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Bitrate is 100mbps fixed which is near as dammit the upper limit of the variable bitrate that my iPhone 12 uses (a typical comparator for what people would use a Pocket for) and I don't find it lacking for the purpose. More important for me is that the Osmo Pockets have Cinelike D which is a good compromise and very easy to grade. I had to do a little project at the weekend using the LX10/15 (with my Cinelike D hack activated) and the Pocket and they matched easily both in terms of colour and acceptably enough in image quality. On the Pocket 2, it is derived from a 4.6K sensor which is giving about 1.2x lossless zoom when shooting in 4K and roughly 2x and 1.6x in 1080p and 2.7K respectively. In the edit, I punched in to around 2x on a 4K file from my weekend project and was comfortable with the result so I wouldn't be bothered going up to say 1.5x as a safety and then adding the rest in the edit. A big advantage of the Pocket is adding the control stick which will give you full pan/tilt/zoom controls right from the handle. That usability trumps a small loss of image quality for the purposes I use it for. The 24mm in that spec is coming from it being a drone camera though. The actual lens on a Pocket 2 is 20mm f1.8. On of the beauties of this camera though are the magnetic clip on wide angle adapters (which gives you 15mm) and of course the anamorphic versions too. As well as also simultaneously being able to us magnetic ND filters too. If DJI do bring a new version 3 out with an optical zoom and/or with 10 bit capture then that would be great but I have to say that even as it stands now the Pocket 2 is a very compelling camera for travel and, for me, it is a vastly superior proposition to my iPhone for that role. Its not only because of the creative possibilities it has with having an integrated gimbal so you are not only stabilised but can do tracking etc or the anamorphic and NDs or the ability to have real hardware controls with the control stick. Its that you can take it out of your pocket, hold the power button on and be ready to shoot 2 seconds later rather than titting about unlocking the phone, opening an app and making sure you are in the correct mode. Another bonus is that if do have a need for remote shooting or self shooting with tracking then you can operate it from your phone which you can't do with your phone as you are already using it to film with 😉

Filmmaking is an art form. In the realm of creativity, people often crave the authenticity that only real humans can provide. This is why blockbusters often enlist well-known actors to generate interest and why, despite our daily reliance on them, our personal computers don't make headlines in gossip columns. https://www.eoshd.com/news/dont-panic-about-ai-its-just-a-tool/

1 man in this house and 2 women… One of them made pink cupcakes earlier…

Problem with FF is not the housing in itself. It's the dome/port which goes with a wydeangle FF lens. Yes Olympus camera are well renowed among pro uw photographers but for video, Pana features are in another league. For underwater photography, prior of the latest mirrorless FF revolution the market king was Nikon with its D850. With the new Z series and new mirrorless mount Nikon failed to give a valid lens selection for underwater use and now most photographers are switching to Sony A7R line. It's a complicated topic. A stellar lens topside could be the worst underwater.

It's likely that most footage you've seen from the Helios is when it is at its peak swirl settings, which is what it is famous for, but that requires the right combination of subject/focal distance and background distance/contrast. Lots of people buy a Helios and are disappointed because it's no-where near the swirliness they see in all the pictures. Here's a more general review of one of the models, focusing beyond the swirl and including a bunch of normal compositions. Also, it's worth pointing out that while the Helios does swirl, so do lots of other lenses from this time, and they do so almost as much. Once again, the internet glorifies the one that is "the most" of something and the ones that are a close second get no attention whatsoever (link with timestamp): Also, and this is quite controversial I know(!), but it is possible to close the aperture of these lenses(!!), and this tends to increase contrast and sharpness and reduce flaring etc - all the things that happens when you do this to other lenses(!!!). Here's a range of compositions comparing the lens wide open and then stopped down (linked to timestamp): Plus, all the swirls happen further out from the centre of the frame, so if you use it on a crop sensor then you're effectively cropping out the worst part of those optical distortions. Plus, lots of well known and highly prized cine lenses also swirl quite a bit, yet the films shot on them aren't a swirly mess. Here's a controlled test of a bunch of them, just skip through it looking at the string of lights in the background: and finally, if you crop to a wide aspect ratio, the "swirl" will only be seen on the very sides of the image, which means that the swirls are limited to being quite close to vertical - very similar to an anamorphic bokeh! Here is the Master Anamorphic 50/1.9 - potentially the most optically correct anamorphic lens ever made, and yet the bokeh is oddly-shaped with cat-eye rendering and also differently shaped towards the edges vs the middle: Compared with a swirly spherical lens like the Super Baltar 50/2.3: The character of the bokeh changes on the swirly lens from anamorphic-like on the edges to normal in the middle, which some might find distracting, but you might also find to be less distracting because it limits the distractions to the edges of frame rather than being directly behind the subject. The Zeiss CP.2 50/2.1 has very similar rendering to the Baltar above, and yet is known as a relatively neutral lens and is a workhorse of Hollywood: What I find far more distracting in bokeh is the edges of the shape, rather than the geometry of the shape. Take this example of perfectly round bokeh balls and see how distracting the ones on the right are.. and don't even get me started on "bubble bokeh"