BTM_Pix

That's the thing, it's all become very insular. Self-congratulating technological achievement, and I don't really feel to grateful towards it, whereas an actual human artist you do feel a sense of awe and gratitude and good will when they do something brilliant, or anything that demonstrates talent.
Now the danger is that the feedback loop of inauthentic procedurally generated content feeds into the AI and it becomes split off from human input to a factor of something like 9:1, which will unmoor it even more from the hand of an artist.
What could save it is only if it concedes more control to us, not less, and becomes a proper in-depth tool, not a single button press or prompt.
I recently watched the documentary about Hayao Miyazaki, A never ending man, where he retires and instantly regrets it because he's a total obsessive. He's aging and can't be fudged with a feature, so decides to delegate to a team of CGI experts and instantly regrets that too, so he ends up literally drawing it himself on top of the CGI frames. Even though the CGI experts were absolute top notch, almost all of his style got lost in the delegation process. It didn't matter if he sat next to them and micro managed, it just wasn't conveyed. The only way he could do it was to put his hands directly on the paper.
It's the same with AI, unless your hands are directly on the paper and it stays in the background as an assist, it will never be authentic art!

Or their father who has abandoned them inside the log cabin to keep the log fire stoke while he does an urgent emergency live rumour broadcast from the verandah.
With only one day to go before this announcement, if this announcement is something as major as the v2 of the S1 cameras then I would have expected to see tweets from the usual suspects humble bragging about the strains of having to go overseas as they are wolfing down Takoyaki in Osaka with the rest of the bros.
But there haven't been so maybe it isn't significant enough to take them all to Osaka.
It doesn't rule out them having been sent them or there being localised events but my reading of this is that this is (white) smoke without a lot of fire.

Or their father who has abandoned them inside the log cabin to keep the log fire stoke while he does an urgent emergency live rumour broadcast from the verandah.
With only one day to go before this announcement, if this announcement is something as major as the v2 of the S1 cameras then I would have expected to see tweets from the usual suspects humble bragging about the strains of having to go overseas as they are wolfing down Takoyaki in Osaka with the rest of the bros.
But there haven't been so maybe it isn't significant enough to take them all to Osaka.
It doesn't rule out them having been sent them or there being localised events but my reading of this is that this is (white) smoke without a lot of fire.

It might help if 
a) Every piece wasn't introduced with the breathless "hey look what I made with AI". It should stand up whether you did or didn't and it just comes across as being inauthentic. Which, of course, it is.
b) It wasn't being pushed by the same NFT/Crypto/Whatever this week's fad is shills.
c) It evolves beyond more or less just remixing existing content. People aren't moved by it because they get the feeling they've seen it before. Which, of course, they have.
I remember in my 30s going back to a hip club that I frequented when I was in my teens and very early 20s and feeling completely out of place and absolutely not getting it.
Its a bit like that for the internet with the internet now. 

It might help if 
a) Every piece wasn't introduced with the breathless "hey look what I made with AI". It should stand up whether you did or didn't and it just comes across as being inauthentic. Which, of course, it is.
b) It wasn't being pushed by the same NFT/Crypto/Whatever this week's fad is shills.
c) It evolves beyond more or less just remixing existing content. People aren't moved by it because they get the feeling they've seen it before. Which, of course, they have.
I remember in my 30s going back to a hip club that I frequented when I was in my teens and very early 20s and feeling completely out of place and absolutely not getting it.
Its a bit like that for the internet with the internet now. 

I went there in my 20’s and even then felt out of place and out of time.
The 1920’s was probably my era…

It might help if 
a) Every piece wasn't introduced with the breathless "hey look what I made with AI". It should stand up whether you did or didn't and it just comes across as being inauthentic. Which, of course, it is.
b) It wasn't being pushed by the same NFT/Crypto/Whatever this week's fad is shills.
c) It evolves beyond more or less just remixing existing content. People aren't moved by it because they get the feeling they've seen it before. Which, of course, they have.
I remember in my 30s going back to a hip club that I frequented when I was in my teens and very early 20s and feeling completely out of place and absolutely not getting it.
Its a bit like that for the internet with the internet now. 

Social media is destroying the internet as a medium and turning it into cable tv.
I don't think people will realise what this means until a lot later, but now that print media is going away along with a lot else, including proper journalism, we're about to enter the find out stage.
The internet as it was originally intended with net neutrality was the greatest invention of the century and we are really harming it by making independent .com websites bankrupt and the written word obsolete. It's going to become more and more of a problem.
Maybe one day, blogging will make a come back like vinyl?
I remember when a certain cat owner, who went by the name of Philip, switched predominantly to social media tweets and youtube, rather than blogging... his own site is now dead basically, and his content is now at the whim of an algorithm he doesn't own or have any control over... Anyway, he switched, and HE became the story - front and centre, private life out there for all to see, and it clouded out his actual work and images... and the other point I'm making is that he had no choice anyway because smartphones work better with YouTube and social media, the large in depth pages of the web just don't work well with modern attention spans or small screens with no physical keyboard, especially since most of the WWW these days is such a mess - so much poor content and horrific web design... you know, ads everywhere, popups, autoplay, cookie prompts, constantly scrolling by itself as new elements load. It's unworkable.
I want us to come back to the founding ideas of what made the internet so special, before it's too late.

To paraphrase Tony Wilson of Factory Records, Sigma protected themselves from ever having to have the dilemma of trading the camera's low light capability for image quality by having no low light capability whatsoever.
On the upside, there's absolutely no need to carry ND filters around 😉

Maybe when they’ve got their act together sufficiently to produce enough of the current focal length version to meet demand they will think about it!
Having said that, their approach with producing dedicated wide and tele adapters for them is an OK halfway house.
I had the wide for my original X100 and it performed well, although the 0.79x and 1.4x respectively of the adapters is a bit conservative but I guess those were the optimum to not degrade performance too much.
At the time that I bought my DP2m, I had a Nikon D800 and a Hasselblad H3DII-39 and couldn’t imagine that it would live with them but it actually did.
I bought it on impulse really as I was at a dealer picking up a lens for my actual job and they had just started a price slash offer on them to clear stock and I thought I’d take a chance as I’d looked at it before but at £900 it seemed way overpriced.
Turns out it wasn’t even at that price and I even ended up using it for work as well for certain roles.
I then kept my eye out for the DP1m and DP3m at used prices (which plummeted because the new price had been cut) and picked them both up as well.
It’s interesting that they completely write the JPEG’s off in that video as for work because of the live editorial fast turnaround time of it I used  JPEG quite a lot!
The ultimate quality is only to be found when using the Sigma software though and, as I said, that really does bring you back to the slower paced days of developing images.
Funny thing about prices is that because I paid smaller prices for mine, looking at the current used markets, they are the only cameras that I have ever owned where I could make a profit !
Which I suppose takes us back to the “value” in cameras as even if I had paid full retail for them then they would still be about 65-70% of the original cost.
My D800 and H3DII-39 on the other hand….
Yeah, let’s not go there.
By the by, it’s interesting to see the iteration of Chris Nichols in that video compared to the current one.

I think there is a lot of merit in that.
Whats interesting with this new Q is that Leica are actually mirroring (or mirroringless) what Sigma did with the DP1m and DP2m cameras and have actually chosen the same focal lengths.
It might suggest that they will go the whole way pretty soon and bring out a third one, this time with a 75mm lens like the Sigma DP3m.
A real bargain at $21K for the Leica set, of course.
For anyone looking to have that choice of no choice on a smaller budget then the DPm cameras are worth looking at.
They take the shooting experience back in time by having basically a choice of ISO100, ISO400 at a real push and ISO1600 in Black&White.
In camera writing time and battery life is so bad that its the equivalent of only having two rolls of 36 exposure film.
To add that final touch of retro, the files are so slow to process in Sigma's software that it more or less mimics sending your slide film back to Kodak for processing.
If you can past those limitations- and of course we should never forget how many incredible images were taken in the past under those restrictions - then the image quality is your reward.
Having said all that....
Never, under any circumstances, go and try a Leica Q3 in a shop as all logic goes out of the window when you pick one up.

The Atomos stuff can be a bit fussy sometimes over its HDMI input source but this would do the trick to get it into a Ninja for example if you were using composite or s-video sources.

 
Alternatively, if you are using component output gear then this one would do the job.

 

Ahead of the IBC, Panasonic have announced two new box cameras.
The UB-50 is a full frame L mount camera and the UB-10 is an MFT camera.

Its a pity the didn't call the bigger one the UB-40 as that would've given some food for the thought and possibly make RED RED Whine (ask your Grandad) .
Details are scant and no idea of pricing.
Product pages here :
https://eu.connect.panasonic.com/gb/en/broadcast-proav/aw-ub50
https://eu.connect.panasonic.com/gb/en/broadcast-proav/aw-ub10

The batteries I got for the Canon MV20 duly arrived, were charged, put onto the camera and....
Fuck all.
Well, slightly more than fuck all as the powered tape eject mechanism works which shows they were doing something but there was not a sign of life otherwise.
Pondering that my "search by cheapest" method of selection might have been flawed I decided to power it off the mains.
So, as the original is lost somewhere inside the storage room of shame, I ordered a variable voltage PSU using the search term "cheap but not likely to kill me" and it duly arrived this morning and I plugged it in and ...
Fuck all.
Well, it too also does the powered tape eject mechanism and, to taunt me, also appears to be charging the battery when attached.
My carefully considered technical analysis of the situation leads me to the conclusion that it is, indeed, fucked.
 

What stood out for me is that it can do both regular timecode as well as wireless with the Atomos UltraSync Blue system.
If it can convert the incoming timecode from the UltraSync Blue into regular timecode to output to the camera (and vice versa which is more unlikely) then that would be very useful.
To do this otherwise would need an UltraSync One which is roughly 75% of the total price of the FR-AV2.
The bluetooth headphone monitoring can easily be replicated with cheap add ons for other recorders but its good to see it integrated.
The additional $100 over the F3 isn't onerous and if I didn't have an F3 then this would be my choice.
 

What stood out for me is that it can do both regular timecode as well as wireless with the Atomos UltraSync Blue system.
If it can convert the incoming timecode from the UltraSync Blue into regular timecode to output to the camera (and vice versa which is more unlikely) then that would be very useful.
To do this otherwise would need an UltraSync One which is roughly 75% of the total price of the FR-AV2.
The bluetooth headphone monitoring can easily be replicated with cheap add ons for other recorders but its good to see it integrated.
The additional $100 over the F3 isn't onerous and if I didn't have an F3 then this would be my choice.
 

The batteries I got for the Canon MV20 duly arrived, were charged, put onto the camera and....
Fuck all.
Well, slightly more than fuck all as the powered tape eject mechanism works which shows they were doing something but there was not a sign of life otherwise.
Pondering that my "search by cheapest" method of selection might have been flawed I decided to power it off the mains.
So, as the original is lost somewhere inside the storage room of shame, I ordered a variable voltage PSU using the search term "cheap but not likely to kill me" and it duly arrived this morning and I plugged it in and ...
Fuck all.
Well, it too also does the powered tape eject mechanism and, to taunt me, also appears to be charging the battery when attached.
My carefully considered technical analysis of the situation leads me to the conclusion that it is, indeed, fucked.
 

What stood out for me is that it can do both regular timecode as well as wireless with the Atomos UltraSync Blue system.
If it can convert the incoming timecode from the UltraSync Blue into regular timecode to output to the camera (and vice versa which is more unlikely) then that would be very useful.
To do this otherwise would need an UltraSync One which is roughly 75% of the total price of the FR-AV2.
The bluetooth headphone monitoring can easily be replicated with cheap add ons for other recorders but its good to see it integrated.
The additional $100 over the F3 isn't onerous and if I didn't have an F3 then this would be my choice.
 

I agree with this.
If the primary purpose is to use with the animation software then I’d be led by that and Dragonframe do seem to recommend the Canon models above the rest for use with their software.
Canon do charge an additional fee for the animation firmware upgrade but if it makes it more functional for your primary purpose then I guess that is a price worth paying ?
Not sure what impact it has on the rest of the regular functionality in terms of this replacing it or just being additional functionality.
https://www.canon.co.uk/support/consumer/products/cameras/eos-r/eos-r.html?type=important&detailId=tcm:14-1955953&productTcmUri=tcm:14-1723696
 

@maxJ4380 I know Canon was taken off the table early on in the discussion but since nobody inquired about the animation purpose of the camera, I figured I'd bring it back into the mix. The reason I mention it is because Canon has introduced animation versions of some of there cameras. I was always curious about those models, but since I do not do animation, my curiosity was fleeting.

From the perspective of using it with an ATEM, this camera is stupendously good.
With the ATEM MINI ISO, you do your live stream with the cameras (and have full remote control over everything in it), and it saves your switching as a project file for Resolve.
Afterwards you load the file into Resolve, get your full switcher performance back (which you can then tweak) and automatically replace all the video elements with the 4K BRAW files from the cameras.
It is fantastic.
Imagine then not adding a Bluetooth capability to let the camera be operated remotely without the ATEM.
It’s not like you are then offering a free lunch as if you want all the extra capability that the ATEM offers then you need to buy an ATEM anyway.

From the perspective of using it with an ATEM, this camera is stupendously good.
With the ATEM MINI ISO, you do your live stream with the cameras (and have full remote control over everything in it), and it saves your switching as a project file for Resolve.
Afterwards you load the file into Resolve, get your full switcher performance back (which you can then tweak) and automatically replace all the video elements with the 4K BRAW files from the cameras.
It is fantastic.
Imagine then not adding a Bluetooth capability to let the camera be operated remotely without the ATEM.
It’s not like you are then offering a free lunch as if you want all the extra capability that the ATEM offers then you need to buy an ATEM anyway.

Wrong presumption by me.
Dont get why you can’t control it over the SDI port let alone the HDMI port.
Its just weird choices they’ve made here.
This is the only viable solution for external control.
I’m getting this camera next month for use with ATEM but there is development scope there for me to make an interface for external control by that method.
I’ll let you know.

Mystery solved.
I went to my brother’s place to retrieve some outboard gear from my old studio that he had been storing and it turns out that I gave the DX100 to him to give to my niece and he “forgot”. 

So here it is in its full cased glory with charger, battery and docking station.
Let charging commence but I purely to check it powers on etc as I’ll need to go and get all the tapes next week.

Well, I have retrieved it and it is sans Cinevate but more importantly a battery or charger so it will be an eBay job to source them.
I’m also found a “few” other forgotten about camcorders and cameras including this which was released fourteen years ago today apparently.

I used to use it a lot for doing GV shots around stadiums pre-match, hence it’s battered appearance!
Again, a charger is required to confirm if it is still functional.
As I say, there was quite a few different things in the case that was in.
So if anyone wants a Sigma DP3M (and you should because it’s so good that I have inadvertently bought two) then I’m your man!