All the animals were gathered around the barn, and one of the pigs got up to make his speech. Comrades, I have something to say, but before I get to that I must tell you that I had a strange dream last night. In my dream, I went down B&H and bought a Sony mirrorless camera and the very next morning, I woke up and had an offer from 20th…
Month: September 2023
“VENICE” – it’s a word that captures the very essence of cinematic. Everybody knows of Venice, and knows that Venice is one of the most beautiful, most cinematic places in the world. The face of Italy, which is itself the beautiful face of Europe, whereas London is more like the arsehole. Well done Sony, for your VENICE cinema camera branding. What next? Sony BERLIN? Sony NEW YORK? Sony Milton Keynes?…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSqgzddHooM The iPhone 15 Pro is starting to look like a professional Super 16mm camera for filmmakers. A larger 1/1.28″ main sensor which is nearly Super 16mm size, Apple LOG, 4K ProRes recording externally, 28mm & 35mm modes and a pretty cutting edge zoom optic on the back in addition. Although it shouldn’t be missed that an Android phone can record 6K RAW internally in Cinema DNG format, Apple has…
Do we need 8K? First, a short journey to the past. A similar debate was heard over 4K. It turns out we did in fact need Ultra HD. The quality of 1080p on high resolution sensors wasn’t fantastic. Pixel binning. Line skipping. 4K was a way to get a full pixel readout and oversampling for a more film-like image, with less brittle look, fewer hard edges. Now we have affordable…
In the last post we saw how EF established Canon as camera market leader, keeping mediocre DSLRs afloat well into the final chapter of the previous decade. EF lenses were critical. These lenses helped in the transition to Canon’s own mirrorless cameras and with EF, users were locked into Canon’s ecosystem, despite the growing threat of mirrorless in the second half of the 2010s. During that time EF even became…
Panasonic pioneered mirrorless cameras 15 years ago and Sony made the first affordable full frame mirrorless camera. It wasn’t until 2018 with the Canon EOS R that the market leader had an answer. Fast forward to 2023, and why is it that Panasonic and Sony have squandered their lead in mirrorless cameras to Canon? Both companies had a massive head start. Panasonic got to the market 10 years ahead of…
The designer’s intent for Micro Four Thirds has been so badly distorted by marketing, the system no longer makes any sense. In the days of the Panasonic GH1, there would be never any question of simply sneaking a small sensor into the body of a full frame camera and calling it a day. This was never the ethos of Micro Four Thirds. Yet that is exactly what Panasonic have done…