kye

Vintage anamorphic adapters are optically imperfect in very pleasing ways, but are large, expensive, difficult to find and setup, and can be slow to use (double focusing etc). Modern smartphone anamorphic adapters are optically imperfect too, but are small, cheap, easy to find and setup, and designed for AF cameras so should be incredibly fast and easy to use. Of course, the first question is about coverage, and this might surprise you, but modern smartphone sensors are approaching MFT sensor size. GX85 with 14mm F2.5 lens (no adapter) - I took a photo so this is open-gate MFT: GX85 with 14mm F2.5 lens and Neewer 1.55x anamorphic adapter in-front of the lens (de-squeezed): Full-sensor coverage and no vignetting visible. Can it cover S35? Who knows! Looking at this image it's much blurrier on the bottom than the top, but I was just holding the adapter in place so maybe I didn't have it exactly centred vertically, but it should give an idea of the image quality. It's obviously lens-dependent though, as this is the GX85 with the TTartisans 17mm F1.4 in 16:9 movie mode (no open gate)... Coverage.... isn't ideal! However, with the 2x digital zoom on the GX85 and de-squeezed you get this: This equates to about 44mm FF equivalent, and reminds me of some of the more funky vintage anamorphics. Perhaps the most impressive thing is the form factor. This is a 1.55x anamorphic setup probably more pocketable than a BMPCC4K, and that's literally got "pocket" in the name! Those just show the adapter leaning against the lens, as I am yet to work out how to mount it properly. The challenge is that this adapter has a 17mm rear thread which is smaller than any step-down ring I can find, so I'll probably have to go DIY to mount it. People have suggested I drill a hole in a metal lens cap, or get the smallest step-down ring I can find and glue a washer to it where the inner diameter of the washer matches the thread size. I'll have to experiment, but there are options. That whole rig weighs less than my Sirui 1.25x anamorphic adapter on its own.. 627g vs 744g!! It's early days for this idea, but the coverage surprised me and I think makes it a real option for shooting actual projects. The fact that the 14mm looks so clean and the 17mm so dirty means that buying one of these probably gives you as many looks as you have lenses, so potentially quite a few. I'm yet to play with how it looks at different apertures and focus distances, but they'll probably give some variety as well. The above were shot at F5.6 or so. If you stretch the 16:9 files from the GX85 you get 2.75:1 so super widescreen and you can crop the sides if you wanted to. On something like the GH7 with a 4:3 open-gate it would be almost exactly 2:1, a very useful format. It's not just MFT either. I've heard quite a number of instances where people want to go for an older look and will use a S35 cinema camera (like a RED) in a lower resolution mode and combine that with some vintage optics to get the look they want, or used the Alexa S16 mode and S16 lenses. Lots of cool stuff has been shot like that and when you have to de-squeeze in post then cropping a bit takes very little extra time on real projects. In a way these are perfect for low-budget anamorphic experimentation if you're interested in optics with some character and getting a range of looks from just one purchase.

This is a forum for people that shoot with budget hybrid cameras. None of the above points relate to what anyone here is actually doing with their work, or whoever they're showing it to. Completely contrary to that, Dynamic Range is something I struggle with in real-world shooting for a large percentage of the shots I take. The idea that they're somehow equally important is beyond imagination. I'm done. Feel free to continue the discussion about pocketable 8K gimbal cameras, 17K sensors, 150MP doorbells, 5000fps smartphones, or whatever theoretically true but practically irrelevant things you want.

I only ever pay attention to what is visible when I apply my entire image pipeline, so I didn't know offhand, but I just shot some test clips and viewing them straight out of camera I don't really see aliasing. I do see some artefacts in the 4x mode that are hard to describe, a bit of noise (and perhaps some processing artefacts on the noise?) but definitely not aliasing, even when I shot hard edges and rotated the camera slowly to try and reveal any aliasing. The 4x mode is soft, obviously because it's sampling a small area of the sensor and then upscaling it to 4K, so maybe that smooths over things perhaps. I could do a 8-bit challenge... maybe we should make it interesting and limit the entries to 720p or something just to add a spin. I'd be tempted to enter the Charmera. To say that it's 8-bit is perhaps the understatement of the year!

Everything you said above can be copied and pasted a decade from now when people are arguing if a 32K sensor is better than a 16K sensor. On the 32K sensor you can crop in more.. it's great for high-res frame grabs.. cropping in 9 times instead of 8 times! The problem with such discussions is they're unconnected from reality. What CAN you do with an 8K image that you CAN'T do with a 4K image? Both have enough resolution for cinema. Both have enough resolution to pull frames and print them on billboards. Both have enough resolution to win an Oscar... etc. All this is beginning to sound like people arguing they need a 150MP doorbell camera to be able to live with themselves.

Interesting idea that the lens might be contributing to this impression, and I would tend to agree with you. In my testing I routinely found that if you change almost any variable then the aesthetic impressions of almost all the image characteristics are changed. This is one of the reasons I am so critical when people compare cameras side-by-side but don't match WB and/or don't use the same LUTs or colour pipeline, they're effectively saying "I've compared these cameras in identical conditions except for the colour which is different in every way and impacts your perception of basically every aspect of the image". My testing of YouTube suggests that for 4K uploads Prores HQ isn't much better than H264 at around 100Mbps, and maybe also 50Mbps, but it's likely to be pretty subject specific (like if you have lots of demanding shots like big fountains or rain or snow or waves moving across water etc - things with huge amounts of motion). I'd suggest experimenting, and hopefully that gives a place to start. Impacts of these sensors to the market value of videography is obviously a hugely complex topic, but in general terms if this reduces the barrier to entry then more people will come into the market and more supply without more demand means the price goes down. I'm not sure that the extra DR of these sensors really has that much impact on this though. I watched Peaky Blinders The Immortal Man on Netflix the other day and there's a wide shot taken from a long way away with a large fire on top of a hill and no other lighting in the rest of the scene, taken at the dim end of blue hour, and the fire is clipped to absolute hell, basically being just a solid yellow blob. Whatever cameras they used were fine for the rest of the film but clipped on this. The market for DR is there, but the better the tech gets the thinner the tail is. Still, if every camera had Alexa 35 level DR, that would be a nice bump in quality for all footage for sure. Temporal NR wouldn't be shown by that graph, true. I agree that the word "RAW" has less and less meaning every day of late as well! The relationship between ISO and DR is an interesting one too. I used to think that the DR during the day was higher than at night, especially if there was direct sun, but I've almost reversed my position on that since I've been shooting more at night in recent years. It might be that during the day people expect that the light and shadow sides can't both be seen at once whereas at night lighting from artificial lighting is more even, or it might be that the sun doesn't tend to be in the frame when at night the lights are almost always in the shot unless you're using quite a long lens and the background is controlled. If you think about S16 film footage the daytime footage doesn't normally look as harsh as the shots taken at night in cities where every light in the frame is absolutely blown to hell. I haven't read up about LOFIC sensors, but my impression was that they have an additional capacitor that catches the 'overflow' from the main read-out, which should increase the DR across all modes of the sensor. This assumption that it applies all the time and without any trade-offs may well not be true of course, but it sure seems to work nicely at base-ISO where they tested it!

You make excellent points, but it really comes down to your perspective. The detail from the 8K will be completely irrelevant, except in cinemas, where exactly zero people will ever watch this footage. The extra DR will absolutely be visible, even on smartphones, even with a film emulation applied, and especially because these cameras are designed for wide FOV shooting outdoors where there is a high probability of having huge DR (and even the sun) in the frame. We can look at images in controlled lighting, this is true. However under such conditions the vast majority of cameras from the last decade will look just fine. In fact, if the older cameras have the same bit-depth in their codecs but less DR then they might look BETTER than the modern cameras as the bits will be less stretched! So if we're going to compare modern cameras in very controlled conditions then the comparisons should include the vast hundreds of models released in the last decade or so, but if you do mention them then people go berserk because these older cameras fall short in other areas, and you can make a good argument that the controlled tests are nice but not entirely sufficient for evaluation. In which case, the stunning differences in DR between these cameras is now back in the consideration and the DJI is miles ahead of the Luna. To summarise that a bit, if you're taking everything into consideration then the DR really matters and if you're not then why aren't you comparing dozens of older cameras, and if you desperately want a tiny gimbal but only shoot in controlled conditions then isn't that a niche application so narrow that it really can't be justified to evaluate the cameras overall? In terms of me reminding people that lower DR 1080p cameras are fine for many practical tasks, this is true, but modern camera releases have basically nothing to do with practical tasks at all. There is no justification for 8K codecs. Period. The justification for 8K sensors that let you crop 2x for a 4K image is borderline but fine. Then there's 17K - seriously... Most camera discussions departed reality long ago and the discussions about this or that camera have the same rigour as discussing which super-hero can win against which other super-hero.

If the camera shoots 4K then you'd be silly not to, and I was really looking for the smallest 1080p camera, not the smallest 4K camera, but I did include a couple for reference so that's my fault for not being clear. I guess really this thread was a bit of a fantasy that I could trade spec for size, but we all know that's not how it works. Even 10 years ago the tech was there to make a camera with a GoPro sized body and a P&S lens on the front. I have one of my daughters old cameras - a Fujifilm J20 from 2009, which is an SD P&S but it's just under 20mm / 0.79 inches thick and has a 3x optical zoom lens. This is the J20 pictured with a fake SJ4000 action camera, which is basically the size of a GoPro. Combine these and they could have make a 1080p camera with 3x optical zoom in a body thinner than a GoPro and by making it slightly wider they could have made room for the battery and given a little grip to hold it with. Given that it might have been a big seller back then, I was hoping they'd be a forgotten classic and around for a couple of hundred, but really it's just a fantasy. The idea is the "smallest 720p or 1080p P&S camera" not the "highest resolution P&S camera". Sensible people don't want the best specifications available in the camera so large they can only just operate it, they want the nicest possible shooting experience with a camera that has the spec they need for their given situation.

I was very impressed with the results I saw from various people testing it. The GH7 sensor is good, the lens in the L10 is also good, and V-LOG and the codecs available are more than enough, so it should be a great combo. In terms of the lack of IBIS, that's definitely a thing, but if you're able to steady it with almost anything (tripod, gimbal, monopod, even just a large handle of some kind) then it should be pretty stable.

One has 16 stops of DR (or 17.2 with SNR=2) with little if any NR, and the other has so much NR that the DR is measured as 13 stops for both SNR=1 and SNR=2, which is a completely ridiculous result. One has 10+ stops of latitude and the other has something like 4-5 stops of latitude. Considering that the primary purpose of these cameras is to shoot wide scenes in uncontrolled situations, DR is always a major challenge. NR is normally the issue with cameras like this too, and one has results that are remarkably good for cameras of any price, and the other is remarkable for how heavy the NR is. When the one that scores better in all of the above is the cheaper one, that's also saying something. I don't think that "completely and utterly" is overselling it at all. Hey, if someone else wants to publish lab tests on these things then I'll link to them instead. Unless you think they're lying about the lab test results, then the discussion is normally better when it involves actual objective measurements than if it doesn't involve any at all. I'm not saying that measurements are the only thing that matters, but if you're comparing two cameras that have a difference in performance of 4 stops then that's an incredible amount and when shooting outside in available light on wide angle lenses then that is something that really matters in real-world situations.

The CineD lab tests disagree with you about there being NR. Below I have linked to where they talk about NR test results and they say "very little if any noise reduction" (linked to timestamp): I believe your impressions about how the final images look, but Nr can happen anywhere in the pipeline, so maybe it was something done elsewhere in the process? YouTube compression is absolutely brutal on grain, acting as a pretty serious form of NR that is applied to every upload, so maybe that's part of what you're seeing too?

Good discussion and I think this cuts to the heart of how different the thought process really is. If I'm shooting in public with a single prime then this is how I am thinking about it: - I have a fixed FOV, but I can move around and closer/further and when I do that I change all of the following at once: - the size of the subject in the frame - the perspective I have on the subject - the size and position of the subject compared to the items in the foreground and background - my distance to the subject - my influence on what I am shooting - So I visualise the situation in 3D and estimate where I need to move to create the composition I want - I move there and refine the camera position and take the shot If I'm shooting in public with a zoom then this is how I am thinking about it: - I have a flexible FOV and I can move closer/further so when I do that I can: - zoom, which changes the size of the subject and foreground and background in the frame without changing their relationships, or my distance, or without changing my influence on the subjects - move, which changes the perspective I have on the subject and therefore the relationships of the objects in the scene to each other, and it changes the subject distance and my influence on what I am shooting - So I visualise the situation in 3D and estimate a line/cone of positions I can be in to create broadly the composition I want through varying combinations of focal length and my position - I weigh up my priorities, trading subject distance, my influence on the subject/scene, and composition against each other to work out what I think is the best balance - Depending on the layout, I also consider how fast I can get there compared to what is happening in the scene - I move there and refine the camera position and zoom simultaneously, and take the shot One is starting with a single FOV and working from there, the other is starting with an infinite number of FOVs. The thinking is completely different. When I'm using a prime the idea of zooming is completely alien and when I am using a zoom the idea of there being set focal lengths is completely alien. It's like I have two programs in my head, one for primes and one for zooms, and I just run the appropriate one for what lens I am using at the time. The idea of taking a zoom and limiting it to preset lengths might seem like a miracle compared to having a prime, but it's a disaster compared to having a zoom lens. I spoke more about this in my dedicated thread about it, and once you start thinking beyond composition and into aesthetics and tone the idea that a 35mm vs 50mm FOV are 'similar' is about as ridiculous as a photo editor only allowing you to crop the image by 0% or 30% (this is the difference in FOV between a 50mm and a 35mm). I'm sure you're aware of these fundamental differences from your own shooting and you'll have been doing all this consciously or unconsciously. If you start from a technical perspective then a zoom is just like a set of primes, but from a creative perspective it's nothing like a set of primes whatsoever.

Apparently Sony is working on a smaller LOFIC sensor now, so swapping to LOFIC may well mean sticking with Sony, especially if you already have a deal of some kind worked out.

I recently watched a video where a street photographer tested his first 40mm lens, after only ever shooting with 35mm and 50mm lenses previously, and he couldn't really make heads-or-tails out of it in the week he had it. You could tell from the video that he found it different than a 35mm or 50mm, and that didn't surprise me, but what did catch my attention was that he didn't really even know how to explore and learn a new focal length. After reflecting on that video for some time I realised that: Lots of people must "learn" the focal lengths by sort-of memorising them based on external influences rather than just using them and learning first hand through experimentation With MFT and S16 cameras I'm used to using all sorts of "odd" focal lengths because I'm adapting all kinds of lenses from other systems with/without speedboosters and add-on anamorphic and spherical adapters I'm also used to getting a new focal length and using it blind and over the course of many outings of shooting with it gradually learning what impacts it has on what I shoot, how I shoot, how I walk around, how I begin to look at the world, how the world adapts to me once I adapt, how I feel when the world reacts to that, etc.. Using a zoom isn't like having a complete set of primes at all, it's almost like a different genre or different type of shooting entirely, but I'm quite familiar with that as well Now, when I think about using a particular focal length that I'm familiar with, all kinds of stuff comes to mind, and when I think about using one I am not familiar with, I don't know how to think about it at all.. the focal lengths are all so incredibly different. Having a camera with a 20mm and a 60mm seems like: - the people who don't know what they're doing won't notice (as they're confused about everything already) - the people that are used to shooting with primes will have an awkward and steep learning curve that they might not navigate that well - the people that know how to learn new focal lengths will probably adapt, but given the 35mm and 50mm FOVs are at the worst end of the main lens, they'll likely have a difficult experience choosing between a 2.5x crop of the main camera to get 50mm, or losing the DR and colour profile on the 60mm lens It might be that these are actually ideal for the type of shooting that people will use this camera for, and it's the normal FOVs that are ill-suited, but if you've "learned" the 24/28/35/50/85/100mm FOVs then it'll be a serious transition to navigate.

Yeah, as someone who shoots out and about (but doesn't vlog) 20mm and 60mm equivalents seem a little odd to me, although the 20mm makes sense for vlogging as it's just wide enough, and I guess having anything shorter than 60 would be a little too close to the 20 perhaps? Then again, I've worked out that I can do this odd thing called "cropping" which involves getting less than 4K in the final image, which is why no-one has ever thought of it before. It all still seems very cumbersome though. The log profile swapping etc smells like they'll release firmware updates to make it much easier. I often get the impression that the manufacturers get their product design feedback from people who film very deliberately and slowly, and only when it hits the market and people all point out the workflow gotchas that firmware updates eventually fix strange things like this.

CineD tests are published, and the DJI kicks the Insta360s butt completely and utterly. https://www.cined.com/dji-osmo-pocket-4p-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range-and-exposure-latitude/ https://www.cined.com/insta360-luna-ultra-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range-and-exposure-latitude/