Robert Collins
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Posts posted by Robert Collins
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It does seem disappointing. The lack of a tilt LCD which was an obvious addition points to the likelihood that this is going to be a simple/careless refresh. And that is a pity. The LX100 is something of a Panasonic icon/flagship in a lot of peoples eyes.
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7 minutes ago, jonpais said:
I can’t recall who it was, but I think someone in this thread already answered that question: photographers want the cameras they see professionals shooting at these events.
At least, that’s one explanation.
Even if, as some claim, ‘Sony’ isn’t putting a ‘dent’ in the ‘pro’ market, few question their ‘expertise’ in ‘video’, which is why most of us are here in the first place. ?
Yes. Of course I have heard this 'explanation' but it makes no sense - there is no logic to it. If the 'needs' of pros and enthusiasts are very different it doesnt make sense their 'wants' are the same.
And conceptually, advances in 'camera tech' and mirrorless in particular offers is a 'democratization' of video and photography... the ability to get 'professional' results with 'ease'.
Small size is a boon for a traveller but is probably unergonomic for a pro.
Eye-af at the push of button is great for an amateur but probably pretty useless for a pro who can focus on the nearest eye without thinking about.
Af in video is pretty much a prerequisite for many but many pros are happy or prefer to shoot manual.
The same can be said for ibis
...Or WYSIWYG EVFs....
Ultimately, a key advantage of mirrorless is that it circumvents many of the 'skillsets' that are required to operate a 'pro' camera.
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1 hour ago, Kisaha said:
What I see in this forum is the vast difference in approach between professionals and semi-pros to amateurs.
Yes, I dont see why mirrorless manufacturers like 'Sony' have such a focus on 'pro' needs. Afterall the 'needs' of 'pros' are very different from what you would imagine are their target market.
Pro photographers are relatively impoverished (with a median income well below the US national median income) and arent even a particularly large demographic.
You would think the natural mirrorless target market would be women, the young, and affluent travel enthusiasts.
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19 minutes ago, Django said:
I don't see the profesionnal photography market moving away significantly from Canon/Nikon and even less from DSLR to MILC just yet:
World Cup Moscow, June 2018.
Paris Fashion Week
Lens selection, OVF, weather sealing, battery life, off-sensor AF, grip, balance with big lens etc.. The DSLR still remains king.
It will take indeed at least another decade imo for MILCs to take over and I suspect it is still Canon/Nikon that will pave the way by adressing things like weather resistance, ergonomics etc.. giving pros a mirrorless DSLR experience.
Sony is more focused on enthusiasts & semi-pros by making the smallest, most compact advanced cameras which is what Japanese tech giant companies aspire to.
But cramming the most features in the smallest body has it's limitations. Sony are well aware of all this and even somewhat admits to it:
Do you think we’ll see mostly mirrorless cameras at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo?
Yes.
How many of those cameras do you want to be made by Sony?
Many! But the professional market is very conservative, so we’re taking it step by step. We saw some photographers using the Alpha 9 at this year’s winter Olympics but of course the majority was Canon and Nikon. But the number of Sony photographers is increasing.
There have been questions about the weather sealing of a7-series and a9 cameras. Is this something you want to address?
In really bad conditions, in really heavy rain, will photographers keep on taking pictures [for long periods of time?] I don’t think so. In those conditions, most photographers will use some kind of rain cover. But of course durability is very important. Photographers should be able to shoot [in poor weather]. We have an internal ‘weather test’ and for each kind of customer we will aim to produce products with adequate durability.
Is that something that your professional users are asking for?
Yes. But we need a balance between durability, and size and weight. For a professional camera, the requirement for durability is higher, but for hobbyist kinds of camera, the priority is smaller size and lower weight.
I sort of feel that pro photography will dramatically change over the next 10 years rather more than the equipment.
Those rugby scrum photos look kind of 2000s to me. How many of those photogs will have a job in 10 years? I just dont really see the need to pay 300 people to take exactly the same photo at 10 frames a second in a modern world.
Most likely people will be taking stills from video at sporting events like the Olympics and World Cup.
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1 hour ago, Eric Calabros said:
Sony overall ILC marketshare is still %13. The same number they achieved when they were in DSLR/SLT business. in APS-C, despite all the tech buzz, Canon hammered them with a lazy EOS-M effort. Same will happen to FF when Canon releases its mirrorless dragons. And I say this as a Nikon guy.
Yes, I think Canon is very well placed for mirrorless. Thom Hogan recently estimated that the Sony 'A' series had 3% market share of ILCs. It might (optimistically) be 5% in 2018 and that would be a reasonable market share of FF which is about 15% of ILCs.
Sony's APS-C strategy seems to be a bit of a mess. High end bodies with low end lenses - no 2.8 zooms. They are supposed to launch a a6700 camera by the end of the year - for what US$1500? US$900 gets you a Canon M50 + 15-45 + 55-200 or a Sony a6300 body only. Canon is the only mirrorless manufacturer focused on the low end asp-c - everyone else - Sony, Olympus, Fuji and Panasonic have gone relentlessly upmarket.
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1 hour ago, jonpais said:
How can you say that? Wouldn’t they be better off concentrating their resources rather than spreading them too thin?
Well as nikon has far more market share than Pentax, Fuji, Olympus and Panasonic combined they can probably afford a fairly broad range of offerings.
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1 hour ago, MurtlandPhoto said:
We still don't know how F mount lenses will perform with Nikon's mirrorless adapters. Say they perform flawlessly, then the change to mirrorless will be pleasant for most users. We'll find out in one week.
I think we sort of do. Conceptually on sensor pdaf cannot really match a dedicated off sensor pdaf array because the off sensor array can have much larger sensors which gather far more light...
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3 hours ago, kye said:
TLDR:
- MILCs will gradually replace DSLRs, like DSLRs replaced SLRs and smartphones will replace cameras for the enthusiasts that had compact cameras
- Mirrorless advantages over DSLRs
- MILC lenses vs DSLR lenses and focus modes
- Enthusiast vs Pro Stills vs Pro Video customer segments vs mirrorless manufacturers - current and predictions
- Industry sales are decreasing, more competition
- Predictions of what each brand will do and what will happen commercially
- Sony are leading, CaNikon only have to have good enough mirrorless to keep their current customers, then they can go after Sony in the future
- Consumers are the winners...
It is quite a good video. But it seems the first point is glossed over with a pretty glib 'DSLRs will gradually die' approach. I simply dont think you can compare 'milcs taking over from DSLRs with DSLRs taking over from film.'
Consider this. Take a D850 owner who likes its form factor and OVF, has US$15,000 of F mount lenses and doesnt shoot video (my guess, is that most of them dont). And let's heroically assume that Nikon comes out with a 45mp mirrorless that is as good as the A7riii in a 'more ergonomic' form factor. What possible reason would the D850 owner have to switch to Nikon mirrorless (or any other) when their existing lenses wont work nearly as well on the new camera or they have to sell their lenses and buy anew? I dont really see what mirrorless brings to a 'core' D850 owner now or in the future (well apart from silent shooting with a VF). And so Nikon mirrorless and DSLRs are likely to have to live somewhat uncomfortably side by side for a long, long time.
That it is why I think Nikon's marketing of this product is going to be interesting - and perhaps rather different from what many people are expecting.
- webrunner5, Aussie Ash and kye
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When I was looking for a back up for my A7riii, I tried an A7iii but ended up getting another A7riii (lightly used).
I have definitely seen examples where the A7iii has better detail in FF 4K. Some say the af is better on the A7iii but if it is it is very marginal. Same can be said for low light.
A7riii does offer some advantages...
Better EVF
Better and brighter Lcd
No crop in 4K 30
Having said that, the premium is difficult to justify unless you want higher mp stills.
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1 hour ago, kye said:
I'm reminded of hearing that some cinematographers want equipment that gives a great look SOOC camera, and some want a neutral capture that they can then manipulate in post. The former tend to view cameras and lenses and lighting as artistic tools, and the latter talk about the highest resolution and lowest distortion components and view the camera as a technical tool.
For me the big advantage of Sony is ease of use. You get uncropped 4K, slo mo, good low light, shallow dof with standard lenses, decent af and ibis. Everything you need so you don’t have to bother with manual focusing, adapters, focal reducers or even gimbals a lot of the time.
- kye, jonpais and webrunner5
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The market share numbers are exaggerated by the fact that neither Canon or Nikon have launched a new FF in the past year.
The A7iii though is an incredibly strong product offering especially at its price point. It’s strength is that it has no glaring weaknesses - it does pretty everything well or very well for both video and stills.
I tend to disagree with most people here about the ergonomics. I do get that people who are used to a dslr want a mirrorless that feels like a dslr. But I have never owned a Dslr and whenever I pick one up it feels like a klunky relic. There is some something very intuitive about large sensor small body. I guess I am mostly a photographer so my wants are different. The form factor of the Fuji X-H1 is popular here but it hasn’t resonated with photographers.
I will be super impressed if Nikon comes out with a better mirrorless than Sony (I will be totally gobsmacked if Canon does). I don’t think Nikon actually needs a better mirrorless to outsell Sony -their brand name should do that with a fairly solid offering.
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22 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:
I think Panasonic and Olympus both shot themselves in the foot with the pricing of the GH5, GH5s , and Oly with the EM1 mk II. That is crazy money for a m4/3 camera. Especially with the Sony A7 mk III now and the BM PK4 coming out. They have done screwed up as they say. The Genie is out of the bottle and no way to put it back in.
And now Canon and Nikon both are going to have to have a FF mirrorless in the 2000 dollar range, and not some piece of crap one either. There really isn't a whole lot the A7 mk III can't do that even Nikon or Canon will have on their top end ones. What the hell is left out that the average person needs other than high MP for photos. And that is really over rated in this day and age anyways. Nobody prints anymore anyways.
From Imaging - Resource
"Sony A7 III Print Quality
Excellent, high-quality prints up to at least 30 x 40 inches up to ISO 800; Very good prints up to 13 x 19 inches at ISO 6400; Usable 5 x 7 inch print at ISO 51,200."
Hell that is a print as big as most peoples LCD TV!
The big advantage of a high resolution sensor is that it gives you a lot of flexibility to crop. Essentially with an A7riii you have 42mp FF, 18mp APS-C and 11mp M43 all wrapped up in one. Makes your lenses very versatile.
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2 hours ago, jonpais said:
And just how do you know whether BMD did a cost/benefit analysis of AF-C in the batcam? Anyhow, why state the obvious? Of course it’s expensive!
Given these cameras are appear to be based around Sony Starvis sensors, they won’t have OSPDAF and mirrorless afc is pretty poor without it.
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8 hours ago, Trek of Joy said:
Supposedly one-year-old iPhoneX still beats the Note9 in benchmark tests, but the Note has a better screen. With the next iPhone just around the corner, the gap will likely widen in Apple's favor.
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/galaxy-note-9-benchmarks,news-27773.html
But when did someone last buy a phone that was too slow to do anything - they even put delays in the phone so the apps open in a visually pleasing manner. And when did people last buy a phone with a crummy screen....
It all. Seems measurbating to me.
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I heard that people shoot 4K for YouTube because the 4K videos get ranked higher in search
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6 hours ago, Ty Harper said:
Can you elaborate on how you felt they weren't working well together? I've been meaning to buy the SliderOne Pro/Motion Box combo for a while now, so any first hand critiques would be greatly appreciated.
Well the first SliderOne pro I had worked fine by itself. Ants the motion box (only released a month ago) worked fine by itself. But the two working together resulted in ‘uncontrolled shudders’ for a few seconds every 5 minutes in a time lapse.Edelkrone sent me a replacement SliderOne and so it seems to work pretty much perfectly.
The app is superb. Always connect, very fast and easy to use and extremely intuitive.
I have been using it mostly for motion timelapses though and haven’t done much straight video with it. I did this as a sort of test looking for jitters but it looked pretty good to me....
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20 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:
Just imagine IF... The IBIS is as good as Olympus/Panasonic... The EVF is as big as the Leica SL... The 4K is as good as the D850 but with extra options like HLG and Nikon LOG... And the AF is Dual Pixel... That would mean the Sony A7R III would be beaten and it would leave the A7 III to win on price but not much else.
...plus 4k 60p, HD 240p, internal 12 bit prores raw and a global shutter....
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8 hours ago, jonpais said:
when’s the last time anybody inadvertantly changed the mode dial without a lock? Never happened once in my uneventful life!
Yes I have A7riiis and I hate the mode lock. What for?
My theory is that there were suggestions for putting a lock on the EV dial (which I rarely use for photos) and they simply put the lock on the wrong dial.
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1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:
30p is a crop, so the lens correction wouldn't reveal the very bottom edge of the sensor readout.
Looking at Caleb's video, the stretch is certainly enough to push the bottom of the frame out of the picture where the blinking pixels occurred.
My theory is that Sony discovered some units shipped with a hardware fault causing corruption on that bottom scan line of the readout, and only way to fix it was to hide it with firmware fix, rather than do a recall.
Why else would it be stretching the picture? It has no purpose and is an unlikely "bug" (would be the first bug of its kind ever in the camera industry). It is a full pixel readout in 4K/24p/25p of the entire sensor top to bottom, so yes they are scaling from 5 or 6K down to 4K. I don't think that's the issue. They have done it before, no problem. Wonder if A9 has same stretch?
Still if they fixed the 'scan line' corruption with a 'y axis stretch' of 1% you would think they would be smart enough to also stretch the 'x axis 1%' too.
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Hmm... As the fix for this is to expand the X axis in post 1% or presumably decrease the y axis by 0.7% or something (maths not my strong point). I would conclude.
Option1... hot fix for dodgy horizantal lines. A 1% adjust wont wont fix that.
Option 2... Digital lens correction. Well then it would appear in both 24p and 30p
Option 3... FCPX bug. Maybe...
Option 4? Sony is down rezzing the video from say 5 or 6k to 4k and screwed up its algorithm. Quite probable.
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40 minutes ago, Danko said:
I’m writing this to try and make people here step away from the discourse that’s been prevailing. Guessing and speculating is fun as we said somewhere earlier but it became a narrative of this battle or survival. And it’s not. And it has nothing to do with reality. It’s not a reality of creative industry, authors, amateurs, simple professionals. It’s only reality of youtube ‘influencers’, embattled fans on DPReview, idle wanna-dos.
Well done. Havent laughed so hard since watching 'who is America?'
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10 minutes ago, jonpais said:
We don't even know at this point whether Nikon will license other manufacturers to make native mount lenses. This is all pure speculation that leads nowhere.
A more fruitful discussion would surround Hugh Brownstone's video, in which he outlines what he believes Nikon must do in order to surpass Sony.
You should probably save up for the A7siii which will use Sony's stacked cmos technology and hopefully be out before the end of the year.
Nikon FF Mirrorless
In: Cameras
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Here in Bangkok my speed in my house is 50/15 for US$12 a month unlimited. My mobile is US$20 a month for 40GB. I could get much faster for a small premium but when I tried it, I found it less reliable.
The worst internet I have found is in France. In Paris, I stayed in a US$300 a night hotel that only had internet in the reception. In the house I was staying in the Dordogne, there was no mobile phone signal and the internet was 50kbps when it worked!!