Robert Collins

7 minutes ago, gt3rs said:

Yep with a minimal 1.1 crop that is very acceptable. Limit is 20min so not that better than R5 but probably quality is better here.

Also seems possible to record in 4:2:0 10bit that is good for HW acceleration for editing

Is this with full af and sound too?

7 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

Its what they use in the FX9.

Like having a built in SteadXp

https://pro.sony/en_GB/insight/filmmaking-tips/pxw-fx9-tutorial-videos-video-stabilisation

Many thanks. Looks quite impressive in the promo!!

In the latest Sonyalpharumors post there is a feature listed as:

* Movie Edit add-on compatibility for Image Stabilization in post

Does anyone know what that means? At first I thought it meant no IBIS but the photo shows 'stabilisation inside' written on the camera in the same place as the A7riv.

45 minutes ago, Nezza said:

Exactly. A high end camera released in 2020 with 12M, not cutting it for many. I don't know why you'd accept it at that price point. These are marketed as hybrids - not solely video.

I dont agree. Sony has a range of 'hybrids' from the A7riv to A9ii to A7iii to A7siii - they all make various compromises from the A7riv that is a photo camera that does a bit of video through to the A7siii which is a video camera that can take photos. Clearly if your passion is 'printing big' you dont go with the A7siii.

At the end of the day the A7siii should and will be judged on how good it is at 'taking video' - IBIS, AF, resolution, frame rates, bit rates, overheating etc....

The killer feature the A9 and A9ii have is 'silent shooting with a stacked sensor' - this means you get silent shooting with a very fast sensor read and no noticeable rolling shutter in the stills. Contrast that with say the silent shutter on the A7riv which is basically unusable (apart from still scenes) because of the rolling shutter. Canon and Nikon are yet to introduce mirrorless cameras with a stacked sensor.

As for the lack of SLOG and other picture profiles on the A9, I thought it was a tech limitation of the shutter on the A9 rather than a software/cripple hammer issue?

I am pretty happy with the specs so far. Will pair nicely with my A7riv. Would like much improved video IBIS but am not particularly hopeful.

My webcam is rubbish. Well, actually its the webcam video that looks rubbish. My webcam is the popular Logitech C920 - which as webcams go - is a mid/high end webcam. But the image out of it really is bad (especially in low light.)

And, in case you are wondering - no, I dont have anything better to do than wonder why the video out of my webcam is so bad. Watching the news when everyone is being interviewed by webcam, you realize that virtually everyones webcam is crap.

And it isnt just my lighting. Admittedly my lighting was bad but I bought myself one of those Elgato key lights - better but still really rubbish if you ask me. Now, I know, of course, that I could set up my Sony as a webcam but it seems a hell of hassle - dummy battery, capture card, a stand etc... Surely there is something plug and play. But apparently not - there doesnt seem to be say - a 1inch sensor webcam.

Which brings me to my question. Why has there been so little innovation in the webcams? My Logitech C920 was introduced in January 2012 and apparently is still considered by some as the best webcam on the market in 2020  - https://www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-webcams#:~:text=There's a reason you've,calls and large meeting rooms. 8 years is an eternity in the camera world (it isnt as though camera companies have been particularly busy) and, I assume, equivalent to several lifetimes in the streaming business.

And, secondly, what sort of setups do people on this forum use?

Olympus's camera division has been bleeding for years. To translate those yen figures into dollars - over the past 2 years imaging has lost US$270m dollars on US$800m of turnover. Rather remarkably this doesnt include corporate/central allocated costs that are a seperate line item (to the divisions) in the accounts.

Even more remarkably, if you go back and look at when the division reported a 'gross profit' you will find that the gross profit margin was around 50% (which is quite lot higher than Apple's). You really dont get a lot of camera for your money even when the company is losing US$300 on every US$1,000 you spend. When your SG&A expenses are running at over 50% of sales, you realize all those marketing costs add up pretty quickly....

6 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Tim, there is nothing wrong with tasteful and honest advertising.

'Honest advertising' is an oxymoron. The entire point of modern corporate marketing is scientifically crafted deception.

Camera companies starting up a fund to pay a bunch of different people and create a different bunch of shills.

 If you can trick people into thinking your trickery is honesty, you can trick them even better.

Thinking of Olympus - at least keep it humorous.

Sad - the OMD EM5 was my first digital camera - but inevitable. Olympus's camera division has only made a profit in one of the last 12 years. It is a pale shadow of what it was - back in 2008, the camera division reported over US$3bn of sales (mostly compacts). Now it is less than US$400m.

9 minutes ago, fuzzynormal said:

Yeah.  Agreed, but at the same time we've been building to this moment on the schedule.  Lots of sweta equity leading up to this springtime.  Sunk cost fallacy, maybe?

Yes, sunk cost fallacy. Realistically, your crowd in 'crowd financing' is self isolating at the moment.

Even those with disposable income will likely be saving it in the current uncertainty. And if they are looking to invest (and or take risk) there are plenty of stocks that are off 40% in the last month.

1 minute ago, Super8 said:

Right.   More test = more cases.  

Don't tell me you can't connect the dots.  The U.S is a state to state controlled country.  And the best country in the world by the way.

 

I get that totally.

But what I mean by behind the curve is - why has it taken the country so long to start testing people in large numbers?

We have known about this virus for quite some time. I live in a 2nd world country - Thailand - but it has been possible for anyone to get a test here, if needed, for well over a month....

3 minutes ago, Super8 said:

The first test from the CDC did not work and new rapid test were developed. 

Drive thru testing has started and it's all happening.  I wish it happened sooner and wish we all had the protection needed.  You seriously need to go back to the source and look at how this was spread in the hardest hit areas.

You act like test would have slowed down the virus being passed from travelers to and from this country.  Travel to and from the US should have been stopped a month ago and lock down should have been done a month ago. But panic with 10 deaths and 2,000 cases would have been far worse.

You parrot what the news reports but can't understand how people need to be tested and who should be tested.  

It's up to you.  I would wait.

It does appear to me that the US has been well behind the curve on this virus all along which is disappointing given the amount of advance warning they had.

Today the US announced 1823 new cases which is a 40% increase in cases from the day before (the largest percentage increase of any country.)

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Hopefully they will get things back under control quickly...

Have you considered the 'worst case' scenario? Well it turns out that the NHS in the UK have modeled the worst case. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/15/uk-coronavirus-crisis-to-last-until-spring-2021-and-could-see-79m-hospitalised

Under this scenario it is assumed that 80% of the UK's population contract coronavirus over the course of the next year. According to Chris Whitty the UK's Chief Medical Officer this could lead to 7.9m people being hospitalized and 318,000 deaths.

Whilst this figure sounds (and is) horrendous it needs to be put in perspective. In 2018 there were 541,000 deaths in the UK - of which cancer was the most common cause with 150,000.

Well on a more positive note. We can see from China and S.Korea that when you tackle the problem head on with tests and restrictions you do seem to get it under control within a month to 6 weeks - hopefully numbers in Italy will start to come down.

Also a major panic in the asset markets, should mean we get some great investment opportunities for those that have some cash....

There is minor panic here in Bangkok. Most people are wearing masks (despite the fact that they are effectively useless for preventing you catching Coronavirus).

The schools have all been shut. My 6 year old son had to self-quarantine for 14 days when he returned from a holiday in Japan. I had dinner with a friend who has a birds nest business and in February sales were down over 90% compared to January. (In China, car sales are down 83% for the first two months (YOY)).

And this is despite the fact that Thailand has only had 40 cases of Coronavirus so far (mostly Chinese tourists visiting during Chinese New Year.) I doubt a Coronavirus could spread here with temperatures in the mid 80s (possibly explains why there are virtually no cases in India or Africa.)

But these worries/concerns/panics tend to be self-perpetuating - easy to stoke and slow to dissipate. The economic impact in Asia is going to be quite dramatic and I expect everyone of us is going to be impacted in one way or another.

6 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Seems like the surveys vary depending on who you ask.

One British newspaper is saying they all want to be evil YouTubers (Daily Mail and The Sun)

And another is saying they all still want to be doctors, and teachers, same as 20 years ago (The Times)

Here is another one I found which contradicts itself in the space of one page, which is quite impressive.

https://www.fatherly.com/love-money/work-money/the-2017-imagination-report-what-kids-want-to-be-when-they-grow-up/

So they all watch YouTube and end up wanting to be vets?

Damn cat videos everywhere.

 

I rather suspect the simple answer to this dichotomy is that 'youtuber, actor, singer, programmer' etc were not 'career/job' options in their survey...

For me Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ should definitely have been nominated for cinematography.

5 hours ago, Super8 said:

You can direct the later comments to me and not Andrew if you like since I wrote that.

I was a little harsh about correcting stills in RAW with the Sony but I stand by the photo's and video that I've seen.

Just look at Tony and Chelsea's videos record on Sony A7 series that they post.  I believe since they switched to Sony, all content they create in studio is shot with Sony.  Skin tones and color depth is so off on that footage that I'm surprised you and Mako don't notice or acknowledge how they look.

 

Since Tony and Chelsea switched to Sony for stills (with the A7r4) they have been using the EOS-R for video (whilst also still using the GH5 and Blackmagic.)

He posted a video about it about a week ago.

That being said - the fact that they are using different cameras for stills and video obviously speaks volumes about what they feel about Sony's video capabilities.

Sony has absolutely nailed stills photography (particularly autofocus) and seems to have got very lazy with the video side.

1 minute ago, Super8 said:

Sony makes good cameras out side of color.

 You can't argue RAW stills and straight out of camera color and ignore Sony video color. 

 

 

 

Well in the quote from you - you mention 'Sony photographers' so in a sense I can.

Sony's success is really built around 'photographers' rather than videographers as I see it. Clearly for video guys out of camera color is way more important.

But my real point is this. I dont think there are swathes of delusional Sony users out there believing that Sony's color is great much in the same way as I dont think their are swathes of Panasonic users out there thinking their cameras have great autofocus.

1 hour ago, Super8 said:

I would kindly tell Andrew if he is wrong but he is 100% correct in his assessment  of Sony color.  Sony sales are not based on Sony color and Sony shooters have nothing to compare it with except what they've shot from Sony.

So many Sony photographers have stopped caring or able to see good color because they're blinded by brand loyalty. 

I am not a Canon shooter, yet.

Arri and Canon have the best color by a mile.

 

 

 

 

The 'brand loyalty' argument is both naive and simplistic. Afterall, almost by definition, a Sony user has 'switched' from another brand over the past 5 years.

The fact is that Sony has a lot of strengths for photography especially mirrorless - it just so happens that 'color' isnt one of them.

Also straight out of camera color isnt that important to most photographers as with raw it is always something that you can easily adjust in post. And for those that straight out of camera color is important - they probably arent using Sony.

My feeling with Sony though is that their color problems are mostly to do with their 'auto white balance'....

1 hour ago, wolf33d said:

Hahaha. I must say you are on your way for the top 2020 clueless comment on any internet forum.

That guy has a net worth over $US20 million, and multiple properties you and I could only dream of under his name. In fact, that reported net worth is probably much much less than it’s actual. 
Wake up to the real world buddy. 

As for Potato Jet absolute BS income video, he his doing like 90% of the YouTubers. We have a French Youtuber, very popular with 7M subscribers. One of his video was how much I make? He basically talked BS during 10min, and the only numbers he gave was « as a Youtuber you never know how your month is gonna be made of, sometimes you can make $5000 a month and sometimes $500 ». 
Another French Youtuber, with similar sub made a video a few days basically saying I am sorry but you cant fool people like that, that’s the $ you make PER video and just with ads, not counting brand deal. The first guy in question is a YouTube millionaire. 
I am giving this as an example, but it’s super common for some reason for all influencers to completely under talk, lie on those aspects. My theory is that if you actually talk money and are transparent with the shit loads of money you make, your followers will be a bit disgusted/jealous and less trustful with your ads. 

As I said, I have first hand info from good friends, while they do not have millions of subs, only 100K+, they already make a good living with just that. 
There is no debate to have here. Potato thing makes great money with YouTube and good for him. He fools people about it (including his wife fake comments about paying the house) so we can cry for him and be more susceptible to click his affiliate links and stuff, but that’s what they all do. 
Anyone thinking it’s not the case is unfortunately fooling himself. 

I agree that there are people out there making a ton of money from youtube (and that they probably understate how much they are actually making.) The problem though with youtube is that people 'underestimate' the difficulty of becoming a successful youtuber.

We all live in our own youtube bubbles where our 'feed' essentially consists of videos from youtubers who have already made it in some form or another and we dont see the millions who dont in any way make it. 

Ultimately youtube is a business everyone wants to do and for which the only barrier to entry is the cost of a smartphone. From that perspective it is probably the most competitive business in the world.

Youtube. Seems that people think of little else;;;;

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4532266/75-cent-children-want-YouTubers-vloggers.html

IF the rumored specs are true, this looks to be a rather odd release from Canon. There doesnt appear to be any major improvement in the specs for stills - basically the same frame rate, resolution and processors as the 1DX mkii. 

There has been a bump in the video specs but the 1DX is inherently a flagship stills camera.

2 hours ago, Video Hummus said:

Exciting if they can pull off clean ISO 25 41MP stills. Looks to be a very photo-centric sensor design and processing. I wonder if this will be the EM1 Mark 3 or a high resolution variant.

Will at least quiet the low megapixel complaints of MFT. That leaves lowlight performance.

Although it does begin to raise the question of how many pixels on a smaller sensor is too much. The diffraction limit on a 41mp M43 sensor is f4.6.