kye

+1 for having a consistent methodology.  

It might not be exactly what each person will get in their own setup, but it allows direct comparison between brands.

The parallel is DR, which has so many nuances in testing that you can't compare measurements that come from different sources, making the data almost completely useless unless it's part of a large database all from the same source and methodology.

8 hours ago, Clark Nikolai said:

At some point both costs of SSDs will be so low and data transfer rates will be so high (Thunderbolt 4, etc.) that it won't matter much in practical terms if raw files are not compressed. I could see new cameras saving internally in uncompressed raw, (ProResRaw or uncompressed BRaw) which would not be subject to the patent.

At one time shooting HD was super expensive, now it's super cheap, the same with 4K and other things. If the cost of media is within the budget of a production, and the transfer times for copying the cards is short enough for the shooting schedule, then it doesn't matter.

This is true, but it is mostly offset by the increase in resolution.

1080p was ~2MP and I remember the data rates and processing requirements being huge at the time.  Now we have 8K ~36MP and the data rates and processing requirements are huge for todays computers.

It's tempting to say that we won't go past 8K and computers will keep up, but people have been saying this since 1080p and it's gone up 18X since then.  The next shifts will be into VR, where you need to shoot in a huge amount more than your delivery resolution so I see no end in sight to the increases.

3 minutes ago, JulioD said:

At least all the armchair camera engineers go quiet for a while

Check the other threads....  they're still alive and well.

18 hours ago, Al Dolega said:

The XF405/605/705 lens (which as far as I can tell are all the same) is faster and goes both wider and longer than the XC10 lens, which is 27-273mm f2.8-5.6; XF lens is 25-380 f2.8-4.5. Plus the XC10 lens doesn't have a servo zoom.

That awkward hood/loupe thing on the XC10 is also awful, what a convoluted way to try to make the camera cheaper to produce. The placement of the EVF on a typical photo body is fine, just needs to tilt and extend a bit like the EVF on the XF's.

Would love to have the rotating grip like the XC10 though.

Yeah, the ergonomics (and grip especially) on the XC10 was second to none.

12 hours ago, Davide DB said:

Well I hope these are not the features of the future Lumix FF flagship.

The specifications for the video look very basic. 8K@30p 10 bit but only 4:2:0 internally.

Greater resolution comes at the expense of every other spec.

Announcements like this are just wonderful...

All it took was a pair of press-releases and all of a sudden dozens of people with no training or experience instantly turn into patent attorneys and corporate lawyers specialising in mergers and acquisitions and market strategists etc, and not only that, they also instantly gained insider knowledge about market caps, sales figures, product strategies, etc, and just when you'd think that it couldn't get any better they also become R&D experts in both hardware and software design!

With a shift so radical in capability, even the hardened skeptic must believe there is a higher power involved.

6 hours ago, JulioD said:

This whole synergy making things better cheaper is just corporate BS

Not always, but sadly it's hard to do.

The challenge is that for synergies to emerge the management from the more powerful company needs to have the humility to recognise that they don't know all the answers and that there are better ways of doing things.  Unfortunately, "not invented here" is a very common mindset and different is eradicated rather than celebrated.

7 hours ago, Clark Nikolai said:

It looks cute. I think it might be mostly a fashion accessory (but it also takes pictures). I like how it's small. It's kind of wild that a camera "for kids" is 44 Megapixel. Odd that there's no bluetooth to transfer to your smart phone or tablet.

I'm an adult and I would consider this for some situations like travelling and my photos aren't so important.

It's definitely cute, but I think it's probably not good.

I couldn't find any reviews or sample images, so I suspect it might even be a low-res sensor that just upscales to 44M in software.  It's probably the same sensor and firmware as those first generation 40+MP smartphones.  If retro is in, then a bit of blur is part of the style, not a failure of lens design or MTF curves!

24 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Good point. Nikon has got a bit of an old fuddy duddy branding of stereotype cameraman photographers. So maybe a little bit of the bold brash youthful branding of RED mixed in could be "a good thing"? 

I've stopped trying to understand the younger generations in terms of tastes etc..  The other day we went out to a nearby community event and my daughter (20) came, and was rocking one of these:

I couldn't find anything online about it other than online stores and Reddit comments telling people "you're in the wrong place - you have a digital camera".

3 hours ago, Tim Sewell said:

All good points @kye - and thanks for taking the time to watch. I did, in fact, go for a loose shaky style in the actual shooting as I thought it would suit the style and the song - and I made it even looser with some zooms and pans added in post. This was very much an experiment - I was mainly there to do stills (which in part led to my not having prepped as much as I should have done). Overall I'm satisfied that it's worth me doing some more of these but - as you say - I need to do some deep background on the genre as well!

Thinking about this more after posting, and after going down a small and enjoyable rabbit hole of watching video of rock bands play live, I think the majority of the effort is getting good angles and then putting in the work in the edit.

I think the camera work during recording is good when you've got lots of good roaming cameras, but you don't need them. If you were doing stills and just setup a bunch of static cameras and hit record, then took stills during the concert, then took all the static footage and edited it together, applying creative filters, cutting as much as the style of music permitted (cutting frenetically for a smooth jazz performance wouldn't work, for example..), and cropping with motion in post (push-in zooms, push-out, pans, and even cropping in on someone and following them like it was shot that way live), could all be combined into a decent end result, despite there being no active cameras during the concert.

But, adding my usual disclaimer, time is money and that stuff all takes time, so if the budget doesn't permit it then that might be out of reach financially even if it's possible artistically and logistically.

I keep thinking that it might be fun to edit music videos, but then I remember that would involve clients and deadlines, and then it doesn't sound like fun anymore!

3 hours ago, mercer said:

Exactly. I don't even know what to think. I wasn't planning any upgrade anytime soon, so I can wait to see how things pan out, but how Canon responds will definitely sway me one way or the other.

Hell, this was so out of left field, that for all I know, Canon could announce they bought Arriflex next week.

Man, that would be something!  This Nikon/RED thing came from left-field, but a Canon/Arriflex announcement would leave me not knowing what to think!

In terms of what this means for the mirrorless market, I think it's potentially a good thing - I'll be waiting to see what Nikon does with this in the next few years.

2 hours ago, JulioD said:

There is nothing special about REDCODE.  It was sold for a long time as some special mojo.  

It's well respected in post-production for being a good codec to edit and colour grade (efficient with computer resources etc).  The people who know how to colour grade don't really care much about the image from the high-end cameras because they're all flexible enough in post to get what you want from them, but the codec performance is a real thing.

10 hours ago, Tim Sewell said:

First finished piece using the FS7, first live band video.

This was a bit of a nightmare, to be honest, but it taught me 4 very valuable lessons for next time:

1. Get to the venue before the soundcheck. Set up and crucially...
2. Get the band to do a run-through of the song you're covering, ideally with the stage lighting as it will be later.
3. Get a second static view that you can just leave rolling.
4. During the gig, start rolling and don't stop until the end.

You can probably guess from the above that my major problem wit this piece was lack of coverage, which is why some of the cutaways don't quite fit.

Having said all that, it was a great experience and the band are happy; so on to the next one!

Nice work!

The shooting style was sort of loose and a bit who-gives-a-f*ck which actually suited the song and the way they were singing it.

Coverage is always an issue, which is why I value speed of shooting for my home videos, because it means I end up with more to work with in the edit.

If you're filming rock-n-roll and the dirtier style of music then you could lean in to the grittier style and have angles that are gritty too.  For example, an older camera with a super-wide looking up at the singer, or even a few action cameras plopped around the place would give you lots of options and lots of backups to cut to.  The quality will probably be bad, but you can make them B&W, blur a little, add tonnes of grain, and now they're super-8 angles and things are fresh.  Just find something to mount them to, strap a USB power bank onto each one to give them infinite battery life, put in a large but cheap SD card (which is fine because of the low data rates), and then just set and forget.  Cameras from companies like the SJ-Cam are easily affordable and these days shoot 4K etc.

I'm reminded of Painkiller from Judas Priest:

It is quite obviously dirty and distorted on purpose, even having slow-shutter, radically stretched / warped shots (as short cut-aways), etc.  Even the heavy contrast and radically clipped highlights/shadows lean into the aesthetic.  This is a much heavier song, but there are things that could be learned.

If you want to up your game then it might be worthwhile sitting down and analysing a few great videos like this one, even just watching them at 25% speed on YT reveals a bunch of useful stuff, like lots of inserts where it doesn't matter if the music is sync'd or not (like the singer staring at the camera) which are useful because you can use them anywhere in the edit as long as the movement lines up on the beat, etc.

You can also lean into the effects, like rotating hues, strong filters like Instagram etc.

Also, a 360 camera mounted high and off to the side could also be great - not only would it give a high-angle of the band but can also give great angles of the crowd and show that the band is super-popular (assuming it's a real gig).

I understand all this is subject to the time and budget constraints you have, and margins can be super-tight for this stuff, but just some ideas..

We all know the camera and imaging industry is being disrupted heavily, first with the move to digital that sunk Kodak, then with smartphones slowly eating the whole industry from the bottom up, and now right at the start of generative AI.  In situations like this market consolidation is an enormous game of 9-dimensional chess, so this move will be the result of more analysis than a person could read in a week, even if we had post-graduate qualifications in corporate law, economics, and accounting.

It's not like Nikon was sitting on a huge pile of cash to begin with - in this phase of a market disruption where the manufacturers are literally fighting to stay alive if this wasn't a great match for the two companies across many/most factors then it will be a mistake that might cost them everything.

I'm reminded of the pattern in automobile manufacturers where the fancy sportscar brand that isn't profitable is purchased by the mass-market manufacturer that is profitable, and then in exchange for the sports brand being propped up the high-powered engineers get sent on excursions to the parent company to talk about how to tune the suspension and tweak the engine for a new hot-hatch variant.

But, in this case, I'm really not sure who is profitable and who isn't...

Simultaneously I'm optimistic about the RED tech trickling down to Nikon, but also pessimistic about that because now Nikon has a cine line their first job will be to protect it with a cripple hammer.

WOW indeed!

Let the speculation commence!!

Payday for Jarred.....

Gerald just dropped a video talking about how he has discovered that camera overheating tests are almost completely unreliable.

TLDR; he tested the same camera in the same environment with the same settings, and got results ranging between 55 minutes and 8.5 hours.

Here's the video, which talks about it in much much greater detail:

I think this pretty much means that camera overheating is an un-testable risk for any camera without a fan.  

This is because:

• The tester probably didn't tell you what ambient temp they tested at
• The tester definitely didn't tell you what airflow and ventilation was present
• The tester probably didn't test all the modes you will use
• The manufacturer might update firmware after the testing and completely invalidate the data
• The test won't have been in the situation you're recording in
  and, lastly, in case you're still with me...
• The test is probably a random number generator anyway

I think that overheating is now officially the camera boogyman.

Sceptical of overheating in general? I've personally missed moments when my iPhone overheated........and that's a camera that no-one has identified as having a thermal management problem.

11 hours ago, hoodlum said:

It looks like Sony has significantly cleaned up their video noise quality.  I do wonder if this can be applied to other non-global shutter sensors as well.

https://www.cined.com/sony-alpha-9-iii-lab-test-dynamic-range-and-latitude/

Possibly, but you know Sony - only the latest releases are updated and the rest are dead to them!

22 minutes ago, MrSMW said:

Oh I get it Kye. I’m just musing along various trains of thought more than anything but always with at least a nod to the OP and the post.

For sure if I did not need to earn a living from my kit, OM-1 with 12-40mm f2.8 would be my one and done right now.

Something longer I keep on a shelf but bring to that safari adventure, but otherwise, other than the lack of dual ISO, it’s a brilliant little thing.

Yeah, I think I'm just a bit frustrated overall TBH.  

I'm also fighting with Resolve over half-a-dozen small issues, to the point where I'm genuinely considering writing my own colour grading plugin where I can get what I want.  

I'm also rapidly becoming frustrated with the colourist forums too, as recently I randomly heard a snippet in a podcast that was a simple and beautiful answer to a question I asked several years ago and got zero helpful replies to, but that everyone involved in colour for the last 30 years would have done hundreds of times on the average project, so now I'm wondering what the quality of the rest of the info on there is.
I also watched something a number of months ago that was right at the cutting edge of colour science tools which was what I was thinking about but no-one is talking about.
I know it's a sign that I'm progressing beyond a certain level of knowledge/skill, but I just find it frustrating to be seemingly going against the current in yet another area of this stuff.

What does this all have to do with MFT cameras? (apart from being frustration in general..).  Well, the better I can capture things in camera the less work I have to do in post.

9 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I suspect there would not have been a G9ii of they had not done it in existing FF S5 body…

I will be surprised to see another unique M4/3 body from Lumix going forward…

No idea what the official sales figures are, but I would not be surprised if it’s been a steady downward decline in sales of both M4/3 bodies and lenses.

We know that overall sales of all cameras is down over the last decade, especially at the lower priced and more compact end of the market.

Logic and basic economics suggests to me if the market is in decline as I believe it is, then so is investment.

For my needs, we have already reached ‘peak camera’ in various forms such as a system exists for me now with; Nikon, Fuji, Sony and Canon, but sadly not within L Mount.

That’s 3x FF brands/systems and 2x APSC with small compromises that make little to know difference between FF and APSC, but M4/3 is too big.

For me. For my needs. YMMV.

For me personally, the current conundrum and potential future one, is how much smaller and lighter can we get this stuff without sacrificing performance?

For me, switching to a (much) smaller sensor is not a viable option and neither is swapping out an f2.8 for an f4 or something even slower.

But none of it matters as I have very good options for this coming season that suit me very well and all I am personally interested in for the future is can I get the same performance out of a smaller & lighter set up?

Probably…

Can I afford to do it?

Maybe…

Am I going to do it?

Almost certainly, but not in ‘24!

 

Yeah, but remember, our situations have almost nothing in common.  You're shooting dreamy images for someone else to pay you money and doing so in a situation where you're expected to be taking up space and using as impressive a camera setup as possible.  I am shooting environmental images for myself in situations where I'm discouraged from taking up space and where having the smallest possible setup is to my advantage.

As far as my understanding goes, if I was doing what you do then I'd also have the same thoughts as you.  I imagine that if you were doing what I do then you'd also understand why I have the priorities that I do.

It's easy to look in at a situation from a distance and see enough of it to have a good overview, but to be far enough from the details that the subtleties aren't apparent. 

The FF user telling the MFT user who wants small cameras that FF is just as good as MFT is like the cinematographer telling the wedding shooter that an FX9 is just as good for shooting wedding videos as a mirrorless, and completely missing that the price, size, weight, workflow, and a dozen small details make the proposition impractical at best.  The comparison probably isn't bulletproof and you could probably find weaknesses in it, but I've had enough issues in the field with the size of my XC10 and GH5 that I can pretty confidently say that the considerations involved are real, even if they aren't obvious to outsiders.  I mean, the other recent thread from @John Matthews was about cameras substantially smaller than the GX85!

6 hours ago, MrSMW said:

“All I want is the perfect camera”.

Not really.

All I want is a GX85 with a modern sensor, so Dual ISO and higher DR.  

I don't need / want LOG, 10-bit, 422, ALL-I, RAW, PDAF, a flippy screen, dual card slots, 6K or more, mic-in, etc, etc, although if they came with no penalties then I wouldn't hate having them.  In the real world though, they do come with penalties - huge ones (see rant at the end of this post).

6 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I hear you. We should add the word ‘system’ after the word camera because there is too much emphasis on the body, but if the glass is not there…

Absolutely.

6 hours ago, mercer said:

@kye we've discussed this a bit in the past regarding selling everything and moving to a new system and normally I would be against it... I still consider my 5D3 with ML Raw as my main camera... but if my main camera was a m4/3, I might consider it.

Unfortunately, m4/3 as a small camera system is a thing of the past. Any new cameras will be as big as Panasonic's FF offerings, so if you want any of the upgrades you mentioned, the only option is to change systems or deal with the bigger m4/3 bodies. Sony could be a great option, as @BTM_Pix mentioned because you can use some of your current manual focus m4/3 lenses with a simple adapter while you decide what lenses you'd like to invest in. Also, eventually there will be no m4/3... it may not be for a few years, but the writing is on the wall... so your Voigtlander lenses will become VERY expensive paper weights. Sell them while you still can.

Then again, if you are happy with the images you are getting with what you already own, then there's no reason to upgrade.

But if you want some of the features you mentioned, the only options are a change in systems... hell you can have a lot, if not all including size, by going full frame. In the end, after selling off/trading what you have, you could probably end up with more money. 

Yeah, this thread was more of a temperature check, just to make sure there wasn't something I'd forgotten, and to have another thorough think-through of it.

I'm not sure I'd swap to another system right now even if it was free.

The GX85 with 12-35mm still feels on the large side, so casually stretching to something 50% larger isn't a casual proposition at all.

4 hours ago, John Matthews said:

On a side note, I'd wait because there have been reports on a small Panasonic camera is in the works. My bet is that it will have PDAF and some other decent features. This could be more than a year away though.

That's my feeling too.  

Panasonic has said there won't be more compact cameras, but has also said over and over that they're fully behind MFT, and having spent a long time developing the dual-gain PDAF sensor in the GH6 it would be pretty easy for them to capitalise on that investment by doing refreshes of the rest of the lineup.  Hell, even if things trickled down and they released a GX camera with the sensor and processors from the GH5, that would be a good outcome for me.

2 hours ago, MrSMW said:

That would be interesting as they stated officially there would be no more small (or compact anyway) cameras.

But there are indeed some very valid FF body/lens combos now that are not exactly massive and bigger/longer lenses can be compensated for with cropping, ie, larger sensors and AI etc...

I'm actually deeply suspicious about the current size comparison between MFT, S35, and FF cameras, and how they're all a similar size and weight.  The FF bodies with IBIS do tend to be heavier, but are the same size, and something smells fishy to me.

If a sensor is smaller then it takes less power to run it, and it takes FAR less power to move it around for IBIS.  The sensor is also a lot lighter, and the IBIS motors will be dramatically lighter.  This means that if all else was equal the batteries should be smaller or last longer, and the internals should be smaller and lighter.  I understand that the screen is independent of sensor size, as are lots of other things in the camera, but when combined with a smaller sensor with a lower resolution the processors should be smaller.  The camera module from the iPhone is practically microscopic.

BUT, that's not what we're seeing.

I suspect it's a combination of lowered IBIS performance (the motors not being able to move as fast or as far, but no technician out there will get their shit together and actually make a test setup for this), combined with the manufacturers just not trying, which I think is quite sad.

What this means in practice though is that it should be easily possible for a GX sized camera with modern components and design to offer a serious challenge to the specs of the larger S35 and FF cameras.

2 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

I think the closest that you're going to get with that will be the Sigma contemporary range.

They are behemoths compared to what you can get in MFT but, actually, when you line it up against an MFT package of actual equivalence (or slightly less in this case) then the story changes.

Its just that with MFT you have the option and thus far in L mount then you don't.

Unless....

You don't mind sacrificing a daft amount of money and going APS-C and picking up the Leica range that they made for the TL and CL which are very compact indeed.

Leica have abandoned APS-C and Panasonic seem content to sit either side of it with their MFT and L mount so it might be a place that Sigma could carve a niche for themselves with an APS-C body, particularly as they have an excellent set of fast primes and a zoom for it.

With the trials and tribulations of them trying and thus far failing to make a full frame Foveon, it could well be that it would find a home for an interim APS-C version in a rehoused Fp. 

Realistically, though, the only current way to get pancake-ish full frame in L mount is to go for the manual focus route of using M mount on them like I've done on mine here with a 35mm f2.

As @MrSMW has just posted, the E mount system is currently better served with compact FF lenses particularly in regard to 3rd party manufacturers like Samyang.

The closed shop nature of the L mount alliance (in terms of electronic lenses at least) is definitely a hindrance in that regard.

Now I've moved to zooms, I seem to be swimming against the prevailing winds of the camera market once again.

I want MFT zooms to be F2.8 or slower, a standard 3x (~24-70mm) or 10x zoom ratio, and as small as possible.  I'd be happy if the attempts to make them smaller meant that they were 12MP or less in resolution.

Instead, the market has put making the fastest and sharpest lenses known to man as the first priority, relegating size to third priority (there is no second priority), and because everyone is shooting wide open they've managed to get the whole industry to basically stop discussing anything else except 150fps animal-eye-detect focus performance.

When I think about a FF camera with an F2.8 lens I think of it having too shallow DoF for my compositions, and by the time I stop it down I now need the second base ISO just to give it a normal exposure after the sun has gone down.  

It's been a long journey for me, but now MFT seems to be the sweet spot of DoF and exposure to create the right aesthetic in a sensible amount of light, which makes the AF performance far less critical, and when combined with a 4K sensor the data rates aren't stratospheric, the lenses can be budget friendly, you can do it on affordable SD cards internally, making the whole camera package smaller.  ....not to mention you don't need a supercomputer to edit the footage.

The "better" cameras on the market seem to have "improved" every aspect, but the challenge is that when you "improve" one aspect you make all the others far worse, in a never-ending game of "one step forward, six steps back, and how will you be paying for this today sir?".

On 3/1/2024 at 6:36 PM, PannySVHS said:

I think small sized camcorders were used to be called palmcorders.

Ha! What a great word! 🙂 

4 hours ago, PPNS said:

does the gh5s have worse DR than the P2k? it uses the same sensor as the p4k/micro studio

CineD says so.

I've kept a spreadsheet of all their DR tests and random mentions, and the following image appeared in one of their early reviews before they got serious about publishing the lab tests - it includes both the P2K and GH5S:

They haven't tested the external RAW update, so if you want to assimilate your GH5S into the collective then that might give a bump?

DR is a tricky beast though, depending heavily on how you test it and the NR applied, etc, so I'd suggest the above is a rough statement rather than a definitive result without any caveats, because we don't know exactly what they did and why in the test.

It does seem to be a case of the missing Panasonic GX-series camera with modern sensor.

Revisiting the lineup, each with their smallest equivalent of a 24-70mm and a 24-240mm, here's the GX85, the A6700, the FX3, and the FP:

The A6700 seems to have good options in the 18-55 and 18-135mm variable aperture lenses, which aren't too big.

The FX3 would be the choice for Sony FF due to its high-ISO performance, and the tiny 28-60 really is tiny.  The 24-240 is a lot bigger than the 14-140 on the GX85, but it's pretty small for FF.  

Lastly, the FP seems to only have OIS options for 24-105 and 28-200, but they're not in the camerasize database, so pictured above is the 24-70/2.8 which is a tank.

Canon and Nikon are notably absent.  By the time the FX3 and FP are in the mix, we've deviated so far from the GX85 that we may as well be having an open house.

I guess the summary is that there isn't anything in MFT, but if I wanted to completely re-buy everything in my entire camera bag, there are options that are larger, incredibly more expensive, and better, but no-where near better enough to make me consider any of them for a single second.

The more I think about it, the better the AI options in post seem.

15 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

I don't know if this is universal, or just the cameras I've tested, but I've found that recording 8 bit produces blocky color artifacts that are visible even without log recording or color grading. See my example in the other thread, and note that the comparison is with roughly equivalent bitrate (In this particular example, the 10 bit file ended up slightly smaller but within a couple %).

 

I suspect it's a symptom of how the camera processes the image rather than a limitation of 8-bit images.  I know this because the images you posted to the forum will be 8-bit images, so if it was a limitation with all 8-bit images then it would be visible on all images posted.

I can see it, when zoomed radically and saturated and being pointed out, but suspect that it wouldn't be visible under normal circumstances.  If that was the price to avoid overheating and storage anxiety while recording then it would have to be a pretty specific set of circumstances for that to win out over the increased creativity. 

15 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Not a single Olympus or OM System camera has dual ISO. None. Otherwise, the best Olympus camera for the size is the OM-5 or E-M5 iii.

Well, that rules them out, which is unfortunate.

10 hours ago, Matt Kieley said:

Does it have to be MFT? I just got the Panasonic S5 now that it's cheap enough (I got one used for $800 on Adorama). It has great color (10 bit 4:2:2) and DR, dual iso, excellent ibis, and smaller/lighter than the GH5. 

Yeah, it has to be MFT.  Not only to share my existing lenses with the GX85, but also because the FF lenses are gargantuan in comparison and pretty sparse really.

10 hours ago, Matt Kieley said:

As for AF though, have you considered getting a lidar follow focus like the PDMovie Live Air 3?

Not only would it be too large (and "Smallest" is literally the first word in the title of this thread) but compatibility is another whole thing that just isn't a factor when sticking to a single lens system.

2 hours ago, Thpriest said:

If size is really important then the GX85 is great. It's the only camera I regret selling. It has the Cine D hack as well. Mine had no recording limit as well (bought from Hong Kong). Stick a small fast lens on and you are good to go.

Yeah, it's just the frustrations of when I hit its limitations, which when I'm travelling is a multiple-times-per-day sort of thing, and is often in a that-would-have-been-the-killer-shot-from-this-location-but-the-camera-couldn't-do-it sort of way.

I'm fully aware that I want a camera that can do a wide range of things very very well, but you can't fault someone for trying to improve things.  The thing I find fascinating is that even if I had a million-dollar budget for a setup, I still couldn't get what I want.