eatstoomuchjam

Jumping the gun makes a lot more sense than Chris/Jordan being actually critical of Sony. 😅

Uh oh. Did someone at Petapixel say something to make the bosses at Sony mad? Maybe they had to go back and edit out any minor criticism they might have had. 😅

@Andrew Reid At least here in the US, the FX2 is $3,500 and the A7 IV is selling for about $2,500. Is it different there? At least here, I'd say the FX2 costs a lot more than the A7 IV - like, enough to just buy a pretty nice cage and a lens or two more. It'll certainly sell/move some units, but even though the rotating EVF is nice and the body has the pleasant boxy look that goes with Sony's cinema line, I don't think this would be the hybrid that I would buy at that price. A used R5C is about $3,000 and a used Z8 is about $3,200. I just don't see how this camera competes with either of them in any meaningful way... unless you have a bunch of Sony glass and want better stills than the FX3 (available used for only a little more, about $3,700 here).

"Finally, the A7IV, but in a more differenter body."

Nice! Looking forward to seeing what you shoot with it!

Are you sure it was on May 25 and not sometime in the middle ages? 😛

That's why I ignored it when it was them, but I'm pretty sure that I've seen jbCinC_12 comment and/or like things here in the past so I responded once they said it was also a topic of interest for them. 😃

"Best" is pretty subjective. If autofocus is the main thing that you want, then Sony's is the industry leader, followed closely by Canon. Fuji's has been mostly OK for me, but it definitely doesn't seem as magic as Sony/Canon. Most of the other stuff is going to be a matter of personal opinion. If you have a local camera shop and they sell both, your best bet is to go try both of them in person. But both cameras are going to be completely usable for vlogging, interviews, event coverage, or whatever else you want to do. They're both very nice and with much better specs than what a lot of us were using as high-end cameras 10 years ago.

The 5D Mark II launched for around $1,700. The US has averaged around 36% inflation overall since then. That's $2,400. The R5 Mark II launched for about $3,800 (more than closer to 130% inflation). Go through many manufacturers and this pattern will continue. Cameras cost more now, comparatively, than they used to. "Need, need, need" No hobbyist needs a camera in the first place. That doesn't mean that they might be upset that the camera that they want has had its price inflated out of reach. You're trying to make a relative argument, but $500 isn't a tiny amount of money in absolute terms. On the other hand, that working camera operator might want to just put that extra money in the bank instead. This is a silly talking point. Income is income. I don't earn money with my gear, but I earn plenty of money at my day job to buy it. The only way this argument isn't silly is if the person needed the gear to get a specific job - and at that point, there's a good chance that they could just rent the gear for the duration of the job for a lot less money. Maybe for you, it would be, but that doesn't mean that it is for others. Many people buy specific cameras with a specific intent in mind. Buying a camera for status is silly since almost nobody else on sense has any real sense of what makes it a nice camera, other than being from a few brands. But "they shoot with a Red" is just as equally impressive to them with a Komodo as it would be with a V-Raptor [X].

Oh yeah, but that's exactly the point I'm trying to make. 😅 Sony's sales are down right now because anybody who would consider buying one new did - unless someone else is paying for it, any savvy consumer right now is going to pick one up in excellent/like new condition (maybe even in the original box!) for a decent discount and only lose a portion of that new camera smell. It'll take the release of a new model with compelling features to jazz their sales numbers. Otherwise, Canon's riding the wave of a few compelling releases and Nikon, who was late to the game, has finally released a more budget-friendly line (relatively speaking, nearly $2,000 is hardly "budget" in any realistic terms). Of course they're both moving a lot more new cameras right now.

Sure, and if they aren't releasing any new cameras, then that's unlikely to change. The pros and cons will remain constant! 😅

That is a bit interesting, but I'd also point out that Sony have not had a major new camera release in what seems like a very long time. The A7R V is from 2022 and the A7S III is from 2020. At some point, the majority of people who are going to buy a certain model of camera brand new already bought it. Nikon, on the other hand, has released several exciting new cameras including the Z5 II which is "affordable" at under $2,000 and can do internal 4K raw. I'm assuming that the sales chart is for sales of new cameras. If it were for sales on the used market, there might be more of a Sony bias, given that those cameras have been on the market for a while. I'd bet that if they announce a new A7S IV with similar performance/features, but at 6K or 8K, there would be a huge spike in new sales for Sony. I could be wrong, though - to use this forum as a sample group, is anybody here, at this time, still waiting to buy any current Sony mirrorless camera brand new?

Sure, the S1II is nicer. One would hope so, given that it's 8 years newer than the GH5. But if shooting anamorphic, for instance, one might prefer the GH5 if using a 1.8x (end result is 2.4:1) to the S1 II (need to use 1.6x to get to 2.4:1. Anyway, if the use case specifically is "needs to be a hybrid sensor" and "needs to shoot 5k open gate," the S1II is clearly the best and maybe only camera on the market that one can buy. I'm still taking the position that the above combination of characteristics isn't hugely useful for most shooters. 😃

After watching that video yesterday, I gave some serious thought to picking the same glasses up for when I'm using my Ready Rig since the current solution of mounting a monitor to the Nimbus crossbar has the monitor bouncing around while I walk which is not perfect for what I'm trying to do. The price for the glasses they used isn't bad (about $300), but I didn't find any stock of the HDMI converter box thingie which is only $99. Some places had the newer/nicer one, but it's like $300. I'll be keeping an eye out, though - that seems like it could be a real improvement over what I have now.

But is it 3328x2496 ready from the full sensor? If so, that would be 60fps open gate. Just at 8-bit 4:2:0 and also with no HDMI output available.

Hybrid? Could be. Every other camera that I can think of would be considered more of a cine cam.

I'm not suggesting they should bring "heat," just that if they could bring it up to the level of Fuji or DJI, that would be very nice. I'm not really sure what making lenses has to do with an electronic rangefinder, though (since that's basically what PDAF is). I've never made a lens and yet, if I hold my Mamiya 7 up to my eye, I can see when the rangefinder point aligns with the viewfinder image. Anyway, they've already rolled out continuous PDAF to a single camera as a beta. It's a smart way to go since it keeps the test group smaller and they won't instantly develop a reputation as a company who does crappy autofocus. Once they work out the bugs there and get it to a passable state, I expect that they will expand it to more cameras. Is it necessary? No. Is it something I'd use sometimes on my UC12K? Absolutely. Certainly a lot less size/weight than the Focus Pro that's currently attached. 😅

At the high end, I have no idea right now what would convince me to buy anything. I kind of have what feel like "endgame" cameras. What will improve on the Ursa Cine 12K? Especially if it gets AF (I think BMD hinted that there are phase detection pixels in there somewhere). Improve on the Ronin 4D? Maybe if they released a new one with both PDAF and LIDAR. For something lighter than UC12K, but still set up for sticks? I have my K-X. Want something even smaller/lighter? I have an R5 and the OG Komodo. For travel, the GFX 100 II for photos and very nice video - or the R5/Pocket 3 if I want to carry nothing bigger than a 12L backpack. When the R5 II is a lot cheaper, I could see trading in my OG R5 toward it. No rush there at all. When the Pyxis 12K hits the used market, maybe I'd swap out something else for it? The R5 is in many ways the nemesis of me buying small cameras like the S9. Every time I think about it, I look one one of the sites that lets you compare camera sizes and realize that the only reason the R5 is bigger is that it has an EVF (which I like) and a grip (which matters less with small lenses, but I don't dislike having it with them either). But part of my plan in the first part of this year was to stack my stuff before tariffs hit in force since prices for everything would be going up. Now my wallet is crying and no real reason to get any sort of new camera for a while. Even the Insta360 X5 - I bought it, played with it, decided it won't give me $700 of enjoyment that my older One RS 360 edition isn't giving me, and it's back in the box and getting sent back for a refund today. If it'd been closer to $300, I'd have kept it and sold the other. But $700, going past the emotional moment of playing with it and having fun, is silly for something that will still have much worse quality than the Pocket 3.

Many of these jokes are about the new Zhiyun X100 RGB which they did in partnership with Cam Mackey. It has his name and roadrunner logo on nearly every possible surface as well as a silly faux-leatherette wrap. I've bought a few YouTuber partner things from brands because they're actually useful/decent (the Potatojet tripod, a few of the SmallRig Caleb Pike batteries (2 100W USB-C ports is neat), even some Gerald Undone HDMI cables from Komodo Blue because the store was out of stock on the normal blue ones and when ordering online, it's hard to know which HDMI cables will actually work as advertised), but that was more despite the branding which was thankfully pretty subtle. The X100, even if I were interested, would be a "no" because the branding is a combination of obnoxious and everywhere. https://store.zhiyun-tech.com/products/molus-x100-rgb?variant=43885286457524

This is where I was going - if Fuji released this camera at $300, I'd totally get it. Or even maybe $500. But... at $850, that's why I say fashion accessory.

FujiFilm have officially announced the anticipated X-Half camera that rumors sites have been talking about since last year. The technical specs are a bit below ho-hum and Fuji decided to go a bit far with film nostalgia, including requiring the user to crank a film advance lever between exposures and setting a limit of frames to match a roll of film. Video specs are about 3/4 of full HD in normal mode at 1440x1080 at up to 24p (recorded in 3:2 format) and there's a "2in1" feature which will do 2880x1440 at 24p, but I don't understand what this is at all from CineD's write-up. Photo resolution is about 12 megapixels (4:3) from the 18 megapixel 3:2 sensor. Retail price will be $850. I hope that there's some incredible... something from this camera once I get around to watching the reviews. Otherwise, it seems to be pure fashion accessory. Otherwise, the cheaper X-M5 and a panacake lens would seem to be a better and almost equally portable option. https://www.cined.com/fujifilm-x-half-camera-announced-when-analog-heritage-and-digital-capabilities-merge-together/

The discounts don't seem to have come to the US, at least not yet. Used bodies are still about $1,200 here and new is still about $1,400 body-only.

I certainly don't follow the mergers or spinoffs of semiconductor companies too closely (and especially not closely since apparently the acquisition happened in 2016, though maybe the Fairchild branding still remains?). 😅 I think they've said "designed and manufactured by BMD," but I'm guessing that's "manufactured" as in "handed money to someone who owns a sensor fab who is probably apparently-former-Fairchild-now-OnSemi" since BMD building a sensor fab would be pretty bonkers.

We all understood your point and you seem to have completely ignored the responses that you quoted. Panasonic don't have to make their own sensors in order to have access to the latest/greatest technology. Other companies like Red, Arri, and BlackMagic don't make their own sensors and go to third-party vendors like TowerJazz, Fairchild, and OnSemi. Each of those three vendors have sensors that are desirable over the sensors made by Sony for various reasons. As to the patents thing you halfway brought up, a google search for Panasonic image sensor patent returns a non-zero number of results. You say Panasonic doesn't have anything to bring to the bargaining table, but you don't seem to actually know that, especially because you make statements like "Canon's DPAF builds on Sony's PDAF" which doesn't make a lot of sense, given that they are radically distinct technologies (sure, DPAF is a form of phase detecting AF, but then, in any realistic way, that sort of phase detection is how every manually-focused rangefinder camera in the history of cameras has worked). But more than any of that, people already brought up specific examples of Panasonic buying sensors from someone other than Sony, including for the GH7 which was announced almost exactly 1 year ago and has the most advanced Micro 4/3 sensor ever made - with PDAF.

To some extent, I think both of these things are related. For the most part, gimbals haven't changed a lot in a long time. Manufacturers got pretty good, a while ago, at making them. If you buy the latest and fanciest gimbal made today, it won't me meaningfully different than a pretty good gimbal from 5-7 years ago. A number of the changes/updates tend to be in other features like having a secondary camera where you can ask the gimbal to track people - or gimbal-integrated focus motors. And really, there's only so much to say in reviews of those things. Otherwise, a DJI will work a lot like a Zhiyun which will work a lot like a Feiyutech, all of which will probably work somewhat better than a Hohem (but the Hohem will probably still get the job done). 😅 Anyway, the Crane 2S is a solid choice! Looking forward to seeing what you shoot with it!