Mokara

They are doing it because they are not making any money supporting the small guys. There are other outlets for that group. The long term trends are pretty clear from their pre-covid quarterly numbers, they are adjusting their business model to cope with that reality. Like I said, they are not a charity, their priority is their own financial health, not yours. It is a business. Pulling your content from SS will not do anything because that is where most of the people buying content go. You are just removing yourself from your customer base by doing it. Or do you think that customers are going to pull their business from SS because they want to show solidarity with small contributors? If you have an issue reaching the threshold, then set up a co-op with other contributors, form it as a company and contribute as a group. Then you will have a better chance of reaching the threshold for the higher payout. SS want to deal with large contributors at a corporate level who consistently provide quality product, not individuals. They have plenty of content being contributed, the last quarterly report makes that clear, the small contributors are likely too much of a pita to deal with and it will cost them nothing if those guys go away.

The counter argument to that is that cell phones use variable frame rates.

Their overall margins must be quite small if net income dropped by 43% on a total revenue drop of 1%. After expenses their portion of what is left is a small sliver compared to what the contributors receive, so even a small drop in revenue will hit their bottom line hard. Revenue may drop, but expenses don't, and likely increased due to the huge increase in the amount of material being contributed. So, what they are doing is giving preferential treatment to those contributors whose images move, while making contributors whose images don't move as well and who on balance probably cost the company money take a smaller piece of the pie, so they still make a profit on those transactions as well. Basically giving competitive photographers their proper due, but reducing the amount that less competitive photographers get. They will want to keep those contributors whose images sell, while encouraging those whose images don't sell to move on. Keep in mind that the Q1 financials cover a period before all the covid-19 economic impacts took place, so these are systemic trends associated with the industry in general. Q2 is probably going to be much worse, but that is a short term impact. The Q1 trend is long term.

It is the same as the RX100.

The ZV-1 looked a bit better than the iPhone IMO. Why bother? You will probably get better low light performance from the Sony. Doesn't matter too much outdoors, but indoors or other low light situations it can become more significant. It does need a lens that gives a wider field of view if it is going to be used for vlogging. It also appeared to be having focusing issues in places, focusing on the background rather than his face at times. But, that may just be the camera not being set up correctly though. Other than that it appears to be a RX100 using the mark 5 lens and the mark 7 electronics, housed in a different body.

I would not be so sure about that. There is a massive economic downturn, demand for most things other than essentials are way down.

What evidence is there that the stock footage industry saw significant growth? There may be more companies around doing it and more photographers contributing images (= more overhead, especially for contributors whose products don't sell), they may even be selling more images but that does not mean that their net revenue has expanded. In fact, according to their Q1 financials, their net income was down 43%. Their databank increased by about 27%, suggesting that a lot more people are contributing, but at the same time paying downloads decreased by 1%. That is what is causing the financial crunch for them.

You don't mirror the collection on your own computers? Why would it take months? Bottom line is that it is their service and they make the rules. They are probably facing increasing competition from an expanding array of similar sites resulting in drop of demand (in addition to the drop in demand due to the adverse economy), in the mean time their expenses remain the same. They are not a charity and are not going to run at a loss, so hence the decrease in the royalty.

If you don't want to do business with them then take your business elsewhere.

Yup. I work in high tech, so what would I know. Licensing IS buying technology, lol, that is how it is done. What did you think it was? A gift? There is extensive stealing of IP by companies in China. Basically they mostly ignore whatever patents other people have and just go ahead and just make whatever they want. That is a huge issue with the country, in theory there is IP protection but in practice it is rarely enforced, especially if the IP comes from a foreign country. Just because they are producing stuff instead of other people does not mean they are "innovating". Mostly they are simply copying other people's innovations, either through license or just by stealing IP. Often they are producing stuff under contract for some Western company, because it is cheaper to manufacture there. You might see a lot of stuff with "made in China" on the label, but it was actually designed somewhere else in the world. Of course there is some research going on there, but it is no where near the scale of what is happening in North America and Europe. Manufacturing is NOT innovation! Places like China produce a lot of stuff, that does NOT mean they developed it. Usually that (or the basic principles behind the design) is done elsewhere. The reality is that most innovation actually comes from North America, and to a lesser extent from Europe. That is not going to change any time soon. Even well developed Asian countries, such as Japan and Korea, are far behind in that respect. They are not Asians, they are Americans.

Sony might like to think that the a9 is a 1D/D5 competitor, but it is not. In reality it competes against the 5D. Sony does not have a full pro camera. Cameras like the a7 compete against the 6D, as does the EOS-R. The R5 will fit into the 5D/a9 space, and will be priced accordingly.

The Autel patent in question was actually from Canadians at a company called Dragonfly. Autel just bought it, they did NOT innovate anything. Most of what these Chinese companies do is based on western tech that has been bought or stolen. Western companies don't compete in these consumer sectors because of production costs, no other reason. The suggestion that "innovation" is slipping from the Western hemisphere is total nonsense. It is not. Stuff may be MADE in developing countries, but the technology underlying it is almost completely sourced from Europe and North America.

The camera occupies the 5D/a9 space, so it will likely be priced at a similar price point. I would guess that an a9III with similar video specs will not be far off as well. It may be why Canon are doing these development announcements now, so as to generate buzz for their camera in the face of similar imminent products from Sony and Panasonic.

It is not that innovation has slipped to China, it is just that it is not economically feasible for European/North American companies to compete in the low end consumer market for the most part. Plenty of drones are made in Western countries, but they are high end products not available to hobbyists. Usually they are sold to industrial/military/professional clients. That does not mean they don't exist.

Yes it would. Nikon currently don't have a processor that can match the R5 specs and it is unlikely that they have the resources to invest in getting one. Hopefully the R5 will come out before 20202.....that is a LONG wait! Lol.

Professionals will not be giving up their cine cameras. I seriously don't understand why people who think of themselves as "pros" keep pushing this BS. Professional video cameras offer a lot more in functionality and utility beyond specs that no hybrid can offer. Neither Sony nor Canon are worried about "cannibalization". The only people who think that is a thing are the people who buy hybrids and who use that as a rationale as to why their product does not have the specs a dedicated pro video camera might have. The real reason is that those high end pro video cameras have a lot more hardware and cooling capability included that allows them to achieve what the processor and sensor is capable of. There is no crippling outside of the limits imposed by physics and economics. The reason Canon went 8K was because their latest processor was capable of it. If your processor can't do 8K then you can't implement 8K. When it can, you do. Not rocket science. Canon have made all these development announcements because they know Panasonic and probably Sony have similar products coming soon, and they want to try to steal their thunder. They can't deliver an actual product just yet, but they want people talking about their cameras, not competitors cameras, and hopefully hold off buying competitor products until such time as the R5 actually arrives, whenever that might be.

Like the Nikon DL series? It is a real camera when it is available for purchase. Development announcements don't count. It could arrive in 2023 or maybe never for all we know.

nm

Do you have your R5 yet? For now it is vaporware, lol. We will see what Sony and Panasonic will be producing at the same time as the R5 shortly, so hold assessment until all the cameras actually show up!

They convert it to teal and orange anyway, so it doesn't matter how accurate the color is in the first place

I would guess the problem is with MacOS rather than the ninja. The other possibility is that the SSD is in the process of dying. SSDs are pretty cheap these days anyway.

The a7S series are supposed to be video centric specialist cameras for low light shooting, so don't expect the high resolution necessary for 8K. What the camera will most likely have is at best 4K60p (or higher frame rates) with a higher bit depth and either 422 or RAW recording. Along with updated software features such as improved focusing, tracking and the like. It will NOT be competing with the R5. The R5 may impact on what a future a7RV would look like, but that is not in the immediate future.

The 1DXM3 appears to have it's own special processor though, I suspect the R5 will have a newer one similar to the DV7. It does have H.265 recording, so possibly a version of Digic 8 with a H.265 encoder included. Otherwise it doesn't make sense that the R5 would outperform the 1DXM3.

The overheating comes from the processor. The sensor is operating constantly when the camera is on, it is not overheating. This is not a DSLR, it is a MILC. Overheating happens when you start recording, and the source of that heat is the processor which is doing processing/compression of the data coming off the sensor. That is what generates the heat.

Yes it is. The problem is not so much in the actual processing, but the heat generated by the processor while doing it. This is the reason why dedicated video cameras (which have fans to cool the processor) can do more than stills cameras even when using the same processor. If they are able to achieve these specs in the EOS-R body, then Canon clearly have a next gen processor that probably has more processing power, but (more importantly) is MUCH more thermally efficient (likely a smaller node process together with a redesigned logic structure). Those two things combined would enable them to make a huge leap forward in terms of video specs and overall capability.