eatstoomuchjam

From Canon's support people, someone has to examine the camera to determine the level of work, but a rough estimate of prices, based on the perceived difficulty is:
Minor = $269
Standard = $359
Major = $499

That's before my CPS discount on repairs which is, I think, 30%.  So I guess that'd be $180, $270, or $340, give or take.  Added to the approx. $1,500 below new price (and about $1,100 below most used prices I've been seeing), that ain't bad at all.

(Though I do really need to sell something now, my gear list is getting ridiculous - anybody want a used Z Cam E2-S6G in good shape with a bunch of accessories including the eND?)

1 hour ago, kye said:

The C300 having a similar problem helps to give more confidence that your unit wasn't treated especially badly, but also gives less confidence in it happening again, or in the Canon design department!

Or in their QA department - for all I know, the first owner received the camera with the dust already in place!  Maybe they didn't care or notice - if I hadn't been told of its existence, I don't think I'd have sat here with a lens off clicking through the ND filters and I probably wouldn't have seen it until I filmed something with a solid that happens to be behind it, probably stopped down a little bit.

Anyway, I registered it with CPS.  The website didn't want to give me a price estimate since based on my purchase date, it's likely under warranty (maybe?).  So I sent them a note explaining that I bought it used, asking if there is a way to know if it's still under warranty from the original purchase date, and if not, what the price would be for them to remove the dust.

Sadly, a somewhat vigorous shaking doesn't seem to have dislodged it and it didn't budge when I blasted a little air in through the exhaust (the intake is not in a place to have a direct path)

1 hour ago, kye said:

When something doesn't work now I just treat it as the first offer in a negotiation and switch it off and let it chill for a while and come back to me when it's ready to raise it's offer 😄 

This is the way!

Are you looking for a generic one that covers all phones?  Most of the smaller ones that keep the phone vaguely phone-sized are pretty model-specific.

1 hour ago, kye said:

 It still begs the question of how the dust got into there, and how much dust it's been exposed to in its life...  the probability the camera has only ever gotten one bit of dust in it, and that dust happened to get to that spot is pretty slim by my estimation!

It does!  Though from what I read when googling it, some Canons have been notorious for it in the past - they even had an upgrade for the C300 to install a better filter to prevent it.  The camera looks really clean otherwise, though.  It also included the power adapter which MPB said it didn't - I think they just didn't realize that the same power adapter works for both the battery charger and camera.

1 hour ago, kye said:

Can you call CPS to get an estimate for how much it would cost?  Maybe that would help inform if it's a return or if you'll keep it and send it off for the service.

I could call or I can just register it on the website and fill out the maintenance form.  Also nice that I'd get 30% off.  But it is really small - I'm not completely certain I'll even bother yet.  I'm not usually shooting stopped down, it's only on the strongest ND filter, and it's also thankfully near the top of the sensor which means it's where the ground will be if I'm shooting (I'd be more likely to notice it against a blue sky or other patch of solid color vs in the details that tend to come with whatever is on teh ground).

Of course, CPS also just recently gave me an estimate that my 85/1.2L that I sent in for cleaning/maintenance needed a new motor because the manual focus ring wasn't working and that it'd be a $700 repair.  I asked them to just clean it and send it back because for that price, I could just buy another on the used market.  Got it back and both autofocus and manual focus are working exactly as expected.  I suspect the technician didn't realize it's focus-by-wire?

2 hours ago, kye said:

I have also found that fan brushes for painting are really nice for dislodging the dust that is just attached enough to not move from air alone, but they tend to be gentle enough that they're not picking up dust and then pressing it onto the surface as you move it around.  I don't know how far I'd go if something was on my sensor - I'm mostly blowing dust off my lenses or off the outside of the gear after a trip.

I should clarify - the dust is under the outside layer of protective glass in front of the sensor/ND assembly.  It's on one of the internal ND filters.  Without some disassembly, it can't be reached with a brush.  I'm more hoping that one of the air intakes for the camera's fan has some path that goes there and that blasting in air from the rocket blower will dislodge it.  😄

2 hours ago, kye said:

I've noticed a minority of people seem to be perfectly happy taking their time and doing other things while the camera has no lens or body-cap attached.  Personally when I'm changing lenses I do it in a sheltered area, taking the rear lens cap off the next lens, then swapping the lenses as quickly as possible (while still being calm and controlled) and then putting the cap onto the previous lens.

I am somewhere between those people and fastidious.  While on set, it's not usually a reasonable investment of time to move to a sheltered area to swap lenses.  I don't walk around doing other things while the lens is off, but it often takes 15-60 seconds.  Usually the rocket blower is plenty to handle any dust that sneaks in, no biggie.

But the fact that it's under the external protective glass is why I can't figure out how someone got it in there.  Worst case, I need to decide whether to send it to CPS for what should be a pretty easy fix for them - or I just sent it back to MPB within the returns window.

1 hour ago, Aussie Ash said:

RareAdaptors.com  do a Canon FD to LPL for about US $100 but it only works with lenses with a 60mm thread (and they don't list them !)

That's a conversion kit, not an adapter.

1 hour ago, Aussie Ash said:

removing the FD mount looks fairly easy I don't see what problem there is with that ?

The FD 85mm f/1.2L, which I have, and maybe some other FD lenses, are non-trivial to convert.  With the 85, you need to get a special adapter and remove the rear element.

1 hour ago, Aussie Ash said:

Canon FD sets are common amongst Red owners.

What's that have to do with the discussion?

7 hours ago, Aussie Ash said:

Canon FD can be adapted to LPL but not PL 

Canon FD is a 42mm FFD and LPL is a 44mm FFD.  A recessed adapter could do that, but I'm unaware of anybody making one.  Do you have a link to somebody making an FD to LPL adapter (that isn't a full mount conversion)?

The camera is here.  As far as I can see, there is a single decent-sized piece of dust on one of the internal ND filters and that's it.  I cannot see any other marks on the camera's sensor assembly.  The speck is big enough that I could imagine it being a little bit visible on a big blue sky, but in a way that'd be not hard to clone out.  I'm also going to have to experiment with shaking the camera a little bit and/or blasting a rocket blower into the vent holes/fans.  It's hard to imagine how that little sucker got in there.  Worst case, if I decided to send it to CPS, I have to assume it'd be a pretty cheap repair.

Overall, I'll gladly trade that for the $1,500 price reduction vs new.  😅

3 hours ago, kye said:

When it comes to things like the extra DR, I think about practicalities.

 

This is a real thing and a very good point.

To give a personal and recent example, I was asked on Thursday of last week to jump in at the last minute to help finish someone's feature over the weekend.  I'm not sure of the details for why their DP became unavailable. The filmmaker had a shot list for Saturday that was 15 pages long taking place in 7 different locations - and both I and the other guy they brought in had a hard out at 4 or 5 in the afternoon.  Sunday's agenda was similar, but without either of us needing to leave.  We didn't finish the list for either day.  Likely, we'll be shooting again next Saturday.

It was all outdoors in parks, usually a several hundred meters from our cars.  None of our usual suspect gaffers were available/handy.  We had basically 0 time to light things and the director wanted a bunch of wides and tracking shots (both tend to take longer to light).  Controlling the light in any meaningful way was not a realistic option.  These are exactly the situations when an extra stop of dynamic range is nice to have to keep the sky at least a bit blue, but yet also still have some detail in some of the harsh shadows.

Real tough situation for the filmmaker - they definitely want to keep quality high and have they great ideas, but there are also budgetary and delivery date realities - the difference between a real indie film set and a reddit comments section.  😉

(Also, RIP colorist - there are like 5-6 different color profiles in play across all of the cameras that were used between the original DP and both of us last weekend, hopefully they only have to match 2 or 3 within any given scene)

2 hours ago, Aussie Ash said:

colour movie film in the 1960s was only ASA 50 so they used extra lighting out doors on sunny days !!

I'm not sure what ASA 50 has to do with needing extra light on a sunny day.  Assuming ~24 fps, that'd give a proper exposure at approximately F/16 in bright sunlight (1/48 second for 180 shutter + sunny 16 rule indicating a 1/50 shutter speed = close enough)  and you'd still need to use ND to open up the aperture beyond that.  I suspect those lights are for filling in the faces/front of talent in a wide, given that the sun is actually at about a 60-90 degree angle from the lights (judging by shadows).  From where the cameras are pointed, the subjects will be backlit.

3 hours ago, kye said:

I did think of that, but took it out of my reply because I was thinking that anything on the sensor would be in-focus regardless of what the lens was doing.  Maybe I'm wrong though, not sure..

You'd think so, but no!  If you're using like an f/1.2 lens, you can have surprisingly big dust spots on your sensor and never be any the wiser.  The more stopped down, the more they appear.  From what I remember, and I might be wrong about this, it's bascally the same effect as using a large diffuse light source vs a small point source - put your hand next to a white card near the large diffuse source and you'll get a blurry, indistinct shadow.  Do the same with a small point source and you'll get a well-defined crisp shadow.  It's the same on a smaller scale with sensor dust.

3 hours ago, kye said:

First thing I'd do is fit a mild-telephoto lens, focus it wrong so it's all blurry and point the lens at something that is one colour - like the sky or a blank wall - and see if the mark appears on the footage.  If it does then you have a problem, otherwise it won't show and you're fine.  It may show up in the bokeh of out-of-focus areas too, but texture or patterns in bokeh is normally relatively benign and very common.

That, and also to set the aperture down to like f/16 or f/22 and shoot something - or even to put a pinhole lens on and shoot something.  If you ever want to know how many pieces of dust have landed on your sensor, a pinhole lens is the quickest way to see them all.  🙂

Thanks to a maybe-too-good-to-be-true deal from MPB ($1500 or so off new), I guess I'll have a C80 soon?  This puts me in officially "too many cameras" territory and I'm going to force myself to finally sell my E2-S6G for this.  We'll also see whether what they describe as "dust on one of the ND filters" that won't impact image quality actually means.  They originally said it was an unremovable mark on the sensor protection glass that wouldn't impact image quality - and they revised the description after I asked for a picture of the mark.  There's a two-week return window, in case I feel differently after seeing the sensor.  Of course, CPS membership should mean I'd get a 10% discount on a repair - so if the price would still be less than the substantial difference vs new, I could just do that.

Anyway, any special requests from anybody for tests while I poke at it?  Will this inspire me to buy Canon's 24-105/2.8?  Could be a great pair for a super minimalist/fast day of shooting setup.

4 hours ago, kye said:

• Start with a small camera body
• Think about the lenses I'd use with it for that project
• Think about the shooting style and approach and think about extra rigging and accessories that would require
  ----<realisation occurs>----
• If the setup is going to be that big - why not use a larger body with better features / quality

This is why, for me, there are two likely ways to use it:
1) My small bag full of C-mount and D-mount lenses and possibly attach it to the smallest 5" monitor that I have (which is quite small)
2) Throw it in my bag where it takes up almost no space and attach it to the back of existing short telephoto lenses which now function like long telephoto lenses

Oh, thank goodness Zoom finally have a reasonable accessory for timecode shoots.  For a bit now, the worst thing to hear from an audio engineer has been "I use a Zoom F3."  "Guess I'll hope waveform sync works in post, then..."  😅

2 minutes ago, mkabi said:

Nobody is doing Medium Format above 4K.

The GFX 100 II and, I assume, Eterna, have a 5.8k 2.35:1 full sensor width recording mode.

And the Ursa Cine 17K has a 65mm sensor.

And FWIW, any of the Red VV cameras have a 40mm-wide sensor which is exactly in the middle of the 36mm of a FF camera and the 44mm of GFX/Eterna.  Since terms don't matter anymore, they should probably just call that "medium format" since, y'know, the GFX sensor is also substantially smaller than what would traditionally be called "medium format."

9 minutes ago, mkabi said:

You want to invigorate and/or disturb the cinema space in 2026 and going forward??? Bring affordable IMAX 12K sensors into a small body. 

Unless Sony have a big 12K sensor that can read out fast enough for video, how would that happen?  There's only one 12K video sensor on the market, as far as I know, and BMD have it custom-made.  There isn't huge economy of scale in it so manufacturing costs are high.

But also, speaking as a person who owns a 12K-capable camera, there is almost never any reason whatsoever to shoot in 12K - including in IMAX.  Mine is an 8K camera nearly all the time, except when shooting plates - and when I forget to toggle back to 8K after switching plates and facepalm.

I'm pretty sure that the Mavo Mark II LF is using IMX410.  It's a great sensor which is why it's been used in so many cameras since it was introduced in 2018.  But that's also exactly the problem.  It's in a lot of cameras already.  Sell it at $1,500 and it's interesting as a budget play.  Sell it at $3,000 and you're going up against the EOS R5, Nikon Z8, Red Komodo, Nikon ZR, Panasonic S1 II, and EOS R6 Mark III.  IMO, every one of those sensors that's at least equal to the IMX410.  They also support 10-bit internal recording that doesn't look like ProRes 4444 (I think that's the only 12-bit format available on Kinefinity right now).  Of course, it's also up against the much cheaper Z Cam E2-F6 and E2-F6 Mark II which also use IMX410.

The form factor is enticing, but a ZR is even smaller and also has a big flippy 4" screen.  And internal raw.  And really good autofocus.  And costs around $1,000 less.

Just like with some of the other cameras that have been announced recently, the question to ask not just "What makes me buy this over the other cameras on the market?" - but it's also "What makes me buy this over a camera I already have?"

Nice Storyblocks ad read in the middle of a video where he claims to be retiring, but then says he's just not going to make (as much) camera content as before.  And then claims that the brands never paid him for reviews - guess he bought all those fancy Aputure lights himself and reviews calling the Amaran Halo series "UNBEATABLE" had no gear or money changing hands, 'cuz, y'know Amaran Halos are the pinnacle of video lighting technology...  (Saw a couple used on set, they were fine - didn't seem bad or anything, but "unbeatable?"  Yeaahhhhh Ooooookaaaayyyy)

Also, the part where he says that he will now feel free to take gear given to him by camera brands because he's "retiring" from reviews.  🤣🤣🤣

Ohhh, and then he says he will make paid "showcase" videos for brands, but will limit it to short form content.  Wow.  What a "retirement."  

On 4/14/2026 at 11:56 AM, eatstoomuchjam said:

if Mission 1 Pro ILS is <$700, I might take a flyer on it. 

Nice try, GoPro, but $699.99 is not as "less than $700" as I meant.  So it is in "I'm gonna wait for this to be in the hands of real people" and not "Why the heck not put in a preorder?" territory.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1964095-REG/gopro_mission_1_pro_ils.html

I'd expect 10-bit H.265/HEVC.  ProRes isn't impossible, but I'd still think of it as a long shot.  I wouldn't place any bets on any form of raw video.

But for this form factor and anything that I'd use it for, 10-bit H.265 would be absolutely fine.

For me, the two use cases would be a pocketable 16mm-like camera with C mount and D mount lenses - and a super telephoto camera to pair up with an EF mount adapter.  With a 2.7-3x crop factor (smaller than normal 1" sensor), the EF 100-400 turns into a like a 280-1120.  Will the center of the image circle be sharp enough to resolve a full 8K?  Don't care, if it makes a half decent 4K, that'll be plenty.

The Verge posted a 95% useless hands on video where they just kind of show the camera hardware and show it powered on (but with none of their own video), but near the end, they finally get to one of the things I was most interested in - there is indeed an HDMI port (micro HDMI (🤮), but it's better than nothing).  Assuming that the latency is decent, maybe this really could be the Super 16 pocket camera that I've been waiting for!

What to think about it?  It's a lot of beauty shots of a boxy camera with a lot of buttons, and apparently has some menus - from a company who made a Micro 4/3 cinema camera that I thought nobody bought, but judging by B&H having a used one for sale, I was wrong at least once.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1733741-REG/bosma_dc0201_g1_pro_camera.html

But $3,500 for a Micro 4/3 camera with poor dynamic range from a mostly-unknown manufacturer was always going to be a hard sell - especially with the Komodo now costing $500 less brand new.

This new camera is up against some really tough competition from other vendors, both new and used.  It will need to have features a lot better than the others or have "good enough" features and compete a lot harder on price than the G1 did. 

Huh.  A Sub-$3k cinema body in that form factor could be really compelling.  The big question now will be what sensor they put in there.  If it's an IMX410, it'll be big shrug from me - but if it's a newer sensor, maybe the one used in the S1 II, and they have 10-bit ProRes and, ideally, some 12-bit codec, it could be a compelling product.

Otherwise, the Nikon ZR exists, costs less, and can be shoved into any of the same spaces that the Vista would fit in.  Also has decent face detect AF which is really useful when the camera's shoved into a tiny nook/cranny.

On the other hand, looks like Insta360 are leaking images of their own MFT camera...  all speculation at this point, but it could also be a viable entry in the "small modern MFT camera" category.  

https://www.43rumors.com/the-mft-revolution-is-here-first-leaked-images-of-the-insta360-mft-camera/

Some nice updates, but even if they were available in my country, I'm not sure there's anything in there that would make me upgrade from the Pocket 3 that I already have.  I took the train to Chicago last weekend and made a short film with some friends and I brought the Pocket 3 and the Ursa Cine 12K LF.  It turned out to be less of a crazy combo than one might think.

HIgher maximum frame rate?  🤷‍♂️
Higher bitrate for video?  Nice, but not a "buy now"
10-bit D-Log vs 10-bit D-Log M?  Also nice, but not a "buy now"
Higher resolution for photos?  🤷‍♂️

2 hours ago, mercer said:

Being a Canon fan over the years, obviously I drooled over the R5 since it was released, especially after the overheating got sorted out (thanks to the fine folks on eosHD) but it was waaaay over the reality of my life. Since my interest was once removed, I'm a little unsure of the specs but believe that the 4K raw is cropped, not downsampled, right? 8K is complete overkill for what I do... in some ways as I started thinking about this, I've gone back and forth that the 1080p raw on my 5D3 is probably plenty good enough for the short films I don't finish (HA) so 8K is just perverse for me.

I think you're right.  The 5D II has some sort of full frame 4K raw if I remember right, but that's well out of the price range.  I think you mentioned the C70 in another comment - used prices on them are just about in your price range.  If you don't anticipate shooting in >4K for any reason, the C70 is really a hell of a camera.  The DGO sensor + somewhat soft OLPF really makes some of the loveliest images that I've ever seen.  Canon's focal reducer can also be locked onto the front with screws so anything that can adapt to EF will look full frame-ish.  Built-in ND's are fantastic.  Though it lacks IBIS.  I really don't think it's the camera for you, but the DGO sensor is a really big deal.

2 hours ago, mercer said:

Unless I misunderstood your first sentence here... I believe the Nikon ZR does have IBIS? My real concern with the ZR is the 4K R3D crop in 4K. I'm sure I can live with S35 crop for video or maybe the 6K is soooo good that I will get over my analogesque snobbery. But the Komodo suggestion is tempting... another camera I have drooled over.

You understood right and I was just flat-out wrong.  My mistake, sorry about that!

2 hours ago, mercer said:

Shit... just checked BH... the Z6iii is on sale brand new for $1999...

A Z6 III that costs less than a ZR?  As dreamy as the small size of the ZR is, for me, that'd be an easy choice.  Sheesh!