Robert Collins

48 minutes ago, Castorp said:

The cameras in the new iPhones look really good. I’ve always found Apple’s AWB head and shoulders above anyone else’s (phones and camera makers) as well as superior colour science. 

Pretty excited about computing playing a larger role in photography. I feel camera makers are really dragging their feet introducing software correction and augmentation. They’re still seem stuck to the idea of analogue correction in lenses. 

Also excited about DOF simulation becoming really good in the latest iPhones. 

Means camera makers will have to find other ways to improve. Soon it won’t be possible to tell a “professional” camera from a phone from looking at de-focus in an image. 

That's one way of looking at it. Although as the latest iphone XS max starts at US$1150 and Sony is rumored to be bringing out a FF camera for under US$1500 - it wont be long before it wont be possible to tell a 'professional' camera from a phone by looking at its 'price'!! 

Supposedly the major annual update to Premiere Pro CC will arrive in the next few days. These new 'curves' for selective color adjustment look super intuitive to me.

19 minutes ago, ErikSwan said:

Do you have a profile you are using for correction in post, or are you just manually estimating the distortion parameters?

 

I use the one that you can download for free from the foot notes with this video. It works well.

2 hours ago, mercer said:

I thought I read that there is a strong rumor suggesting 16mm flange distance and a 2x crop mode, so in M4/3 crop mode, with an adapter, m4/3 lenses will work. Not a bad idea to keep existing customers that may be interested in moving to FF.

Unless there is some type of internal/external Raw or internal ProRes, I don’t really see the point of a FF Panasonic. It seems like they’re grasping at straws here... especially if it doesn’t have IBIS.

Something like this makes most sense to me. It also would explain Panasonic's 'need' for a high mega-pixel sensor. At 50mp for FF - you have 12.5mp for M43 - in other words a GH5s sensor capable of 4k video.

24 minutes ago, jonpais said:

I’m with Wolf on this. If their FF camera doesn’t have PDAF, it would make me think twice about purchasing another Panasonic.

As things seem to stand, I simply dont get it. History shows that far more 'mounts' fail than succeed.

And Panasonic faces an incredible uphill task in competing with Nikon, Canon and Sony in FF mirrorless. Not just in terms of brand name but also experience and a lens catalog that they effectively have to start from scratch. If you then throw in a lack of ibis and no pdaf (as well as a March 2019 release) and a US$3000 price point - this mount sort of looks DOA.

10 hours ago, Simon Young said:

This german speaking dude has done the most extensive testing of the Z7 so far. He put the camera to work during two weeks. The talking head part in this video is shot with the S-lens, 35mm at f2.0. Focus sticks to his face like glue. It’s shot without an ND filter, hence the wonky motion cadence, in auto white balance and standard color (not flat).

He says he prefers the Canon and Fuji skin tones but that the Nikon is probably more accurate but that this footage might look strange because he’s very sunburnt after climbing mountains in Switzerland.

He’s praising the view finder and the lcd-screen, very responsive it seems, but he’s not too keen on the size of the house (too small) the size of the glass (too big albeit very sharp) and he’s very disappointed that there are no separate video settings - it’s cumbersome to constantly change exposure settings manually between video and stills. 

Other than that he overall thinks it’s a very fun camera to use, but in the end suggests those who are not invested in the Nikon system to wait for next generation.

Looking at the 'mode dial' on the Z7, I see there are U1, U2, and U3 available for custom settings. So presumably it is easy to say set one for 4k video and one to 1080 slo mo. Then it becomes easy to switch between stills and video.

I have one more thought about the camera industry - the camera industry is a mess.

The following is an example using Canon (yes fish in a barrel) but much the same applies to the other companies.

So imagine you are a new ILC camera purchaser and you want your first camera to be a Canon. What do you buy? And exactly what camera are they trying to sell you?

You hear that Canon makes excellent DSLRs and lenses. Great but this looks to be 'old tech' that is gradually going to be on the way out. Not something you should sensibly buy into now as it isnt likely to have great resale value.

So the future is 'mirrorless'? But which should I buy the EOS-M or the EOS-R? Well EOS-M is cheaper and has more lenses. But is Canon going to develop it further now that it has the EOS-R? Or is it another dead end? It is not as though EOS-M and EOS-R are compatible with one another in any shape or form?

So it seems that EOS-R is the future so this is the one I should buy? But I am not sure its ready. It says it has 4k but it doesnt really. It says it has slow motion 120p but without focus. And what lenses should I buy? 3 out of 4 of the new lenses weigh more than the camera. 2 out of 4 of the lenses cost more than the camera. Oh so I am supposed to buy the old legacy dslr lenses and use them on my new camera via way of 'an adapter'? I know Canon wants to sell me an adapter - they have just launched 3!!

So all in all what I see is Canon offering a bewildering array of options that for most customers will simply be 'too confusing' to buy into. They will most likely decide to 'just wait it out'.

And much the same can be said about other manufacturers. Panasonic's foray in FF devaluing the future of M43? Nikon devaluing the future of its DSLRs with the Z range? So surely Sony and Fuji will benefit from this confusion? Not at all. When Sony had the monopoly in FF mirrorless it was an easy switch but Nikon and Canon have muddied the waters, they have done enough to stop the tide of switchers without making a convincing case for their own mirrorless.

I dont see things turning out well for the camera industry in general...

I do think some of the commentary on this camera is 'wrong'. There is a consensus for instance that this camera is a 'disappointment'. I dont think so. I think the camera is entirely 'consistent' with about the last 10 ILCs that Canon has released. In other words if you believed/hoped that the Canon EOS-R would come with uncropped 4k you really havent been paying attention or are delusional. If you really think that Canon are going to 'nail it' with their 'pro' release again you are heroically optimistic. Canon ILCs have consistently been under-specced and overpriced v the competition for quite a while now. Their tech (particularly sensor tech) is well behind the competition.

So I dont really have a problem with those reviewers that take a half full v half empty approach to their reviews. A lot of people are pretty much locked into the Canon ecosystem through their lenses and accessories or think that off-spec sheet advantages of Canon make up for their on-sheet shortfalls.

Where I think the EOS-R is a particularly hard sell is that it is a 'new mount'. And while I think it is easy to justify in investing in your 'existing' mount despite its deficiencies - it seems a bit much to double down with their new mount (when you could simply choose a different new mount) knowing with a high degree of certainty that the cameras will be under-specced and overpriced until such time as Canon abandons its legacy in-house sensor operations.

My favourite part in Caleb's video is when he says it is very similar to a GH5s on the basis that it doesnt have ibis and has roughly the same crop!!

15 hours ago, omega1978 said:

Have you try the HDR(HLG) 4k ? is there a standard correction LUT for DLog-M from DJI ?

Havent tried HLG yet but have some good footage with it. DLog-M is pretty sweet though. The problem I face is that it is in the middle of the rainy season here and the light is overcast and flat so that I havent had some decent light/DR to really test the video yet.

I have been trying the hyperlapse mode but tend to find the camera movement too fast and dont see a way of slowing down the drone - this rather uninspiring hyperlapse was slowed to 40% in post (quite probably user error.)

20 minutes ago, nigelbb said:

Are vloggers really a market that any camera company seriously targets their cameras at? How many vloggers are there? Hundreds? Thousands? I doubt it. People who use these hybrid cameras primarily for video amount to no more than 5% of the total market so vloggers must be a tiny fraction of that 5%.

Well apparently they are an incredibly important demographic or the camera companies wouldnt be arranging glamorous jamborees for them every camera launch. And I am sure that every new camera 3 years from now will have a 'fully adjustable LCD' because the youtube community needs it to do their selfie videos of themselves. Any camera without will be deemed useless. 

Another micro-demographic that the camera manufacturers pay far too much attention to are 'pros'. I love the way that say Tony Northrup says he cant recommend this camera to 'wedding professionals' because it doesnt have 2 card slots. If you happen to be a 'wedding professional' and need Tony Northrup to recommend your camera well I pity for you. And then there are the 'pros' who apparently cant 'afford' to spend 10 seconds a day switching out a battery....

Here are a few thoughts on the Mavic 2 after a week or so of use. Mostly points that I have found that dont seem to get much mention in the youtube stuff.

1) There has been no firmware update so far for Crystalsky monitors, so you cant use the Crystalsky with the Mavic 2 yet. Pretty disappointing for an expensive accessory.

2) For some inexplicable reason DJI has removed quite a lot of the intelligent flight modes that were on the original Mavic Pro. The two that I used a lot - Course Lock (great for panning) and Waypoints are both gone.

3) Theoretically you can pan the camera from left to right (unlike the Mavic Pro) but in practice this has fairly limited practical use because the props get in your shot.

4) So you are likely to shoot quite a lot of video while flying left or right which is fine apart from the side obstacle sensors dont work (unless in intelligent flight mode or tripod mode.)

5) The DLog-M 10 bit h.265 profile is a huge step up from the Mavic Pro and is great in post. Unfortunately, the footage in DLog has horrendous lens distortion. Its easy to fix in post but rendering h.265 is pretty slow. (I am wondering whether it is best to transcode first for Premiere Pro.)

6) I like the 2.7k 60p footage. It is FOV and I assume pixel binned - so isnt the most detailed - however the 60p really helps smooth out the footage.

7) I never used 'autoexposure' with the Mavic Pro because of exposure flicker but I havent noticed any with the Mavic 2 when shooting shutter priority.

1 hour ago, Snowbro said:

I was actually trying that; for some reason I cannot get two seperate luts on one adjustment layer to save as a single lut from lumetri color. I can do the combination by having the lut I made on the clip, then put the eterna kodak lut on an adjustment layer. However, when I copy the lumetri color (with my lut applied) on the clip and paste it into the adjustment layer, it overrides the eterna kodak. It just creates two lumetri color adjustments with my lut on each of them. Not sure how to save the combo yet.  

In Lumetri color with Premiere Pro you can place one LUT in the 'basic' panel and one LUT in the 'creative' panel.

Maybe I am missing something but why not simply export your LR settings as a LUT from LR and then use that with the Eterna LUT in Premiere Pro.

I used to think the mode dial was an incredible waste of camera real estate. But with modern hybrid cameras I think it is far more relevant. I like the one on the A7riii (apart from the ridiculous push button unlock.)

The main reason is the custom settings (C1, C2, C3). I set C1 to 4k video settings and C2 to 1080, 120 video settings. So switching between stills modes (A, S, M) and video (4k, 1080) is all pretty easy and convenient. I also use S&Q a fair bit.

11 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

I think if negative reviews are to be extinct, customers less knowledgable (what's a 4K 1.8x crop?!), brands more powerful and marketing disguising itself as editorial to the point where it is absolutely normal and accepted, then the internet has basically been bought by the corporate world. And we cannot allow that to happen.

While the sentiment is admirable it probably is totally unrealistic. The corporate world will buy up the internet. I think there is already vast evidence of far more disingenuous marketing tactics on the internet being used to influence our choices than the rather blatant bribery of youtube influencers. 

I still think the simplest and most obvious explanation for the EOS R video specs is that Canon simply doesnt have the sensor tech that all the other manufacturers have access to.

It simply doesnt make sense to introduce a 'new mount' with worst specs than everyone else unless you have no choice.

4 minutes ago, Snowbro said:

Yeah, and Sony is supposed to release some interesting things this month too. I know Canon will nail their pro version, so switching to sony/nikon etc., then back will get expensive. I'm just a poor college student! haha

Aha... And so the great Canon cycle of 'hope over experience' begins again....

2 hours ago, Emanuel said:

Indeed. Just wait and they'll release both models in a premium one.

I bet the shots you can get with the zoom as B-drone may not justify the outdated investment in a few months.

I wouldn't dare to infer the same about the PRO version available now and from today on, though. A unique piece of its kind.

Still the best 'money grab' approach by DJI would have been to release the zoom first and then the pro 6 months later....

All getting very Heath Robinson.According to Jordan Drake - adapting an APSC 10-18 lens to a new full frame mirrorless camera is going to be a 'thing' for bloggers....

Seems that reception for the Eos R is pretty muted from this poll taken in the Eos R mirrorless forum on DPR.

3% will definitely buy - a figure so low it is usually reserved for the release of new selfie sticks...

A similar poll taken in the Z mirrorless forum gives the Nikon Z system a much better response.

5 minutes ago, Shield3 said:

Guess you never read any Shakespeare.  Some mouth on you Mercer - geesh. 

The frustrating part for me is you know damn well Canon *could have* done better with this one.  No 4k60?  No 1080p120?  The a6000 had the latter, and the 2 year old 1dxII had the former upon release.  I always have considered myself a Canon person at heart - just so pissed they're holding back - they're not listening to customers like Sony and it shows.  Canon needs a shake-up in the upper mgmt/marketing area more than anything else.  Push the damn envelope.  Had this been released in 2014 there would be a lot less complaining.  Not very many Canon non-cinema bodies have an EVF - and it's tough to see the back of the body in good light (and I'm tired of loupes and heavy external EVFs).  Only one we had was the XC10 - I had it for a couple of months and just didn't love the image.  So yeah - a few of us were serious buyers and looking forward to this, and mostly frustrated that Canon thinks they know better than we (the collective consumer).

Actually I dont think we really 'know this.' In fact nearly all the shortfall in performance seems to point to Canon being unable to pull data off the sensor fast enough - heavily cropped 4k, rolling shutter in cropped 4k, no 1080 120p, relatively poor fps in photos, no continuous eye focus etc... And the problem with mirrorless is that it is very sensor dependent. If Canon is behind here and cant catch up, this will be a bigger problem long term than simply starting with an underwhelming entry level camera.

Although I think this is the sort of average tech spec that we have come to expect from Canon, I think it has some interesting touches.

1. Adapter with variable ND

2. Wifi transfer of raw to smartphone

3. Additional programmable ring on lenses

4. Programmable touchbar?

Just now, Django said:

Hey look at it this way, that 50mm 1.2 can double as a 85mm 1.2 in 4K ! Yay!

Well more like man 85 f1.8 but still - a lot of versatility....

Wow... 4K 120p....