mtol

I've used both the dumb adapter and the electronic one on a bunch of Lumix bodies and I basically rely on them. Most of my lenses are EF or EF converted. As you would expect they are super useful. I do run and gun doc, so these are lifesavers. I love being able to fine tune exposure while leaving my aperture and ISO where I want it. The actual physical control of these is very smooth. There's a bit of a vignette at max ND. They are not super well-built. After a few years with these adapters, two smart adapters have failed on their own after developing intermittent connection issues. Sometimes cleaning electronic contacts with rubbing alcohol has helped extend the life of my adapters. Still, the cameras lose connection to the lens and stop recording randomly when this happens, so its really not a reliable system when your adapter starts to give out. Generally, I prefer the dumb adapter for this reason - I've used it a lot and had no connection issues. Also, on a recent shoot, my camera got smacked against something and the adapter was the fail point - breaking clean in half. So I saw inside the adapter, and the length of screws connecting the two sides of it did not inspire a great deal of confidence. Compared to something like the Meike adapter with drop in filters, my experience is these are not robustly built - they don't feel solid or co-operate with some heavier lenses like a canon 100-400. But with all those caveats, these things rule and make shooting easier. Especially the dumb adapter, for manual primes. I love Fotodiox for making cheap adapters to fill gaps in all sorts of workflows and I think that's exactly what this is - cheap gear that doesn't last forever. I do wish the electronic adapter was more reliable.

Agree this is a waste of time. They should say "a cinema camera is coming" or "the S1ii is our cinema camera". Either would help a lot of consumers decide what their next move is.

I wonder if there's a thermal management reason keeping it from shipping with compressed raw formats. All in all a very tempting camera, but in no context do I ever want to produce files that large.

I didn't know that the c50 had digital zoom like that. Neat! Canon stabilized lenses were my go to shooting tool for such a long time and I'm sure the new ones are better than the Ef generation. What I can't stomach is the price of new glass and being locked into a particular lens aesthetic when I want to shoot handheld. But all things considered, as a tool, good lens stabilization can be more organic and less artifact prone than ibis. I've seen some stabilization tests with the digital is and I am not impressed. I also expect Nikon will come out with more professionally oriented cameras soon. Renting a c50 is a good call. If it feels right in hand and you like the images you'll cut through the noise.

As long as it checks all the boxes for you. You really can't go wrong. For me both the C50 and R6III are close to checking all the boxes, but if the C50 had IBIS or the R6III had the XLR handle, they would be perfect. I know canon has some great stabilized zooms, but I don't want to get married to a system for a feature that most systems are putting in-body. I'm currently invested in L mount, but just barely - which means I own some adapters and one lens in that system. The rest is EF glass or adapted to EF glass. So switching systems would not be too costly if any one camera hits it all out of the park. At the end of the day, they're all good machines. I'm not in a huge rush. But I look at the price of used FX3s and kind of think it may make sense to invest in something that will hold its value as the kind of go-to camera for the next 5 years. Then again, I prefer the image out of my S1H to the FX3 any day, and had I gone that route I'd have a more valuable black box and five years of inferior images.

I have a hunch they will announce something with a higher resolution and open gate. Unsure about RAW. But they have to adapt with the market and surely they're noticing the discourse around the age and limitations of the FX3.

Every other camera has some nominal compromise for my workflow, but I'm hoping either of these cameras will check all the boxes for a long time to come. Really my S1H does 90% of what I want it to do to begin with, but readout speed improvements and reduced size would be welcome.

Personally I'm waiting for the FX3ii and S1Hii which hopefully will both be announced in April. Many good options if you need something now, but certainly more good options in a few months time.

There's an interesting conversation to be had about the limitations of images to create positive change in the world, but there's also a conversation to be had about the technical limitations of our gear. What gear is really war-ready? I've long thought that camera manufacturers need to implement some kind of in-camera encryption for serious documentary work. Clearly, filming events like these is crucial. But what happens when your gear is seized in a politically sensitive context? What happens when a fascist state can use high resolution images that you capture to criminalize the people you're documenting, to find and hunt down other witnesses? The camera can be a liability too. And what could be done to upload footage automatically, or a proxy, in the event that the seized gear never comes back? Other than everyone streaming everything live all the time, which carries its own risk. We've seen now footage from people who were arrested or detained - which, I think, is fortunate but far from a certainty going forward. We're still missing a piece of the puzzle - not that ICE isn't clearly guilty of murder here - but they seized Pretti's phone, and now the fascists are the only ones to decide if that footage will be seen.

I own one L-mount lens and two bodies, with about 40 adapted vintage lenses. I could imagine kitting up if I was on Fuji X mount or Micro 43s, but I made a decision at some point to put everything into EF mount so that I could jump between camera systems when the time comes.

I can understand that camera companies are not exactly incentivized by the profit motive to release *perfect* cameras, but it's a shame that this is artificially feature limited when it's getting so, so close. I just shot a project in 3:2 open gate on my S1H and it was such a great experience for myself and the director, though I did run into some of the limitations of the slower readout speed and ibis wobble. I guess Sony is saving 6k and open gate for the A7S4 and Fx3ii. It remains to be seen how they will integrate 32 bit audio recording. I am sure I'm not the only one waiting for these features in a proper workhorse body for doc. I'm close to pulling the trigger on an S1ii anyway as it has the fewest compromises of any system, but it's hard when you know an S1hii could follow or the Fx3ii is likely around the corner. I'm making money from my gear these days, but not so much that I feel like burning money on an intermediate body. All the tech is around for a perfect doc mirrorless camera.

Dpreview released their S1II review today, holding off on a gold rating solely due to the camera's price... Andrew isn't alone in his criticism of Panasonic. I was expecting to see the price come down a bit already. If the firmware truly resolved the overheating issues the camera was having, I think the only issue remaining is the poor H264/H265 output of the camera I've been reading about. And the lack of clarity on when / what the S1HII will be... Still, its becoming a more compelling package.

Honestly I hope they go this route.

I do appreciate a viewfinder, though. As it stands an FX3 is hardly usable without rigging, based on screen quality alone.

Add faster sensor readout to that mix and 32 bit support and its likely the last camera I ever buy.