BTM_Pix

In the accreditation queue outside the stadium on Tuesday we had the most audacious theft attempt when someone mingled into the queue and casually strolled off with a peli case (with 2 D5's, a 70-200 and a 400 f2.8 in it) and an attached laptop bag. Fortunately, he only got about 20 yards away with it before he was spotted because he stuck out like a sore thumb. And the reason he immediately aroused suspicion? Ironically, far from it being because hr looked like a dodgy scruff, it was because he was WAY too smartly dressed to have ever passed for one of us !

Nah, we'll have had the Photokina show by then. (At least one Photokina cos, well, you never know with BM) That will give us a whole load of new fuel to shovel into the speculation boiler. This will be the good ship RMS EosHD after Photokina if Canon and Nikon make their mirrorless announcement s

Mmmm...looking at how far it could be pushed and how smooth the workflow was on a 4 year old MacBook (ie the same as mine!)....well... I've got to say that a used FS5 (as the prices get pushed down even further by he mark ii) and the Ninja V isn't the worst proposition in the world as a very flexible system. In a few months, the total cost of that will probably be hovering around £3.5K.

Would I complain about having to use an adapter? I'd be a bit of a hypocrite I suppose if I did as I routinely use Nikon's teleconverters for work without any issues. They lock tight and any balance issues they cause are offset by them mainly in my case being used on lenses that need monopod support anyway. Would I be thrilled in having to do that on ALL my lenses ? Probably not but I'd be FAR less thrilled having to rebuy the rest of my core lens set in this speculated new mount, especially as I'd have to take a hit on selling lenses that were now part of a 'dead' system. Canon FD lenses are not cheap because of their optical quality and this would be the same situation. The price of the "upgrade" to a Nikon mirrorless system with a new mount and to remain native would be prohibitively expensive. The f2.8 zooms and long primes are not suddenly going to get significantly smaller and cheaper because they are in this new mount. So, if they do a mirrorless that doesn't have an adapter that has "as native" performance for existing lenses then they will have a problem retaining existing users when their current DSLRs are ready to be replaced. And the issue that they also face is that with cameras like the D5, the D500 and the D850 etc the rabid upgrade cycle isn't exactly what it was 10 years ago. We are at a point with those cameras where its only going to be wear and tear - not performance - that prompts you to upgrade. The double edged sword there for Nikon is they have not only produced cameras with great image quality but also some serious robustness! With every week that passes, the other systems seem to be getting more and more lens options. There will come a point where all Nikon have left to bargain with are the fast long primes and the legacy stuff. In the case of the former that's just a niche within a niche and I believe Sigma will step into the breach there and in the latter, well, lenses you've already sold won't pay the bills. Having said all that..... There is a couple of opportunities here for Nikon to make things both smoother for existing owners and actually make it very appealing. The first is to have the option for the mount to be user interchangeable as per RED, Ursa, Kinefinity etc so that we wouldn't have the two points of failure potential and the wear issue using an adapter. If its actually connected to the body rather than the new mount then that will keep everyone happy. For my, and I suspect many others, usage I think we'll be going out to shoot with lenses that are in one mount or the other. For anyone who would want the flexibility of quick change as they will be going out with 3 new mount and 1 old mount lens then Nikon can still do a regular tube type converter. The second thing they can do is make one of those mount options also encompass a speed booster. The option of shooting video in Super35 with fast primes that are now even faster and still have full AF? Yes please. Ditto they could also utilise the extra space to produce an electronic ND version of the mount. If they see supporting the old mount in terms of it being an opportunity rather than a duty/hindrance then they could have a monster on their hands. It could be the true hybrid that, thus far has eluded everyone. Obviously if they come out with something that's 5 grand with two plastic kit lenses and 3 slow primes with an adapter for legacy lenses that weighs more than an anvil and offers just enough AF to not be sued under the trade descriptions act then they can fuck right off

You've done it now. I'm now envisaging AC/DC bringing out an album celebrating modern technology.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/aceyoon-Extension-Converter-Connector-ChromeBook/dp/B0772HVP1R/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1525285986&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=usb+c+right+angle+adapter&dpPl=1&dpID=41madGjpWxL&ref=plSrch That's £7 for two. Plus another few pounds for the epoxy which I shall of course be affixing it to my camera with.

Look, I've found a right angle USB C adapter. So I'm not going to waste that bit of research and I'm all for getting another couple of pages out of discussing it now

Yeah but we're bored waiting for it already so have to fixate on something to get the page count over the 100 mark

It depends on your usage I suppose both in terms of frequency that you are going to use it and also how often you swap the media. If you are only going to use it infrequently then it will be OK to connect directly (though you still need to address the mounting of the media itself so its not just dangling there). At the risk of getting stuck (ho ho) with another epoxygate, I do actually think that using it to attach cold shoe or similar mounting threads to a drive like the one illustrated would be effective. Or even using one of the sliding smartphone to shoe mounts. If you were using the USB-C part every day but swapping media on it multiple times a day then you will be saving a lot of wear and, yes, just take the extender out at the start and end of the day. If you are using the USB-C part every day, swapping multiple media every day and changing locations frequently every day then I think it makes the point even more to be using an extender as your wear/damage potential is even higher and with that amount of reliance on it as your recording media then its increasing the risk even further. What I would envisage to be honest is a clamp/cage system that is providing locks for most of the cables in that part of the camera and people just having to take the hit on the size increasing. An ideal solution would channel them downwards to prevent potential knocking whilst operating from that side.

Except I didn't actually say to do it at the camera end but hey ho. The solution to the USB C port wear is to use a short extender cable that you do leave attached to the camera and then plug/unplug the device with its cable on the end of the extender. If you then get wear it will be at the end of an easily replaceable £2.50 cable rather than your £1200 camera.

I'm just contemplating being sat in front of a 43" 1000 NIT monitor on my desk. It'll be like Bikini Atoll

Might this be a decent choice when it arrives in a few months Jon? https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/philips-momentum-first-displayhdr-1000-pc-monitor/

I just import off the SD card direct onto the iPad. Edit in LumaFusion and ftp it to the agency or export direct to YouTube depending on who the end client is. Its really fast editing on it and it has enough tricks (like LUTs) if you need them.

We should probably clear town before the posse arrives but, yeah, I agree with that assessment! Here's my tongue in cheek prediction about these cameras.... There'll be a wave of young filmmakers who pick up cameras like these from the bargain bins and just get out there and make stuff with them. Great stuff. New stuff. With a new aesthetic. Completely uninhibited by sensor size, bit depth and all the other hooha that ties everyone else up in knots. It will be exactly like it was with music when kids picked up the discarded analogue synths and drum machines that everyone had written off while they chased the new digital dragons and they made a whole new type of music with it. And in 10 years time we'll all be on eBay trying to buy back Panasonic LX100s at £2K a pop

That was a staged scene I hope rather than an unfortunate incident in those woods! The Panasonic is quite a few hundred cheaper here. I picked one up for €720 in Germany a few months ago. I use it for shooting fast turnaround pre-match build up films outside the stadiums (edited on iPad using the wildly good LumaFusion by the way) and its just a great shot getter in those circumstances with absolutely zero dicking around. The issue with the 80D is that you fall down the rabbit hole again of lens selection, ND, no ibis and blah blah blah. Their XF400/405 would give you the best of both worlds with the camcorder ease of use and DPAF but the price is, well, you know....its Canon isn't it? At the risk of being flamed though.....I will say that this is an interesting little side by side and when you start adding prices up of lenses and so on...well, it makes you think really. OK, there are things that it won't ever be able to do that the other one can but, for a lot of bread and butter things that can make you some money.....mmmm

The locks are available as add ons rather than buying an entire cage and the epoxy was on the cable to the adapter, not the camera, to make it permanent at that end. Just offering a £50 SDI output option to be honest But, yes, if the output is limited to HD only then I'd have preferred to see SDI (especially for the remote control element) and convert at the monitor end if necessary if I only had HDMI but can understand they'd get more moans that way round. Probably people would be citing a conspiracy to sell more Video Assists!

Just go and re-buy that FZ2500 and get on with it. Hell of a camera for that sort of work and - truth be told - a lot of other stuff too.

I think the $145 is per month rather than per day in Jon's area.

If you are recording internally it only outputs 1080p on the HDMI port unless I misread it? That being the case if you really need SDI out purely for monitoring (or recording the 4:2:2 HD signal externally) then one of BM's micro converters will do the job for you for about £35.00 As per the BMCC etc there will be cages that will trap the HDMI in place to the camera and at £35 it won't be that much of a hardship to epoxy the other end of the HDMI cable into the converter permanently. BM cameras can be remotely controlled through SDI (they even make an SDI Arduino shield specifically for people to create their own controllers for the cameras and their ATEM switchers) but I doubt that it will be doable via the converter unfortunately so that would've been a good use for having a native SDI port for me. But, as I say, for purely monitoring purposes then the solution is there and inexpensive.

FWIW I do frequently see Amiras being used in that same NFL role at larger football (the real type ) events here in Europe. Its always single operator with assistant very much in the role of general helper (though his exact beverage dispensing duties remains unclear) and shooting what you would probably describe as cinematic ENG for want of a better description. CinENG as I'll now call it!

There are plenty of ways to get HDMI out to a wireless viewable form on a tablet or phone. BM also provide full documentation to enable developers to create their own apps for remote control. So, with this camera at least, these aren't issues.

Most Tascams are covered because they use the same remote port but I was just wondering if anyone has either of their wifi controlled models?

Yeah, at least I don't have to waste any time on Roland it would seem ! Most of the Tascam ones can be controlled by the RC10 remote so thats all covered now, the SoundDevices stuff is too and the Zoom just seems to be done through voltage change so that won't be too much of a hardship. On the camera side its going to be LANC for Sony, Canon C series and BM, wifi for Panasonic, Bluetooth for new BM and probably some sort of simplistic shutter release type for Fuji, Nikon and Canon DSLRS. I just need to make it a bit smaller than the current prototype that you see me working on here.

Unless its Cersei. No one is going to have the balls to tell Cersei to get off Snapchat

I'd have no trepidation saying I was using such a fine piece of equipment ! It uses the same USB keyboard protocol as the MixPres so it would be able to be remotely started and stopped in sync with the BM camera.