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After months... years of lusting over the Sigma FP, I finally found one at a price I felt comfortable with. Other than a few, short-lived, camera purchases, I haven't bought a camera, that I use regularly, in 5 and a half years... I still have a BMMCC, I bought nearly 3 years ago, sitting in a box on my shelf that I only used once to test the rig. The FP arrived a couple days after I purchased it (big hat-tip to Used Photo Pro) and although I knew the measurements and saw plenty of photos of the camera, I was still really surprised by how tiny it is. It really isn't much bigger than a deck of cards. but out of the box, it also isn't very ergonomic, so I picked up a grip for it, and it now feels like an extension of my hand. While I awaited its arrival, I researched lens adapter, SD cards and external drives and settled on a few that could arrive in time for the weekend. When Saturday came, I had two lens adapters (Minolta MD and Nikon F), an Angelbird 128gb card and a 1TB Sandisk Extreme SSD. I instantly chuckled at the sizes of the adapters and SSD compared to the camera and thought.... this is so dumb... why am I going to attach this huge SSD to this tiny camera ( FYI - the SSD is quite small actually but in comparison...) but I still packed it in my camera bag and found an extra L-bracket I had laying around so I could spit and glue something that resembled anything usable for my first, and possibly only, test of the FP... As some of you may know, I have been quite happy with my current camera and have felt a very little need, or want, to upgrade my camera. When Saturday rolled around, I had my camera packed, I asked some questions to a fellow EOSHD member, and I was ready to test this miniature cinema camera. It was a gorgeous day for mid-November, so me and a friend drove to a familiar spot down the shore to see what this little thing could do. Due to my distaste for external monitors, and tentacles of cords, my first intention was to shoot internally to the SD card, so I wanted to test the 8bit cDNG files, hoping they'd be good enough for B&W delivery or a quick downscale to 1080p. In fact, on my drive down, I convinced myself that I wasn't even going to test the external drive. Since we got off to a late start, we quickly hit the boardwalk for some quick tests. After formatting the card and turning on the camera, I was a little shocked to see that a 128gb card, that cost more in dollars than its GB storage, only provided 10 minutes of footage. Now I already knew this, but seeing the ticking clock made me really slow down and think about what I was going to shoot. My main camera has been a 5D Mark III with Magic Lantern Raw, so I'm used to a lot of storage, but CF cards cost a bit less and provide a bit more footage than what the Sigma FP was offering... Anyway, I walked around and took a handful of shots. With the camera strapped to my neck and Minolta 35mm 1.8 lens locked and loaded, I instantly enjoyed shooting with the FP. I had a few minutes to set the camera up the day before, so every function I needed was in a logical place for my brain and fingers... So... the FP is a lot of fun to shoot with. In fact, I am used to people looking at me, or stopping, when I shoot with my 5D, but the FP seemed impervious to the passersby as they went along their unseasonably warm, Saturday afternoon stroll down the busy boardwalk. After a half hour, or so, and a trip to the bathroom (I drink a lot of coffee) we headed back to the car to hit the next spot. When we arrived, I decided to change lenses before we headed down a coastal trail. After a few shots with the Nikkor 28mm f/2 lens in 4K 8bit, I decided to give the 1080p a test. Other than an occasional slow motion shot, I'm not too interested in the 1080p from the FP... I already have a perfectly capable full frame, 1080p raw camera... but I was here and the card's storage was getting smaller and smaller... so why not? When I switched to 1080p, I gave a sigh of relief when I saw that the available storage nearly tripled. So we continued down the trail and I took a few shots... One thing I noticed while shooting with the FP, at this point, was that although the LCD is sharp and bright, the footage didn't have any kind of discernible look. Perhaps it's the small size, or using the OFF picture profile for viewing, but with my 5D, you can really see the magic of the footage while shooting it. The Sigma did not have that. So the process didn't feel as fulfilling as it is when I shoot ML Raw with my 5D3. But I carried on... until we quickly realized that we were surrounded by mosquitoes. I don't know if we were near a nest, or what, but we were surrounded by a swarm of these buzzing, blood sucking monsters. Apparently, nature forgot to tell them that it's mid-November in the Mid-Atlantic. Needless to say, we retreated back to the car. There was still enough daylight to hit one more spot, so we drove a couple miles down the road to the next spot. As I was driving, I decided that I may as well test out the external drive and 12bit 4K raw. I was already here. So when we stopped, I quickly jury rigged the SSD to the L-Bracket with a zip tie and headed to the beach. With the sun in tis final descent, I decided to test out the Dual-ISO function of the FP... which is one of the reasons I've been so intrigued by the camera. I intend to shoot horror/thriller type of stuff, so the one downfall of my 5D is chroma noise in lowlight. I can push the camera to 1600 ISO, but it can get ugly very quick and you really need to push your blacks into oblivion to rid the footage of that the blocky, patch rainbow goo. With my jury rigged SSD and the Minolta lens back on the FP, I turned on the camera and was surprised to see that it automatically changed itself to 4K 12ibit via the SSD and I was really happy to see that I had near an hour of possible footage... way more minutes of footage than daylight to shoot. But that's okay, I had ISO on my side... TOO MUCH ISO... so I'm glad I tossed my VND into my pocket. After a few awkward screws, I was ready to see what 4K raw footage is... Well... other than the awkward rig... the IQ in the LCD looked instantly better... but what was more surprising was how clean an image can look at 3200 ISO... So as the sun set on the horizon, I hit record... over... and over again... Sorry for the long post... but fast forward a couple hours and I was home. My girlfriend was taking a nap, so I quietly grabbed my laptop and uploaded the footage... I won't bore you any further with my post details... hell... I'm still trying to figure them out, but I did manage to get a few shots in 4K raw that I didn't hate. Here are a few samples from my first outing with the FP... hopefully they don't suck too bad...

At the moment it seems a huge list 🙂: https://cam.start.canon/en/H001/supplement_0160.html

Not boring at all. In fact the complete opposite…and maybe, just maybe… Now that I have made the firm and irreversible decision to remain with L Mount for a third year at least, I have the opportunity for something here myself and that is… I am keeping all 4 current bodies (S5, S1H and 2x S1R) but hope to exchange these somewhere down the line for 3x ideally, identical next gen S line bodies. I am currently in the process of offloading all of my current lenses except 2 Sigma zooms and then purchasing some new faster primes. The only other lens I have been sitting on the fence over is the Pannyboy 24-105mm f4 OIS. The OIS part being the reason…with specific consideration to picking up an FP and making it my ‘fun’ camera. Fun because I’m not sure how or even if I could fit it into my workflow, but that is not the point. The point is to scratch an itch. The FP itch. The question would be FP or FP-L…

I mean the R5C is a cinema camera and has all those things if you include the ND adapter and Tascam shoe mount. But I agree, 'small' is subjective. Personally I appreciate the R5C for giving you the option to build it up to about the size/weight of a 1DX line cam or strip it down to essentially an R5.

Oh yeah, with the actual EVF this wouldn't work at all.. Althought the same idea with a M42 ssd might. There's also this option, which is by far the neatest way to go.

All both of them? 😆

As it happens, I took the velcro off the vf soon after writing that post and have a new roll on the way. But here's a couple photos using an elastic tie (and 28mm fd) so at least you can see the sizing. With the velcro, you can position the cable a little nicer though, as the ssd is more stable and secure.

This must be a claimant of the title for the “best”? Sony E 18-110mm F4 G OSS

One note of caution re. this control of focus breathing and that is I don’t think it simply works with all lenses, but specific ones. Sony at least has a list. Not sure about Canon…

Awesome man. I feel this is truly the first successors to the 5d Mark III with ML 14 bit RAW

My FZ1000 arrived. Good news - everything is working beside the problema that the previous owner said. The EVF looks a little hazy (or I forgot how are the EVFs from the past) but very workable, the lamination of the LCD is kinda bad - but only when the camera is off, with the LCD on it dissapears. Did not test the HDMI, conector looks ok, probably a bad solder. The rest of the camera is in excellent shape - and came with 2 batteries and a 64Gb Sandisk Extreme card. Not so good - the "dust in the lens" is not in the lens, is in the sensor. Since I will almost always use it wide open at concerts, probably will go unnoticed. Will try the "bottle with vaccum cleaner" technique that people use with the LX100, but I do not have very high hopes. If the dust bothers me, probably will use the iFixit guide to get to the sensor - as last resort, the procedure looks easier than most cameras, but the sensor assembly is mounted on springs and probably is very easy to lose the sensor calbration. But for $270 (the prices here of the FZ1000 used are around double than that), I'm happy.

The c100 is one of my favorite cameras I've ever uses when it came to size and form factor, I just could never justify the price even on the used market. It was just so comfortable in the hands, at least for me. It'd be hard to "go back" to a c100 given all the new features that have come out since, but I think it absolutely would still hold up IQ wise for a lot of work. You probably wouldn't even need to use software like Topaz to upscale it to 4K. Less DSLR style bodies and more C100 style bodies plz.

The R6II has breathing compensation as well.

oh that's great, did not know that feature. I was going for either a canon r6 II or the sony A7IV. So I will prolly end up with the sony A7IV allthough I have a bunch of EF lenses, which is prolly better supported with the EF-RF adapter.

That's a funny way to spell "S-o-n-y F-X-3-0"

I agree with @kye, get a camera such as the Sony FX30 and let the camera handle lens breathing in camera. As also, any lens that has no lens breathing is likely to be a cinema lens... and thus won't have autofocus anyway!