Trek of Joy

I said this a few days ago and I waivered a little bit yesterday but I think Canon really listened to the market here and once the FW update is released, early next year, this camera will be an all in one solution for many tasks. For your lower rent jobs, you have the 150mbps MP4, for the higher profile clients, you'll have the 302mbps XF-AVC (assuming they use the same as the XC10) and then for narrative, docs, and music videos you'll have Raw Lite. It seems like a great idea to me. Now even though I doubt I'll buy one, although I may rent it, I wouldn't need the full kit, so the 200B is even more appealing... 15 stops of DR at 12bit Raw with touch DPAF plus a plug in to edit natively in FCPX... all for $5999? I'm still surprised they even got this camera approved for production. 

Ehh, if you're happy with A-mount glass and the limited adapting options, the A99II is nice, but I'd still opt for the A7rII. The E-mount 35/1.4 (my favorite FE lens) is much better than the A-mount IMO, heck even the SigArt is better than the old Minolta 35 with a Sony badge on it - which has well documented weaknesses. You can go small/light with the A7 and something like the 28/2 or 55/1.8 - the A99II will always be bigger no matter what lens you stick on it. Sigma is going to produce E-mount lenses, some of their recent releases are not in A-mount, third parties dropping out is a bad sign for the future when new OEM glass is non-existent.
Sony is cranking out E-mount lenses pretty fast these days, the new 16-35GM and 12-24 will not be matched in A-mount. Neither will any of the other GM lenses for that matter. The older A-mount 2.8 zooms are good, but again Sony has left the A-mount lenses for dead. How long have people been begging to update the goofy screw drive AF on the 135/1.8 to no avail? The last A-mount lens was the 50/1.4 and the modest updates to the Zeiss zooms - which IMO were done to improve performance with the A7rII and future PADF E-mount cameras.
I spent some time tinkering with the A99II at some big camera stores in Japan and China over the last couple months, I really like the ergos of the A99 body, its the most comfortable camera in-hand I've ever used.
To answer the original question - insane. And this is from a former A99 owner. I sold it in part because of the lack of a truly outstanding 35. That and the shitty video. Slog3 isn't a reason to choose it over the A7rII either, Slog2 and even Cine4 produce better results. The A7sII is far cleaner at 3200 and above, and can focus in lower light. I'd run a A7rII/sII combo before A99 anything. Again IMO.
Cheers
Edit: After the A9/12-24/16-35gm announcements, I'm pretty much settled on heading back to the E-mount from Fuji, as Sony is clearly pushing tech to the next level while denying others its top sensors. Though I have no use for the A9's speed, the stacked sensor and new body (which I also really like) will surface in other models in the future. I find AF when recording to be very handy - mostly because I used "push auto" to set focus in the old Z1u days and that habit continues today. Plus its nice to be able to track subjects with AF and focus on other things - like not tripping over curbs and shit while walking. Until Sony resolves its AF issues with the A99II its not going to be an option for me.

Yesterday, I filmed part of a project with the Sony A7SII in Cine4.cine, which we use every day. I also produced many of the same shots using a new Sony A9 (standard color) that Sony sent us to evaluate (yay for Sony Pro Services). This was done in about 77º weather (f) and both cameras were in direct sun the whole time. No indications of overheating by either camera. 
You'll note a slight crop in the A9 image as its sensor is slightly smaller than the A7SIIs. Also, out of the box, the A9s skin tones are quite nice though highlight roll-off is pretty harsh given the lack of cinegammas. 
 

Gah, where's the 5Dc with all this...
Canon will sell a ton of these. Haters will still find ways to trash them. Panasonic's new camera had better be amazing or its going to be totally overshadowed by this. 

Love the C/Y Zeiss, the 28/2.8 is something special, its not 2.0, but its awfully sharp at 2.8, and Zeiss glass usually has better transmission than others at the sam aperture. The Hollywood 28/2 is even better, but that comes at a cost. The Nikon is nice too, but you get the wonky focus rings the go the wrong way. Right now all my MF glass is C/Y, but I love the Zeiss look. Cheers

Sony always seems to elicit the "great IQ, hate the shooting experience" posts, and I'm no different. But after tinkering with an A9, Sony finally got it right IMO - the stuff that needs dials is there, the record button is fixed, body egos are better, AF is next level amazing, IBIS is much improved over the A7mk2's and so on. When it trickles down to the A7s3/A7r3/A73, it will be very tough to choose m43 or Fuji over Sony. If the A9 were priced at the A7rII intro price of about $3200, I would have two right now and be back in the Sony camp.

Sony always seems to elicit the "great IQ, hate the shooting experience" posts, and I'm no different. But after tinkering with an A9, Sony finally got it right IMO - the stuff that needs dials is there, the record button is fixed, body egos are better, AF is next level amazing, IBIS is much improved over the A7mk2's and so on. When it trickles down to the A7s3/A7r3/A73, it will be very tough to choose m43 or Fuji over Sony. If the A9 were priced at the A7rII intro price of about $3200, I would have two right now and be back in the Sony camp.

*Image Processing by Nikon* would definitely make me take a second look at a phone.

Been saying for years, IMO, one of CaNikon's biggest blunders was holding onto compacts and ignoring the smartphone world, instead of getting in bed with Apple or Samsung and developing smartphone lenses and embedding color science into their phone processing. Cameras quickly became the most scrutinized feature of most phones along with the display. Huawei is making huge gains and their flagship has the Leica lenses - lending photo cred to a device by simply having name recognition and separating them from the rest. They don't even have an app to get the Cannon or Nikon "signature look", SMH.

Been saying for years, IMO, one of CaNikon's biggest blunders was holding onto compacts and ignoring the smartphone world, instead of getting in bed with Apple or Samsung and developing smartphone lenses and embedding color science into their phone processing. Cameras quickly became the most scrutinized feature of most phones along with the display. Huawei is making huge gains and their flagship has the Leica lenses - lending photo cred to a device by simply having name recognition and separating them from the rest. They don't even have an app to get the Cannon or Nikon "signature look", SMH.

@Andrew Reid
From where the industry is (and where it goes), Canon has nothing to do with entry-entry-entry level devices such camera phones. It's ok to have a couple of dead cheap compacts, just in case, but in a couple of years that won't even make 0,000001% (add zeros accordingly!) of Canon's net profit.
Canon has to move into mobile phone's territory, look at Leica and others, it is an industry they will never compete, it's better to get something -imagine a mobile phone "powered by Canon"- that will appeal to a lot of Canon lovers (and they are a bunch), than nothing to do at all, in the biggest retail industry in the whole world.
Also I doubt that alone, Canon can compete with the 90% (or something) of a Sony dominant market. Remember 2014's NX1 sensor? and CPU? and fast memory read out? I doubt that Canon has reached this level now, even 3 years later.
The Sony sensors are MANUFACTURED by Sony image sensoring division, are not designed by them, and why not utilize one of the few things Canon has a clear advantage against Sony? Canon without Dual Pixel would be nothing in 2017.
Anyway, we will see, we don't really know for sure any of these!!
 

There was some discussion about this in the XT2 thread. You may be seeing in-cam lens corrections not keeping up with what you're shooting. I've noticed it a lot when zooming or panning in the midday sun when out sightseeing. This happens shooting full manual. I use the 10-24 and 18-55 a lot and they both show this behavior.

I think another model with a 12MP sensor only makes sense if they upgrade the autofocus to match the A9 etc, otherwise what would be the justification for an (inevitably) more expensive model. There is no one snapping at their heels to keep prices down.
If they can read 20MP @ 25fps (as in the A9) then I guess maybe they could read 8MP @ 60 fps, and maybe (lineskipped) 2MP/HD @ 240 fps. The challenge though is writing this much data to the card.

Yesterday I was shopping in China with my wife and walked into a giant camera store - much to my surprise there was a A9 demo event. Despite not knowing anything being said from the Sony rep, everyone in the audience, or even being able to decipher the menus - it was awesome. The body improvements make it really feel good, more chunk in the grip, better control layout - lord the new record button is just great compared to the ball point pen tip they've used on every other e-mount body - and jeezus its fast. 20fps is not my thing, but the A9 is a beast. AF and tracking are next level for mirrorless - much better than anything I've seen from the EM1.2, XT2 and the A6500 or A7rII. Everyone in attendance shot stills, so when the rep reviewed images on a big 4k tv, I didn't see any video. If I had a spare card I would have shot some stills and tried to shoot video - they were letting people take away images, but the menus were in Chinese so I don't know if I would have been able to tinker with framerates and bitrates. Very cool though as this was the first time I've seen a camera pre-release like this.
Funny side note - a guy was pairing the A9 with his phone to download images and he knocked over a cup of water sitting on the counter next to the camera and it splashed the A9 body and a a6500/18-110 cine lens combo sitting on the counter next to the A9. A shop staffer gave him major stink eye as he wiped water off the everything, but the weather sealing did its job. That cine lens is sweet too.
 

Canon's Duel Pixel auto focus reliability FTW.  Anything else is a risk.  Also most "high end pros" do multiple takes on controlled shoots with multiply angle shots so I doubt they would care about auto focus too much unless it's follow focusing on a subject moving toward or away from the camera....even then I'd only rely on Canon's auto focus.  But the high enders are shooting on film, red, or arri.

It's not an either or situation...if you're shooting a commercial or a film, you would have a focus puller....you would, whether shooting on a GH5 or C100 or RED or Alexa have at least 3 in the camera dept not including the DP....when the crew cost is 100,000+ per day, telling me that AF missed my best take, is not an option...not snobbery or being pedantic....simply what is economically involved on some shoots compared to others...shooting corporate videos or documentaries or weddings are no less professional as people still get paid....perhaps the biggest difference is that now you're working with a crew of possibly 2 or 3 people (in the case of a documentary I may be short)...you control the edit and if AF misses in a few shots, you're not going to use everything you shot anyway...so a few misses can be worked with...to shoot a 30 second commercial with say half the day on a sound stage and 2 other locations, takes between 3 to 4 prep days...a shoot day between 12 to 16 hours (not flat!) and a wrap day....so...the AC needs a focus puller....the director wants his stuff in focus and the producer does not try to save $350 on the shoot day because it's ridiculous...the one scenario is no more or less professional than the other...what is different are the scales of economy...and of course there is one important factor not being mentioned so far (maybe I missed it)...as with all artistic positions nothing is cooky cutter...and pulling focus and developing a rhythm that works for the scene and making decisions as to when to blur the image, when to rack and when to stay sharp throughout the shot happens in real time...decisions being made between the DP, director and camera department...something AF simply can't do...and make no mistake...pulling good focus is a difficult job at the level of narrative...it requires an instinct for the speed the actors move through their marks and how you follow them on the follow focus and excellent eyesight...it is a precise and demanding job....especially shooting in unforgiving resolution...and lastly....if we're shooting in 24p, because that is the frame rate we are accustomed to in movie theatres...the motion blur we want to see, and yet we use AF which is always obvious to the eye...why not just shoot in 60p as it handles movement better and gives you more than twice the frames per second...so much better image...EXCEPT we want our stuff to look like what we saw in movie theatres when we were kids!...well, to some, the same applies with AF/MF...it's a question of creative choices, economic choices and finally practical choices (the delivery of the final product to client)...neither is superior to the other and nor are they replaceable....the one works where the other would not and vice versa.

I never said "high end" and that's a subjective term. Compared to an iPad, the RX100 is high end. Compared to a RX100, a C300 is high end and so on. And people earn income using both, so the definition of a pro is wide ranging. Nat Geo and Sports Illustrated shooters aren't using Arri's and Leica Cine primes - neither are most wedding and event shooters, they're shooting video with something that likely has AF. You're presenting a very narrow slice of the professional shooting industry, and that's part of my point, when people are dismissive of AF, they're ignoring the bigger picture.
And I'm not talking about asthetics, a look, or artistic expression or anything else beyond the fact people getting paid are actually using AF. Geez, I saw an episode of Diners, Drive In's and Dives being shot at a local restaurant a few years ago and the b-roll shooters were using 70d's and tapping the screens. Watch any reality show and you'll see AF in action. Canon C100/300's (and 5d's, 80'd's, A7s and so on) are being used to shoot commercials, TV shows, documentaries, web series, vloggers and so on, and yes people are actually using the AF when they shoot, despite the stream of "this could never be done with AF" samples. Just search eBay for C1/300 with the DPAF upgrade, if its never used, why did so many shell out the cash to get it? I'm not saying everyone is suddenly using AF exclusively because I try to not talk in absolutes, but to say "pros never use it" is condescending toward anyone that gets paid and does use AF. 
Today more content is being pushed onto Youtube than any other medium of delivery. Regardless of what anyone may think of that, its a fact. There are no concrete numbers, but its pretty easy to surmise there are far more people earning money shooting with AF cameras. AF tech and algorithms are moving at a pretty fast pace, it won't be long before they can pull off almost any shot. AF can easily track moving subjects while the camera is moving independently - like walk-and-talk gimbal shots, and the rest can still be done manually. When digital first hit the line was pros would never shoot digital. A decade later when the 5d2 blew up there was tons of dismissive talk about how pros use real video cameras. This stuff will never end...
Cheers

AF is a tool, choose to use it or not, but reading the condescending "pros never use AF" stuff gets old. I never understand the elitist attitude some have when people do things in a different way than what's been traditionally done. Some don't use AF because until recently it was complete shit or just not an option. Everyone can conjure up scenarios to show how MF can be superior, but then you're looking at things in a vacuum. Not everyone is shooting narrative on set, or shooting weddings and so on - though I know a few wedding shooters and they use AF a lot. I don't think most use it 100% exclusively. There are plenty of situations where AF is a big help, namely run and gun or small cameras on a gimbal. Watch the doc Cartel Land, most of it was shot with a C100/17-55 and it takes the term 'run-and-gun' to another level. I'm pretty sure Canon's C100/300's are marketed at professionals and have been very successful, and they're pushing DPAF pretty hard. 
Movie sets with dedicated focus pullers and cinema lenses with no AF are an incorrect parallel since there's no option to use AF and many of the cameras have no AF capabilities. That's like mocking a Prius for not being a good sailboat. But with small hybrid cameras and fly by wire lenses it can be very effective since MF is being handled by a computer while you spin the focus ring - so trying to repeat focus moves will not result in the same amount of ring movement and distance scales are an approximation.
Also focus peaking is not always 100% sharp, this can easily be seen when zooming to check focus - its close, but many times its not there. AF is getting better all the time and its moving at a pretty fast pace since that's an area that's driving competition. DPAF is special, tap the screen and it follows your subject. Sony's face tracking is pretty incredible - once they get "center lock" focus dialed on the video side you'll be able to track a single person or object regardless of what else enters the frame. It works great on the stills side. 
When I'm traveling and I shoot hundreds of stills a day along with a lot of video, most of the video I shoot is a clip after grabbing a few stills. AF makes life a lot easier. When shooting 2-cam sit-down interviews, everything is done manually. When shooting events (I don't shoot weddings - mostly corporate parties, fundraisers) I use AF a lot because it allows me to work faster, I don't think that makes me or anyone else less skilled, its just what works for me. I'm working on funding for two docs over the next year and they'll likely be shot with either Fuji XT2's or a combo of the A7rII and A7sII - and I'll be using AF and MF together. In the end its another tool to help get the job done, I'm glad I have the option. YMMV.

AF is a tool, choose to use it or not, but reading the condescending "pros never use AF" stuff gets old. I never understand the elitist attitude some have when people do things in a different way than what's been traditionally done. Some don't use AF because until recently it was complete shit or just not an option. Everyone can conjure up scenarios to show how MF can be superior, but then you're looking at things in a vacuum. Not everyone is shooting narrative on set, or shooting weddings and so on - though I know a few wedding shooters and they use AF a lot. I don't think most use it 100% exclusively. There are plenty of situations where AF is a big help, namely run and gun or small cameras on a gimbal. Watch the doc Cartel Land, most of it was shot with a C100/17-55 and it takes the term 'run-and-gun' to another level. I'm pretty sure Canon's C100/300's are marketed at professionals and have been very successful, and they're pushing DPAF pretty hard. 
Movie sets with dedicated focus pullers and cinema lenses with no AF are an incorrect parallel since there's no option to use AF and many of the cameras have no AF capabilities. That's like mocking a Prius for not being a good sailboat. But with small hybrid cameras and fly by wire lenses it can be very effective since MF is being handled by a computer while you spin the focus ring - so trying to repeat focus moves will not result in the same amount of ring movement and distance scales are an approximation.
Also focus peaking is not always 100% sharp, this can easily be seen when zooming to check focus - its close, but many times its not there. AF is getting better all the time and its moving at a pretty fast pace since that's an area that's driving competition. DPAF is special, tap the screen and it follows your subject. Sony's face tracking is pretty incredible - once they get "center lock" focus dialed on the video side you'll be able to track a single person or object regardless of what else enters the frame. It works great on the stills side. 
When I'm traveling and I shoot hundreds of stills a day along with a lot of video, most of the video I shoot is a clip after grabbing a few stills. AF makes life a lot easier. When shooting 2-cam sit-down interviews, everything is done manually. When shooting events (I don't shoot weddings - mostly corporate parties, fundraisers) I use AF a lot because it allows me to work faster, I don't think that makes me or anyone else less skilled, its just what works for me. I'm working on funding for two docs over the next year and they'll likely be shot with either Fuji XT2's or a combo of the A7rII and A7sII - and I'll be using AF and MF together. In the end its another tool to help get the job done, I'm glad I have the option. YMMV.

Used 5d4's are selling for $2750 on Fred Miranda. Personally I prefer the 5d form factor over the 1d - but that's a personal thing. A newer sensor, more MP, Clog, touchscreen and DPAF would make it a significant upgrade IMO.

Agreed! 

Used 5d4's are selling for $2750 on Fred Miranda. Personally I prefer the 5d form factor over the 1d - but that's a personal thing. A newer sensor, more MP, Clog, touchscreen and DPAF would make it a significant upgrade IMO.

Didn't check if the RAM is depleted when using Neat, but there ab-so-lutely is no real time, not with Optimized Media and not with viewer set to Better Performance. Render times are also the longest ever. I wouldn't use proxies for Neat, with noise being one of the things I wouldn't want to judge in quarter resolution. Proxies are better for multicam (you can check in preferences) or if you have to save disk space abroad. Otherwise (depending on CPU and Quicksynch or not) I'd use Original / Optimized. Note, that you can't choose to view one over the other once both appear in inspector under Available Media Representation. On the long run, ProRes will work better than H.264. If you are not only performing simple cuts.
A few more basic tips:
1. Watch One Smart Collection To Rule Them All. Since this MASTER ACCESS collection lives in the new library, you'd have to create it every time anew. To facilitate this, I made an empty library with just my OSCTRTA, I call it FILTER (german for filter) and exported an XML. You can download it here. You double-click it to open FCP X.
2. Learn shortcuts, also those for navigation. See Editing At The Speed Of Thought for inspiration, and imagine how long it would have taken if he had just used the mouse.
3. Use the new workspaces. I made my own ones. I resized the windows for Organize and Color & Effects (scopes opened, viewer very big). I even made my custom workspaces the default shortcuts (cmd shift 1 & cmd shift 2), but that's a "hack", I tell you only if you can't stand to have to use the menu anymore. 
4. Make your own shortcuts. Two I use very often are set volume to silence ("0" - zero) and automatic speed (conform clip framerate to project framerate, ctrl cmd r).
5. If you encounter any problems and you can't google them, send feedback to Apple. There are bugs, and there is no point in tolerating them.
 

A year ago I bought the biggest 5k iMac, with the fastest CPU and the biggest GPU - but I didn't yet upgrade the 8 GB RAM (wanted to do that with third party RAM, because it's cheaper). Biggest library contained roughly 1 TB of footage, biggest project since then was 18 minutes (not long, I know, but rather complicated with compounds and subtitles). Never felt a bottleneck. Until then, I used to have a 2009 MacPro with 32 GB RAM, eventually. At the time I built in the new RAM I expected a significant improvement, but there was none! I guess the main bottleneck of this computer was i/o. Couldn't go over ~ 200 Mbits read speed. For 4k, particularly with ProRes, it should be at least twice as fast. Check that (the volume with your footage).
In my experience, Neat is a real real time killer. Should you turn it off (the checkbox in inspector)? I wouldn't. I would make CC the last step in the workflow. After you locked the edit. You could then turn on background rendering, or, if there are not too many clips with Neat, render them individually.
Another trick for improving performance is to limit the number of clips your Mac has to access all at once. In the browser by filtering. I never see more than 50 clips, mostly much less. In the timeline by splitting up the whole into shorter sequences (=projects). 
"A five minute clip" looks short enough, indeed too short to structure it any further. But it can be advisable too. 
Maybe in part because the media management frightens them off?
 

Actually the reason i upgraded my ram to 32 Gb was the lengthy projects i work on (usually tv shows). If you are working on 5 min projects or Vlogs (and you have bkgr render off) you won't see any difference. Every time you are tweaking a single clip in any way, a low quality preview clip is loaded into ram to smooth out playback (background render does the same but using ProRes HQ or any other intermediate codec, so your memory gets full faster). When you are out off ram, for example on a lengthy project, FCPX is throwing these data on you hard disk and is streaming from there, so you are experiencing lags on your playback. It's easy to know when you need a ram upgrade and thats when you see your mac's performance slowing down as you are progressing with your project. 
& Also: Never leave Libraries loaded on your FCPX's browser. It's important to have a single Library (the one which you are working on) opened ONLY. These are data that are also loaded into your ram and slow down your machine for no reason.