BTM_Pix

So, I was able to get my lead actor to sit through another one of my lens tests. This is the Nikkor 24mm f/2...

I just finished my first shoot where I used the z6 for all the video shooting.  Was a bit painful to shoot (z6+14-24f2.8+ronin-s), but a total joy to grade.  The house was pretty easy to shoot though, nowhere near the dynamic range of some properties I shoot, it'll be interesting to see how it fares with them.  The ronin-s is miles better than the crane 2 for me. virtually no jitter even with the humongous cam and lens combo.  Good job too because the rolling shutter makes warp stabiliser a bit hit and miss.  I know some people have complained about the slomo, but I think its better than the gh5's. I spent the first few weeks telling my partner I was going to sell it, but just like the d5500, I'm loving the image.  Foibles: flicker from lights. I assume this is to do with the slow readout too.  Never had this issue with GH5. Its fine if I leave the shutter on 1/100 or 1/50th, but problematic if I want to use an auto mode.  I noticed some flicker on manual with auto iso. Have no idea why that should happen.  I know people dont post there own work a lot on here, I think more people should. 
 

Its the gateway aspect of the E mount that appeals.
Leaving aside the additional similar options the E mount range offers to Nikon users, having access to the Batis range no longer means you have to get a Sony body to have Zeiss lenses with AF.
The adapter itself is only a few mm deep anyway so if you put the EF lens adapter on it its a negligible difference between putting Nikon's FTZ adapter on the camera really.
Being able to also use the TechArt PRO opens up a lot of possibilities for fast, affordable and very compact full frame M mount lenses from Voigtlander and 7Artisans (28mm f1.4 and 50mm f1.1 are less than £650 for the PAIR!) and of course gives them AF, again for similar overall footprint than the FTZ adapter.
So whilst there is obviously a ton of wonderful Nikon glass out there it is worth bearing in mind that only 4 Nikon lenses will go directly on these cameras without an adapter and it is going to take them a long time before the majority of their most renowned ones are available in the native mount.
Funnily enough, despite being so heavily invested in the Nikon system, its actually only the availability of this adapter thats slightly enthused me about buying one of the Z series !

Don't drag me into it
99% of my time with this camera has been spent writing a controller for it rather than using it to make actual images so I can't really chime in with anything anywhere near authoritative on it as yet.
I'm watching this closely though, as if enough consensus builds then I might actually add an option to interactively lock the ranges so that if you go from ISO1000 on the camera or the app it automatically goes to ISO3200 instead of ISO1250 and the same on the way down from ISO3200 to ISO1000.

Don't drag me into it
99% of my time with this camera has been spent writing a controller for it rather than using it to make actual images so I can't really chime in with anything anywhere near authoritative on it as yet.
I'm watching this closely though, as if enough consensus builds then I might actually add an option to interactively lock the ranges so that if you go from ISO1000 on the camera or the app it automatically goes to ISO3200 instead of ISO1250 and the same on the way down from ISO3200 to ISO1000.

Very cool... I wish something like this was available for the Micro.

Another update to keep things ticking over, this time about controllers.
Currently, there are three wireless controller types as you can see here.

Two of them are standard looking console style gamepad controllers but have fold out grips to hold the phone and their keys and joysticks are directly mapped to the camera's controls.
They are slightly different sizes and the one on the left is holding the compact Pixi4 phone which as you can see is running in reduced interface mode.
However, the important thing to note is that although the screen is running in reduced interface mode, the underlying focus and zoom controls can still be operated by the control pad.
This is important when it comes to the very small control pad that you can see in the foreground, which is particularly intended for use with gimbals.
When used with any of these controllers, the app acts as a central hub to receive the input from the control pads over bluetooth and then process them and pass them on to the camera.
Although the image above shows the controllers with the smartphones in the cradles there is actually no need for them to be used in this way but it is there to illustrate how someone may use them if the camera is mounted on a crane or motorised slider or by a seconds operator etc where this RC style approach is very useful.
Because of this hub mode, you can actually just leave the smartphone in your pocket and then with the small controller operate the camera from a gimbal or even just mount it on the handle of a rig or the arm of a tripod as though it were a dedicated hardware remote.
The typical prices for the two larger controllers are around £20 and the small one is under £10.
Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to the release next week.

 

Accepting defeat and levitation is exactly what I've been trying to do by rising above the Brexit hysteria so you know how thats gone!

Seems like a decent list to me !

 

25mm RED Pro Prime

Looking good! Is that one of the red primes? 

Very cool! What lens is that?

A quick look at it in action from the final testing this week.
This is it being used in the reduced interface mode (selectable on startup) which gives you the option to run without focus or zoom individually.
The reduced mode is particularly useful for running on really small devices such as the Pixi 4 phone here whose reduced footprint makes them ideal for rail mounting for hands off side operation/monitoring of the camera settings.

A quick look at it in action from the final testing this week.
This is it being used in the reduced interface mode (selectable on startup) which gives you the option to run without focus or zoom individually.
The reduced mode is particularly useful for running on really small devices such as the Pixi 4 phone here whose reduced footprint makes them ideal for rail mounting for hands off side operation/monitoring of the camera settings.

Its the gateway aspect of the E mount that appeals.
Leaving aside the additional similar options the E mount range offers to Nikon users, having access to the Batis range no longer means you have to get a Sony body to have Zeiss lenses with AF.
The adapter itself is only a few mm deep anyway so if you put the EF lens adapter on it its a negligible difference between putting Nikon's FTZ adapter on the camera really.
Being able to also use the TechArt PRO opens up a lot of possibilities for fast, affordable and very compact full frame M mount lenses from Voigtlander and 7Artisans (28mm f1.4 and 50mm f1.1 are less than £650 for the PAIR!) and of course gives them AF, again for similar overall footprint than the FTZ adapter.
So whilst there is obviously a ton of wonderful Nikon glass out there it is worth bearing in mind that only 4 Nikon lenses will go directly on these cameras without an adapter and it is going to take them a long time before the majority of their most renowned ones are available in the native mount.
Funnily enough, despite being so heavily invested in the Nikon system, its actually only the availability of this adapter thats slightly enthused me about buying one of the Z series !

The other interesting yet seldom mentioned function it does is having the option to shoot in 1080p
I was dragged along to watch Aquaman last week (pro tip, always go and see the 4dX versions of films you'll hate as at least you can enjoy the ride).
I watched the credits to the bitter end because I was fascinated by how many people were involved in making it. I've tried without joy to find the figure online but I doubt a guess of 600-700 would be too far off.
Sobering in one way but inspirational in another as just getting a 2 minute piece together as a one man band is a big achievement !

I'm going to make an analogy to recording music because it has already been through the democratisation (for want of a better word) process that film making is going through.
This is a local band from my town making a half decent album in 1967.

Great room, great mics, great mic placement.
Because they'd got those aspects so right, it didn't matter anywhere near as much that they had such limited capabilities of a console like this to fix it in the mix.

My phone has more recording and mixing capability than they had available there but unless I take that same approach to acquisition then I can tweak away forever without really being able to get anywhere near it.
That isn't necessarily about having to have a world class room and world class mics but it does involve approaching the craft of it in the same way but also making an artistic decision about what it is you are trying to capture in the first place.
The same is true for image making.
I think it is great that we have the colour grading tools available to transform and even potentially rescue footage that you would ideally have shot under more controlled circumstances but I certainly hold with it being something to enhance or finesse a solid base.
I actually find one of the Pocket4K's most interesting yet hardly ever discussed features is the ability to record with baked in LUTs as I think creating a virtual film stock and taking the time to learn its response inside out and making those commitments to the final vision when shooting will ultimately yield better and more consistent results over time than the time draining options of noodling around with RAW all day.
To offer a parallel to this, for work I  have to shoot jpeg with very limited latitude time or manipulation wise to make anything other than minor tweaks. 
Due to this, I have the same 'film stock' on the multiple cameras I'm using and I'm completely familiar and comfortable with how it will react to the multiple types of lighting that I have to shoot in in terms of colour balance and dynamic range, how far I can underexpose it to boost shutter speed etc so no image that comes off any of them is a surprise or a challenge to get it where it needs to be.
As a consequence, images fly in and fly out with no delay, angst, analysis paralysis or regret.
By contrast, if you give me a single RAW file, I can fuck about all day with it.
Often with inversely proportional benefits.

Hague are a UK company that make a wide range of internal and external camera mounting gear for car shooting at reasonable prices.
Nice people too.
https://www.cameragrip.com/camera-car-mounts-suction-pads/

Its a combination of a few different elements of that.
Exclusivity of event access given to certain agencies would be one aspect of it and in cases where that isn't the official case it is becoming the de-facto one by virtue of a combination of preferential pre-allocated positioning and the number of accreditations granted. So if you take football as an example, a small agency would be given one accreditation and have to take their chances where they are positioned and cross their fingers the most important action of the event happens where they are sat while the larger agency are able to cover the entire field from four or five positions guaranteeing they get the shot.
Subscription based distribution of images favoured by those agencies also means that per image payments are becoming rarer as its so much easier and cheaper for a newspaper to illustrate a story with any number of images as part of their subscription plan than it is to deal with individual payments per image.
If you combine both of those factors then it becomes economically unviable for a lot of agencies and photographers to cover events so where you might have had a typical match with, for example, 30-40 photographers covering it then even if you have two agencies with subscription models and multiple photographers at it the opportunities to earn a worthwhile sum is reduced to a very small amount for half of them. 
When the market opportunity for the images to be able to be sold into gets reduced to that extent then so does the market for the purchase of the gear to make those images, hence why I'm bewildered by Sony getting involved for anything other than vanity or completeness purposes in it.
These agencies also have direct deals with the clubs themselves which also severely limits the opportunity to sell images from aspects outside of the 90 minutes such as training sessions and press conferences both by price (because again, these images are "free" for publications who have all you can eat subscriptions) and also by virtue of them having enhanced access to the stadium and the players.
The same agencies also have deals with the organising associations of the tournaments so its a short hop to tie the whole thing together into a deal to being the official and exclusive supplier of images.
Its worth bearing in mind that as with any editorial content, in sports photography it is often the most controversial images that will earn the biggest fees through syndication bolstered by exclusivity. Very often of course those images would be considered 'off brand' for players, clubs and organising associations so control of the brand image though exclusivity of access is also a powerful driver for this change. 
And then you get on to the TV rights holders who are paying literally billions of pounds to broadcast the events and who are also very keen on protecting and polishing the brand as well.
If there is a fight in the crowd at a football match or a streaker runs on the pitch etc then you are very unlikely to see that on your TV screen as the broadcasters choose what goes out so it irks them that photographers (who pay zero of course to cover the event) don't also turn their lenses away from a disturbance but are very much likely to turn their full attention towards it and start firing away. With the super fast distribution of still images from pitch side these days those unfiltered scenes can be on newspaper sites unhindered within a minute and be damaging the 'brand'.
Taking all of that into account leads to a logical conclusion that TV rights holders will eventually do a deal with a large agency to give them live access to the TV images for frame extraction and editing (transmission of out of camera images to remote editors is already standard practice anyway) as soon as the image quality is there.
Will the pictures suffer ?
Yes and no.
The TV companies have the best coverage positions and quantity of coverage of anyone in the stadium so they can produce arguably more interesting content anyway.
What you will lose is the individual aspect of choice with which a photographer will create the image as you will be stuck with making something out of what you are given so if the TV framing of a piece of action is wide then so will your 'picture' of it and if its in tight then so will your version of it be as well whereas you might well have chosen to do the exact opposite in both cases.
One thing that will also advance its introduction in football at least is the phasing in of the VAR video refereeing decision system which is used for supporting or overturning decisions made by the on field referee. As these are normally the contentious and hence newsworthy incidents such as was it a penalty, was he offside etc, the images from the numerous cameras that the system uses arguably capture the peak moments of action and frame extracts are increasingly being used by newspapers to illustrate them with.
I'm going to give the whole thing probably three or four years tops (particularly in light of the 8K at the Tokyo Olympics) before the balance tips, which is why I've wound down my involvement in it virtually completely in the past six month.

I am not familiar with that because an old git like me can't afford any Any Leica toys. ?

I'm going to make an analogy to recording music because it has already been through the democratisation (for want of a better word) process that film making is going through.
This is a local band from my town making a half decent album in 1967.

Great room, great mics, great mic placement.
Because they'd got those aspects so right, it didn't matter anywhere near as much that they had such limited capabilities of a console like this to fix it in the mix.

My phone has more recording and mixing capability than they had available there but unless I take that same approach to acquisition then I can tweak away forever without really being able to get anywhere near it.
That isn't necessarily about having to have a world class room and world class mics but it does involve approaching the craft of it in the same way but also making an artistic decision about what it is you are trying to capture in the first place.
The same is true for image making.
I think it is great that we have the colour grading tools available to transform and even potentially rescue footage that you would ideally have shot under more controlled circumstances but I certainly hold with it being something to enhance or finesse a solid base.
I actually find one of the Pocket4K's most interesting yet hardly ever discussed features is the ability to record with baked in LUTs as I think creating a virtual film stock and taking the time to learn its response inside out and making those commitments to the final vision when shooting will ultimately yield better and more consistent results over time than the time draining options of noodling around with RAW all day.
To offer a parallel to this, for work I  have to shoot jpeg with very limited latitude time or manipulation wise to make anything other than minor tweaks. 
Due to this, I have the same 'film stock' on the multiple cameras I'm using and I'm completely familiar and comfortable with how it will react to the multiple types of lighting that I have to shoot in in terms of colour balance and dynamic range, how far I can underexpose it to boost shutter speed etc so no image that comes off any of them is a surprise or a challenge to get it where it needs to be.
As a consequence, images fly in and fly out with no delay, angst, analysis paralysis or regret.
By contrast, if you give me a single RAW file, I can fuck about all day with it.
Often with inversely proportional benefits.

This is the most basic and oldest color grading textbook I can think of. I must have read it six years ago. But I found it more useful than online tutorials, because of its broader focus:
https://www.amazon.com/Color-Correction-Handbook-Professional-Techniques/dp/0321929667/ref=asc_df_0321929667/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312091457223&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14846167971322217554&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001876&hvtargid=pla-524043500801&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=62820903995&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312091457223&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14846167971322217554&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001876&hvtargid=pla-524043500801
I know many people here claim camera doesn't matter much if you can grade really well, but I readily admit I can't. So for me I think camera matters more.
And I think there are things you can do with LUTs that are difficult to do without them. Light Iron and CO3 both have proprietary LUTs. That's the smaller part of what makes those places as good as they are, and they work they do really is fantastic. But I think it's still a factor.
Anyhow, I highly recommend the book.
 

@BTM_Pix ... interesting analogy. That band sounds pretty cool... what do they call themselves?
I always forget that you can bake LUTS with the P4K. If I was a smarter person I’d probably buy one but I still think 1080p video is going to make a comeback.
It’s funny, my best results with color has been using the guided color correction tool in Colorista IV. With some saturation and an s-curve, I’ve received my biggest compliments. Anytime I try to sit down and watch tutorials and learn the proper way... eg. left to my own devices... I spend hours and get worse results.
So I agree that it’s great that the tools are available but to master even one discipline in filmmaking is a life long endeavor let alone every single craft.