Mokara

The sensors made by Sony for Nikon are not the same as the ones Sony uses, although they may seem so superficially. The way it works is that the client would design architecture that is compatible with the manufacturers processes and essentially send them the spec. The manufacturer would then make it based on their own technology and what is permissible to use. Significant changes are routine at this point. So, the sensor may include features normally seen in Sony sensors because, well, that is what Sony makes and how they make them. They will NOT include features that are outside of Sony's manufacturing processes. In a contract situation like this the client will set general specifications but exactly how those specifications are achieved is left to the manufacturer to do (and usually those specific manufacturing processes are proprietary to the manufacturer). Nikon would not have designed BSI for example, that part would have been done by Sony. Likewise the sensors would include focusing points that are allowed by licenses Nikon holds. For example, Sony can make DPAF sensors (they have for Samsung, who hold a license from Canon), but they can't do that for Nikon since they DON'T have a license from Canon (and never will).

All that Nikon design does in this is come up with a workable spec that is compatible with Sony's processes and allowable under licences/patents held by Nikon. They talk to engineers at Sony's manufacturing facilities and figure out what can be done in general. Then they will come up with small scale prototypes made in the R&D labs and send those over to Sony along with the design they used. The engineers at Sony then modify that to be compatible with their processes (likely significantly changing aspects of the design in the process) and practical to make. If Nikon is OK with the final prototypes that come out of that process, it goes into production, with all of the sensors resulting from that going to Nikon (Sony will be contractually barred from selling them to anyone else). This is how everything else is made in the tech industry, so no doubt the same holds true for Nikon/Sony sensors.

9 hours ago, IronFilm said:

As we take a breather from the exciting mirrorless rumors, we can see how very popular Nikon's traditional DSLRs are, they can't even keep the excellent Nikon D850 in stock because it is in hot demand:

https://nikonrumors.com/2018/07/24/today-its-july-24th-and-the-nikon-d850-is-still-out-of-stock-in-the-us.aspx/

That does not necessarily mean there is huge demand, it could simply be that manufacturing is lagging. Unless you know the actual sales numbers you can't say which is which because the manifestation of both scenarios is the same.

2 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Wait....    what??? 

Just ask any Sanders supporter and they'll tell you the exact opposite! That the systems was rigged heavily in the Clintons' favor!
 

And to say Republican supporters helped Sanders win primaries by voting for him is I feel just bizarre.

Independents? Yes. As Sanders was reaching out to voters who felt the old established Democratic Party were not speaking to them, but Sanders was different and bringing in a lot of young new blood to the Democratic Party's cause. 

Is this a bad thing? (from the perspective of a Democratic Party supporter that is, just to clarify: I'm not one. I'm not even an American citizen)
 I'd say probably not, because you don't win elections by purely appealing to your base but also by bringing in the independents / middle ground over to your side as well. 

So to say a candidate was appealing to the independents as well, that sounds like a compliment to me? And a positive trait you'd want in your party's candidate. Rather than the negative you are spinning this as. (although often this can be a negative for a candidate during the primaries season, as you win elections by appealing to the middle ground but you often win primaries by appealing to your party's "middle ground" which can be much much further to the left/right than where the country's middle ground is)

Sure they will say that because that is the only way to get around the fact that Clinton was the clear favorite among Democrats for THEIR candidate. The caucus system is the biggest rigged and most corrupt system of them all. It heavily favors candidates supported by activists on the left (and the right, for the Republican contests), which skews the results away from the popular choice. The Washington results made that VERY clear, since we got vastly different results with the two methods of selecting delegates. If the caucus states had proper primaries Clinton would likely have won most of them. Instead Sanders got the majority of the delegates from those states, simply because he had the support of left wing activists. Clinton was the heavy favorite among rank and file registered democrats, while Sanders base was activists and independents who usually vote Republican although registered as such. Pretty much the only primaries he did well in were the open primaries, Clinton dominated the ones restricted to registered Democrats. And it should be obvious why THOSE people were supporting him - they did not want a centrist Democratic candidate in the general.

The problem with open primaries is that you get a bunch of people who are not going to vote for your party in the general election, their objective is simply to get someone in who their guy can beat, and to stoke up dissent in the opposing party. They WANT to nominate some on the far wing of the opposing party so that in the general their guy would stand a better chance. Many of those independents and republicans who voted in the open primaries for Sanders would NOT vote for him in the general because he is a socialist while they are center/center right. The Republican operatives WANTED Sanders to win because it would guarantee them the presidency. And if he didn't win they were going to stir up as much resentment as possible in the left wing activists so they would stay home and not vote for Clinton in the general election.

On ‎7‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 1:33 PM, Andrew Reid said:

 

An example: Hilary Clinton ran a poor campaign, that's a fact. She lost, that's a fact. It could be interpreted as me being pro-Trump or as a personal opinion.... But she did. She was simply a poor campaigner. Unlike Bernie Sanders. 

The reasons Sanders did reasonably well is because of the caucus system in some states that favor activists and because other states had open primaries (ie not restricted to Democrats only). A clear example of that was Washington State, where Sanders won the caucuses easily, getting 74 delegates to Clinton's 27. But due to state law, later on there was a non binding primary held run by the state itself, and Clinton won 54% of the vote then. Clinton had the support of Democrats but because of the rigged system Sanders got the delegates. It was like that in may other caucus states as well (incidentally, that was the main reason Obama got the nomination 8 years earlier). In open primaries Clinton usually won convincingly among registered democrats but Sanders won big among independents and republicans who participated in the primary. If the Democratic primary contest was only closed primaries Sanders would have trailed Clinton badly and there would have been no contest. The only reason he came close to Clinton was because of support from activists and independents/republicans. The damage done to Clinton's campaign as a result of having to have a bitter fight with someone who was not even a Democrat for the nomination probably cost her the national race. If you want to point fingers, point them at Sanders, he singlehandedly has more to do with Trump being president than anyone else.

On ‎7‎/‎16‎/‎2018 at 10:38 PM, jonpais said:

are you saying the RX100 has more tech than the GH5? Does it have anamorphic mode, 10-bit internal, full HDMI out, the ability to save all settings to an SD card, waveform monitor, truly usable touch screen, fully articulating LCD, 4K 60p unlimited recording, and on and on? If the batcam had all the features of Sony, Panasonic or Fuji, it would cost in the same ballpark. 

Compared to the equivalent Panasonic camera, it does have more tech included. For it's form factor the RX100 series without question are technologically the class leader.

Depends on if they have the processor to handle it or not. It is unlikely that the specs will dramatically exceed the current DSLR cameras for that reason, so that is what you are looking at in a best case scenario.

The problem is the computer. Laptops in my experience struggle editing the H.265 output from the NX1. I have a similar Inspirion and it is barely useable editing NX1 footage, but my desktop (a 8700K system with a 1080Ti graphics card) has no issues. There is a huge difference between the capabilities of a laptop and a desktop. If he wants to use the laptop he is probably going to need to transcode his clips first. It will take a long time, but if he can batch convert them he could have it run overnight.

8 hours ago, Axel said:

@BenEricson

Sigh. That's analog to having wine served from bottles with cork instead of Tetra Paks.

I told one story already. We had a very worn print of Time Of The Gypsies in the cinema where I was projectionist. A thick layer of scratches, rumble in the (analog) audio, hundreds of splices. It was a morning performance for two school classes, kids of fourteen, fifteen. I was certain, they wouldn't stand it. Much to my surprise, they were deeply immersed. Their faces were red, their eyes shone when they gathered in the foyer afterwards. Sure, it's an unbelievably good film, but I think the presence of he medium added, well, something. 

Did you read Flicker? 

No, it added nothing. They were reacting to the story, not the medium.

On ‎7‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 8:18 PM, andrgl said:

Got a chance to see some modern stuff projected tonight. Damn man, celluloid is amazing, too bad it looks like shit online.

Seeing real grain dancing on a screen is amazing.

Real life does not have grain, so why would high quality imaging have it? Grain is an artifact of inadequate technology, both now and in days gone by. Eventually it will be gone. The presence of grain does not make footage "superior".

15 hours ago, Axel said:

With digital HDR and HFR and of course ever higher resolution, the image quality could be far superior to analog film. But it might take another generation before 24p die, and the reasons for that are not *just* nostalgia.

Specifically, we need to wait for the generation who grew up with analog as the primary viewing medium to die off. Only then will modern media seem "normal". Off course, by then the deficiencies of current digital media will be seen as "filmic" and "superior" to whatever replaces it

13 hours ago, kye said:

• 24fps is linked to the minimum frame rate for humans to observe continuity of motion rather than a slideshow, no-where near the limits of human perception which are being explored by computer games and are upwards of 100fps (IIRC)

Specifically, minimum fps is dependent on the actual motion in the footage. If you have objects whizzing by, or you do rapid pans, you HAVE to have high frame rates or it will look complete crap. Shooting at 24 fps actually imposes a lot of limitations of what and how you can shoot, limitations that increasingly disappear at higher frame rates.

37 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

And Every one of the examples on Wiki show a camera with a zoom lens that has a huge range! You conveniently only read the first paragraph. Nobody on here relates a bridge camera to something that used film, Nobody. Hell you must be 30 years older than I am to think that LoL. ?

Bridge cameras have nothing to do with zooms. They are fixed lens cameras with advanced controls similar to what you find on SLRs. It may be that most of them have zoom lenses, but that is not a requirement for the type.

21 hours ago, Damphousse said:

The RX1 does NOT have a zoom lens.  Read the post I was responding to.

Also how much does the RX1 cost?  How many do they sell?

All sorts of niche weird and wonderful things are made.  That doesn't mean they are mass market hits or profitable.

Never the less, it is still a FF bridge camera.

"The term "bridge camera" was originally used to refer to film cameras which "bridged the gap" between point-and-shoot cameras and SLRs"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_camera

On ‎6‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 12:57 PM, webrunner5 said:

Why would they even bother selling the damn thing if the 4K only lasts 5 minutes or less?

Because it is primarily a consumer stills camera, and 4K shot on it is likely to be short clips?

On ‎6‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 9:46 AM, wolf33d said:

2 generation and no improvement in bitrates, fps and quality ... 

That is because it has the same processor, and compression is done in hardware by the processor. Magic is not involved and wishful thinking carries no weight, so it will use the same compression the processor has always done.

Ditto for the overheating as well. 

5 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I think Smartphones sales is going to slow down pretty big time in the near future. China for one is really pushing that if it is not a Chinese Cellphone company you are not going to be able to sell it in China at all in the near future. That is a HUGE market cut off. And they have got to the point that they are just costing too damn much money for the gains you see each year now. People in India and Africa are not buying 1000 Dollar phones. If you are not into big time photo, video output a 5 year old phone gets  the job done yet. I see the market dropping off not moving up.

But yeah I agree with your statement. Samsung and Apple are the leaders in the world. I see Apple is going to start making stuff "in house" since the move of China is to cut off sales of Apple products there, and even the manufacturing of them also.

I think they are not, and have not sold as many RX10 mk III, mk IV as they have hoped. They are just too damn expensive. Sure they are pretty impossible to beat if you have small ass hands to hold the damn thing for a vacation lets say, or even using them for wildlife shooting.

But since they are not selling them by the millions I would bet overall it is a dead end street profit wise. I would not be surprised the mk IV might be the last version they ever make. I think they lost their way when they went to a variable Aperture lens and got rid of the ND filters. I can't even use my RX10 because the Aperture ring raking the hell out of my finger. It must to have been designed for 12 year old girls is all I can guess??

They will have newer versions of the RX10. But the improvements will be incremental, similar to what is done with the RX100. Development costs will be contained by keeping the body/mechanicals largely the same and just updating the internal electronics as silicon is improved. There is a market for high end small sensor extreme lens cameras.

5 hours ago, Damphousse said:

An RX10 with a 1" sensor and only 1080p recording costs $800 new.  So a full frame bridge camera is going to cost waaayyyy more.  Not many people want to pay that price and be stuck with one lens.

Consumer electronics is a low margin business.  A few companies like Apple make nice profits but have you seen how much they charge and what features they leave out?

These people aren't stupid.  If they were going to come out with a full frame in house camera they would have done it BEFORE they destroyed their reputation with photographers.

Sony already have a FF bridge camera. It is called the RX1. 

On ‎6‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 1:22 PM, webrunner5 said:

Really good bridge camera are like the high end Point N Shoot stuff, Way to damn expensive to sell many for making a profit in the long run. I think Sony just keeps updating them to show off their 1" sensor improved tech that seems to be used by everyone. I would not doubt they loose money on them.

You can buy a damn good camera for 1300 to 1500 bucks new or used. Sure you are not getting the fast lens but most people in that price range have some lenses anyways.

Plus I think Samsung would be crazy to get back in the camera market. It is a sinking ship down the road. No room for small market camera company's in the future other than Leica, Digital MF stuff. But I guess it is a good way to show off your Sensor Tech!

The reason for them doing it would be the same reason Mercedes has a formula 1 team. It is advertising for their bread and butter products, it shows off their technological prowess and it provides a test bed for innovative engineers to try out new technological ideas. 

There can be other reasons for a company to do a particular thing beyond the bottom line.

For Samsung I think that the camera division was largely not doing this prior to the NX1 and that is why they got canned. The NX1 was probably a last gasp effort by the engineers on the project to convince management that they could produce a flagship like that, they threw everything except the kitchen sink into it, but by the time they delivered there was a power change at the senior management level and the new guys saw things differently. The decision had already been made and it was too late no matter what the NX team did.

23 hours ago, Tim Shoebridge said:

A return by Samsung to the camera manufacturing business would be very difficult, the one thing they need which they lost so spectacularly is trust. But making sensors for other manufacturers makes a lot of sense, the sensor in their NX1 was ground-breaking. Are there any other 28Mp APS-C sensors even out there yet.....?

It would not be difficult at all. They have done the same thing with computers before.

The biggest issue of course would be lenses, but if they could get Sigma or one of the lens companies to support their mount then that problem would go away. Samsung could return to the market relatively easily if they had a collaboration with a leading lens manufacturer put in place.

17 hours ago, kaylee said:

Guys –

I have to get some shots tomorrow with a locked down camera that is not moving at all, in order to do some double exposure effects in post.

I'm gonna be using my 24-105 IS L f/4

SO....

in my mind there is no reason that IS should be on, and it could possibly create bad results, and that's common knowledge.

TRUE OR FALSE?

Depends on how stable the tripod is under the conditions you are shooting. If there is strong wind or if there is vibration in the ground you will still need stabilization even when on a tripod, otherwise you will see the vibration in your shots.

It would be more than twice as much. The license fees would be such that it would not compete with existing Canon products. It would cost at least as much as the C200, and likely more.

Don't hold your breath. The operating parameters will likely be similar to the M50 if it has the same processor, so it will probably be 4K without DPAF. Unless they are planning to put a Digic 9 in the camera.

On ‎6‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 3:04 AM, Grimor said:

When camera finally comes out, we'll see zillions of camera test on Youtube because people already have the lenses.

Just wait few more and see what  you like the most.

You mean we are about to see a frenzy of cat videos?

Don't most cell phones use variable frame rates in video?

19 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

They said they cancelled it because they were not profitable as they expected at that price range. 

 

Even with your logic, stacked sensors are the bottleneck, since there is a processor AND a DRAM right behind them!

Give customers a 18-50mm lens and see what happens in exif data of publicly posted images. 

They can say what they like, but they announced them, showed prototypes with great fanfare, then failed to deliver. They would not go through with all of that if they thought it was not going to be profitable. There have been a number of other indications that Nikon have been having manufacturing issues, such as the delays in delivery of the D850, the extreme shortage (along with shoddy construction of many) of the P900, the failure to update the P900 even though it was probably the most in demand of all of their P&S models, the shuttering of manufacturing facilities in China which were supposed to be making the DL cameras at the same time they were having problems meeting supply demands of other products. All of that is indicative of serious supply chain issues within Nikon. I hope they get their act together, because they do make interesting cameras, but pretending that there is not a serious problem within Nikon when there clearly is IMO is foolish.

Processor capabilities are the bottleneck for all cameras. The sensor of every single model for every manufacturer currently on the market is more than capable of overwhelming the processor in them.

Marketing is going to be doing analysis on their products and how they are used based on information in the public domain, and guiding development of new products to meet those consumer needs. Why on earth do you guys think they would not do that? They are in business to sell products, and a big part of being successful is understanding what your customers want, how they are using your product, and satisfying that demand as best you can. Exif data is a gold mine of useful public user information and only an idiot would not mine that.

21 hours ago, salim said:

Which shows how much further the mobile phone processor manufacturers  (Apple or Qualcomm) are that they can process 4k/60p and compress it like crazy without the phone melting in your hand. They've become very efficient and powerful. This makes me hopeful that you don't need to have a very large box around the processor to help with heat management, as long as you can make processor and its code more efficient and just do some creative heat sink design inside the camera around the processor you can have very capable yet compact systems. 
 

The phone CPU manufacturers have a decided advantage due to economy of scale. They can afford to invest in cutting edge development of their processors because they sell so many of them. Most camera manufacturers sell far fewer so they cannot afford that sort of investment. Cell phone processors are always going to be more advanced as a result. Samsung was able to make a cutting edge camera that was more advanced than anyone else at the time purely because they could leverage the processor development through their cell phone business. Most other manufacturers can't do that, with the exceptions of Panasonic and to a lesser extent Sony, who can use other products to leverage processor development.

20 hours ago, Trek of Joy said:

Ahh, that would be interesting, when you said action camera I thought GoPro. I'm guessing no 4k on the RX0 because of heat. But something like a 28mm equiv. F/1.4, fully waterproof/shockproof and such would be a very compelling camera

Global shutter is one improvement I can think of - which IMO will find its way into smaller sensors before any m43 or larger sensor simply because of phone volumes. Sony has too many heat management issues for any dramatic improvements over existing models, despite their super stacked sensor no 4k60p.

I guess we'll have to wait and see if there will be more. There's really not much in the space to begin with and at $1200 I'd be surprised if this is a big seller. The original was a bargain, this is now well into really nice 2-3 lens ILC territory. The only advantage now for the RX100 is smaller form factor. I'd be willing to bet the EOS-M50, Fuji XT20 - and a few other ILC's - outsell this by a wide margin, people spending real camera cash will want a real camera.

Chris

Overheating in cameras is due to the processor, not the sensor. That is the limiting factor. Doing processing on a 4K workflow, particularly compression, is much more taxing on a processor than a FHD workflow. The sensor doesn't care, it is doing the same work for both 4K and FHD workflows (more in the case of FHD, since that usually has higher refresh rates). If the sensor does not overheat when doing FHD, it won't overheat during 4K since it is doing exactly the same thing or less. The thermal bottleneck is the processor.

7 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

Now I understand why Nikon cancelled the DL. If you can't make a modern premium compact and yet keep it under $1000, you better forget it. 

They cancelled the DL series because they were having manufacturing difficulties and the delays meant that it would have been effectively obsolete relative to the competition by the time it arrived.

21 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

It's all gone a bit focus group. I think consumers want the longer zoom, and to hell with the built in ND or fast aperture. What the slower aperture essentially does is give you a smaller sensor, so not much point of it being 1" in terms of the look now. May as well be small chip.

I would have liked a longer zoom but not 200mm at all costs. 24-135mm F2.0-2.8 would have been great.

For the money, and 6th model, I'd expect a bit more of an ergonomic flourish of creativity, the old form factor is very tired and the Panasonics are a lot nicer to use especially LX100.

They probably did an analysis of the exif data on publicly posted images and concluded that almost no one uses the wide apertures anyway, while longer focal lengths predominate, so it was an acceptable compromise for the camera to optimize it in a way that would be more useful to the majority of users.

58 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

Its certainly got a ton going for it over the Panasonic but its well over twice the price so by putting that lens on it they've put themselves in that sort of comparison area with consumers.

Funnily enough, I quite fancy this in the camcorder format of the AX700 where you are getting the variable ND and the mic input and the better ergonomics but it just seems like a bad compromise in the RX100 format for me. 

I have the RX100 V and I bemoan the lack of a mic input and more than one ND setting far more than not having enough reach on the lens but I need to stop thinking about the different RX100 versions as "upgrades" as their naming and pricing suggests because they all co-exist together for different uses I suppose and the RX100 VI is for people who do need that.

You need to consider what these cameras are primarily used for, and that is as a travel camera. For that application the longer zoom is certainly more useful than aperture, since most of your shots will be in good light anyway and you will be stopped down, meaning a large aperture is a waste.

2 hours ago, Trek of Joy said:

I guess the demand/market for cameras like this is more reach, as the RX10 and now the RX100 both sacrificed speed on the wide end for a longer zoom range. They've gone from a compact an advanced shooter would carry to an all-in-one compact to try and attract the superzoom shoppers. Pour one out for the RX100 series, its now been neutered to have a longer zoom while losing its appeal to enthusiasts. The large sensor compact fad seems to have passed. Its been two years since the mkV after a string of annual updates, I bet this camera is the last of the RX100 line until something revolutionary happens on the sensor side.

I still dream of that Nikon DL with the 18-50/1.8.-2.8, I have an ebay alert in case one of the functioning show cameras escapes from Nikon....

Chris

There will be more. Performance enhancements will come from processor improvements, not sensors.

4 hours ago, Don Kotlos said:

On the upside it shoots 24fps RAW !!!!

But yeah the tradeoff of aperture diameter for range and lack of mic input is not good. 

They will still be selling the mark 5, if you need a camera with a larger aperture. The mark 5 is a very capable little camera, especially since it has vastly better AF capabilities compared to earlier models. The mark 6 is less of an improvement outside of the zoom for most applications a camera like this would be used in IMO.

3 hours ago, ryne275 said:

Wow, no 4K/60? Why? My $1K iPhone can do it

Processors.