BTM_Pix

I used to work out of my little Mazda Bongo camper a lot back in the day. Same logic regarding the savings and convenience particularly when I had to cover games late at night or be at pressers first thing in the morning. Great to use it as a mobile office as well to file from too. The biggest cost savings were covering long multi day events away such as football tournaments and particularly like here when shooting the Tour de France. Using the camper saved me a lot and meant I could ram it full of boxes gear as well as utilise it as a mounting point for remote cameras ! Its got me quite nostalgic for covering the Tour again to be honest, although these days it would be far more lucrative shooting it as a vanlife vlog than it would as an editorial photographer.

Some real world usage overheating tests.

Wow, the cart AND the camper van? ”And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.” Curious about the tripod mounted gimbal - do you use that as a remote control PT head during the ceremony or is just purely for mounting purposes when not wafting it about ?

I'd give a mention to the Contax Zeiss 28-85mm f3.4/4 Its a bit annoying in that its a push/pull zoom design but its very nice optically and has not gone crazy in price like many other CZ lenses. If you don't mind paying a bit more and have a more limited range at both ends then the 35-70mm f3.4 is a great option.

It was Monty Python that invented it anyway.

Yes https://petapixel.com/2019/05/29/alter-rfs-a-hinged-lens-filter-adapter-that-swings-out-of-the-way/

The release of the Z8 has certainly stimulated a lot of trade ins of Z9s at MapCamera at least as usually there are between 0-1 on any given day. Probably cements my decision to get a used Z9 when I get there. Well, I say "cement" but, you know, its only Thursday

Of course I didn't avoid the internet today ! Officially announced now. Full-frame BSI CMOS Sensor with Triple Resolution Technology (60MP / 36MP / 18MP) Summilux 28mm f/1.7 ASPH. fixed lens with integrated macro mode Hybrid Autofocus System (Phase Detection AF + Contrast AF + Depth from Defocus + AI) Tilting 3" display and 5.67MP OLED viewfinder Fast and convenient connectivity with the Leica FOTOS app USB-C and HDMI ports Up to 8K-Video and multiple video formats including .h265 and ProRes Made for iPhone and iPad IP52 ingress protection I'd recommend having a download of the full technical spec document as there are a lot of caveats involved int he video formats such as 8K being 4:2:0 and ProRes being 1080p only. Not mentioned in that document but stated in the PetaPixel "preview" is that anything above 1080p is cropped. Considering that Leica is really pushing the video specs of this camera, it is pretty laughable that it doesn't have a microphone input let alone not having a headphone socket. https://leica-camera.com/de-DE/fotografie/kameras/q/q3/technical-specification $5,995.00 / €5,950.00 (Germany) / £5,300.00 https://leica-camera.com/en-GB/photography/cameras/q/q3-black

The TG-BT1 bluetooth shooting grip might help with the control of the zoom.

Just to add the stuff from my now cleared thread. 26.1MP APS-C X-Trans BSI CMOS 4 Sensor 5-Axis In-Body Image Stabilization X-Processor 5 Image Processor 6.2K 3:2 Open Gate 4K60p H.265, ALL-Intra, 4:2:2, 10-bit internal External RAW to Atomos/Blackmagic Available end of June - $1299 Body Only / $1399 with 15-45mm kit lens A very interesting sign of the times is that it has a dedicated control setting on the dial for Vlog mode...

I've had my eye on getting that for a while. Unfortunately, I need a bit more capacity for all the shit I've accumulated that I can't let go of so this would have to be me dragging my suitably sized cart to a gig.

So the ZV-1 Mark 2 has been announced today and Sony have indeed addressed the wide end being wider so it now starts off at 18mm equivalent instead of 24mm equivalent. But it isn't optically stabilised like the original so you lose a fair amount of that 6mm by having to use the electronic stabilisation. And the long end has been cut from 70mm to 50mm. And it is now a lot slower (f1.8 to f4 versus f1.8 to f2.8). And now we go over live to the Head Of Hopes & Dreams at Sony .....

As is the ProRes. I'm going to be avoiding the internet on Thursday in case I accidentally lose my mind and buy one.

This is apparently from an over enthusiastic Leica dealer who pushed the publish button a bit hastily ahead of the official launch on the 25th of May. \ Cached version of the since deleted page is here https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WVl0azXh3-gJ:https://downtowncamera.com/blog/the-new-leica-q3&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Hypercrapoid. To be fair it does have external input too.

The Osmo Pockets are great products for vlogging but don't seem very well represented. The magnetic clip on anamorphic lenses and ND filters offer a lot of possibilities for more creative shooting and the stabilisation and tracking capabilities are far better than the resolution and time eating post production methods of other cameras. They are also a bit better in terms of not attracting attention - at least the unwanted variety - as they are much smaller and people are usually more intrigued than defensive when they see one being used. I watched this the other day as well as the one in a very similar vein made by his partner in crime and I've got to say it did neither them nor Canon any favours at all. It just looked exactly like someone from Canon had invited them down to their office for a couple of hours to have a quick go with one that they had just got in and it was all very sloppy. This one is a bit more comprehensive and considered in my opinion. Sony are apparently announcing a new camera on 23rd May which most people seem to think will be the Mark ii version of the ZV-1. It will be interesting to see whether the lens range on it will be the same or whether it starts wider.

This is actually a bit of a rework/variation on a theme of Canon's Legria Mini/Mini X cameras from a decade ago. I had the original one and it was pretty decent for what it did at the time and I think this new one might be an idea that has now met its time. I've seen a lot of mocking about it but considering its a single purpose product then judging it on its suitability for that one purpose then it seems to have a lot going for it for a lot of its intended users.

Well there is a Lumix S2 already available that will also fill the Q3 role.

Puzzles me why Sigma don't get in on this market. They have a track record in fixed lens compacts (albeit APS-C) and with the FP-L and their compact primes they have the building blocks to do it. Likely for half the price of the Q3. Maybe their long overdue full frame Foveon may actually come as a fixed lens package rather than the FP based interchangeable one that everyone expects.

From the brief hands on experience that I had with @Andrew Reid's Z9 and Megadap E mount adapter, I was impressed enough to consider it a bit of a turning point in finally purchasing the Z9 (or Z8 or Z9 or Z8). This review is with a broader range of lenses and setups. There are a couple of EF adapters out there and the one I'm looking at is the Meike with the drop in VND system. This is their own test video but it looks usable enough. For M mount (and everything else like M42, C/Y, Manual focus F mount etc that you can adapt to M) I have the original version of the TechArt Pro for E mount and it works well for what it is but has some restrictions. Their version for the Z mount looks to made a lot of steps forward and for the miracle it is performing in terms of bringing AF to manual focus lenses I'd be fine with the performance judging by videos such as this. With regard to the FTZ, I've only seen positive things really other than some slight slow down with TCs but thats par for the course a lot of the time with my experience on some lenses on TCs on the native F mount. I'm not sure there is any performance difference between the FTZ and FTZii but the latter is the one for the Z9 as it doesn't have the protruding foot.

OK, so its not something that will find a natural home here as a talking point and it is bound to be at what will euphemistically be termed "a premium price" but it might actually have some relevance as an indicator of another camera release in the not too distant future. We are all aware of the relationship between Leica and Panasonic goes beyond (and behind) the L mount and the internals in terms of the sensor and processor spec of the Q2 and the S1R are "quite similar". It wouldn't be beyond the bounds of credibility then to take a steer from the specs of the Q3 in terms of what a mark 2 version of the S1R might be when it arrives and considering the Q2 and S1R were released within a few weeks of each other then this might be sooner rather than later. The Q3 is officially announced on the 23rd of May but, as expected these days, the full spec has now been leaked and the general headline for stills shooters at least is the bump in resolution from 47 MP to 62 MP, the tilt screen and the persistence with Hybrid AF. It is the video spec that surprised me though : C8K (17:9): 8192 x 4320 8K (16:9): 7680 x 4320 C4K (17:9): 4096 x 2160 4K (16:9): 3840 x 2160 Full HD (16:9): 1920 x 1080 No further information regarding the codecs that will be available (and knowing Leica it might well turn out to be limited to 256 colours, 15fps and be in FLV format 🙂 ) but that spec would be interesting in a new S1R. There is no news on price but I'd be surprised if it is less than €5.5-6K. There has always been something about the Q series that has had me about to irrationally buy one several times so I'm certainly mad enough to buy one of these but, unfortunately, poor enough these days not to be able to afford to.

Yeah, I thought that camera may have appeared by now to throw a bit more doubt into things but I'm now having intrusive thoughts about the Sony a1. This will be me outside the shop.

Yeah, that really is a weird one how they've managed to do that. I'm now weighing up my actual uses in terms of when I would need that extra power though and whether the external PD option wouldn't be more appropriate to me anyway. My thinking is that the times when I would need that extra power would also align with the the uses that would potentially cause heat issues as well so fully externally powering and not having a battery in it might offer some mitigation to that issue too. For my usage, the times when I would be doing 8K RAW etc on any serious level wouldn't realistically be me casually wandering about wafting the camera about but be in a more controlled situation so external power doesn't bother me and would actually be more beneficial. Another issue is media costs. I'm presuming the RAW and ProRes formats are a no-go when using the SD card option of the Z8 but I'm wondering what the maximum capability is format wise when using them? Absent of dual recording capability to the two CF cards in the Z9 anyway, the CF/SD combo of the Z8 could actually be of more benefit to me in a lot situations. So, there we go, its not even the end of the afternoon and I've gone from Z8/Grip/2 batteries to Z9 and now back to Z8 only. Tune in tomorrow to hear another U turn.

As a lot of it seems to be related to the heat in the card then it could well mitigate it but it would need confirming. On a more general note though, that kit does offer a good option when shooting a lot of content as the cost of say a 1TB drive to go with it is at least half the price of the equivalent CF card. I've just done the sums and a brand new Z9 will cost me around £400 more than a Z8 with the grip and two additional batteries. For a used Z9 it will probably be almost even. I like the modularity aspect of going the Z8 route, particularly as I can defer the grip until later to see to what extent these issues affect me in actual use, but I'm still leaning towards the Z9 at the moment. Its just under three weeks now until I'm in a shop and having to make the actual decision though so thats enough time to change my mind at least another five or six times !