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I'd also like to know if Canon are working on a small ILC cine camera. Maybe a C100iii or an ILC XC model or something in between. I'm not optimistic though as AFAIK Canon have had their announcements and the C100 (2012) and C100ii (2014) schedule seems to have stopped completely.

Sony A7Siii anything, that seems to be the last missing component in the next batch of cameras. I'd also like to know if Sony are updating their 4K action camera, as I'm in the market.. Thanks Andrew!

I think we should discuss lenses and MF cameras separately. In the same way that a MFT 25mm f2.8 lens gives the same viewing angle and DoF as a 50mm f5.6 lens, there are equivalent lenses on MF also. My question is that given the two sensor sizes and two equivalent lenses (equivalent in both focal length and aperture) then are there any other differences? The video I included looks absolutely gorgeous to me, but is that simply a combination of the lens resolution and characteristics, the colour science, the codec (IIRC that video was raw?), the source resolution, and the nice lighting and subject? If so, then the engineering part of my brain understands that, and would also explain why lovely images can be also be taken with MFT, 1" cameras, or even smartphones and their borderline microscopic sensors. I want to have a camera that is as small as possible, but if there's something magical about MF (which the images certainly hint that there might be) then I want to understand what it is and start working out how to get it!

No-one. The problem is that sometimes it doesn't.

If what you're saying is true then that's a good thing, and I hope you're right. My experience has been awful with older budget cameras, and the issues I've seen with the GH5 (or those that made the cut anyway) are admittedly less than 2005 point-and-shoot cameras, but unfortunately we're still too far off for it to be acceptable performance for me. I've now filed it under the same category as 8K video - it will be good but it's not available yet and when it is available it will be costly and take time to trickle down into the camera body with the right feature set for my preferences.

What are the competitors likely to release and when? I was hoping Sony would update their flagship action camera this year When is the next Xiaomi Yi announcement likely to be?

I agree and have commented previously in other threads about this. I'm not sure why but when you go smaller than APSC there are no fast zooms available, and APSC only has the one option.

You might be right about CDAF being best for fine-tuning the focus, but PDAF not only knows something is out of focus but which way the focus is to be found. After watching dozens or hundreds of beautiful moments pass while the focus mechanism has charged off in the wrong direction and the moment concludes and the shot is lost while the camera is still wondering why the entire frame is a complete blur, I will always be deeply deeply skeptical of CDAF-only cameras.

Thanks everyone! This is kind of a microcosm of my previous impressions about MF, most talk about it being scaled up but the same, a few talk about desirable aesthetic differences and then get refuted. It's kind of why I asked the question. My brain says that the differences should be all engineering, but then I see images like the video in the first post and something within me stirs and says "I want that!!". I guess we'll have to wait for the camera to come out and judge the footage for ourselves.

Now we've heard the Fujifilm GFX 100MP 4K Medium Format camera announcement, it leads me to wonder what the medium format look really is? Obviously the sensor size means that shallow depth of field is easier to get, and larger sensors gather more light (although MF sensors don't seem to be low light beasts), but what else is part of the look? This sure looks nice though...

@noone I agree that there are too many systems to survive. It's an interesting time, as it is an industry in disruption and also, depending on how you look at it and over what time scales, in consolidation. In the long term I think we will have three form factors, large modular cinema cameras with mind boggling specs, smartphones with many lenses and AI driven computational image processing, and the middle offering that will be the successful synergy of video and stills. As smartphones eat the bottom end of the market it's the middle offering that we're moist concerned about here, and we've got a number of iterations before this space settles down.

How directional it is would be useful to know too

Yeah. Until the cameras get into the hands of reviewer's who can pick them apart, understand the various combinations of features that work well and those that are locked out, understand who there for, and then compare them, only then will I sink a solid four figures into a new system. The more that I thought about this announcement and what I wanted the more that the line between mirrorless, cinema and ILC camcorders blurred in my brain. If we're talking about the relationship between consumer and cinema cameras then why should the consumer ones not overlap on video features, and what is the best form factor anyway? At some point you need to understand what features you actually use and then when the camera that has those is released then that's what to buy. For some people that was 10 years ago and for others it's not yet. The problem is that some don't start with their requirements, and that's how you get lost in the confusion of camera tech.

@A_Urquhart good info, thanks. As this is a camera that is really likely to shine brightest with raw and careful grading, perhaps just sharing your impressions of it is easiest and quickest. Or alternatively just take a bunch of random shots and upload some DNGs or TIFFs for others to dl and play with?

No PDAF though

I get that sometimes. I also get it when you're trying to get something really big in frame too. Yesterday I was at some Greek ruins and checked the framing and had to walk back, three times(!) before it fit into the wide end of the XC10 24-240mm zoom. I'd suggest that it's any time you're working in a location where you struggle for space is a potential wide angle lens situation.

What kind of shots did you want the wide angle for? I sometimes miss a wide angle, and I'm curious to know when others do too

I'm hoping the mount swap service could do it. One less set of contacts and electronics and all that is a good thing. If so, it would basically mean that the new system would "launch" with the entire Sigma FF lens line up, and for many people they wouldn't have to re-buy anything to have native lenses. It would kill the paltry lens catalogue from CaNikon!

There's a well-known thing here called "the Australia tax" where the same products cost 20-80% more than the exact same products do elsewhere in the world. It's due to many manufacturers having exclusive suppliers with dedicated regions, so you can only buy through one business and they control the price. I am also interested in hifi and it's a common occurrence for someone to take their family on a week holiday to Singapore or Japan and buy a piece of hifi equipment and have it shipped directly back to Australia. Depending on how expensive the item is, the difference in price can be so large it covers the cost of the family holiday, a week of lost wages, the shipping of heavy and fragile goods, and the person still comes out ahead.

Does anyone know if the existing Sigma FF lens line up would be convertible to the new mount? I don't understand the technical details of lens mounts..

I've had the frustration of discovering this as well. I thought about it and I don't think there's much that can be done. I was going to do a follow-up test to see if a high quality 1080p upload would look better at 1080p than a 4K upload at 1080p, but was so frustrated with it I didn't bother. Facebook video is worse, with the video starting by default at 240p or something. I discovered why too, the channels with huge subscriber counts get high bitrates at the start of the video! Hooray for capitalism!

Absolutely. I did this for my XC10 in C-Log and luckily there were no significant differences a stop either way of where it exposes skin tones in auto (how I shoot) so I just don't worry about it. Unfortunately I sympathise with the OP wanting to know about cameras they don't already own. Unfortunately this level of performance testing doesn't often overlap with non-cinema cameras so the comparison probably isn't on vimeo somewhere

+1 for adding grain and uploading in 4K. Don't forget you can do an export of one or two shots, upload as a private video, watch and see how it looks, then adjust and do it again until you've worked out what looks best.

It depends on the camera. High end cinematographers always test the optimal level of exposure when they are about to film with a new camera. The answer of where each camera looks nicest with skin tones and DR is always different from camera to camera. For some it is underexposing, and others it is overexposing. However this is with cinema cameras and you are talking about prosumer mirrorless. The real question is perhaps "How do I get good results on a budget 8-bit camera shooting log?"

The 405 has been tested by the EBU folks, and the two profiles have 9.7 and 10.7 stops of DR. The XC10 tested at just over 11, so if DR is why you'd want C-log then you might still be satisfied. The full report is here. https://tech.ebu.ch/files/live/sites/tech/files/shared/tech/tech3335_s27.pdf Edit: just realised you were talking about the XF400. Doh!