Robert Collins

On 7/7/2018 at 2:31 AM, ntblowz said:

https://www.droningon.co/2018/07/06/dji-mavic-pro-2-makes-first-appearance/

 

The camera/gimbal unit is removable, so like gopro karma it can be used on osmo?

There is quite a bit of speculation that you can already see the gimbal with a second camera in the photo here....

Which seems to match Ositalv claim of a US$249 hand held gimbal for a Mavic 2 camera here....

27 minutes ago, Thomas Hill said:

Thanks, and it's A7iii 4K XAVC-S.

This site has a lot of tests and hardware recommendations for Resolve and Premiere Pro.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/

I used to have an i7 4790k and 960 graphics card PC as well as an A7riii but I use Premiere Pro so what I say may not apply to Resolve.

I first upgraded to a 1080 GPU but didnt find it made much difference - in fact I cant really seem to get my 1080 to run much higher than 50% load.

I then upgraded my processor to an 8 core 7820x and this added a lot of performance.

1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

You can bet your butt Casey Neistat has seen, or been using one.

...And that he has already crashed it...

On 7/7/2018 at 2:31 AM, ntblowz said:

https://www.droningon.co/2018/07/06/dji-mavic-pro-2-makes-first-appearance/

 

The camera/gimbal unit is removable, so like gopro karma it can be used on osmo?

The photo is interesting. With a bit of luck it means there could be a choice of two cameras - 1/1.7 and 1 inch.

6 hours ago, andrgl said:

Neither of those are good choices due to massive throttling of their GPUs. Get a portable gaming laptop. Reddit is a good non-biased source to use to find the right one.

I agree. In addition both these laptops are charging 8th generation intel CPU prices for 7th generation processors. And the 8th generation processors are about 30% faster.

This is a good video.

If you are committed to the 2 in 1 concept - the Dell XPS 15 2 in 1 has probably the best performance.

15 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

I've seen enough waterfall, river and night time traffic headlight  streak shots to suggest that they do

True enough of waterfall, river and seascapes - I often take a 10 stop ND filter with me But it isnt strictly necessary. This shot was taken without an ND. About 20 shots (equivalent to 95%) taken at 1/8, f16, iso50 and then 'mean averaged' in photoshop....

Headlight streak shots dont usually use NDs, they are a function of 'night time' plus 'low iso' resulting in a long shutter speed.

They're also useful as a device to take out people in shots of busy sites with long exposures in daylight.

Well you could use an ND for this but it wont turn out that well because you will tend to get 'ghosting'.

The standard method is to take multiple shots on a tripod over a reasonable period of time and 'median average' in photoshop.

People using faster lenses shooting wide open on cameras in bright light that don't have a high enough shutter speed to make the exposure is another one.

A very minority case with modern cameras. My fastest lens is an 85 1.4. There are over 1200 images (keepers) from my 85 1.4 in my Lightroom library but only '1' image was taken with the maximum shutter (1/8000) with the aperture stopped down (to F2.) (And I live in Thailand.)

 

8 hours ago, noone said:

They really do need to get a wriggle on with FF mirrorless (Canon too).

 

Around here (middle of nowhere Australia), Canon and Nikon reign supreme with the pros and have done for years.      That said, in the last few years there have been a few pros switching to Sony and a growing few more adding some Sony gear .

Just yesterday, one of the better semi-pros with a decent local following started posting with an A7Riii and one of the leading local pros stated Sony is sending him an A9 and A7Riii to try out.      Every passing day means a growing number of defections.

BUT it will be difficult for both Canon and Nikon. A lot of their long time, most loyal customers are DSLR diehards. Not only do they have no interest in moving to mirrorless but they are inherently hostile towards it. If you think about - the greatest fear that a die hard Nikon DSLR user has - is that Nikon's mirrorless will be a success!! Because then they can see the writing is on the wall for the development (and probably value) of their equipment.

I imagine that sort of dynamic will be difficult to manage (both externally and internally.)

6 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

 

The halfway house solution though is to put it in lens adapters that terminate in different mounts other than MFT and E mount to provide a more flexible halfway house between something like the Lens Throttle and the Aputure.

It will likely be cheaper than $200 as a front mounted system and certainly less than that within a mount.

It seems that the timing would be right for an adapter solution. Canon and Nikon are bringing out mirrorless and we are likely to see a lot of adapter use in the next 5 years.

20 minutes ago, kye said:

@Robert Collins

I get your point, and your stats aren't wrong.

However, when I look at that graph I think a few things:

• Camera sales are through the roof
• Smartphones have eaten compact cameras almost completely
• Mirrorless is a relatively new product category

If I put myself in the shoes of a Nikon exec I think I would see:

• Nikon was a leader in film cameras, which were eaten completely by digital, but Nikon adapted
• Compact cameras sold like hotcakes but sales are basically gone
• Non smartphone sales are down to almost 1/6th of what they were less than 8 years ago
• Nikon is unlikely to get into the smartphone game

In terms of what is next, smartphones are going to start to erode the DSLR/Mirrorless market, they're introducing longer focal lengths, simulating shallow DoF, and getting better in low light.  These are all things that you used to need a 'big camera' for.

I don't really know what Nikon should do, unless they have another side of their business that I don't know about, they might be cornered at this point from digital convergence on one side and rabid innovation from the likes of Sony and m43 on the other.

One question that would be interesting to know is what is the typical pay-back period on designing a new camera system?  Is it 5 years?  10 years?  I have no idea, but you'd be silly to invest funds into a bold move if the market doesn't look like it can be relied upon to pay it back, even if you do it properly.

I get your point but I mostly disagree on a conceptual level. I am somewhat positive on the digital camera you are negative (as are most people.) No problem - time will tell.

But where I have a problem is this. Imagine you invested in a 'tech mutual fund'. Why would you do this? Well because you thought that tech stocks are going to rise. Right? So imagine if your tech fund manager decided that tech stock prices were too high and instead of investing your money actually sold the stocks and put it on deposit. What would happen? Well if stock prices rose you would be royally pissed off because you would see no gain and you invested solely on the basis that you would see a gain if stock prices rose. And if tech stock prices fell? Well you would be better off but only in the sense that you didnt expect to be - on the basis that the fund manager had done the exact opposite of what you wanted.

And this is what Thom Hogan means by the fact that Nikon is being run by 'bankers'. Who really have little interest in what the company invests in apart from whether they get their dividend at the end of the day.

Sony have been very aggressive in the ILC market - whether it will prove right or wrong only time will tell. But to me the management of the Nikon brand taking the view that the brand and its products are going nowhere is not in the interests of shareholders - because if shareholders believed that they wouldnt be shareholders in the first place.

Very cool... My view is this...

1. Still shooters dont really use ND filters

2. Video shooters use them all the time.

3. Hybrid shooters need/want switchable NDs.

I dont personally think that still shooters would like to pay 'much of a premium' for an electronic ND and as still shooters are in the majority that may well be a barrier for an in camera electronic ND.

I like this sort of solution...

https://dronedj.com/2017/10/12/dji-16mm-lens/

As a hybrid shooter I would be all over a set of lenses that had built in electronic nd filters...

19 minutes ago, kye said:

 

20 minutes ago, kye said:

Please look at this much more appropriate graph and tell me that there you can't see a general trend going on here......

I think your graph is a little misleading. Actually....

1) Smartphone sales fell (slightly) last year

http://www.businessinsider.com/smartphone-sales-are-decreasing-2018-2

2) And were down 21% yoy in 1Q this year in China.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/26/report-chinese-smartphone-shipments-drop-21-to-reach-lowest-level-since-2013/

3) Meanwhile mirrorless ILC sales were up 48% (in value) in 2017 over 2016 which was itself a record year for mirrorless (CIPA).

and when they compare the length of the line to the total length of the lines around the world of people lining up to buy iPhones....

Actually it is the lengths of these graphs that makes me optimistic for ILC cameras.

In 2017 there were 1500m smartphones sold and 13m ILCs - that is less than 1%!!

But every new smartphone buyer is a potential buyer of a 'better camera' - it is perhaps why we see the highest percentage of ILC buyers being under 30 for 20 years (CIPA).

But then again I am optimistic about ILC camera sales over the next 20 years (and I may well be wrong.) If you thought that ILC cameras were going to die you wouldnt actually be a shareholder in a camera company. And being a shareholder in a camera company whose management doesnt believe in the future of digital cameras is something of an oxymoron.

 

36 minutes ago, kye said:

If you want to understand what the Execs at Nikon night be thinking, you must get into the Japanese mind-set, one aspect of which is long-term thinking the likes of which the West has never seen.

There was a famous example where someone asked a Japanese philosopher what the impacts of The Great Fire of London was, and his answer (over 300 years after the event) was "it's too soon to tell".  Yes, that's a ridiculous example, but it's indicative of the culture.

So, if you are the head of a corporation that's over 100 years old, in a culture known for 100-year business plans, you're not restricting yourself to stats from the last three years!!

Well Keynes famously wrote that 'in the long run, we are all dead'

And I dont buy the whole Japanese corporate philosophy and as this chart of the Nikkei shows the index is still 40% off its highs - 29 years ago !!! .

Japanese companies are heroically creative at destroying shareholder value just look at Sony, Panasonic and Olympus over the last 30 years. Nikon and Canon are by comparison to them and most Japanese companies extremely well managed.

But personally I wouldnt trust any 'camera company' that told me they could see '10 years into the future' let alone '100.'

If you look at the 'Nikon' page at dpreview....

https://***URL removed***/products/nikon/cameras?subcategoryId=cameras&page=1

...you will find that Nikon have released just 3 cameras in the past 18 months and their latest release (D850) was announced virtually a year ago.

And in the previous 2 years before that they released 27 cameras!!

So Nikon appears to be a digital camera company run by a bunch of execs that dont really believe in the future of digital cameras.

While they might be right I dont think they are. CIPA numbers show that the ILC market has shrunk only about 5% since 2014 (in value.)

And the demographics (at least for Japan) show an increasing number of under 30s and women buying ILCs.

1 minute ago, webrunner5 said:

I know of no new lenses Sigma made for the SD cameras?? And you can use any of the old ones as far as I know? Now i know Sigma cameras are known for fast AF, but I know the system does work.

I was refering to the Sigma Art line of primes for the e-mount.

https://www.sigmaphoto.com/article/art-primes-for-sony-e-mount-announcement

Essentially, instead of redesigning the lenses they tacked on an mc11 adapter to their dslr lenses. They are new but the reviews are not great (Jon Pais tried one, found the video af sluggish/unreliable and sent it back.)

14 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

They came out with a Mirrorless body that uses the same Sigma mount. Why would Canon not do that? Man having the same mount, Big time Deal! No new lenses to buy, and ND's to boot, hell yes!

Strictly speaking, retaining the EF mount doesnt remove the need for new lenses (although it does remove the need for an adapter.)

As mirrorless uses a different focusing system, mirrorless lenses need different focusing motors - hence the Canon STM line of lenses for EF-M. Simply building in the adapter wont work efficiently (or Sigma adding an adapter to their lenses for E mount rather than redesigning the lens.)

32 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Now the Only good rumor I have heard is Canon might, and I mean might, on their top end Mirrorless, have ND filters built into an existing EF mount on it AKA like Sigma does mount wise for their new SD1 Mirrorless cameras. They don't have ND filters in them but there sure as hell is room for them in that snout! That would be a BIG deal if they do it! It might not be the most beautiful Mirrorless on the market but think of a FF Canon Mirrorless needing no EF lens adapter and ND's in it. Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

I do think switchable nd filters are a sort of holy grail tech for cameras (but I doubt we will see in Canon mirrorless,)

I actually think a solution like this is pretty elegant - a lens with a built in switchable nd

https://dronedj.com/2017/10/12/dji-16mm-lens/

1 hour ago, kye said:

Is everything to do with cinematic-ness just trying to add the third dimension back in?

For stills I think it has a lot to do with it. A smart photographer/artist I know says the main purpose of photoshop is add depth to your photos by essentially cooling, reducing contrast, reducing clarity to the background and doing the opposite to the subject.

If we are specifically discussing bokeh balls, I dont like them much as they detract from the subject in a photo. When someone says 'nice bokeh' about your photo, it is just a polite way of saying 'crap photo'.

Are bokeh balls a case of 'look how expensive my lens is?'

I think for film/video it might be slightly different. A couple of years ago I had a production shooting part of a film at my house and they put large fairy lights at the end of my driveway. This seemed odd to me. Why? (I have never thought of putting large fairy lights at the end of my driveway and still dont get it but they clearly knew what they were doing.)

You can see a shallow DOF screen grab here (the fairy lights are orange and in the middle.)

And another here with deeper DOF....

There was clearly purpose behind this lighting choice but I have no idea what it was.

This is possibly worth its own thread. According to Nikonrumors (no idea how reliable they are), Nikon mirrorless is coming and coming soon (possibly later this month.)

https://nikonrumors.com/2018/07/03/first-set-of-rumored-specifications-for-the-nikon-mirrorless-cameras.aspx/

The specs sound very similar to the Sony A7iii and A7riii. (Which sounds good to me.)

The big surprise (at least to me) is that it will supposedly have IBIS. It appears to have a new mount which will take an adaptor for f mount lenses.

Bokeh or out of focus areas aesthetically add depth to photo or video. Depicting depth is important because essentially you are trying to depict a 3D scene in a 2D format.

Essentially bokeh to a certain extent mimics 'aerial perspective. Aerial perspective is the concept that we view things as being further away if they have less contrast, detail and saturation.

Here is a random example off the internet...

Essentially we can 'see' a range of hills further and further in the distance.

If you consider that bokeh is essentially 'blurring' the background it is creating the illusion of aerial perspective and depth. The bokeh/blurring clearly reduces detail, reduces contrast (by merging the highlights, mid tones and shadows, and reducing saturation (by merging highly saturated areas with less saturation.) (of course you could achieve a similar effect by adding smoke to your background.)

1 hour ago, anonim said:

Thanks again, sir... Alas, it looks to me that gorgeous look of you photo from earlier post (you explained it as processed RAW) is completely lost even in straight jpeg, so it seems the same case happens in video usage that interests me exclusively.

I only think that this is half right. Sony gives quite a lot of leeway in its video profiles to produce straight out of camera close to what you might want (hence Andrew Reid's Pro color etc..). What you can do is make 'global adjustments' to saturation, color, contrast etc but they effect the whole output.

What you cannot really do with 8 bit video is make 'selective adjustments' in post whereby you brighten/add contrast/sharpen part of the image  while perhaps doing the opposite to other parts of the image/video. That's why people are crying out for a thicker video codec from Sony.

1 hour ago, kye said:

Interesting images.  What RAW recorder are you using?

I use Lightroom. But that is because I like the Library/DAM and integration with photoshop (hence the missing baby.) If you dont use photoshop 
Capture One (comes free with your camera) is possibly a better choice as an all in one raw converter.

I saw a video where someone pointed out something interesting about one of 'ositalv''s photos. This one.

Look at the number of connector pins to the lens cpu - there are 12 - that is a lot. Off hand the Canon mount has 8, ef-m 9, Sony E 10 and M43 11.

The video's theory was that the extra pins were for electronic zoom (like you can do via the app with M43.) Sounds plausible but if we look at the X7 camera and lenses, we can also see the possibility of primes with a built in ND that can be controlled by the app and a leaf shutter (to reduce rolling shutter.)

16 hours ago, anonim said:

Thanks... what lens you used for this photo? Or it is really extracted from some clip? If so, it looks to me different than Jon's samples... So, is there difference between how does sony a7iii process still and video image?

This is with the Batis 85. It is a 'still' from a 14bit raw file so you can obviously process how you want unlike the 100mb/s 8 bit video where your ability to process is very limited.

Here are a couple of straight out of camera jpegs (8 bit) to show how the Sony renders by default.

This is the original jpeg of the earlier photo....

And this is another straight out of camera jpeg. So you can see that Sony renders its jpegs with a lot of contrast, saturation and a lot of sharpening which is different to Jon's video grab (and most video). I also think the Sony has a tendency towards slightly cartoonish colors.

Theoretically you can match the video to stills with PP2 (still) from the video picture profiles. My guess is that most people wouldnt go down that route.

4 hours ago, jonpais said:

What I dreaded the most going with the a7 III were the skin tones... I half expected them to be a nightmare, and most of what I'd seen online didn't inspire much hope. But I shot a few clips at the post office this morning (mix of daylight/fluorescent), and the colors look fine to me, especially since I didn't do much in the way of color correction. So far, finding the Sony a joy to shoot with...

Edit: A more accurate representation of the colors can be found here.

 

Actually I have never really had a problem with Sony skin tones but, then again, I live in SE Asia too. I have a 'vague theory' that Sony colors work well with Asian skin tones. I have certainly seen some pretty horrid Caucasian skin tones from Sony.

Inserts token portrait from earlier this week ...

1 hour ago, scotchtape said:

When you are in auto ISO the +-0 only shows the exposure compensation and not the meter reading.

You can test by changing the EV dial.  

When you switch back to manual ISO then it shows the reading.

It may just be a little early in the morning for me but this doesnt make a lot of sense to me.

I am with chrisE here. If you keep shutter speed and aperture fixed with auto iso and the meter reading is 0, adding a 3stop ND (for instance) should simply raise your iso 3 stops, giving you the same 'effective exposure'.

(I do find that you need to add a little EV+ when you use an ND filter (maybe a stop for a 6 stop ND) but I think that might be related to the quality of my NDs.)

3 hours ago, Tim Shoebridge said:

A return by Samsung to the camera manufacturing business would be very difficult, the one thing they need which they lost so spectacularly is trust. But making sensors for other manufacturers makes a lot of sense, the sensor in their NX1 was ground-breaking. Are there any other 28Mp APS-C sensors even out there yet.....?

Samsung returning to produce sensors for the camera manufacturers makes a lot of sense. I doubt the major brands enjoy being dependent on Sony (an increasingly aggressive competitor) and would 'prefer' to buy from an 'independent' manufacturer. In that respect Samsung returning to make cameras would actually be counterproductive because they would, like Sony, become a competitor rather than independent supplier.

Ultimately I think Sony's success in the camera business will come at a cost to their (camera) sensor business. I see a lot of the brands moving from Sony when they eventually get some decent competition either from Samsung, Tower Jazz or whoever.

2 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

Yeah and # 2 Just use the hack for the Sony cameras. I can get over 13 hours in 1080p @ 24p on my 64gb card using the hack. The limit is the least of the problems on Sony cameras now.

I dont think the hack works on the A7x3 cameras because they dont have playmemories apps.