BTM_Pix

This is a comparison that I did between the internal CDAF of a Pocket 6K versus the lens being driven directly (although it uses the same internal motors) by an AFX. It highlights the general speed issues with CDAF in lower light and lower contrast situations of course but also on when the lens is being driven from near to close targets and its these which are most likely to cause it to not lock and to give up the ghost completely. Despite Panasonic's interpretation being a lot better it can still have these issues in my experience. PDAF isn't immune from this stuff either and in the S5ii which uses a combination of both PDAF and CDAF I've had it struggle in lower light. Low light or absolutely no light doesn't bother a LIDAR based system like the AFX in the slightest of course 😉 As I've said numerous times, the fully sentient AF system doesn't exist and an operator chosen combination of AF-S, AF-C and manual focus is still the one that yields the best results.

I used the Animal Eye AF on my S5ii the other day for the first time and whilst it was reliable in stills, in video it was certainly less so as these frame extracts show. When it worked, it worked well. But in a lot of cases it preferred his nose. This was with the Panasonic 85mm f1.8 so there isn't a massive margin for error but it also has to be said that Rolo is what can politely be described as a lazy little fucker so he's not exactly doing a lot of leaping about to overly tax the detection and tracking. Maybe it thought his nose was a built in Owl and it was picking up its eyes.

What was the problem with the Pocket 3?

The price for a brand new one and going to the correct counter at the airport and declaring it to customs is £630 versus £899 in a UK store so its still a massive saving. And I always go to the correct counter ... Funnily enough, the new ones seem to have gone short supply there too and I'm wondering whether its to do with them bundling them with the S9. The S9/28-200mm bundle works out at a fully legal import price of £1524 versus the S9 body only price in the UK of £1499. Thats a lot of lens for £25 ! For anyone who is looking for the S9/28-200mm bundle without the travel and who don't mind a dealer who is a "parallel importer" then Cotswold Cameras have the bundle for £1699 https://www.cotswoldcameras.co.uk/Panasonic-Lumix-S9-Digital-Camera---28-200mm-f-4-71-Macro-OIS-Lens-Black I have never dealt with them so have no idea about dealing with them but the Trustpilot reviews are here. https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/cotswoldcameras.co.uk It not until December so I should be able to comment on its weather resistance (or not!) too.

I read the title and thought your S5ii had been naughty. On my next holiday, I’m taking the camera and buying the lens when I get there. So, I’ll be taking the Sigma Fp and buying the Panasonic 28-200mm lens for the typical used price in Tokyo of around £400. The big draw for the Fp is that this lens is optically stabilised and is an appropriate size for it. It’s not the fastest but that keeps the size down and it’s a great range for travel. The beauty of the Fp is the modular nature so I can take off the EVF to strip it down to go with a couple of the fast compact M mounts I’ve got that I’ll take as well. Incidentally, for anyone interested in this lens and the S9 then Panasonic are bundling them together and the lens then works out at around £400. Like with the Fp, that’s a good package for a full frame roll your own cinecorder.

It means someone or something is unrecognised or unsuccessful to the extent that, for example, they could run stark bollock naked down the high street without garnering any attention or interest. So, all about irrelevance rather than immunity for US Presidents.

The newer pro camcorder versions of the FZ such as the HC-X2 have internal 4:2:2 10 bit now. Yeah something more like the XC10/15 lens range with the internal 10 bit 4:2:2 would be eminently doable for them. But they won’t because they hate us 😉 Panasonic did actually release a new bridge camera this week though (FZ82D) but they’ve gone with a 2/3” sensor and a quite insane 20-1200mm equivalent lens! I doubt it signals a refresh of the FZ200/2500 but you never know.

They'll be on a hard drive but I wouldn't hold your breath as both the drive and the camera are in a different country than I am and won't be to hand for a good few months.

Controversial 😉

I was using the 200 mbps HD intra for these which gives the added bonus of extra at the wide end and a lot more reach at the tele end. And the stabilisation is easily good enough to hand hold even at 500-600mm equivalents. The amount of different shot size coverage you can get out of this camera as a consequence is ridiculous.

The only comparison that we all really need to do is of footage that we make from cameras that we own and of what other people are making with it. If theirs is better then the camera isn’t the problem and we should stick with what we have until we can make ours as good. And then don’t think of “upgrading” until we do. With any camera from the past five years (at least), the ceiling that we hit is usually our own capability rather than that of the camera. And, yes, I am absolutely flat broke after not being able to follow my own advice on this !

And yet the FZ2000/2500 that is the camera for ticking every single one of these boxes can’t get arrested. Same sensor size as the Super 16 film format that was used in classic BBC travel docs such as Palin’s Around The World In 80 Days but with an optically stabilised zoom with a huge range, internal ND and without the flightcases. Cheaper than the iPhone as well.

As well as the add on wide angle and anamorphic lenses, it does have a decent virtual zoom with a good ergonomic operation using the thumbtack. Its range is dependent on your resolution of course but for the purpose as a travel camera its pretty good.

It is a bit of mystery, especially with the option of the magnetic mount anamorphic lenses and ND filters. Feels like there was much nicer stuff being made with the first one but you could argue that the GH cameras have followed a similar curve in absolute terms.

Then the little cheating fat bastard is dead to me now 🙂 I was watching it and at about 750m thinking "nah he's going to have to try another day" and then he just crowd surfs his way to the front. What a moment. He has another shot today but honestly I just hope he can hang on to the end of the race as the last stage is an individual time trial from Monaco to Nice and he deserves what will effectively be a 33km lap of honour. I might not be able to resist the urge to head down there to see it in person.

Obviously, England are being run by a manager that is so risk averse that here he is taking a bath so, the overhead kick aside, we are an insomniac's best friend and stinking the tournament out.

That was some display of Main Character Syndrome by Ronaldo last night though taking every single free kick and then the penalty though. It was very weak and potentially catastrophic from Martinez not to substitute him at half time of extra time after the penalty miss when he clearly had become an emotional wreck. You could argue he got redemption in the end scoring one in the shootout but it was really horrible as a neutral watching him fall apart like that so God knows what impact it was having on his team mates. The brilliance of Costa dug Martinez out of a big hole. I wouldn't be starting Ronaldo in the next game as his body isn't responding to him any more. The talismanic effect of having him in the team has been lost if he's seen to crumble like that and make it all about him. France are not hitting any heights in this tournament so I think you have a reasonable chance of overcoming them but you can't do it with a passenger.

It shouldn't be beyond the means of Panasonic to create a hotshoe mounted 9 axis IMU that embeds the data in the files via BLE so you can have the option of both. The drawback to the L mount series is how few optically stabilised lenses there are for it as well. Baffles me that Sigma in particular don't make any (other than the 100-400) with OIS as if there is any camera in L mount that could do with a helping hand regarding stabilisation it is their own ones. All of it just emphasises how nothing beats a tripod. IBIS means we can stick it to the man by snatching shots where tripods would likely be unable to be used but if the end result is irreparable warping then its a pyrrhic victory really isn't it.

Shooting with the S5ii a few days ago with the 20-60mm I was noticing some weirdness from the IBIS in terms of distortion and wondering whether its interacting (badly) with the lens correction for barrel distortion. These are two consecutive frames and there is a tiny horizontal change which the IBIS is correcting but its causing quite a distortion on the edges. Its subtle but its very noticeable on the building on the right. However, when you do a difference action between the two frames you can really see how it is spreading the distortion from the centre (where its barely anything) outwards.

What's delusional is using a single verbal incident in a race situation as some sort of proof that a rider is doping when he has never been implicated by involvement in any other indicator nor anecdotally by his accuser or any other rider, let alone failed a test! The incident was related to a feud between Simeoni and Lance Armstrong (quelle surprise) about Simeoni exposing Armstrong's own association with Dr Ferrari of whom Simeoni was also a client. Simeoni was a prosecution witness against Ferrari and this racing incident was a clear way in which to intimidate him against testifying. The other riders involved in giving Simeoni abuse when he was sucked back into the peloton were reacting to the racing incident which was against the accepted conventions of road behaviour within the race and in support of the yellow jersey (Armstrong in this case) who is de facto leader of the behavioural code within the peloton. So it had nothing to do with doping per se as Armstrong was still essentially "clean" in 2004 and everything to do with the etiquette of the racing. If it had been about doping then surely Simeoni being a prosecution witness would have implicated Nardello? Which, of course, neither he nor anybody else ever did. He didn't look like he was going to last the first two hours at one point on Saturday. Today is the first flat stage but its very debatable whether he can challenge for the stage. Well, this is where my hypocrisy will catch up with me if he is ! I covered quite a lot of those stage wins (and more than a few of this last 300m mishaps) and I have to say that they were amongst the most exhilarating things that I've shot so I have a massive soft spot for him. Logic would say he has done it clean because he has managed - unlike Wiggins and Froome - to not be implicated even in the shady whiff around the UK Cycling/SKY setup that he was a part of or anything else outside of that. If he has though then, to me, I'll view him in the same category as the rest of the cheats that have gone before and it will be meaningless. At least if he was then he managed to not be an absolute psychopathic cunt with it like Armstrong was. Well, except to the press, where I was in a few packs where we were on the receiving end of his, erm, "spikiness" when things weren't going his way. And sometimes even when they were.

Well as I asked before: I thought I'd given you the answer at the time but obviously I didn't . Trying to get "absolute certainty" is the cop out to hide behind the "everyone was at it" defence thrown up by Armstrong and his enablers when he was eventually forced to admit the truth. No one can be "absolutely certain" of the actions of another person at every moment of their life. Armstrong himself used the "I've never tested positive" benchmark until it was discovered he had but had colluded with the UCI to cover it up, thus muddying the waters for everyone else as well. So, again, because of his shithousery, the benchmark then gets lowered to suspicion to justify it but even that doesn't make the "everyone else was at it" defence stand up to much scrutiny. Even if we take out all those with subsequent failed tests in their whole career and/or implication in the known indicator stuff like Festina, Michele Ferrari, Bologna raid, Puerto/Fentes etc then are there any that match a top ten finish that you are challenging ? Of course there are. Asking for just one is pretty facile so here is one from each of Armstrong's seven Tour de France "winning" years. 1999 - Daniele Nardello (7th) 2000 - Daniele Nardello (10th) 2001 - Andrei Kivilev (4th) 2002 - Jose Azevedo (6th) 2003 - Haimar Zubledia (5th) 2004 - Jose Azevedo (5th) 2005 - Cadel Evans (8th) The 2006 edition, following Armstrong's first retirement from cycling, five of the top ten finishers hold similarly "clean" records. So, no, they weren't all at it. Anyway, the 2024 edition starts today so lets enjoy the spectacle and hope the little fella gets that 35th stage win.

Was the a7RC not the compromise play ? I haven’t looked at it closely enough but I’m guessing there were compromises there for your work?

A lot of manufacturers have some sort of variation of it but it’s the implementation of it that is key for me at least. The Variable Scan Mapping of the LS300 was the one that really caught the imagination because you could map it to the zoom rocker so it was really intuitive. You can actually use a LANC controller for it instead and map focus to the rocker switch for a great solo solution. Incidentally, you could do this with Clear Image Zoom on the Sonys such as A6500, A7Rii etc with cheap compact zoom rockers that plugged into the remote port too but I’m not sure whether the modern ones allow it? For the Z8/Z9 and now Z6iii Nikon have their Hi-Res Zoom function and have the hardware MC-N10 grip to provide a tactile control. There is always a lot of “durr but you can crop in post dude” reaction to this sort of functionality and, whilst this is true, there are plenty of applications where virtual zoom makes a lot more sense. For something like the LS300, if you are shooting live or handing media off for as live then obviously it gives you the way to get a tighter shot in camera that wouldn’t be an option otherwise. To paraphrase Nigel Tufnel, if you’ve got a 24-70 on the camera and you need the shot to be tighter … The other scenario is not having to shoot in a “wasteful” resolution just to give you the option of cropping later. With something like the 8K Z8/Z9 you are getting up to 2x hi res zoom and still be shooting in 4K whereas the Z6iii is a bit more limited in that it is only 1.2x whilst still being 4K but that might be all you need for that extra push over the cliff. As I say, it’s horses for courses and will be of minimal use to a lot of people but it definitely has its applications where it’s an absolute boon. It also forces you to make a decision about framing whilst shooting, which is anathema to the “I simply MUST have maximum post shooting noodling capability” crowd of procrastinators. Fucking cowards 😉

Considering he was using 180deg shutter angle it’s actually not that bad. Good thing about the gyro stabilisation like this in the BM and the Sony version cameras is that, unlike IBIS, it is non-destructive to the image so you can tweak it later. That’s not only good for the now but it also means if someone does come up with a better method then you can re-process the files and rescue or improve shots. With IBIS, those warps are there for good.

Wide end of the Panasonic 20-60mm kit lens on an S5ii capturing some people so desperate to avoid the outlandish parking charges at British seaside town that they've decided to parachute in.