.
One day I think Sony will buy Nikon and ultimately control RED's product line.

I had a TM700, it was not all brilliant, fan noise was picked up by the mics, and the codecs were not great with quite a bit of compression artifacts noticeable, but was much better than most other options at that time.  The form factor though is definitely much better than using a photography camera for video.  I moved to a camera because they supported more formats, I wanted 4K but didn't want to drop back to 25P after 50P HD (in PAL land), and no camcorders in that sort of format supported 4K @ modern frame rates, and still don't.
Unfortunately there is no money in camcorders anymore for the likes of Sony or Panasonic to invest in the R&D to go into bringing anything new out in that form factor, the mobile phone killed them off.  The mobile phone has also killed off a lot of point and shoot cameras.
MarkusPix also loves small camcorders for all the reasons discussed here. 
 
 

Oh, I've imagined all kinds of things for it, but in the spirit of this type of camera itself (i.e. practicality), I don't expect to ever see them realized. I don't think they sell enough units to have multiple models in this space, so I doubt the XF400/XF405 will ever get direct similar-size replacement; the XF605 seems to be the replacement for both the XF405 and the bigger XF705.
Raw and global shutter would probably land flat on their face in terms of attracting the buyers of these types of cameras, who probably would be more interested in better battery life, better stabe, a longer and wider focal range, streaming and broadcast hookups, etc.

It's a great camera. Now, imagine it with global shutter and raw recording.

I added a "zoomy camera" to my quiver in 2019- the Canon XF405. Basically a bit chubbier version of the soccer-mom sized palmcorders being discussed here, with a top handle/XLR box (which comes off). 1" sensor, 25-380mm lens, C-Log3 was added via firmware about a year after which I was happy about. The XF fills a specific role in my kit and does it well- a small-enough-to-always-bring-it cam for three-point-handheld-with-the-EVF shots that need AF and smooth zooming during the shot, in good light, without a need for massive DR or super shallow DOF, in 4K60 to twin SD cards. Resolution is decent in good light, obviously doesn't match say my S5iiX's 6K-to-4K downscale FF mode, but it does look good cut with the 4K60 from APS-C mode on that camera (which is barely oversampled).
Of course I would love for it to be 10-bit and intraframe, have more external controls, be better in low-light, EVF could definitely be better, etc etc; but I'm happy with it for the $1800 I paid for it used. The XF605 checks some of those boxes for an upgrade but it's bigger than I want and still too expensive. Maybe in a few years when used prices drop.
The HVX/HPX/etc are still so popular with skaters/action-sport folks because they render motion so well (CCD=global shutter), there are workable fisheye adapter options for them, and they're pretty cheap nowadays which is important when your cam is often in physical danger (dropped when filmer falls while follow-filming, or cam gets kicked/hit, etc).

I would hope so but possibly/probably too late for me as I don’t have the luxury of waiting to find out as I need to work this year, last year and the year before within the system.
I’m not being in any way facetious John as I am sure you will appreciate, but it doesn’t help with most/any manufacturers in this industry who play their cards quite close to their chests before suddenly announcing, “ ta da, our latest lens”.
Brand specific strategic planning isn’t always easy when you have such specific needs as I have!
Did I make a mistake going L Mount?
Kind of, but then there weren’t any other real viable alternatives at that time…but at the same time, any/all could provide what I needed, but it’s really only in the last couple of years that the really niche items that work for me, have come into existence.
A long, relatively lightweight and compact at least APSC, but preferably FF fast zoom. Tamron E Mount. Only player on the planet!
There’s workarounds of course, but it’s complicated and niggles with every system and combo, but E Mount adapted to Nikon Z is I think, a bit special. For my needs.
I’m happy with all my kit for 2024. It is easily the best set up I have ever had. EASILY.
Could it be better?
On paper spec-wise maybe but not by much and for me going forward and making any changes for 2025 and onward, it would have to be because it is at least; smaller, lighter, even more ergo friendly and without sacrificing any performance…and possibly gaining some.
Such as my interest in 60mp+ sensors and 6k 50p internal, because that opens up opportunities to carry less bodies, smaller and lighter lenses, compensating with cropping and pulling stills from video.
Leica SL3? In my dreams… The simple reality is the maths doesn’t work even if I had the beans…and a crucial lens is still missing from that line up.
S2H could change things, but the glass for me will always be the sticking point for me with L Mount in the future. Or rather the combo of bodies and lenses.

Oh I get it Kye. I’m just musing along various trains of thought more than anything but always with at least a nod to the OP and the post.
For sure if I did not need to earn a living from my kit, OM-1 with 12-40mm f2.8 would be my one and done right now.
Something longer I keep on a shelf but bring to that safari adventure, but otherwise, other than the lack of dual ISO, it’s a brilliant little thing.

Yeah, but remember, our situations have almost nothing in common.  You're shooting dreamy images for someone else to pay you money and doing so in a situation where you're expected to be taking up space and using as impressive a camera setup as possible.  I am shooting environmental images for myself in situations where I'm discouraged from taking up space and where having the smallest possible setup is to my advantage.
As far as my understanding goes, if I was doing what you do then I'd also have the same thoughts as you.  I imagine that if you were doing what I do then you'd also understand why I have the priorities that I do.
It's easy to look in at a situation from a distance and see enough of it to have a good overview, but to be far enough from the details that the subtleties aren't apparent. 
The FF user telling the MFT user who wants small cameras that FF is just as good as MFT is like the cinematographer telling the wedding shooter that an FX9 is just as good for shooting wedding videos as a mirrorless, and completely missing that the price, size, weight, workflow, and a dozen small details make the proposition impractical at best.  The comparison probably isn't bulletproof and you could probably find weaknesses in it, but I've had enough issues in the field with the size of my XC10 and GH5 that I can pretty confidently say that the considerations involved are real, even if they aren't obvious to outsiders.  I mean, the other recent thread from @John Matthews was about cameras substantially smaller than the GX85!

Not really.
All I want is a GX85 with a modern sensor, so Dual ISO and higher DR.  
I don't need / want LOG, 10-bit, 422, ALL-I, RAW, PDAF, a flippy screen, dual card slots, 6K or more, mic-in, etc, etc, although if they came with no penalties then I wouldn't hate having them.  In the real world though, they do come with penalties - huge ones (see rant at the end of this post).
Absolutely.
Yeah, this thread was more of a temperature check, just to make sure there wasn't something I'd forgotten, and to have another thorough think-through of it.
I'm not sure I'd swap to another system right now even if it was free.
The GX85 with 12-35mm still feels on the large side, so casually stretching to something 50% larger isn't a casual proposition at all.
That's my feeling too.  
Panasonic has said there won't be more compact cameras, but has also said over and over that they're fully behind MFT, and having spent a long time developing the dual-gain PDAF sensor in the GH6 it would be pretty easy for them to capitalise on that investment by doing refreshes of the rest of the lineup.  Hell, even if things trickled down and they released a GX camera with the sensor and processors from the GH5, that would be a good outcome for me.
I'm actually deeply suspicious about the current size comparison between MFT, S35, and FF cameras, and how they're all a similar size and weight.  The FF bodies with IBIS do tend to be heavier, but are the same size, and something smells fishy to me.
If a sensor is smaller then it takes less power to run it, and it takes FAR less power to move it around for IBIS.  The sensor is also a lot lighter, and the IBIS motors will be dramatically lighter.  This means that if all else was equal the batteries should be smaller or last longer, and the internals should be smaller and lighter.  I understand that the screen is independent of sensor size, as are lots of other things in the camera, but when combined with a smaller sensor with a lower resolution the processors should be smaller.  The camera module from the iPhone is practically microscopic.
BUT, that's not what we're seeing.
I suspect it's a combination of lowered IBIS performance (the motors not being able to move as fast or as far, but no technician out there will get their shit together and actually make a test setup for this), combined with the manufacturers just not trying, which I think is quite sad.
What this means in practice though is that it should be easily possible for a GX sized camera with modern components and design to offer a serious challenge to the specs of the larger S35 and FF cameras.
Now I've moved to zooms, I seem to be swimming against the prevailing winds of the camera market once again.
I want MFT zooms to be F2.8 or slower, a standard 3x (~24-70mm) or 10x zoom ratio, and as small as possible.  I'd be happy if the attempts to make them smaller meant that they were 12MP or less in resolution.
Instead, the market has put making the fastest and sharpest lenses known to man as the first priority, relegating size to third priority (there is no second priority), and because everyone is shooting wide open they've managed to get the whole industry to basically stop discussing anything else except 150fps animal-eye-detect focus performance.
When I think about a FF camera with an F2.8 lens I think of it having too shallow DoF for my compositions, and by the time I stop it down I now need the second base ISO just to give it a normal exposure after the sun has gone down.  
It's been a long journey for me, but now MFT seems to be the sweet spot of DoF and exposure to create the right aesthetic in a sensible amount of light, which makes the AF performance far less critical, and when combined with a 4K sensor the data rates aren't stratospheric, the lenses can be budget friendly, you can do it on affordable SD cards internally, making the whole camera package smaller.  ....not to mention you don't need a supercomputer to edit the footage.
The "better" cameras on the market seem to have "improved" every aspect, but the challenge is that when you "improve" one aspect you make all the others far worse, in a never-ending game of "one step forward, six steps back, and how will you be paying for this today sir?".

I think the closest that you're going to get with that will be the Sigma contemporary range.
They are behemoths compared to what you can get in MFT but, actually, when you line it up against an MFT package of actual equivalence (or slightly less in this case) then the story changes.

Its just that with MFT you have the option and thus far in L mount then you don't.
Unless....
You don't mind sacrificing a daft amount of money and going APS-C and picking up the Leica range that they made for the TL and CL which are very compact indeed.

Leica have abandoned APS-C and Panasonic seem content to sit either side of it with their MFT and L mount so it might be a place that Sigma could carve a niche for themselves with an APS-C body, particularly as they have an excellent set of fast primes and a zoom for it.
With the trials and tribulations of them trying and thus far failing to make a full frame Foveon, it could well be that it would find a home for an interim APS-C version in a rehoused Fp. 
Realistically, though, the only current way to get pancake-ish full frame in L mount is to go for the manual focus route of using M mount on them like I've done on mine here with a 35mm f2.

As @MrSMW has just posted, the E mount system is currently better served with compact FF lenses particularly in regard to 3rd party manufacturers like Samyang.
The closed shop nature of the L mount alliance (in terms of electronic lenses at least) is definitely a hindrance in that regard.

That would be interesting as they stated officially there would be no more small (or compact anyway) cameras.
But there are indeed some very valid FF body/lens combos now that are not exactly massive and bigger/longer lenses can be compensated for with cropping, ie, larger sensors and AI etc...
Sony A7RV for instance is basically the same weight as my S5ii and Z6ii, but smaller and with 2.5x the sensor size.
They can be had for a little over 3k euros from reputable dealers with warranty used in 'like new' condition and when you compare it size-wise with say the OM-1 M4/3 camera, it's spec and real world capability are just nuts.
With E Mount, there are also the largest range of smaller lenses from any other FF manufacturer.
I went Z6ii with Tamron 70-180mm f2.8 myself as the best compromise of cost vs size/weight vs outright ability for my needs, but could easily have made a case for the A7RV with the Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 which in APSC mode produces a more detailed 26mp file at an equivalent focal length around 40-110mm so a bit shorter, but I could make that work because I could crop a bit harder still and really, only I would know.
M4/3 is up against it IMO though. Always has been. Ever more so. It's advantage was size & weight (or lack of) and with older stuff, that can still be the case, but the move forward that many have needed on the tech side, have come at the cost of it's primary appeal.
APSC is still a good shout though with Fuji and Sony leading the way. Canon I don't think have the lenses and no one else is really in the game.
Sometimes, a clean sheet is the answer, but for most of us, pro or otherwise, we can't easily do that.

Invariably, the conversation goes to FF. Personally, I thought about that Sigma FP and Panasonic 28-200 (with IS). That combo seems super versatile now. Size-wise, the FP is the size of a mid-range MFT camera. The equivalent of the Panasonic lens would be a 14-100 f/2-2.8 zoom, which would be incredible. The package would come in at 830-ish grams.
I've always thought this: if L-mount comes out with smaller pancakes and a few reasonably priced very small bodies, MFT would be on a path to obsolete. Until then, MFT cameras will continue to make decent strides in terms of features and at least on the used market, their prices continue to rise- the true indicator of a camera's value.
On a side note, I'd wait because there have been reports on a small Panasonic camera is in the works. My bet is that it will have PDAF and some other decent features. This could be more than a year away though.

The new 28-200 is roughly the same size and weight as the 20-60mm so it is a lot more balanced to the Fp.

It has a a great range and having the OIS offers an interesting proposition of it turning the Fp into a very compact Cinecorder.
However, it is very, very slow on the long end though, particularly for only 200mm.
Not that ultra shallow depth of field is the be all and end all of course but f7.1 is a bit of a stretch.
Of course the swing to that particular roundabout is that you don't have to worry so much about the camera not having sentient AF !

Well, that rules them out, which is unfortunate.
Yeah, it has to be MFT.  Not only to share my existing lenses with the GX85, but also because the FF lenses are gargantuan in comparison and pretty sparse really.
Not only would it be too large (and "Smallest" is literally the first word in the title of this thread) but compatibility is another whole thing that just isn't a factor when sticking to a single lens system.
Yeah, it's just the frustrations of when I hit its limitations, which when I'm travelling is a multiple-times-per-day sort of thing, and is often in a that-would-have-been-the-killer-shot-from-this-location-but-the-camera-couldn't-do-it sort of way.
I'm fully aware that I want a camera that can do a wide range of things very very well, but you can't fault someone for trying to improve things.  The thing I find fascinating is that even if I had a million-dollar budget for a setup, I still couldn't get what I want.

Not a single Olympus or OM System camera has dual ISO. None. Otherwise, the best Olympus camera for the size is the OM-5 or E-M5 iii.

It's in that camp with the GH5 as being on the large side..  Realistically, I like the GX85 but just want some upgrades in DR and low-light, and in the absence of that existing I've worked out that I could have two setups, one for running around and one for slower situations where I don't have exactly the same requirements.  
So the GH5S is better than the GX85, but is larger and has worse DR than the P2K, so it's sort of wins and losses in comparison.  Considering I already own a GH5 and a P2K, it's a tough sell to buy a whole new camera for essentially no net benefit.
I know very little about Olympus lineup and was secretly hoping that someone would go "there's always the Olympus XYZ - it's perfect!"....  what models might suit?

10-bit is always better than 8-bit, and 4:2:2 is always better than 4:2:0, but the question is if that difference is actually visible / meaningful.  If you're doing very little grading in post then 8-bit vs 10-bit and 4:2:0 vs 4:2:2 probably doesn't have any visible or meaningful difference.
But I suggest doing a test.  Just find a bunch of scenes around the house (or not out of the way) and shoot the same composition in each mode and then just load them up side-by-side and look at them.  If the 8-bit 4:2:0 shot doesn't make your stomach turn then just go with it.
In the end, if you can lessen the impact or eliminate overheating, that you can lessen or eliminate the impact of running out of SD card space, then that means you can relax more while recording, you could shoot more, you can have extra time and energy and headspace that was previously devoted to worrying about or managing these things.  If you can have more headspace and be more relaxed while shooting then the way you use the camera, and the way that you behave while recording will be better.  If you behave better then what is in front of the camera might also be better.
So, realistically, the option is potentially of having a very slightly worse recording of potentially much better material.

It would seem a "small" camera doesn't exist without forgoing one of the items listed above. I agree with Matt. It would be the GH5S because IBIS isn't one of the things you listed.