New cinema camera...?

[maxJ4380]

On 3/23/2026 at 10:29 PM, kye said:

Could do, I guess there are options.

One thing that comes to mind for the vlogger crowd is having a small manual focus that goes between two useful focal distances, like vlogging distance and normal infinity focus.  This is how the Olympus 15mm F8 MFT pancake lens works, and it's surprisingly functional.  

It sort of sits in that middle-ground where you need to adjust focus because you can't get 30cm to infinity in focus at the same time (like a normal GoPro), but the DOF is still deep enough that you don't really need to have much control over it.  In practice it's sort of like a switch where you're either at one end or the other.

Looking at those GoPro sample shots, both the shallow DOF shots are relatively macro, so that doesn't need a large sensor or super-fast lens, but the moon shot might actually be the more difficult one requiring both a long focal length and also a larger aperture to get enough light.  I don't really do astro-photography but the moon is approaching higher-ISOs I would imagine.

Seriously though, there are probably 5-year-old android phones that could replicate both those images, so I'd suggest that most of what we're seeing is the hype and that GoPro shares the same definition of cinema that most YouTubers do.

I have one. i dont mind it for when i do road trips. The 15mm olympus lens i mean...  Can use it like a lens cap, push the lever and away you go. Although i do worry that ultimately dust or dirt is going to find its way into the lens... takes up no room what so ever. You do get a slightly different look, its a simple lens, i guess you like it or you don't . If your camera has peaking that helps with depth of field i find.  Would have liked the 9mm as well but that hasn't eventuated yet. 

Not so sure about the moon shot, the moon is pretty bright, if your using a tele lens of some kind you dont need to venture too far from a normal iso and shutter speed.  I can string a lens combo together of about 950mm on a mft mount, and i can tell you that image of the moon thats been supplied is huge. Be interesting to see how they did it, my money's on  this new gopro  gaffer taped to a telescope of some kind at least. maybe 1200mm as my images of the moon aren't that big.

I'm also willing to bet  gopro gave their camera to someone who's heavily invested into astrophotography and got all the gear and said, here have a play with this. Its actually a very nice image of the moon all things considered. I am confident that optimum conditions and fair amount of skill were involved in that photo of the moon. Same with all the other images supplied they all look done under optimum "conditions"  Gopro might sell a bunch of these, if all you have to do is gaffer tape it to the back of a telescope and can get similar results. There's plenty of enthusiasts out there who would buy one, however if you have the gear already, you probably have a decent camera already as well...

I like the little go pros, i think their pretty cool considering what you can do with them.  They are a great little action camera, maybe not a great cinema camera but that comes back to the owner and time and effort and money they want to put into it. 

My "gripe" with gopro is its all digital, digital stab, digital zoom. I dont like the fisheye too much, so i shoot linear , which is a digital zoom i believe. Now i'm not nocking the digital stab or the zoom per se but there's no optical with gopro if you want optical its up to you to supply your own diopters or other type of " kit ". I would be interested if  gopro did do some kind of  two lens system like a wide angle and a normal lens that you could twist on and off like the front element does, but i fear with the new gp3 there will be just more digital and an Ai moniker 😉.    

[kye]

On 3/24/2026 at 12:48 AM, eatstoomuchjam said:

Indeed - and I don't think they've said that the images are SOOC.  It's hard to know how much editing was done with the moon shot.  It's also not out of the question that an auxiliary lens was used to make it more telephoto.  This is the importance of waiting until devices are in the hand of real consumers before getting too hyped. 

100% - I'd assume that this was the best image that an expert with all the other associated equipment was able to get with a decent travel budget and after a decent period of having it.

I've always maintained that there are three useful references for a piece of equipment:

• The best images that anyone is able to create
  This shows the upper limit of its potential
• The images that competent reviewers get
  This shows the type of images that people of moderate skill are able to get in non-ideal conditions
• The worst images
  You never get to see these until you get one yourself, but in theory this would show how fragile/flexible the camera is (for example you can expose an Alexa pretty horribly wrong and still get a half-decent image from it, but try that with a camcorder and it's a complete disaster)

The promo is only the first category, and the fact there are only a few shots in there is a statement in itself.

10 hours ago, maxJ4380 said:

I have one. i dont mind it for when i do road trips. The 15mm olympus lens i mean...  Can use it like a lens cap, push the lever and away you go. Although i do worry that ultimately dust or dirt is going to find its way into the lens... takes up no room what so ever. You do get a slightly different look, its a simple lens, i guess you like it or you don't . If your camera has peaking that helps with depth of field i find.  Would have liked the 9mm as well but that hasn't eventuated yet. 

I think the 15mm is a lot better than people make out, but of course most discourse online is from people who think that a Zeiss Otus is the ideal lens and that Michael Bay doesn't use large enough apertures.  To be honest, when reading / listening to most opinions now I am just hearing that the person hasn't been to the cinema for years, hasn't watched any/much classic cinema, and isn't even familiar with the saying "F8 and be there" let alone thinks that it is the cornerstone of almost all the important photography in the history of the field.

I was always interested in the 9mm but as I bought the SLR Magic 8mm F4 as one of the first lenses I bought, then upgraded to the Laowa 7.5mm F2 lens later on, the selection of slow wider pancake lenses was never really justified for me.

10 hours ago, maxJ4380 said:

Not so sure about the moon shot, the moon is pretty bright, if your using a tele lens of some kind you dont need to venture too far from a normal iso and shutter speed.  I can string a lens combo together of about 950mm on a mft mount, and i can tell you that image of the moon thats been supplied is huge. Be interesting to see how they did it, my money's on  this new gopro  gaffer taped to a telescope of some kind at least. maybe 1200mm as my images of the moon aren't that big.

Right, I guess that makes the moon shot even easier then.  If you have enough light then almost any camera will look pretty good.

10 hours ago, maxJ4380 said:

I would be interested if  gopro did do some kind of  two lens system like a wide angle and a normal lens that you could twist on and off like the front element does, but i fear with the new gp3 there will be just more digital and an Ai moniker 😉.    

Looking at the mount again, there doesn't appear to be any visible mechanism to attach the lens..

I'm wondering if this might be a magnetic mount of some kind, like MagSafe perhaps.  If that's true then it might just be a matter of pulling the lens off and snapping another one on.  That would certainly fit with the GoPro ethos of it being a fast no-nonsense experience.