eatstoomuchjam

In general, I think FF is the sweet spot for a lot of stuff - not that the format is intrinsically better than anything, but because that's where most of the research/development goes. Lens makers and camera makers put the most work into those systems and lenses for those systems. S35 is just behind it with one vendor putting almost all their eggs in that basket and, as you said, it being the default for a number of video-focused things. Unless the gimbal is camera-integrated, they sort of end up being the worst for lots of stuff. Everything ends up being harder than it should be, including stuff that should be simple like accessing camera menus. I'm really enjoying the focus rat bag. It's a lot less involved than putting on my Ready Rig and if I have an image stabilized lens, I can get stable enough footage. If I were shooting Panasonic and lighter gear, I wouldn't even need/care about that!

Sure, I love my Fuji, but I'd be delighted to use an X2D II and tell people that I liked it if they wanted to send me a free one. Ergonomics are one of the absolute top criteria for any camera. If I were presented two cameras, one 45 megapixel and one 61 megapixel and told to choose one, my first response would be "either, that's a lot." My second would be to pick them up and shoot a few frames. And even that ends up subjective - if I'm using light pancake lenses, I don't care much if the body has no grip and I just have to wrap the bottom 3 fingers on my right hand awkwardly down the edge of the camera. If I'm going to put a 24-70/2.8 on it, the body with no handgrip just got pretty unpleasant. A 70-200/2.8 and now I strongly dislike it. And yeah, that's why there's a 24-70/4 and a 70-200/4. I have the former in EF mount - and I've been trying to get accustomed to shooting with a Focus Rat bag these days (third-party cinesaddle that I got from the B&H deal zone). The EF 24-70/4 is on it a lot more than the 2.8 - I can actually hold it pretty steady with the IS turned on (and the EF 24-70/2.8 has none). I have the 70-200/4 RF as well - can't use it on the Ursa (no RF mount), but it's fantastic on the R5 or on my handheld Komodo setup. I don't find myself wishing I had shallower DOF very often with either. Especially if I'm handheld on the focus rat, having a little more DOF is more of a feature than a bug. Biggest problem is just that I'm always shooting from chest height and I'm only 5'9" or so. If the talent is 6 feet tall, there are gonna be some nostrils. Next thing will be experimenting with setting my elbows on the bag and using a shoulder rig so that I can get a little more height. But a 30-pound camera setup on the shoulder is... not living the dream. Better to use the R4D at that point. Anyway, for the style you've described shooting, you really are basically at endgame/perfection now. It's always tempting to swap out for other, shinier gear, but especially now that the prices on everything are going up so much, it's hard to imagine buying anything new. I'd guess that part of any interest in new gear is also a game to keep the job interesting - you've been doing weddings for a long time, haven't you? Can't really change the format of weddings, but you can at least change the tools that you're carrying around them. That might just be me projecting, though - that's probably where I'd be after a while. I'm basically not buying anything new and I'm just watching the cameras that I find even remotely interesting until the used stocks increase to the point where price starts dropping. ZV-E1 or A7CR for $1,300ish? X-M5 for $500-600? S9 for $700? I'll be interested. Upgrade from my R5 to an R5 II? Refurbs caught my interest last week or the week before - something like $3,500 - but I'm assuming that also means that trade-in on my OG R5 will be like $800 and I'm not spending $2,700 for a bunch of incremental upgrades.

I haven't used the X2D II, but I am a GFX 100 II user. You're totally right that there is minimal practical benefit over a 45 megapixel S1R II or even less practical benefit over a 61 megapixel A7R V or similar. At f/1.8 or f/1.4 with your new lenses, you'll have all the shallow DOF you'll ever need or want - and almost exactly as much shallow DOF as you'd ever get by using, at least, any of Fuji's native lenses (55/1.7 and 80/1.7 are the two fastest, all of the others are f/2.8 or slower). Some adapted glass looks other worldly, though - I'm a fan of the Canon EF 35/1.4L II (doesn't quite cover, you'll have dark corners). Having the equivalent of a 28mm f/1 lens can give some neat effects. It also makes for some great low light performance - even if there's noise everywhere, it'll look pretty clean at whatever resolution you actually want to use to present it - and detail loss due to some light denoising is practically negligible. With Fuji's native glass, and I'm guessing Hasselblad's, you will definitely be able to punch in more. It's always a little crazy to punch in to the eyes on a medium-length/waist-up portrait and see myself clearly reflected in the iris. That's not a practical need, though, in any way. It is sometimes, for my needs, really useful, though. I brought the 500/5.6 on a recent trip to the Amazon and shot some wildlife. I wasn't even nearly close enough and things are really small in the frame... until I punch in. I could make a perfectly usable 8x10 print out of only a very small part of the image. But... with that said, if I had a 500mm lens on a 61 megapixel FF camera, the resulting print would be exactly the same. The animal would have just been bigger in the original shot. And given that you are shooting weddings, you probably don't need to stand 300-500+ meters away from the ceremony. That is, unless you're the world's first and only wedding photographer who is so unintrusive on the events that they never even leave the parking lot at the venue. Anyway. 100 megapixels is crazy. Now Sony have a 180 that fujirumors keeps saying will be shoved into an upcoming GFX. Unless that also translates to "same or better dynamic range, readout is much faster in video modes," I'm inclined to roll my eyes at it.

And owners of many cinema cameras. And, to a large extent, owners of cameras with sensor shift IS. I've found that, in general, lens IS is a lot better than sensor shift IS when at longer focal lengths. There are already a bunch of used Sigma/Tamron 70-200/2.8 available in that price range. Plus even some first party options aren't much more used - the EF 70-200/2.8L IS series tend to be right around $1,000-1,200 at MPB here. If you really want the extra 10mm at the wide end, though, it looks fine.

Yeah - sounds almost as good as Fuji already. 😅

It took a minute to find a link to what you're talking about. Doesn't seem to have made it to many of the usual suspect forums yet. Hopefully AF on Pyxis 12K means that the same is coming to Ursa LF sooner rather than later! https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=239482

Yeah, a big screen is nicer. No doubt about it. It just wouldn't be, for me, the main selling point of one camera vs another. That said, you are already in L mount and I've heard that the recently-released autofocus on the BMCC is quite good...

I understand that the grip of the Z6 III holds the battery. Judging by pictures, it also holds the memory cards - which includes a UHS-2 full-size SD card instead of a UHS-1 micro-SD card like the ZR has. Oh, and you can also change the cards while the camera is on a tripod or gimbal. I had no idea that mirrorless cameras couldn't be used without a gimbal. That's quite a limitation. Without being aware of it, I've been using mine mostly without a gimbal for a while now. You know the microphone is supposed to point toward the front of the camera and not the back, right? That should reduce the risk of poking out your eye with it when holding up the EVF. 😉 Anyway, the Z6 III has a screen that is still pretty decent-sized at 3.2". From your description, it sounds like your needs could be better met by using a Black Magic Cinema Camera 6K instead of a Nikon ZR. The BMCC has a bigger rear screen at 5". The EVF is optional so you won't need to use it if you don't want to. While L mount isn't quite as versatile as Z mount, it's still quite good. The BMCC6K also has 2 mini-XLR mic inputs which can be used along with the internal mics for 4-channel audio. If you want smaller files, you can increase the compression ratio for BM raw. Even at the maximum compression on the UC12K (12:1, I think?), it still looks very good. I usually use the Ursa at 8:1 except for VFX shots where I go up to 5:1. The main limitation against the ZR is that the BMCC is a bit bigger and heavier. But as a person who wants "the best back LCD I can have," the BMCC blows the ZR and its puny 4" screen out of the water. You'll also get a full-size HDMI port and not a garbage micro-HDMI port in case you want to connect to an even bigger 7" screen.

Yes, a mere 3.2 inch. Yet another time when people might be wishing they had just 0.8 inches more. 😆

Part of what's crazy to me is that the ZR isn't that small. If you compare it with a Z6 III or an EOS R5, the actual bodies are almost the same with the main differences being that the "bigger" cameras have a handgrip and EVF protruding from the small body. Looking on camera decision and comparing the ZR to the Fuji X-M5, the ZR is gigantic. And I feel like the Z6 III was more expensive when the ZR was released, but as of right now, their prices are almost identical with used Z6 III costing less than used ZR. So if you don't need the sort-of Redcode RAW or internal 32-bit float, the ZR becomes a somewhat weird choice. This is why I am waiting for the used prices to go down a lot once people figure that out or when the next shiny camera drops. 😉

Well, my initial review is very short and succinct. "Doesn't fucking work. At all." Judging by their FAQ, I received a defective unit, as on my R5, it just shows F00 and won't switch out of MF mode. On the C80, it displays a communication error and won't autofocus. After updating the adapter firmware, no change. Their utility to program it also does not find it after I follow their instructions to connect it... at least on my Mac. I'll try it on a Windows computer later tonight, maybe. Also, even if it did work, it won't be usable on an RF mount Red. On my OG Komodo, the chin/motor of the adapter hits the chin of the camera. I didn't try it on the Komodo-X, but the horizontal/vertical dimensions are identical or nearly identical so I don't expect a different result there. Asked Amazon to replace it. I think they ship the replacement before I send back the original... though it ships from China. So I guess we'll see in 7-14 days whether the replacement works.

Well, it wasn't in May, but mine just arrived! Let's see how/if it works...

I ordered one, should be here by tonight.

At this point, I am pretty sure that I'll still be asking for it next January - and the January after that. 😉 It makes some sense that BMD would bring all of those upgrades to two of their most popular cameras first - now let's just hope that they don't leave the higher-end stuff out. Judging by their last set of announcements, there is some hope for new features coming to the Ursa LF, given that they're focused so heavily on pushing it into the broadcast market, but I could also see them pulling most of the people working on camera firmware and shoving them over into the firmware that runs on their boxes that are designed to fit in a server rack (the main focus of their recent announcements).

Mission 1 and Mission 1 Pro are now $100 off everywhere. It's still on the pricey side for an action camera, but my Insta360 One R/RS's are getting older/a little beat up and the batteries seem to be showing signs of age too. I'm not sure how this person did such a deep dive on the imaging pipeline, but it was an interesting read. https://gethypoxic.com/blogs/technical/gopro-mission-1-gp3-image-pipeline Info on the sensor: https://www.sony-semicon.com/files/62/flyer_industry/IMX06A-AJ1R-J_Flyer.pdf (Also saw that Sony now has a 247 megapixel MF sensor while digging that up, that's a lot of dots)

FWIW, PDAF has been in beta on the CC 6K for like a year or more now and reviewers were saying that it was working great. This release just formalizes it as released. My hope now is that BMD will finally follow through on their statements that PDAF coming to other omdern cameras, including the Ursa LF. That and 4-channel recording would be a nice update for it.

I think the closest thing to what you're looking for is the cinepi project. That or there was at least some project recently where somebody removed the glass from a smartphone and juryrigged a lens mount to it. That'd be another place to start.

The Ronin 4D can be great, but it can really make you crazy. It is definitely my favorite gimbal. If you go used, you can get a usable 6K setup for around $5,000 which, while still expensive, is a lot more affordable than $10,000! The Flex really makes the system interesting.

As a person who is waiting for used ZR prices to drop a bit more before picking one up, this all sounds good to me. 😅

It looks like a beautiful place. Glad you had a nice trip! Were you looking for additional feedback on the video?

I quite liked it, but do know that if you're trying to capture anything with sound, the fan noise on the raw is really obnoxious. The image was pretty nice, though!

From what I've read, this is basically correct. It can apparently add about 3 stops of extra highlight retention. On most modern cameras, changing ISO doesn't change the sensor gain unless you move into the territory that is handled by the next "native" ISO. The only exception I know to this is Z Cam (which is why they suffer some WB shift when changing ISO). Otherwise, for raw codecs, you are adjusting the allocation of stops/highlights in the recording - and for non-raw codecs, you are changing how the camera post-processes the raw that it read at the base ISO. So in theory, the LOFIC should help with any ISO that is set by the user. It should also be understood that it only helps with highlights and does nothing whatsoever for shadows - meaning that ETTR is probably even more of a thing with any LOFIC system than it was with most Bayer sensor setups.

Minor nitpick: 8K will also be largely irrelevant in cinemas! At least near me, many of them still broadcast 2K on most of their screens, with maybe one or two set up for 4K projection. Only the most eagle-eyed audience members could even theoretically notice a difference in 4K and 8K projection at a viewing distance where they could see the entire screen at once - and outside of maybe a nature documentary, even among those viewers, it's hard to imagine them caring much. Not true. Aside from digital zoom without substantial quality loss, as you mentioned, a number of VFX use cases, especially those involving masking something out, are improved by having the highest-resolution source material available. That and in theory, you'll get better color information putting 6K or 8K on a 4K timeline, assuming the use of a Bayer sensor. Remember that it's necessary to guess at the values for 2 out of 3 colors for every pixel when debayering footage. From what I remember, and I might remember wrong, this means that the readout from Bayer sensors is effectively 4:2:2. Downsampling from 6K or 8K gives you something that is more effectively 4:4:4. As to whether that matters to you, maybe none of it does. In practice, modern debayering is very good and I'm not really sure that viewers are ever going to notice a difference in 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 once at 2K resolution or above. Correct. A 4.6K Arri is still preferred in many productions to an 8K camera from another vendor. The FX5 is going to sell a million bazillion units despite being released as a 5K camera in an era when all of the competitors are at 6K or higher (also assuming that some of the firmware weirdness and constant rebooting to change settings can be fixed). There are still cameras being released today using the same IMX410 that was in my Z Cam E2-F6 that I bought in 2018. The Ronin 4D was one of the best product ideas that DJI ever had (really, the Osmo Raw was, but the execution was too clunky). They were never going to compete with Arri in the space where people use Arri - so take a real pain point from a lot of productions (gimbals are irritating to use/balance and are often disconnected in operation from the attached camera) and fix that. Now you see the 4D showing up in all sorts of productions - because it's the best camera ever made and wins the spec sheet wars? No. But the quality is good and it's an elegant solution for some problems.

Almost no card ever reaches the quoted "up to" numbers that they give, especially not in a sustained transfer. A2 and V30 are generally the best specs that you'll find on a MicroSD. If the Mission 1 Pro writes faster, you might want to check on some forums to see which cards people have found work well with its highest-bitrate modes. Though that said, if you're talking 100-200mb/s (megabits/second), a V30 card should do that without breaking a sweat since the V30 refers to 30 megabytes/second which is 240 megabits/second.

Looks like I came close-ish while overall being too optimistic (my guesses didn't feel all that optimistic?) and they exceeded in at least one way ((cropped) 4kp120). Otherwise, yes, faster UHS-2 SD card (I think that's the second row of pins that I meant). No CF Express, but memory stick is indeed gone. No extra megapixels. I didn't watch anything yet to see if 4k recording is now full sensor width vs slightly cropped or whether they support open gate - guessing no on open gate, at least, since it seems to be either the same sensor or a minor update to the same sensor. I also mistyped the camera model on the USB port bit.