BTM_Pix

Well it looks like Atomos and RED have settled the differences that I mentioned a few weeks ago with a royalty deal. It still doesn't specifically mention what IP of RED's that Atomos had been violating but it does seem widely accepted to have been to do with compressed RAW. Whether this means that prices of the Ninja V etc will increase or that Atomos absorbs the royalty figure from their profit remains to be seen. No word yet on whether RED have insisted on any alignment re-branding so that it would now have to become the Atomos DELTA FORCE OBLITERATOR MOTHERFUCKA to denote it using some of RED's technology. https://www.atomos.com/press-releases/atomos-and-red-are-pleased-to-announce-a-royalty-based-licence-agreement

Its a live command so doesn't actually change anything in the camera firmware (hence why you need to save it into C1, C2 etc to get it to persist when you switch the camera off) so I'm curious about this. Are you saying it only records the 9 minute clips when it is using Cinelike D or is it with all profiles? Is it the same length in both HD and 4K or is it that the file sizes are the same size in both and does it vary with compression setting? To restore it, you can either load a normal profile from the C memory or just use the html file here. GX800 TESTER V2.html

For some context, these are the trade in offers (including an additional bonus of £200!) that WEX sent out with the product announcement. The harsh reality is would I swap my D500 and £1759 for this camera? Very, very unlikely. When I look it in terms of adding another £200 to that £1759 and ending up with a Z6 and my D500, I'd upgrade that statement to absolutely no fucking chance whatsoever

I think they should definitely be pitching it more squarely at wildlife and drop the pro sports aspect of it. The sports stuff they have on the DPR site trailing it today is not going to inspire anyone. I saw your tweet about the lens the other day and I think that I might be able to make it par focal on the Pocket 4K......

The spec of that lens 150-400mm f4.5 would be interesting for FF if just a touch slow (Nikon and Canon's 200-400mm are both f4) but its not such a great story when you put it on an MFT camera, when it becomes an equivalent 300-800mm f9. Its not just reach that is required for shooting sport but also subject separation and that is going to be somewhat challenging with a maximum equivalent aperture of f9. Even looking at the reach, I'd have to say that 300-800mm equivalent is less attractive than it might initially seem, ironically because it probably has too much reach. I actually do use a Sigma 300-800mm but it is definitely a speciality lens that I primarily use for cricket or motorsport and very rarely for other sports. A starting point of 300mm is just too tight for most sports and whilst the extra reach is useful I would definitely trade 200mm at the top for 200mm at the bottom. So I have to say even if this lens was available from day one instead of a vague point that could be 18+ months after release then it still wouldn't be enough to make much if any inroad into breaking the Canon and Nikon stranglehold. If they'd turned up with a 100-200mm f2 or a 200mm f1.4 then it might be different but as functional as the body is it doesn't mean a great deal without the lenses when it comes to this niche area. The launch price here in the UK is about £600 less than the now reduced street price of the Sony a9 so if I was going to take a punt at a non-Nikon or Canon option for professional sports photography then I suspect I would spring the extra. My experience of the AF performance on adapted Canon lenses on E mount versus putting them on MFT would at least mean I had half a chance of being able to use the lenses I needed. But I'm not thinking of taking that punt and I doubt anyone else is either. None of this means the Olympus is a bad camera but it is certainly the worst option out there for the role that they are promoting it as primarily being for. If they want to do something different then I think they should look at making an enthusiast/prosumer/entry level broadcast MFT camcorder. They have all the component parts to make something that sits between the 1" models and the FS5 area. A version based on their 12-100mm lens would be appealing to many people I think.

Its about time we saw a new Hasselblad vlogging camera though as their last one was released 50 years ago. And people criticise Canon for slow product refreshes. Their solution to getting fluid stabilised shots by making the operator and the camera float was out of this world.

This is my view as well. The RED Motion Mount effectively simulated global shutter (as well as variable ND) and I'm again not sure the perceived clamour for global shutter translated into massive sales for them either.

I was at the Alhambra Palace just after Christmas and had to do a double take at one of the tourist parties being guided around as amongst all the iphones, GoPros and small DSLRs was a kid of about 16-17 wielding what I presume was his Christmas present. One of these... I see quite a lot of kids his age with old film SLR cameras but never seen one brandishing a 16mm movie camera before.

Nope, the core part is exactly the same. That file just has a few more items in it to test stuff for on the fly exposure changes for the GX800.

There are some interesting bits for the Micro that people have made using modified RC controllers. The Micro has a LANC port though and that is a serious omission on the Pocket4K as far as I'm concerned as it would make a very simple way for start/stop at least.

Don't drag me into it 99% of my time with this camera has been spent writing a controller for it rather than using it to make actual images so I can't really chime in with anything anywhere near authoritative on it as yet. I'm watching this closely though, as if enough consensus builds then I might actually add an option to interactively lock the ranges so that if you go from ISO1000 on the camera or the app it automatically goes to ISO3200 instead of ISO1250 and the same on the way down from ISO3200 to ISO1000.

Another update to keep things ticking over, this time about controllers. Currently, there are three wireless controller types as you can see here. Two of them are standard looking console style gamepad controllers but have fold out grips to hold the phone and their keys and joysticks are directly mapped to the camera's controls. They are slightly different sizes and the one on the left is holding the compact Pixi4 phone which as you can see is running in reduced interface mode. However, the important thing to note is that although the screen is running in reduced interface mode, the underlying focus and zoom controls can still be operated by the control pad. This is important when it comes to the very small control pad that you can see in the foreground, which is particularly intended for use with gimbals. When used with any of these controllers, the app acts as a central hub to receive the input from the control pads over bluetooth and then process them and pass them on to the camera. Although the image above shows the controllers with the smartphones in the cradles there is actually no need for them to be used in this way but it is there to illustrate how someone may use them if the camera is mounted on a crane or motorised slider or by a seconds operator etc where this RC style approach is very useful. Because of this hub mode, you can actually just leave the smartphone in your pocket and then with the small controller operate the camera from a gimbal or even just mount it on the handle of a rig or the arm of a tripod as though it were a dedicated hardware remote. The typical prices for the two larger controllers are around £20 and the small one is under £10. Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to the release next week.

They don't get a lot of love compared to the other brands and I've got absolutely no frame of reference to compare them against those myself. All I can say is that for me they are very smooth, pretty fast, imperceivable breathing, massive focus throw, heavy as fuck and the very antithesis of stealthy. So, all in all, a PL lens I was under the impression that they were re-housed Sigmas (the first RED zoom and the 300mm prime certainly are) but following this thread they appear to be Tamron and could possibly have had a smaller form factor if Mr. SHOCK AWE CAPITAL LETTERS STORM FORCE ALPHA MALE BIG TITANIUM SHIT WITH FINS ON hadn't have requested otherwise. http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=75054 EDIT>>> FORGOT TO ADD LINK !! http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=75054

25mm RED Pro Prime

Seems like a decent list to me !

A quick look at it in action from the final testing this week. This is it being used in the reduced interface mode (selectable on startup) which gives you the option to run without focus or zoom individually. The reduced mode is particularly useful for running on really small devices such as the Pixi 4 phone here whose reduced footprint makes them ideal for rail mounting for hands off side operation/monitoring of the camera settings.

Its the gateway aspect of the E mount that appeals. Leaving aside the additional similar options the E mount range offers to Nikon users, having access to the Batis range no longer means you have to get a Sony body to have Zeiss lenses with AF. The adapter itself is only a few mm deep anyway so if you put the EF lens adapter on it its a negligible difference between putting Nikon's FTZ adapter on the camera really. Being able to also use the TechArt PRO opens up a lot of possibilities for fast, affordable and very compact full frame M mount lenses from Voigtlander and 7Artisans (28mm f1.4 and 50mm f1.1 are less than £650 for the PAIR!) and of course gives them AF, again for similar overall footprint than the FTZ adapter. So whilst there is obviously a ton of wonderful Nikon glass out there it is worth bearing in mind that only 4 Nikon lenses will go directly on these cameras without an adapter and it is going to take them a long time before the majority of their most renowned ones are available in the native mount. Funnily enough, despite being so heavily invested in the Nikon system, its actually only the availability of this adapter thats slightly enthused me about buying one of the Z series !

You won't find it in the stock profiles, but if you would like to use Cinelike D and Cinelike V the instructions on how to enable it are here. Once you have enabled it, use the C1 etc profiles to save it so that you can recall it I have also attached the most recent version of the html file that you should use to implement it (ignore that its called GX800 TESTER as it will work for the GX80/5 as well) GX800 TESTER V2.html GX800 TESTER V2.html

I meant their E to Leica M one which you then use other dumb adapters on to also mount R, C/Y etc Useless for AFC but great for getting one shot AF for blind old gits like me !

That looks like the original TechART Pro stacked on it as well I'm presuming? Which would mean Z cameras have not only picked up the lens lineup of Sony and Canon but also have AF of a huge array of manual lenses. When you throw in the ProRes RAW output upgrade thats quite a week !

The other interesting yet seldom mentioned function it does is having the option to shoot in 1080p I was dragged along to watch Aquaman last week (pro tip, always go and see the 4dX versions of films you'll hate as at least you can enjoy the ride). I watched the credits to the bitter end because I was fascinated by how many people were involved in making it. I've tried without joy to find the figure online but I doubt a guess of 600-700 would be too far off. Sobering in one way but inspirational in another as just getting a 2 minute piece together as a one man band is a big achievement !

I'm going to make an analogy to recording music because it has already been through the democratisation (for want of a better word) process that film making is going through. This is a local band from my town making a half decent album in 1967. Great room, great mics, great mic placement. Because they'd got those aspects so right, it didn't matter anywhere near as much that they had such limited capabilities of a console like this to fix it in the mix. My phone has more recording and mixing capability than they had available there but unless I take that same approach to acquisition then I can tweak away forever without really being able to get anywhere near it. That isn't necessarily about having to have a world class room and world class mics but it does involve approaching the craft of it in the same way but also making an artistic decision about what it is you are trying to capture in the first place. The same is true for image making. I think it is great that we have the colour grading tools available to transform and even potentially rescue footage that you would ideally have shot under more controlled circumstances but I certainly hold with it being something to enhance or finesse a solid base. I actually find one of the Pocket4K's most interesting yet hardly ever discussed features is the ability to record with baked in LUTs as I think creating a virtual film stock and taking the time to learn its response inside out and making those commitments to the final vision when shooting will ultimately yield better and more consistent results over time than the time draining options of noodling around with RAW all day. To offer a parallel to this, for work I have to shoot jpeg with very limited latitude time or manipulation wise to make anything other than minor tweaks. Due to this, I have the same 'film stock' on the multiple cameras I'm using and I'm completely familiar and comfortable with how it will react to the multiple types of lighting that I have to shoot in in terms of colour balance and dynamic range, how far I can underexpose it to boost shutter speed etc so no image that comes off any of them is a surprise or a challenge to get it where it needs to be. As a consequence, images fly in and fly out with no delay, angst, analysis paralysis or regret. By contrast, if you give me a single RAW file, I can fuck about all day with it. Often with inversely proportional benefits.

The big problem with the immigration thing with respect to it being a reason for leaving the EU is that it is erroneously considered to be a thing in the first place. The UK, along with every other EU member, has always had the right to expel citizens of other member states after 3 months of economic inactivity. It has just never had the will, the means or the wit to do it and the more cynical amongst us would suggest why that fact was allowed to fly under the radar is that it better served the political purpose of some to weaponise immigration instead. Yet, somehow the anti-EU lobby managed to convince people that only by leaving the union would we be "taking back control" of something we always had control of anyway. As a result we've now got three million economically active EU workers in the UK (contributing around £2.3K each more per year to the exchequer than UK citizens by the way and providing 7% of our National Health Service staff) who have been portrayed as a "problem" to further the anti EU agenda and who have been made to feel about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. We'll need more of these mythical stronger border controls to keep these people in rather than out.

That link looks like it connects to your account admin page mate.

Accepting defeat and levitation is exactly what I've been trying to do by rising above the Brexit hysteria so you know how thats gone!