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Yeah, I've been building a basic set of Minoltas for awhile now and I swear by them. They never let me down. Heck, one of the more memorable films I've seen this year (Identifying Features) was almost entirely shot on a set of vintage Minolta Rokkors! And if there's one thing that every review I've read has in common with this film, it's that the cinematography is gorgeous.

By far your best bet here would be to keep an eye out on eBay for used GoPros. I recently picked up a Hero 3 for £50 and I've seen various 4s under £100. It might take a little while, but something good will appear in the end and will be much better than any brand new sub-100 model.

I love them so much and still keep an eye out to finish my set. What really impressed me was how good they are wide open and overall how sharp they are without being too sharp like a lot of modern lenses are. I think I paid $90 shipped for the Rokkor-X 50mm f1.4 and it saddens me that the days of finding deals like that are long gone! 😂

I'm not sure that you'll find a decent action camera for under 100 euro/120 dollars, at least not new. You could probably find an older used GoPro for around that much? I'd go with the DJI Osmo Action if you go new. It's under $200 US, has 4K 60p and excellent stabilization. But anything under 100 euro? I wouldn't buy anything new for that, as I'd expect the quality to be poor.

They are both extremely good in low light, S5 perhaps even more so to my eye. Haven't done anything scientific in terms of testing the dual gain yet. Good idea for a blog post though.

The Rokkors even stand up on medium format. Damned good glass and best ever for the money. One of my favourite posts about this: https://jonasraskphotography.com/2017/08/16/minolta-x-fujifilm/ The later A-mount Minolta autofocus stuff ain't bad either. They really were pioneering trailblazers in the 80s, with lenses like the 35mm F1.4 G

Notice how they have turned the screen inwards on the GH5II to hide the only meaningful size difference.

I love my Rokkors and when I bought them they had arguably the best cost for quality ratio out there. FD prices had taken off, but Rokkors hadn't. The Rokkor X 50mm 1.4 stands up to some Leica lenses I've used, for instance.

Fan came today. Non scientific testing since I can't get access to the temperature sensor (without more tools). Fan replaced with Noctua NF-P12 Redux 1300 Temperature delta: apprx +2 degrees C, fan noise comparable to Aputure C300D II, different characteristic. May be slightly louder, but much quieter than stock, negligible temperature increase. Lowering fan speed to around 1000rpm (guessing, using no name fan reducer) temperature delta up to 9C, a little bit less noise, not really worth it. Lowering fan speed to around 750rpm, temperature delta up to 19C, runs almost silent. I'm guessing if you ran it around 900rpm it could be very quiet and get you +12C I'm leaving it at 1300 for now. Might make a video later, planning on using 4x for 1200W!

@scotchtape Any luck with the fan replacement? And would you mind sharing the stock fan make/model?

Thats why I got a Pocket 4k. I got tired of the farting around with compressed formats. External recorders are the way to get around that nut thats also a hassle. Now I can shoot 3:1 Braw on a cheap SSD directly on the camera or at least 5:1 on an internal SD card. Now that some DSLRS are getting external raw support I still don't really care. Its an added cost to get an external recorder and its a lot more hassle than what I have now. I'm also kind of a freak for 4:4:4. I know visually it actually doesn't make a huge difference. I studied VFX in college and can pull damn good keys with 4:2:0. To me its more about why 4:2:2. Its a left over from the analogue days and we don't really need it anymore. We have fast and cheap enough media now to not worry about 4:2:2. Its an old broadcast video standard and really has no place in our digital world today. h264 and h265 are also very capable of 4:4:4 but we are barely getting cameras to add 4:2:2 and 10bit let alone 4:4:4. So Braw on the P4k represents something I have been trying to achieve ever since I started with SVHS and have been trying to get something better than video standards. Its not just because its raw. To me its because its RGB, 4:4:4 and color space agnostic. No more butchered rec709, no more unnecessary 4:2:2. I know visually I could probably do the same with a lesser format but to me its just about starting clean and go from there. It represents what I always dreamed of being able to do with video. Oh yeah and its 12bit which will be even harder to make an argument for than the 10bit vs 8bit argument. But hey its there and doesn't hurt so why not. Fun fact. 12bit has 4096 samples. DCI 4k resolution is 4096 wide. Thats exactly one sample per pixel for a full width subtle gradient or in other words the perfect bit depth for 4k. Not sure anyone could ever tell vs one sample every 4 pixels like 10bit has but hey there it is. Basically posterization should be physically impossible on the P4k shooting Braw.

Kind of depends. ProRes is in my opinion one of the best formats the industry has ever had. With that said its not a very smart format. It just throws the same amount of bits at a frame no matter what the content. The beauty of formats like h264 is that they are smarter and they look at each frame and try to figure out how much is really needed. Yes bitrate is important for that but its such an efficient format that it can get away with a lot less bits than a dummy format like ProRes could get away with. When ProRes drops down to LT or Proxy its sacrificing quality across the frame no matter what the visual impact might be. h264 breaks the image into blocks. mpeg2 did the same thing but the image was all 8x8 pixel blocks. h264 is even more sophisticated and can use 1x1, 2x2, 4x4 and 8x8 pixel blocks. So the macro blocking can be much smaller in fine detail areas where a macro block may be 2x2 pixels instead of 8x8 that mpeg2 would use. This means we don't see macro blocking as much and visually we get a very solid picture. The image then saves bits in those flat areas so they can be used for the more detailed areas. h264 also spreads those bits across many frames. It uses difference between a group of frames to determine what has actually changed. So if a camera is locked down and only a small red ball rolls across the screen then each of the proceeding frames only have to use bits for the macro blocks that cover that red ball. The more the frames change the more bits they need for each of the following frames. The problem is yes sometimes some h264 encoders do not get enough bits. most of the time 100 mbps is enough. If you get a shot with a lot of random moving fine detail like tree leaves blowing in heavy wind then that 100 mbps may fall apart. ProResHQ is dumb but it has the advantage to look good no matter what the situation. A locked down blue sky will compress as well as those complex moving tree leaves. Its just that both will take the same 700 mbps no matter how simple or complex. h264 on the other hand can get by with much less. It would be a complete epic waste to give h264 the same 700mbps. It would not need it at all. In the above example that small red ball just does not need that much data to store 100% perfectly. I'm not sure there is a magic number as to what bitrate should be used. Really depends on the scene but for the most part 100 mbps has been pretty solid on many 4k cameras. 150 mbps for 10 bit on some cameras has been even more solid. Thats another thing to factor in. ProResHQ is 10bit 4:2:2. So its not really fair to compare to 8bit 4:2:0 h264 formats directly in terms of bitrate. Again its a dummy format and even if you send ProRes a 8bit 4:2:0 camera source it stills encodes it as if its 10bit 4:2:2. So the 150 mbps 10bit 4:2:2 h264 formats are a better comparison and visually they hold up very well compared to ProResHQ.

Agreed. All the photos we look at online are 8bit and rarely is 8bit an issue. For normal rec709 video profiles 10bit is a tad overkill although there can be some extremely rare cases where it can help. The bigger plague of 8bit is some h264 encoders that are too aggressive in how they assume color samples will not be noticed as different and merge them as a macro block. You can have a frame from a h264 video in 8bit and an uncompressed png of that image also in 8bit and get more banding from the h.264. Encoders try to figure out what is safe to compress together. The stuff we can't see with the naked eye. If we can't see it there is no point wasting bits on it. So a 8x8 pixel block with very subtle green values may decide to make that a 8x8 block of one green color. This can cause banding where one would normally not have any in 8bit. Panasonic suffered from this on the GH4 when they added log. The log was so flat that the encoder assumed it could compress areas of color into big macro blocks because the values would not be noticeable. If the shot stayed as log they were right but because the log was flatter than other log profiles it really struggled with areas of flat color like walls when graded. Sony's encoder did better at not grouping similar colors. At least up to S-log2. S-log3 could suffer from the same issues as Panasonic V-log on the GH4 on older Sony cameras. The GH5 had an improved encoder that wasn't as aggressive with 8bit and areas of similar colors.

Just got mine in the mail. Ran it for an hour and have already disassembled it 😄 Fan swap is relatively easy, I might make a video on it when more parts come in, I tried a Noctua 120mm 7 or 900 rpm and it doesn't push enough air. EZ to damage the male JST connector on the board though - more cosmetic than anything else. It's louder than my computer!

Dude! This was awesome. I felt the same way about Mr. Undone. I thought it really hurt his credibility (at least, with me) that the Sigma FP L was such a disappointment to him. You hit the nail on the head in every way. Took the words right out of my mouth. Same thing goes for Bloom. I typically love these guys and what they offer but I agree with you that Sigma is doing something different and I appreciate such things. I can put the Fp together the way I want. Isn't that also the way you have to do RED? I was Panasonic for years with my DVX100 then Lumix GH4. Up to the release of the original Fp, I was looking to go Fuji but wanted to be full-frame. Then, Fuji drops the bomb with Medium Format moves. That will be my play at some point. But, when you drop full frame cinema into the mix the way Sigma is doing, you can put together your situation they way you want. Most cinema cameras force you to do manual focus, Fp does but also is ramping up the lens support where the lens provides stabilization. Not to mention, putting the4 Fp on a gimbal like the Weebill S. This is all good in my view and really puts in the throws of being a real filmmaker. That's the point for some of us. Then, when you add the photo imaging part, this puts the Sigma Fp in it's own little power-packed space. I really appreciated Steve Huff's perspective on the Fp in this regard. This man is a serious Leica guru. Lenses and Cameras and he thought his experience with the Sigma fp was akin to his Leica SL. Yikes! I was like, "okay!". Now, we're talking. He used his array of lenses on the Fp and the look was amazing. Color science and all. After reading your comments here, I recommend folks add Steve's YouTube review of the Fp. It's here: https://youtu.be/Q01kVaFtkvg So, kudos Andrew. I really appreciate your view and coupled with Steve Huff's view on this, I think it showed how powerful the Sigma Fp and Fp L is in the hands of those who love to be different and know how to put their systems together for their needs.

Sorry to post my own stuff again but here's my latest pandemic lock down piece. Confined to my backyard.🙄 The FP continues to inspire.