eatstoomuchjam

There's been some discussion on this here today. The main takeaway is that nobody even understands what it means. How in the fuck can you put a tariff on a film? It doesn't even make sense. And what is a "foreign import?" If I drive across the border to Canada, shoot 3 minutes of footage, and add it to a 90-minute film that was otherwise shot and edited in the US, what's taxed? FWIW, it also would be a torpedo to the Canadian industry - and I suspect the tariffs were partly driven by spite at Canada for voting so strongly against his agenda. Anyway, the major studios are going to hate this. Aside from reducing costs by producing abroad, if other countries retaliate in kind, International returns on films are going to crater - and that's a huge percentage of their profits.

The latest episode of PetaPixel is "Shot on ????????" so... probably this camera. The footage looks about as usual for Chris and Jordan.

... and this is part of the problem. A lot of people will think that they just need to pick up a Ronin and they'll remake Adolescence. And yet, they won't be working with 3-4 camera ops, an entire lighting crew, huge drone + operator, car crane + operator, multiple sound engineers, etc. Local film competitions next year should be a little wild. 😅

That's simply not true. The focus motor is an additional $270 purchase. The 6K version of the Ronin 4D also doesn't come able to shoot ProRes RAW or 4444 XQ. For that, you'll need to add the ProSSD mount ($200) and a 1TB ProSSD ($800). For most MF lenses, you'd also need to buy a mount other than the one included with the camera - I haven't seen many DJI DL mount to anything else adapters. A Leica M mount costs $300 new. Used prices on most of the above are about 2/3 of new cost. The 8K version of the camera includes the mount and a ProSSD, but (if I remember right) not the motor. And while almost none of the cameras that I mentioned include ProRes RAW (except the S1R Mark II), a majority of them are capable of shooting raw (many of them in a format that works in Resolve without conversion (additional $80 fee for Raw Convertor license if PRR). For those that don't, you can buy a used Ninja V or Video Assist 12G for $200-500. For stabilization, you can add a $400 gimbal - though compared with using the R4D, it will be much more of a pain in the ass. On the other hand, most of the other cameras can support lenses weighing more than about 1000g which is about all the R4D can support if you want to use the 4th axis. External 5" screen? If you don't already have one sitting around, you can get one of equal or better quality to the R4D screen for about $200-300. Any of those other cameras can also be set up in such a way that they will be small/light/unintrusive. That's simply not possible with the R4D. The closest you'll come is the Flex unit which costs $900 and then you'll be in a backpack ($200-300 if you buy the official PGY Tech one) and still carrying a pretty big/obtrusive camera. The main advantage of the Ronin 4D is the integrated 4th axis which eliminates a lot of footstep motion and helps smooth things out on a car mount, etc. In my experience, it's better than using an EasyRig with the springy arm or a ReadyRig Nimbus - and can be used with either for even more smoothness. The second advantage of the R4D is that everything is tightly integrated. If you get a Gimbal with subject tracking, that'll be on a separate screen and is usually driven by a second camera rather than through the camera's lens. If you get a DJI Focus Pro or other Lidar-based manual focuser, that'll also be driven through a second camera and another screen. With the R4D, you can draw a box around a subject and turn on AF and when you start tracking, it will do so uncannily well... about 95% of the time, and randomly lose the subject the other 5%. It's a great single operator camera - but again, it's far from the device I'd choose as my only camera. If I could have only one, I'd take something else for sure. It would be my first choice for my second camera, though... hands down.

Davide is 100% correct. Pair that GH7 with one of the cheap Panasonic/Olympus kit servo zooms and you have a tiny camera that works great for street work. Or bring the Olympus 12-100 if you're willing to tolerate the extra weight. Add a couple of fast primes for shooting at night and you have a fantastic usable kit. Otherwise, if you just can't stomach micro 4/3 for... some reason, there's nothing wrong with the A7S III. If light weight is a concern, I'd swap for the f/4 versions of both lenses. You'll still be able to get pretty nice shallow DOF and the lenses will be substantially smaller/lighter. Plus if you're shooting on the street in some of the cities, having smaller lenses won't be shouting "rob me" as loudly as a big white f/2.8 70-200, for example. I'd also give serious consideration to super 35. Fuji has a lot of great options and Sony has the FX30 (or whatever the non-cinema camera version of that is - A6700? Something like that?).

Well, the 8K sensor for the X9 is generally acknowledged as superior to the 6K one and it's (as far as almost anybody can tell) the same sensor that is used in the Panasonic S1R Mark II, a $3,300 camera. That camera compares favorably to the EOS R5 without being enormously better. You can get a used EOS R5 for around $2,000. Having both an EOS R5 and both versions of the X9 (having bought the 6K and upgraded), I can safely say that the image from the EOS R5 is pretty close to the X9. Plus if we're talking about shows on Netflix, Chimp Empire (recommended to be by another forum member here) is gorgeous. That one was shot on the Canon C70. Someone listed one in the local Facebook buy/sell camera group today for about $3,500. The Creator was shown on theater screens everywhere. It was shot on the FX3. The Sony ZV-E1 which is available used for about $1,700 uses the same sensor. In a recent short film contest, a film that I shot tied for best cinematography - mine was shot on a combo of Komodo-X and C70. The one that tied it? Shot on a Panasonic S5, a camera that is available used for about $800-900. Even if I cared about awards, I wouldn't be upset about the tie - the other film looked great on the big screen. So... I'm not really sure anymore what point you're trying to make about the Ronin here. Yes, it was used for a Netflix show. Other high-end prosumer cameras have also been used for Netflix shows before so this isn't really novel. Nearly every camera on the market right now is superior technically to the Red One M-X (also available for under $2,000 on the used market) - the camera used to shoot films like The Social Network, Ché, and District 9, all of which were shown on cinema screens worldwide. All of this means it's a great time to be a filmmaker, but that's hardly unique to this one camera. 😃

Just like the Zhiyun light, they will come with silly fake leather trim and Cam Mackey's name plastered over every square inch of the camera, the strap, the case, etc. They'll also have a filter that you can't turn off that gives everything a yellow tint. The x model will come with a hat and it'll have built-in wheels and a special "X" button that makes the camera itself start doing sick burnouts in the sand. There will also be a special Gerald Undone edition of both cameras that will have a special extra-super-hdr mode that increases the rolling shutter to 41.5ms. On this model, the leatherette will be purple. Finally, there will be a Matt Granger special pocket edition which is the same as a normal edition, but comes with some extra large pocket cargo pants.

And the footage from it, when shown, also looks like all of Cam's other footage. At least now the mindless YouTube zombies won't have to write angry letters to Panasonic that they should send a camera to CM "so we can see what it can really do."

For the mounting thread, are there locating pin holes?

This seems to be the clearest frame of it. It's not really giving much away, though.

This is a topic that comes up in this forum frequently. I don't think you'll get any argument from the majority of people here that there are a number of sub-$10,000 cameras that will get you really close to Arri quality. But for a majority of Hollywood productions, they're not reaching for this camera. As I said in another message above, it's extremely polarizing among people who have used it. If your use case is shooting an hour-long oner and you can run 14 takes of it to choose your favorite, it may be the best cinema camera on the market. If you're shooting nature, it's a pretty awful camera - lidar autofocus doesn't work that far out and the focus motor can only go about an inch past the lens mount, not to mention that balancing a lens longer than 130mm or so will definitely put you over the 4th axis' weight capacity. If your use case is putting the camera on sticks and using Arri Master Primes, it may be the absolute worst camera on the market. I'm not even sure that they could be mounted, even using the Flex + a cage to add rods. It's a really cool niche camera that is finding success (and will continue to find success, I think) for specific use cases in Hollywood... and in my own short films too. But if people at Arri are losing any sleep, it's not for the DJI chicken head camera.

I have said before on here and I'll maintain it, DJI's taking one of the smartest plays here. Especially on mid-high end productions, regardless of any other factors, it's going to stay primarily Arri. If you make a traditional camera and try to compete, you'll have a huge uphill fight. On the other hand, if you make a camera that takes something that's a pain in the ass, whether it's Arri or another decent camera system, and your thing makes it really easy, your camera might get used in parts of films that are shot on Arri or Burano or similar. Putting cameras on a gimbal is legitimately annoying. Wanna have that gimbal-based camera track subjects? Time for hacks like putting a second camera on the gimbal and needing to use multiple tools to track and monitor. One of the Ronin 4D's real superpowers is integrated tracking based on what the camera is seeing. Today, a friend and I shot some tests with mine while between blocks at a local film festival. In the first, I experimented with an "impossible" shot where I tracked her walking and then had her pause while I pulled the camera back, planning to do a faux dolly zoom by reframing in post. It's imperfect, but with some practice and a less ambitious distance, I think it could play. For the second, I recently got a Hydra Alien and wanted to see how it would work. My car is a worst-case scenario for rollers - the Wrangler has an extremely stiff suspension. Yet, after 40 minutes of stumbling around with putting the Hydra on my car for the first time ever, I mounted up the camera and had my friend drive while I operated. There are some micro-vibrations, certainly, and I might experiment with the alternate/softer shock plate, but it's kind of amazing how turning on autofocus + tracking on a random car on the road resulted in such great footage. The last shot was to see if I could do a Tarantino-style shot spinning around the subject. If doing this on set, I'd want to set up something to ensure a consistent distance to the subject(s), but similar to the others, given the results after doing no planning or setup, the results are a bit unbelievable for just getting to the parking lot and saying "Hey, I bet we could do this. Let's try!"

Why stop with spraypaint? Hose that sucker down with line-x and never worry again about scratches!

Thanks for the link! I stand corrected - so that's about $25k instead of $30k by my above estimates. That's a surprise about the 6K vs the 8K version! I suppose that'd also be a great counter-argument to people who complain about cameras with rolling shutter speeds > 20ms. The 6K is 22 or 24 or something like that. Gladly! Here are a few off the top of my head (some codecs/frame rates may vary with the 6K, mine are based on my 8K): - Recording modes are either a mediocre H.264 or a very nice ProRes HQ or ProRes RAW. There's nothing in-between. The 6K has 4444 XQ available if you don't buy the raw license. The 8K does not. - To record in the nicer modes, you need to buy DJI's overpriced SSD ($800-1000 for 1TB), it doesn't matter if you have super fast CF Express cards. - You can choose from 17:9 (full sensor width) or 16:9 recording modes and nothing else... unless you go to the high frame rate mode when it will go to 2.4:1 (or something around that) and nothing else - When the 4th axis is enabled, if you have it set to "lock" and you're standing still, sometimes it has some sort of freakout and the gimbal starts going up and down like crazy. Numerous people have reported it on various forums, setting it to "follow" seems to result in fewer freakouts. This seems to have been around since the start. It definitely happens with mine. - There are tripod mount holes on the bottom, but even a narrow Arca-Swiss plate partially blocks the 4th axis cameras/depth sensors, people have complained that this makes their 4th axis work weirdly. I have just avoided putting a plate on it since most of my uses for it don't involve putting it on sticks - The object tracking is really good... most of the time. If it loses the subject mid-take, it is difficult (and it might be impossible) to re-select it on the touch screen - The autofocus is really good... sometimes. Sometimes it seems to lose the subject (even when in tracking mode) and drift to infinity. Then it picks them up again and comes back. It's also laggy. This is less noticeable with wider angle lenses and when stopped down a bit, but it's clearly visible with a 75mm lens at f/4. If I set it on a box on a shelf in my living room and walk slowly toward it, the label on the box will become unreadable until I pause for a half second and then the AF catches up - that's even with the AF sensitivity set to high. I noticed this at first when experimenting with a tracking shot using a 90mm Summicron-M at f/2. I bought the DJI 75/1.8 since native lenses focus faster than mechanical lenses and turned off AMF so the only motor would be the lens' focus motor. Still visibly out of focus when approaching/retreating. The lag when stopping is less than the manual one, but it's still there. I stopped down to f/4 or f/5.6. Still visibly laggy. If I use their 17-28 and zoom to 28 and stop down to f/4, the label stays acceptably sharp - but so far, I don't see any way to use AF if you want the subject sharp while approaching/retreating. Trying to dial in focus in those instances using the thumb wheel is too fussy for me (it's like 3mm of turning from 1.5m to 4m away, the look is similar to the AF with the subject in focus at the start and end and maybe for part of the walk). This weekend, I'm going to experiment with a friend to see if it can do better with a person. If not, looks like that 75 is getting sent back next week. Professional productions probably address this with the 3 channel follow focus (add another $900). - The first-party Sony E mount is actually made by a third party and doesn't update firmware through the body like every other part, you need to do it separately. Many people think it doesn't work well for this reason. - The internal microphone is completely unusable and has lots of high-pitched motor noises. Many people say that the XLR ports on the port expander plate randomly stop working. I think the 3.5mm input is reliable, but for a run and gun shoot, this is very limiting for audio. For me, the internal mic has been at least been good enough to sync up audio to an external device. Then I mute that track so I won't get a headache. Timecode works when available, but you will need the expansion plate for that too. I'm sure that I could add more if I spent a little more time thinking or I wrote this up after the next time I have it out on set. If you read any discussion thread of people who have used it, you'll find that it's an extremely polarizing camera - a number of people who have used it hated it and described the whole thing as an ordeal - and the others generally loved it. I'm more in the latter camp.

FWIW, if you watch the BTS, they were most likely over $30,000 on the camera package alone. I'm not sure if it was specified whether they used the Ronin 4D 8K or 6K, but I'm assuming the more expensive one. $10,000 - camera $5,000 - lens $280 - focus motor $400 - DJI transmitter Then add in the set of master wheels that I saw in at least one BTS photo and at least 3 high bright remote monitors + handles that I saw in another. $10,000 - DJI master wheels $1,700 - monitor (x3) $730 - handles (x3) And then add in the car mount and a drone strong enough to carry a 15 pound camera, and it's not out of the question that that all would total about $50k. If your definition of "serious film project" is $1m+ budget, then that is indeed a small portion - but it definitely ain't cheap. I can also say that as an owner of a Ronin 4D and a person who loves it, it would not be my choice if I could pick only one camera. To say it has quirks would be the understatement of the century. As a second camera? It might be top of my list. And I'll be in that "wave of new pro and amateur projects" filmed with one - for the feature that I've been asked to shoot, it'll likely be UC12K as the A camera and Ronin 4D for most of the handheld, car-mounted stuff, faux-jib (Flex mounted on a monopod), etc.

Apparently one of those people on the fence was me? So far, I like it. Views from the 8K mode might be enough to use as quick inserts on a 4K timeline without being overly jarring. The 71 megapixel photo mode is really pretty good too. I shot the thing below into the sunset. The tree branches near the setting sun don't look awful and there's some detail on my face. I just need to remember to hold the selfie stick more casually so the hand is less noticeably funky after their software subtracts it out. The image SOOC (as below) isn't too bad. It'd probably only be a few minor tweaks in curves to get the look as I'd like it. Pureview HDR seems to introduce artifacts on things that are moving more than a little bit. Like holding the selfie stick at a 45 degree angle in front of myself, my feet looked a little weird as I walked. I'm still not sure about using the camera for more than inserts for anything serious, but if I can get over my shame at holding a selfie stick with a little UFO on the end, it could be a pretty great tourist camera.

Officially announced. If I had an X4, I'm not sure that the new features would convince me to upgrade, but maybe they're enough to convince people who were on the fence to go for it. The leaked info that Emanual added seems right overall. https://www.insta360.com/product/insta360-x5

In my experience, at least in my area, a majority of editors are still using Premiere. I'm one of the few using Resolve.

Maybe he can give the clients your phone number and you can explain it to them? 😉

Will you be OK with only using lenses that mount to EF or PL mount? And would an integrated flip-out screen be a selling point?

Plus if there's an economic downturn which has few productions being made, more people may sell their gear for various reasons including paying the mortgage or buying food - in which case, a flood of items on the used market and minimal buyers means prices drop.

This is all one of the most boggling parts of the announced tariffs. If the goal is to onshore manufacturing, tariffs should be on completed products, not on subassemblies or raw stuff. I don't remember if I mentioned it here before, but this whole thing even had Mr. Beast (of all people!) making a salient point. The tariffs will lead to him offshoring more of his chocolate bar production. He said that right now, he has factories in the US and Peru making his bars. There's almost no part of the US capable of commercial cacao production (Hawaii only, and they don't make enough). Since the US factory makes bars for export, the tariffs on cacao import will drive up the price of the bars from his US factory, making them less competitive abroad. Moving them to Peru means that the raw goods prices will remain tariff-free. It's absolutely bonkers to think that saying "Pay 10% extra for a foreign-made product made with cheaper labor" and "Pay 10% extra + extra labor costs for a domestic-made product" somehow results in companies screaming "Let's on-shore that stuff!" I mean, maybe for the materials that can be domestically-sourced like iron, that could be a viable strategy... but for anything that we don't build here, the only possible end result can be higher prices and production remains where it is (or shifts to a lower-tariff country).

Were there reports of it overheating beyond some reviewers finding that in the most taxing mode (6k open gate IIRC), it would overheat after more than an hour of continuous recording?

The Pyxis and Pyxis 12K price changes were initially right in line with the Chinese tax hike. Then a day or two later, the Pyxis 12K price dropped to the Aussie rate. BMD said they shifted enough to Australia to make that a thing. They had also made a comment that they build some of their equipment in China and some in Australia. At a guess, I'd say they focus on the high end where there's ostensibly more profit margin in Australia. That or they just figured nobody would bother auditing them if they claimed it. I'm sure that a big part of it was that nobody was going to buy Pyxis at $4k and the Pyxis 12K at $6600 was about $1,100 less than UC12K and unlikely to be purchased by anybody since anybody looking to spend $7k on a BMD camera probably already did with UC12K. Like me. I went on a crazy buying spree in the last month since I knew the tariffs were coming. Now my credit card bills hate me (which is translating to my bank account hating me), but I do have some fancy gear now. Anyway. None of that detracts from your point about all of the prices being pure chaos. In the reddit small business forum that I linked above, a bunch of people were complaining that foreign suppliers (mostly Chinese) were refusing to even do business with them, at least partly on the basis of insane and unpredictable US tariffs.

Why's that? I thought BMD did enough manufacturing and assembly for it in Australia that it would be an Aussie tariff instead of Chinese. During the initial round of tariff increases, they only changed the price by 10%.