BTM_Pix

Credit to Sony on that front. You can reheat frozen burritos with their cameras.

Some great discussions on here in the past few weeks about paring things down and in the spirit of that, what do you think is the sweet spot camera? I'm beginning to think its the G80/85 4K, IBIS, Mic input, Cinelike D, articulating screen, flexible mount, compact, no overheating, decent app for remote control, easy workflow. And you can now get them for £550. I can see it about cameras further up like the A6300/6500 and the GH5 but I definitely think the G80/85 packs the biggest bang for the buck. Whats yours?

Cinelike D being able to be switched on in their £250 travel compacts might have opened a few people's eyes to Panasonic playing a very similar game

The free version is 1080 only but, blimey, its Avid Media Composer for free. If you'd gone to the NAB show 10 years ago to pick up a Media Composer system, a DaVinci Resolve system and a Fairlight system you'd be looking at a six figure investment minimum. And now you can download all of it for free tonight. Incredible really.

Careful with making B camera suggestions. You'll have someone on saying that the only B camera to an Alexa is an Alexa. Or that the Alexa is actually the B camera to the Enormo2567-T Is that a challenge

Shooting tethered for stills using the LAN port I imagine? The EOS utility can do camera setting control over that port as well I think.

With regard to audio, I think the innovation has largely come from the music side of the fence rather than the broadcast/film side to be honest. From that point of view, there have been numerous 5DMKii moments. The Portastudio was one, the LinnDrum was another, the Akai S900 sampler, the Atari ST with Cubase, the ADAT digital multitrack, the Yamaha 02R mixing console and of course SoundTools as it was and ProTools as it became. Arguably, these were all much bigger game changers than the 5DMKii, particularly the latter ones as they changed the entire industry at the high end as well as the low. The 5DMKii let you make images that looked somewhat like the movie studios could do, the audio products didn’t just allow you to produce audio that sounded like a real recording studio did but actually became the real recording studios. The nature of broadcast and film is intrinsically more conservative. I’ve been involved in product development for one company where it seemed inconceivable why the BBC, for example, would spend five times more for something that did less and then for another company where it seemed inconceivable to me why they would spend five times more on what we were proposing to them than they could on something similar they could get from a music store. Some days you’re the statue, some days you’re the pigeon ! The problem with audio developments for music is that it plateaued and then became a race to the bottom price wise from which it will never return. It means that the innovation is now in the cost reduction and arguably why not because there really isn’t many more places for it to go in terms of functionality or quality. Which is good for us! As all of this rapid development was going on in music technology, say between 1982-2000, it was like the wild west at times with companies coming from nowhere with bombshell products that either drove their competitors out of business or drove them on to greater heights. And the vast majority of these companies were small ones (generally created by musicians who had to invent what it was the market didn’t have for them to buy), which made them lean and agile. Over time though, the eating each other’s lunch routines often combined with little, no or reckless business practices (and ESPECIALLY poor cash flow from over ambitious product developments) left them vulnerable to being put out of business or, more usually, being bought out by the major manufacturers who were predominantly large Japanese companies. The likes of Oberheim (Yamaha), Linn (Akai), PPG (Korg) and Sequential Circuits (Yamaha again) all went that way and the innovation generally went no further for them once they were under the wing of those bigger manufacturers. Eventually freed from their ‘consultancy’ deals, most have resurfaced as boutique operations serving an ever more niche market. If I look at someone like Fairlight and my relationship with them as an example of what happened to an innovative company, its quite informative. I went from being an awestruck kid when they brought the CMI out, to then working for a manufacturer who basically drove them out of the sampler business they’d created, to eventually working on OEM development with them when they transitioned to broadcast. In the subsequent 20 years they’ve changed hands countless times and are now just a tab on a piece of free(ish) software. Its hard to grasp such a transition for me but for anyone who’s too young to know what the CMI was, its the equivalent of RED’s RAW pipeline ending up as a free download in the Sony PlayMemories store for your RX100. Lexicon are exactly the same. From making jaw dropping almost other worldly products to being gobbled up by a company that was making most of its money off providing car stereos for GM etc and Lexicon was reduced over time to being included in every low end mixing console and software bundle that it could be licensed to. The company that bought them has done the same to every company its bought and I can’t even dignify them by mentioning their name even 20 years after them destroying the company I worked for ! So there’s just no incentive there for anyone to be innovative in music audio anymore as its littered with similar stories and the ones left standing wouldn’t see the amount of volume in broadcast/film that they need to press the button on the mass production runs they now need due to how cheap everything has to be now. The company that COULD do it are the much maligned Behringer. If you look at something like the X Air XR12 digital mixing console and see what they can knock out for £239 retail (inc VAT!!) then it doesn’t take a genius to see what they could do against Sound Devices if they had the inclination but there just isn’t the market there. Because, believe me, they wouldn’t have blinked if there was. So, unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to get that 5DMarkii moment and the innovation such as it is will come from individuals themselves looking at products from the music side of the fence and modifying it themselves. Like getting that X Air XR12 and powering it from Sony NP batteries to make an extremely capable digital field mixer and recorder for £269 (including the £30 for the bits to do it) or being a smartarse and using cheap midi controllers to create remote focus and control systems for Panasonic cameras for under £75 (ahem!). Because music audio had its numerous 5DMKii moments a few years ago there is a backlog of a ton of cheap stuff that flies under the radar for film makers that is waiting for them if they look for it.

There is a definite connection between specific function devices with dedicated controls like a portastudio and creativity. They keep you focused on what you are doing by serving you rather than the other way round. Unlimited possibilities seems like a good thing but the problem is that its so easy to be drawn into trying most of them. Often that just leads to varying degrees of turd polishing where we're spending good creative money after bad as it where when we would be better off walking away from it and spending that time on making something that doesn't actually need polishing.

Also available in blonde.

The 4K is a hell of a deal at that price isn't it? Definitely think they'd be on to a serious winner with a 5" version of it though. The functionality benefits smaller cameras most but the form factor dwarfs them.

Coincidental that it happens at the same point as Canon end the 1DC. Clearly, it must only have been the 1066x cards servicing the voracious mjpeg files for 1DC owners that was making them any dosh

Bit of a surprise but its all over for Lexar. https://***URL removed***/news/3111535898/lexar-discontinued-micron-announces-the-end-of-lexar-memory-cards Meanwhile, over at Sandisk

It converts it to CAT5 so obviously its not wireless but it will do the trick for longer distances if you can live with the cable run. I was looking at something like this one here when looking for cheaper alternatives to the Terradek encoders. Its a bit of a different approach to what you want but it gets the same result and a bit more. Its got a lot of flexibility to it as its a streaming encoder that can be set up locally to stream to an iPad or a cheap android box out to a tv if you want but can also stream directly to YouTube live, Facebook Live or any similar streaming service. Its cheaper than even basic consumer wireless HDMI transmitters as well and I think it offers a lot of additional unctionality for the money and obviously its a fraction of the cost of the Terradek equivalents. I can't vouch for it as I didn't end up buying one but have a snoop around and I'm sure you'll find some reviews for it or something similar https://www.amazon.co.uk/FMUSER-FBE200-Streaming-protocol-facebook/dp/B06XQHRN91/ref=pd_sbs_504_1?_encoding=UTF8&refRID=GBF7XTE93VM3KBTCGTYT&th=1

Ahhh Blimey, must be one of the few times we get more on a product here!

I've used the same sensor in a different (even more compact) body which was the X-M1. Image quality was good but it just didn't work for me really without having an EVF. So, the XE2s would've resolved that for me and I'd have probably kept it. One thing I'd say though is also have a look at the X-T10. They've come down in price a fair amount since the X-T20 was launched and give you an articulating screen and extra dial with only a a small increase in footprint. Internally they are identical. They are even cheaper than the XE2s in a lot of places. I think MPB might be quite local to you? https://www.mpb.com/en-uk/used-equipment/used-photo-and-video/used-compact-system-cameras/used-fuji-x-series-cameras/fuji-x-t10/

Don't forget the subterfuge involved. Last morning in Berlin so suggest going to the flea market as I'd been reading about there being lots of interesting locally produced jewellery available there. Just sat in cafe reviewing the only locally produced gems that were actually bought.

Yes and no. It eventually ends up being sent out as http requests so yes from that point of view but there is FAR more going on behind the scenes to get it to send the messages that you actually want to so its a no from a practical point of view. All of the effort regarding what can be done with this stuff will be merged within the hardware controller. The focus aspect of it in the controller will be targeted at live control and, with the wind in the right direction, an A/B or even A/B/C focus transition control. Have a look at the other threads for work in progress. Not much progress this week as I'm on holiday though !

No, it exists mainly in the dry box now Ties in with the other thread on a different level really about there no point something having 20% better image quality if its 100% more difficult to shoot with. I think thats why the X-T20 might be the decent compromise for people after the image quality of the X-T2 with more of the form factor of the G7/G80 sort of camera.

Lock an individual image while reviewing it instead of going through the menu and the stupid double confirmation? I'm buggered if I can find it and Fuji told me that it doesn't do it because no one ever asked for it! Where is it?

They added audio memo to it based on feedback from sports photographers, which is a good thing. And then still didn't add being able to assign the lock image function to a function key because, I was told by them, no one had ever mentioned it being needed. Despite it being such a fundamental part of the workflow that all Nikon and Canon pro bodies have a dedicated button for it, let alone just allowing it to be assigned to a function key. So, I expect that the next firmware update will allow even more stuff to be put on the function keys.

Yes, there's much more of it in the shadows I'm awaiting the session capture from an old firmware GH4 to finally extinguish everyone's hopes of it being doable.

They do quote 40 mins of record time per battery though so I suppose Fuji would argue that that exceeds the maximum single take time and that the grip allows you to use continuous power blah blah hence why they'd see it as normal. But that completely disregards the fact that the battery drain rate on the X-T2 is completely erratic in my experience, especially in the boost mode that the grip brings. My bugbear with it is what it does when you take a memory card out and put one in again (which I have to do a lot when working) as its seems to just panic a bit and I have to power cycle it as being the only reliable way to get it to be ready to shoot again in short order. Its not that it locks up or crashes its just that you never know what its doing (presumably file reading) or how long its going to take to do it and whether it is actually going to do something if you press the shutter.

Cheers <Cancels trip to the shop >

I use the X-T20 and it is a little gem. Unfortunately its the pocketable aspect that it can't offer that the Sony does.

Bit of a mixed bag thus far with the RX1005 Can't say I'm really bonding with it yet to be honest. I probably need to study it a bit harder but its all a bit fiddly. Have mainly been just been goofing around with the slo mo on this little holiday video wise but did a few stills today and its not bad considering its size and meets the expectation I had of it for taking a few snaps while away. What was more interesting for me was happening upon a poltical rally so I thought I'd see if it was of use for that kind of similar in close stuff that I often have to do when theres a bit of 'heated debates' going on between rival fans outside football stadiums. With the high fps and it being really compact it actually worked quite well in that role to be fair so it might - literally - see some action for me for real work in situations where having the content trumps having the image quality.