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Had a quick go at the Z8 the other day. Shot some 8K ProRes test footage with a vintage Nikkor AIS lens and the Z 35mm f1.8. I have mixed feelings about it. For some reason the IBIS was disabled on the AIS lens, not sure if that's the case with all adapted lenses or not but it was rather disapointing (VR and EIS was greyed out). That said, it was pretty glorious seeing that vintage lens in 8K for the first time! N-Log is kind of a can of worms. Footage is pretty noisy at ISO800 and yeah the provided Nikon LUTS really do suck, horrible highlight roll-off that kills the DR. The info is there though so you'll get better results going manual. The menus and button control is probably the worst from any system, sorry Nikon it really does my head in. Also the grip felt sticky which is not cool. The size/weight is just right, love the LCD hinge system and overall build quality. Just a quick first impression so I guess take what I say with a grain of salt. I do like the camera despite my few gripes and might even try renting it to spend more time with it as again the menu/UI takes a lot of getting used to.

Great post. As a fellow computer science person, I agree with your analysis, especially that it will get better and better, and will get so good that we will learn more about the human condition due to how good it will get. This is also not something new, in the early days of computer graphics, someone wrote a simulation of how birds fly in formation and it was so accurate that the biologists and animal behavioural scientists studied the algorithms and this is how the 'rules' of birds flying in formation were initially discovered. I just wanted to add to the above quote by saying that studios have already made large strides in this direction with the comic-book genre films, whose characters are the stars and not the actors that play them. This is an extension of things like the James Bond films. These were all films where the character was constant and the actor was replaceable. VFX films are the latest iteration of this, where the motion capture and voice actors and the animators are far less known, and when it's AI replacing those creatives to make CGI characters that will be the next step, and then it will be AI making realistic-looking characters. For those reading that aren't aware of the potential success of completely virtual characters and how people can bond with a virtual person, I direct your attention to Hatsune Miku, a virtual pop star: Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku She was created in 2007, which in the software world is an incredibly long time ago, and in the pop star world is probably even longer! But did it work? That's a figure from over a decade ago and equates to just over USD$70,000,000, which is almost USD$100M in todays money. I couldn't find any reliable more recent estimates, but she is clearly a successful commercial brand when you review the below. What does this mean in reality though, it's not like she topped the charts. Here is a concert from 2016 - she is rear-projected onto a pane of glass that was mounted on the stage. She was announced as a performer at the 2020 Coachella, that was cancelled due to covid. So, while Japan might be more suited to CGI characters than the west is (although that is changing) - take the Replika story for example. Replika is a female virtual AI companion who messages and sends pics to subscribers, including flirty suggestive ones. The owners of Replika decided that the flirty stuff should be a separate paid feature and turned it off for the free version - the users reacted strongly. So strongly in fact that it's now an active field of research for psychologists trying to figure out how to understand, manage and regulate these things. It's one thing for tech giants to 'curate' your online interactions, but it's another when the tech giants literally control your girlfriend. Background: https://theconversation.com/i-tried-the-replika-ai-companion-and-can-see-why-users-are-falling-hard-the-app-raises-serious-ethical-questions-200257 There are also other things to take into consideration as well. Fans are very interested in knowing as much as possible about their idols, but idols are real people and have human psychological needs and limitations, but virtual idols will not. The virtual idols that share their entire lives with their fans will be even more relatable than the human stars that need privacy and get frustrated and yell at paparazzi etc. These virtual idols will be able to be PR-perfect in all the right ways (i.e. just human enough to be relatable but not so human that they accidentally offend people). There is already a huge market for personalised messages from stars, virtual idols will be able to create these in virtually infinite amounts. Virtual stars will be able to perform at simultaneous concerts, make public appearances wherever and whenever is optimal, etc. And if you still need another example about how we underestimate technology... "Computers in the future may weigh less than 1.5 tons.” - Popular Mechanics magazine, 1949.

Nice article! My perspective is as a software engineer, at a company that is making a huge effort to leverage AI faster and better than the industry. I am generally less optimistic than you that AI is "just a tool" and will not result in large swaths of the creative industry losing money. The first point I always make is that it's not about whether AI will replace all jobs, it's about the net gain or loss. As with any technology, AI tools both create and destroy jobs. The question for the economy is how many. Is there a net loss or a net gain? And of course we're not only concerned with number of jobs, but also how much money that job is worth. Across a given economy--for example, the US economy--will AI generated art cause clients/studios/customers to put more, or less net money into photography? My feeling is less. For example, my company ran an ad campaign using AI generated photos. It was done in collaboration with both AI specialists to write prompts, and artists to conceptualize and review. So while we still used a human artist, it would have taken many more people working many more hours to achieve the same thing. The net result was we spent less money towards creative on that particular campaign, meaning less money in the photography industry. It's difficult for me to imagine that AI will result in more money being spent on artistic fields like photography. I'm not talking about money that creatives spend on gear, which is a flow of money from creatives out, I'm talking about the inflow from non-creatives, towards creatives. The other point I'll make is that I don't think anyone should worry about GPT-4. It's very competent at writing code, but as a software engineer, I am confident that the current generation of AI tools cannot do my job. However, I am worried about what GPT-5, or GPT-10, or GPT-20 will do. I see a lot of articles--not necessarily Andrew's--that confidently say AI won't replace X because it's not good enough. It's like looking at a baby and saying, "that child can't even talk! It will never replace me as a news anchor." We must assume that AI will continue to improve exponentially at every task, for the foreseeable future. In this sense, "improve" doesn't necessarily mean "give the scientifically accurate answer" either. Machine learning research goes in parallel with psychology research. A lot of machine learning breakthroughs actually provide ideas and context for studies on human learning, and vice versa. We will be able to both understand and model human behavior better in future generations. My third point is that I disagree that people are fundamentally moved by other people's creations. You write I think that only a very small fraction of moviegoers care at all about who made the content. This sounds like an argument made in favor of practical effects over CGI, and we all know which side won that. People like you and I might love the practical effects in Oppenheimer simply for being practical, but the big CGI franchises crank out multiple films each year worth billions of dollars. If your argument is that the people driving the entertainment market will pay more for carefully crafted art than generic, by the numbers stories and effects, I can't disagree more. Groot, Rocket Raccoon, and Shrek sell films and merchandise based off face and name recognition. What percent of fans do you think know who voiced them? 50%, ie 100 million+ people? How many can name a single animator for those characters? What about Master Chief from Halo (originally a one dimensional character literally from Microsoft), how many people can tell you who wrote, voiced, or animated any of the Bungie Halo games? In fact, most Halo fans feel more connected to the original Bungie character than the one from the Halo TV series, despite having a much more prominent actor portrayal. My final point is not specifically about AI. I live in an area of the US where, decades ago, everyone worked in good paying textile mill jobs. Then the US outsourced textile production overseas and everyone lost their jobs. The US and my state economies are larger than ever. Jobs were created in other sectors, and we have a booming tech sector--but very few laid off, middle aged textile workers retrained and started a new successful career. It's plausible that a lot of new, unknown jobs will spring up thanks to AI, but it's also plausible that "photography" shrinks in the same way that textiles did.

The false color is now available on Sony's via a LUT https://www.cinematools.co/false

Currently waiting for a gig to start tonight with my Pocket. Fashionably early though ! Nice to have a stabilised anamorphic camera that raises absolutely zero eyebrows from security staff either on the way in or when you are using it.

Interesting.. I thought this was a good explainer: TLDR; Nolan only mixes for the best theatres, and doesn't care about shittier ones. I guess that arrogance has run its course, since you saw it on IMAX and still couldn't hear it!