kye

4 hours ago, QuickHitRecord said:

A current experimental build for the EOS-M that I am working on. My goal is to turn the M into the only camera that offers crop modes in all of the major motion picture film formats.

Very cool!

1 hour ago, John Matthews said:

It seems sharp enough for me, easily resolving a 4k image. Remember, I'm only using the sweet spot of that lens. Others have notice vignetting, and corner softness- not the case when using just a fraction of the image circle. However, I notice back-lit subject will have a strong chromatic aberration (purple) at f/1.4, but it goes away at f/2.8. It flares a little too- a bonus for me. The usability is absolutely great though.

Great to hear it's working for you.  I've long suggested that the cheap Chinese lenses are a lot like the high-end vintage lenses from the SLR film camera days - both had simpler optical designs and simpler coatings.  The only challenge is how good the lens is wide open, but if it's enough for your application then you're all good!

1 hour ago, John Matthews said:

Thanks. Yes, I really don't have too much time to fuss around with the files- make it look good to my eye and then off to the next one. I just do a few exposure adjustments.

Same for me.

I have saved power grades for each camera that convert from camera colour space to Davincis log space, and a few Timeline power grades that apply a few variations of film emulations.  I just pull all the footage into a timeline, apply the power grades, and then adjust exposure on any clips that need it (I use ETTR so this is normal for me) and mostly I'm good.  The wider DR of the GH7 and iPhone 17 Pro means that the images are less crunched and therefore respond nicely to a film emulation contrast curve and so need a lot less fussing than the GH5 ones did.

1 hour ago, John Matthews said:

I got a whole new set of ND filters. The reason being that I haven't had much luck by using VND's on small/pixel dense sensors. Bad things happened when I put my VND on my old camcorder. In the end, I'm going for 55mm and using step-up rings to get there. Why 55mm? Most of my Konica glass uses that with only a few exceptions. Anyway, I got the K&F Nano-x ND4, 8, 64, and 1000 set. They should do the job and still manage decent quality from a 50MP sensor.

I standardised on 58mm filters as that's the largest size that fits most of my lenses.  Actually about two thirds of my lenses have that size natively and for the ones I use a lot that don't have that I bought dedicated step-up rings and just have them permanently attached.  
I have a K&F Concept True Color Variable ND2-32 (1-5 Stops) as my main vND and recently bought a NiSi IR ND8 (3-Stop) fixed ND to stack on it if the 5 stops of the K&F aren't enough (5 stops is enough for full-sun at F5.6 but wider apertures than that will require more).  I wanted to just buy a nice 5-9 stop one but I have a Tiffen? 4-stop filter and when I paired that with the 1-5 stop I got all kinds of IR pollution on the iPhone, so I knew that anything more than 5 stops needed IR filtration too, and I couldn't find anything that had it.
I had to buy an 82mm one for the front of my Sirui anamorphic adapter, but got a cheaper Neewer 1-5 stop which seems to work ok, although that one I only shot at night and colour fidelity is less important for that stuff.
I also bought a few lower-quality 1-9 stop vNDs in specific sizes for when I wanted to keep the lenses as small as possible, so I got a 46mm one for the 14mm F2.5 pancake lens which lives on my GX85, and a 40.5mm one for the 17mm F1.4, which I had thought might be a good low-light lens for the tiny GX85 Super-16 setup but I haven't shot anything with that combo yet.

Funny how people end up with similar solutions!

34 minutes ago, John Matthews said:

I was only able to muster a few shots today. I'm actually not sure what I'm more impressed with: colors and look with log and FilmConvert Nitrate + Hazy; or, my MacBook Air's (M5) ability to cut through the footage and watch in realtime. Initially, I wasn't that impressed with the Natural or Vivid profiles, but the Log looks great to me with FilmConvert. I need to try more.

The ILS did very well with handheld shots at 17mm, given it's only electronic stab. I will have more lenses next week to try out. Unfortunately, I didn't have a ND of any type to test on this lens (who make a 40.5mm thread anyway? That's stupid). Anyway, next week, I'll have more stuff, including the media mod their new microphone kit. I know it sounds like I'm going all-in with GoPro, but I definitely think they're on to something. I'm quite impressed with the ecosystem too. No need to go through the anxiety in choosing between 5 different cameras either. You want wide- get the mission 1 pro or a Loawa lens.

Nice images.  Once you get files beyond a certain quality then the film emulation can do the rest.

How are you finding the 17mm F1.4?  Sharp enough wide open for you?

In terms of filter threads, you can get filter-thread-adapters in that size.  I bought a tiny vND for mine, which was really cheap because of the small amount of glass required!

3 hours ago, MrSMW said:

10 mins max? I only ever test these things in real world scenarios so no stop watches etc...

30+ Celsius. Usually direct sunlight which must add what, another 10 degrees? Why da fuck did they insist in making these things black?!

This makes sense to me.

I figure there are two scenarios they design cameras for:
1) Recording outside in bursts, in aircon for longer takes, size and spec over thermal management, customers get big image in tiny size
2) Rock solid professional performance from integrated fan, customers pay for the reliability

Unfortunately the third scenario is missing from the market:
3) Decent but not cutting-edge image (4K max) in very small size

25 minutes ago, newfoundmass said:

I get that could be an issue, but for my use, being able to use modern lenses would've been advantageous. Putting a GoPro style camera into tight spots with some of the small M43 lenses would've been really, really nice for my work, especially with the slow mo capabilities. I'm not trying to use vintage lenses for sports, or soften the image, ya know, but I'd love to be able to put a tiny camera behind the backboard of a basketball hoop or attach it to the ring post of a professional wrestling ring and get footage that doesn't have that action camera look.

I guess without it having electronics in the lens mount there's no using an AF lens even in manual mode, because focus and aperture both need power.
I can't think of any way to get power to the lens either, without it coming from the camera.  There used to be that trick of connecting a lens to a camera with lens controls and setting the aperture, then putting it on a camera without them and using the mechanical MF controls, but I guess that's not really possible either.

With the right lenses I think you could get the shots you want, but it would mean buying new fully-manual glass, which obviously isn't ideal.

It takes me back to the "what is a tiny camera with good image quality" question that has been asked over and over again because it doesn't have a good answer.  Hmmmm.

There's a counter-culture online of (young) people shooting with early digicams etc, and the way they talk about it is that they're going for an alternative aesthetic to the clean modern digital look that's now in every smartphone and has become the 'default' look.

Personally, I've been pushing how small a video camera can be, and it has brought me to the same place - deliberately choosing very poor video quality.  

I've been using the Kodak Charmera for travel, which is the size of a construction-workers thumb, because it's so small no-one really takes it seriously when shooting in public, and also because it doesn't attract thieves etc (unlike a large ILC or new smartphone).  But I'm also resurrecting my old Lumix point-n-shoot for roughly the same reasons.

I've started to think of the Charmera as a sort-of modern Super-8 camera - a much smaller and lower quality camera for amateurs.  If you apply some film emulation then it can take away some(!) of the digital nasties but I'm guessing some people will prefer the unmodified low-quality digital look.  In a sense it's a 'worst of both worlds' situation as it clips like digital but also has the low resolution of film while simultaneously looking sharp and harsh - applying the film emulation rectifies some of these issues to create a hybrid with some limitations of both looks.

Here are some stills, both ungraded and also graded with a modified version of my Super16 film emulation, and some sample footage to get a sense of the motion (it's truly terrible).  However, the more I use this camera and look at the footage the more it grows on me.  I can't say I like it, but as I get used to the look it strikes me more as a look rather than deficiency.

Here's a warts-n-all montage of some shots I took.  I was mostly walking around while rolling, but at 45mm FOV with no stabilisation it's pretty jittery anyway considering it weighs about 30g / 1oz so has almost no weight to prevent micro-jitters.  If this was a real edit I'd smooth over a lot of the rough edges like sound pops and clicks etc, but this is a realistic look at how it performs.  The issues do lend it a certain charm (like in the name!) I think, and it's the imperfections that give something character, so logically this must have a lot of it!

I'm still constantly thinking about how to get better results from it, but being so small it's hard to modify the setup at all without drastically diluting its biggest advantage - the size.

Anyone else experimenting in the very shallow end of image quality?

4 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

That's a lovely idea! It's actually an awesome idea in many regards!
 

I wouldnt limit it to 720p. Other resolutions should be fine. I would find the 8bit Dng from the FP an awesome contribution. Chamera would be a charming and perfect antipode to the FP. How about the 720p in the GX85. I found that to be suprisingly nice when I accidently filmed with it. Awesome that you found the 2x digimode on the GX85 to be perfectly usuable. I should find a scenario to give it a try again.

So what will be our challenge besides filming in 8 bit? @kye @mercer

All members welcome to participate. The more the more fun! Some GX800 love@John Matthews , some Oly 8bit goodness @fuzzynormal , some Panny CCD or Eos M 8bit glory @QuickHitRecord ?

I might film with my point-n-shoot instead of the charmera (which is probably the worst video camera anyone on this forum owns).  Not really sure what else is a useful limitation that everyone can meet?  Maybe start a new thread to get some visibility and see who else is interested?

On 9/29/2026 at 4:25 PM, eatstoomuchjam said:

If your use case is with C mount Super 16 lenses, "a bunch of lenses" might fit in a coat pocket.  The tripod can also be an insanely light tripod or even something like a Manfrotto MP-3.

Yes, and I think that the right situation for it is the combination of when you want a small camera and you want to shoot impromptu things.  If you're shooting in controlled environments then a larger camera probably makes more sense, which was sort-of my point, and probably not explained that well.

On 9/29/2026 at 7:15 PM, John Matthews said:

The things that impress me most about this camera are the frame rates and processing. In addition, it’s so damn small and light. I purchased it, and it’ll be here tomorrow.

I’ve seen both super positive and super negative opinions about it, but it really does feel like a new category. I have a few assumptions about it, though: I think it will be a stellar performer when it comes to moiré and rolling shutter. It’s also going to be pricey to get wide, sharp lenses for it.

That’s why I plan on using it with my S9. I feel like they could complement each other well. I’ll definitely be playing around with it over the next few days.

I agree about it being a new category, it sort of feels like that to me in a way too.

Cameras are all about combinations of features, and this one has some feature combinations that haven't really come together before.

I can recommend the Laowa 7.5mm F2, it's really sharp, but not cheap.  It's probably not the right choice now as there have been wider lenses brought out in recent times, but as a reference the Laowa is a great performer.

7 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

The killer for me was no electronic connectors to the mount. To me, it kinda cuts the versatility. Being able to throw something like the 14mm 2.5 Panny lens on it to get a super compact camera, for instance, would've been pretty cool.

I suspect that we're probably better off without it having AF.  I suspect that (in the parallel universe where they did give it AF) the AF they gave it would have been pretty rubbish and also because it got AF it probably wouldn't have gotten any/many good MF features, so neither pathway would have been particularly useful.  

Back in the days before PDAF subject detection was really a thing I remember spending quite a lot of time half-hitting the shutter and then asking the camera "why did you focus on the background?!?!?".  The problem then, as well as the problem now, is that when there are multiple things to focus on, the robots are choosing which one and often falling on their faces.  I shoot MFT at F5.6 and at F2.5 on PDAF and CDAF models and it's great and focuses incredibly fast all the time, but only because either the DOF is so large that everything is in focus or I'm simply focusing on on the middle of the image.

2 hours ago, John Matthews said:

After looking and foraging my various drawers in the house, I was able to find 3 Bell & Howell lenses from my grandfather: 0.7 inch, 1 inch, and 4 inch lenses. This was standard war-time military issue for war journalists.

I also found 3 plastic Lomography lenses:

I have ordered some inexpensive Chinese lenses too: 7Artisans 10mm f/3.5, TTartisan 17mmf/1.4, and TTartisan 25mm f2- a holy trinity for about 350 euros. From what I've heard, these lenses all suffer from poor corner performance; however, I'm throwing away 45% of that APS-C image anyway and only keeping the sharpest part. I figure those will be a perfect size too with the total kit under 1kg. I considered the Laowa cine lenses, but decided that they were simply too pricey for the concept of this kit. I'm bummed about not being able to use my AF M43 glass, but I love the limitations of straight up manual focus. I'll be shooting a lot with the 17mm this weekend.

I have the TTartisans 17/1.4 and it's small and light and cheap, but wide open it's more of a "character lens" rather than a sharp one.  It's good for emulating the softness of film in-camera, if you know what I mean!

I also have the 50mm 1.2 and it's a bit better than the 17mm IMHO, but neither of them are high-end glass.

Share some images with us if you're able!

This highly-cherry-picked reel appeared in my feed.  The image quality looks pretty impressive, so when the stars align the potential images from this thing are very nice.

I guess the question for me is how many situations would the ILS be the right camera choice for?  For example if you're going to pack a bunch of lenses, a tripod, and rig it up with filters, then go somewhere to shoot, setup your gear and potentially direct the scene in front of the camera, using a larger and more capable camera wouldn't make much difference to the logistics but could give advantages in DR and usability etc.

For example, the ILS body is roughly 90mm x 60mm x 45mm, very similar to the Lumix GM1 which is 100mm x 55mm x 30mm.  Small for sure, but by the time you add all the lenses and all the rigging, it's not like your camera bag is that much lighter.

Does anyone know what the stabilisation is like with third-party lenses?  Like, is it the same as the normal GoPros with their own wide lenses? or is it poor / hit-n-miss?

If you're going to get an ARRI phone, why wouldn't you get one with a built-in gimbal?

GoPro ILS vs BMPCC OG...  not a completely scientific test, but lots of shots in different scenes, so a good real-world comparison.

Thinking of it as a Super-16 FILM camera represents an incredible opportunity when combined with the high-resolution sensor - zooming in post.

My experiments with emulating S16 film showed that even a moderate amount of blur applied in post hides a huge amount of detail in the image.  This means you can crop into the source image significantly and the blur will hide it.

For example:
If you were to put a 12mm lens on it, then you'd get a ~35mm FOV at 6K, which you then blur.
If you were to put a 12mm lens on it, then crop 2x you'd get a ~70mm FOV at 3K, which you then blur and the blur hides the zoom in post.
If you were to put a 12mm lens on it, then crop 3x you'd get a ~100mm FOV at 2K, which you then blur and the blur hides the zoom in post.

Depending on how much blur you applied (if you were going for a vintage 16mm look or a more modern 16mm stock emulation) I suspect you could zoom up to 4-6x in post before the digital nasties started being visible through the emulation.  I don't know what kind of digital zoom the camera offers, but if it allows it then you could frame in-camera and not be throwing away bitrate when you crop in post.

This gives two advantages:
1) It turns any prime into a zoom, perhaps even a 4-5x zoom - much more than the 2-3x fast zooms like 18-35 etc
2) if you crop in post then you can apply additional stabilisation, making it feel a lot larger than the tiny camera it is

I suspect that mostly this advice will fall on deaf ears, as people are drastically afraid of softening their images, like they'll be punished in the afterlife for it.  When I saw Goodfellas in the cinema on 35mm film projection, it looked like somewhere between 720p and SD - and that was a 35mm feature film!!  The amount of blur to accurately reproduce even a semi-ballpark 16mm film emulation is beyond most modern thinking, but if you can wrap your head around the concept then the ILS can become a drastically useful camera.

On 9/16/2026 at 8:35 PM, MrSMW said:

On the video side if things, it worked well enough on the gimbal but operating the gimbal as a one man band hybrid shooter is as much a PITA as that ever was so selling the RS4 mini also and replacing both, ie the gimbal and the L10 with a Pocket 4P.

Makes sense.  I'd imagine that perhaps the biggest difference (apart from the size!) is that the 4P has the controls on the handle, not on the part of the gimbal being stabilised, meaning it's easy/possible to change settings and operate it while rolling.

Will you mount it on the hot shoe of your stills camera?  Or maybe off to the side using a flash bracket or similar?  I'm always intrigued by hybrid setups where multiple cameras are attached together.

Not film specific, but a great way to think about business things is the sales funnel.  There's lots of versions of it, but the one I like is this:

1) Marketing - making people aware of your business / services / products
2) Sales - actually selling something to someone
3) Delivery - giving the customer what they paid for
4) Invoicing - getting them to pay you (assuming they don't have to fully pay up front)
5) Re-sales - selling something else to your previous customers (they bought from you once, so may well do-so again)

The reason I bring this up is that there's a critical difference between marketing and sales.  Marketing is generally done in bulk where whatever the customer is seeing isn't customised for them (think ads, fliers, etc), whereas Sales is often done person-to-person and so can be customised to what will help them specifically.  In this sense, the job of Marketing is to make contact with potential customers as quickly as possible, because only then can you start addressing their specific needs.

The purpose of social media in all this is Marketing, which is generic, and should do whatever is required to get them to contact you and not do anything else.  For example if you say you provide corporate videos but don't outline the details then maybe they contact you to discuss, but if you provide tonnes of info about it then maybe it's not quite right for them and they think you can't / won't provide what they want specifically and they never contact you.

In this sense, having an Instagram that says what you do, gives a few examples to show the quality, and encourages them to contact you, might be far superior to an endless stream of great looking images that aren't quite what they want.

The more I think about being able to shoot with 180 degree shutter on my iPhone 17 Pro, the more I feel drawn to shoot with it.  

I don't know what it is, but there's a certain X-factor in the idea for me.

CineD posted their (incomplete / failed) lab tests recently and there are some interesting things to note.

The first is that the rolling shutter is absolutely excellent.

3ms for the main 24mm camera, <6ms for the 100mm camera and 5.6-7.4ms for the 13mm camera.

The 3ms is equal to the fastest of any camera in their database:

Very impressive, especially considering that this is much more likely than most cameras to be shooting fast-moving things or being shakily hand-held, like when shooting inside moving vehicles etc.

The other thing they tested is Dynamic Range, which (because of the internal processing) couldn't be fully tested.  However, there are a couple of images of the waveform from the Xyla, including the below one, which shows the 12th stop peeking above the noise floor:

They conclude that it's likely got "around 11-12 stops above the noise floor" which is a very good result for such a small sensor.

To me these things are both very encouraging and just makes me want to shoot with it more.

Completed filter holder V1.....

It's far more compact than anything else I've seen that fits anything other than a naked iPhone, which is important because if my phone is a huge rig then I may as well be using a "real camera" and if I can't fit the whole thing in my pocket then that means carrying a bag and (once again) I may as well be bringing a real camera.

I cut up some 2mm aluminium sheet to bridge the gap between the two sections of the Tiffen and epoxied it in place.

Then I added another layer of 0.22mm aluminium that was painted black (that I ordered by mistake - thinking it was 2mm) to cover it up and give it a semi-nice finish.  I did a bit of filing around the edges and added some black nail polish to tidy up the edges, and finally put a pop-socket holder on it so I can hold it a bit more securely.

This is how I typically hold my phone when shooting, it's nice and stable and it gives me a good grip.

The case is super grippy, so I'm optimistic that it'll work well.

I deliberately called it Version 1, because after discovering how easy it was making this one I'm thinking that version two should be a custom one designed from the ground up.  After all I have all the tools and plenty of spare materials.  I'm thinking I might have a ring of rare earth magnets set into the sheet, and I'll base it on a step down ring that's stepping down from a few sizes above so it's got a bit of material in it.  Hopefully I can create something that attaches really well and is still nice and slim.

Getting ready for my next trip and I'm going far more minimal this time, and so the focus is on using the iPhone 17 Pro as my second / backup camera.

As such, I've been working on a vND solution for it.  The significant considerations for me are..

• It needs a ton of ND
  As it doesn't have an aperture, if you want 180 shutter then you need enough ND to shoot F1.78 in bright sun
• It has significant IR pollution issues
  It suffers from IR pollution far more than my GH7.  If I shoot with my GH7 and my 1-5 stop True Colour vND I never get IR issues, but the iPhone gets them even with just this 1-5 stop adapter.
• I need an adapter that works with my iPhone case
  I'm not taking my phone case on and off when I use an ND, and the "solutions" that the smartphone filter companies provide seem like pretty shitty cases compared to the rugged cases that I prefer to use.
• I want it to be as small as possible - adding an ND filter shouldn't make it look like I'm shooting a Nolan feature film

As such, I've developed the following approach.

• I'll stack my existing 58mm K&F 1-5 stop True Colour vND with a fixed NiSi 3-stop ND that also has IR filtering in it
• I'm modifying the Tiffen MagSafe filter attachment I bought to work with my Otterbox case (photos below)

Cutting it like this and overlapping them gives the height step-up required so the filter part sits on top of the lip that the case has around the cameras.

After some testing, I found that I could position the 58mm filters so that they don't obscure any of the rear cameras (including the ultra-wide).  The two limiting factors in the arrangement are that I can fit two 58mm filters but not three (the third one starts obscuring the ultra-wide camera) and if I position it so the three filters are fine on the ultra-wide then the other cameras start to be obscured by the filter holder.

The above is only held together with super-glue, but I have will cut some 2mm aluminium sheet and glue it in place with 5-minute araldite (epoxy) to make the thing sturdy.

The MagSafe connection is remarkably strong, partly because the Otterbox case has magnets in it designed to transfer the magnetic field to the outside of the case.  It'll be strong enough for careful use anyway - it's not like I'll be shooting with it and also wrestling people at the same time!

The more that I think about how good these smartphones are now the more ideas I have on shooting with it.  Once you toss in high-quality filtration like this, plus anamorphic adapters and all sorts of other things, the shooting possibilities get really exciting!

I also found this video below, which combines a cheap adapter from Aliexpress with 17mm rear-filter and the Viltrox 28mm F4.5 lens.  He just sticks the mounting plate from the smartphone clamp for the anamorphic directly onto the Viltrox lens with tape, so hardly and ideal situation, but it is more proof of concept, and it covers FF too!

Test image:

Video:

On 8/6/2026 at 4:47 PM, Emanuel said:

This is turning into quite an interesting rabbit hole, good call starting this thread : ) Well, at least we have one thing in common this time ; ) the GX85 is in my arsenal too!

...

That also makes the format issue particularly relevant. Since the GX85 records video in 16:9 rather than genuine 4:3 open gate, a 1.55x adapter would produce a rather extreme 2.75:1 image. The more practical 2.07:1 combination would require an open-gate body such as the GH7.

A potentially more practical option might also be one of the smartphone anamorphics with a standard 37mm rear mount, such as the Beastgrip 1.33x or 1.55x MK2. These could be attached to lenses such as the Panasonic 14mm or TTArtisan 17mm with ordinary step rings, making mounting and alignment considerably simpler than with the 17mm-threaded Neewer.

Yes, the Beastgrip might well be a better candidate - not only due to having a filter thread I can convert to but also potentially with a larger rear aperture for better coverage!

I found this comparison between the Moment M-series (left) and Beastgrip (right) which shows the rear openings:

Some rough measurements of the Beastgrip suggest that the rectangular opening is almost exactly 17mm across, which would make the image circle significantly larger than my Neewer, which uses a 17mm threaded mount.  
The rectangular opening looks to be on a separate plate - I wonder if that could be removed somehow to really open up the rear element?

On 8/24/2026 at 10:25 AM, J S H said:

I have experimented with the Beastgrip 1.33x and 1.55x adapters using full frame cameras and wide/normal to short telephoto lenses (35/40/50/75). I have tried with my slow Leica M lenses, which are usually pretty forgiving on coverage. These Anamorphics will cover full frame and are easy enough to attach to the M mount lenses with a 39 to 37 step down ring. the 1.33x is definitely a better fit for the 35 & 40mm lenses, as the 1.55x has a pretty wide FOV. Results are similar to the above samples, with soft edges and major distortion. But definitely plenty of character. Next time I take a stab at it, I'll post some samples. 

Wow - full frame coverage!   I really didn't expect that, and it's very encouraging to hear!

I also realised the 1.55x makes everything pretty wide, and have been contemplating what FOVs I'd want to get and what focal length taking lenses I'd need to use to get them.

You reminded me of my ultra-cheap Risepray 35mm F1.6 C-mount lens, which has a 37mm filter thread.  Assuming it doesn't vignette (and therefore doesn't need any cropping) that would give me a 45mm F2.1 equivalent lens, which would be pretty good for shooting street and run-n-gun like I do.

Second Charmera arrived, and I got the other naturally coloured one, so that's a win!

I got the second one so that I don't feel like I need to be careful with the first one, so it's the sort of redundancy that will let me push for getting shots even if it's raining or I'm in a crowd or whatever.

I found a second microSD card for it, but it had issues, and it turns out that if you format the card in the camera it stops being functional - either for the camera or for reading it on a computer!
This ended up being a win though, because I discovered that if I format the SD card to the oldest format FAT32 IIRC then it works better than the previous format (ExFAT) which had random stutters in the footage.  So after some confusion and a bit of trial and error that's a big win!  It still duplicates every third frame though, so it didn't change that behaviour.

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.

On 8/4/2026 at 5:07 AM, PannySVHS said:

2x digital zoom was without artefacts right? 4x has to be aliasing extravaganza though!:) I could test it myself. But then, why not ask a GX afficiando like you!:) I still love mine. Got a second one so I carry two sometimes when doing a phototour.

Up for a 2026 8bit challenge btw?:) Would be nice with more than two challengers though of course.:) @kye

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!

2 hours ago, Emanuel said:

Fair enough, and I think “it really comes down to your perspective” is already much closer to what I have been saying from the beginning : )

 

I would only question “completely irrelevant”, 'cause and when you immediately acknowledge the principal practical justification for an 8K sensor:

Cropping twice into a 4K image ; )

That is precisely where the additional detail becomes visible in the comparisons posted above, particularly with the tele shots and whenever the image is cropped and magnified.

8K is also useful for extracting high-resolution frame grabs : P

 

So yes, I concur that the Pocket’s additional latitude may be much more valuable in a wide, uncontrolled, high-contrast exterior scene. The Pocket 4 Pro remains high on my wish list, of course : )

But in a shot requiring additional reach, reframing or magnification or yet, genuine DSMC use ; ) the Luna’s resolution may be the advantage that actually matters too : )

Which brings us back to perspective, purpose and the particular shot, rather than to any single universal verdict on the two cameras.

 

Let alone the POV Head Tracker, detachable screen, internal 32-bit float stereo audio (all game-changers) and the rest of the Luna’s modular shooting concept ; )

 

E. :- )

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.

19 hours ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

 

Maybe. It could also be how the lens renders people, that gives me the sense of artificiality. I do see a significant image (and sound) quality reduction when uploading my own video to youtube at the settings and video format recommended by youtube. I've been trying to figure out how to minimize this issue, and one way is to use the highest-quality format as an intermediate for uploading (QuickTime with Prores HQ). I've not gotten to test this enough to come to a conclusion. 

I think to evaluate noise reduction and other algorithmic processing done by the camera, one would need to look at subject detail also, and how faithful the details and color in the image are to the subject. This is affected by the lens in addition to digital image processing and compression, but when evaluating a fixed (non-removable) lens camera, it is fair since the user can do nothing to change the optics. Anyway, if this sensor and optics available for 1" sensors satisfy the video community then a lot of money can be saved by not having to invest in larger sensor cameras. It also means making videos of satisfactory quality (or quality that is perceived as very good by the public) will become much more accessible to the general public and thus worth less in the job market, as has become the case for still photography. However, I'm not really convinced just yet. 

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.

9 hours ago, ND64 said:

They only rely on IMATEST and it doesn't reveal everything. Especially these days that temporal NR algorithms are doing magic work. The RAW files of these devices are nothing like conventional RAW still images from a mirrorless camera, let alone their 10bit h.265 video. But even some still cameras turn on the NR on RAW from a certain ISO and above. This is S1II for example. The highest no-NR-applied ISO is ISO 5000

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!