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@Django & @MrSMW - I can't recommend the Z9 high enough. I've had mine for over a week, and I have zero regrets and am just loving it.

I saw this video on YouTube a few weeks ago that could be useful for some of you guys to think about...

I think it's just about ROI.

I’d like to call a halt to buying gear but I’m seriously thinking about selling my Lumix S5 and getting an S5X to go with my S5Mk2. The user experience with the Mk2 is so much better than the Mk1. It would only mean spending 1000€. That and a Sigma 16-28 f2.8 and the Rode Wireless Pro. Oh, and sell my Macbook Pro 16” M1 Pro with 16gb ram as I made a big mistake there. 16gb ram is totally inadequate. I need 32gb at least. Expensive mistake. So…fuck. That’s a lot of money😵‍💫

Human vision tends to favor temporal resolution over spacial or color resolution. Detecting motion is an important survival skill that we, and most animals, probably developed early in our evolutionary history. Color resolution isn’t nearly as important. Early color TV took advantage of that fact to reduce the bandwidth required to transmit chroma signals alongside the luma signal. We still see that today with 4:2:2, 4:2:0, and other color sampling schemes used for digital video.

If we had more artists and less engineers, you wouldn’t have this thread or this forum. You’d be exchanging letters written with quill pens with your fellow artists. 😉

Many in France believe that too.

My parents still believe Great Britain has colonies and rules the world…

I'm offsetting my timetable by a month. I allowed myself to take advantage of Cyber deals through the end of November. If all goes according to plan, I'll be able to hold off on purchases until Cyber Week 2024 -- I wouldn't deny myself that opportunity!

The key difference is that OIS and IBIS will stabilise during the exposure, and digital IS stabilises afterwards. I did a test some time ago to show what this looks like. This test is deliberately with a long lens, so is somewhat exaggerated, but should be indicative of the issue. If you are using very short shutter speeds then it doesn't matter, it's only when using a 45-360 degree shutter angle that these effects would be visible. Once you know how to recognise it, you see it in YT content every so often, so it does happen in real-life. The combination of action-camera and low-light is particularly succeptible. Digital IS is a great tool, and for some people it's sufficient. Use whatever works for you 🙂

90% of my Canon glass are EF primes and none of them have lens IS. IBIS is just great for getting rid of micro jitters and what not. Its a solid feature. Digital IS not only crops but can also introduce other issues. And of course IBIS isn't immune to that either with infamous wobble issues on wide angle lenses. The beautiful thing about Z8/Z9 is that you can actually lock the IBIS. So it can be on or off depending on lens/situation. Having options is always better than not having them! That said, within Canon ecosystem, I would definitely choose the R5C over the R5 even though it doesn't have IBIS.

In the comments of the react video all the situation was explained. "Hey Kai & Lok, Bloody producer here. First thing first the videos have bene restored (there’s a post on DRTV channel explaining what happened). Long story short, no one is monitoring the channel so things decay. I wish you’d reached out to me first, but I also understand why you do what you do. I haven’t been back to our old channel for years, and this certainly brought back memories. I still remember the hundreds of weekly meetings we had together, exchanging banters and ridicule each other’s haircuts. I remember our shared love for Top Gear, and Lok our shared Apple fanboyship. Those were the most fun 7 years I had work-wise, and I still miss those days a lot. I’m sure you’ll agree that those were also our most creative years, daring to think big (nothing compared to today’s Mr Beast era but those were some big ideas on YouTube back then!). I’m glad we got it going for so long. I’m also glad you guys continue carrying on making these videos. I have reached out personally and hopefully you got my messages. Would be happy to catch up whenever you guys are back in Hong Kong. Please do more of these reaction videos. I’d be the first one to watch! And thanks for bringing back my memories, and renewing the interest in our old channel and content. Cheers, Richard (Bloody Producer)" After that, Kai posted: "UPDATE: Good News! Thank you to the Richard/Bloody Producer and DR for making all the videos available again What also happened is that I ended up speaking to the Bloody Producer; he made the point - both publicly and privately - that he wished that we’d got in touch before publishing this video. But I want to clarify a few things first: First thing I’d like to say is that primarily this was made as a reaction video; the purpose of it is to SHARE the old content that we had on our hard drives with the public because it wasn’t available anymore, and hadn’t been for more than one month. Simple as that. Although the mystery of why they were taken down in the first place has since been explained by Richard/BP, it wasn’t our core objective to find out. Nothing shifty. We wanted to make the videos available for all to watch via a fair use/reaction video sort of thing. Another thing about Richard/Bloody Producer mentioning that he wished that I’d “reached out” makes it sound like we have been on good terms ever since and I simply didn’t want to mention it to him. The last communication we had was in 2016 when I didn’t sign the last contract and it was made quite clear how things were at that point and there’s been no communication up until now. Long story short: things haven't been cool between us for quite some time. We both have had chances to chuck out an olive branch at many opportunities, but ultimately didn't. I felt that we were releasing this purely for the sake of sharing content with you - the people watching - not to do the dirty on DR or to stir up a controversy. People have written about this news over a month ago; blogs asked me for interviews about it; Tony Northrup made a video titled “DigitalRev DELETED!” On 2nd November 2023 with over 80k views. If either Lok or I wanted to jump on the Hot Controversial News bandwagon, we could’ve done it much, much earlier. Alas, I have apologised to Richard/Bloody Producer directly for not attempting to contact him before hand. And the good thing is that, as Richard and I are both grown-ass men, we can talk again, bury the hatchet - let bygones be bygones - and just move on. And even more importantly: the videos are back online on the DRTV channel and, well, Richard/BP has encouraged us to make more reaction videos if we want, which is great because we really enjoyed watching those old videos together and I hope you have too! Thanks for the support, everyone! Love from Me"

Hollywood has always been and continues to be formulaic. Occasionally some new things are introduced, like influences from New Wave or graphic novels, but then those aspects just become part of the palette of options.

Let's be reasonable! 4K/8K is quite far from cinema...a good FHD is softer and creamier with an FF sensor and an old lens...etc. It's not a few extra images that change much: real cinema isn't silent cinema in black and white with a real piano in the room? Lol Tell me, have you tested when you lose the cinematic sensation: at 25p, 26p, 27p, 28p ...29.5p ..more?! Please, it's not a bit ridiculous...who decides, is it you? Is slow motion filmed in 60p 120p no longer cinema? : no, stop, we have to wait for the film to return to the original 24p !? Amusing . Cinematic rendering is a personal matter. Sometimes old high-budget films on silver film then remastered have a very clean rendering, but not sharp...very beautiful, very cinematic visual experiences Cinema is just an illusion that arouses passions and 24p is a matter of broadcasting habits and laziness... and for TV broadcasting everything has to be readjusted, so 24p disappears. For video games it's only cartoons so the cinema experience here, I don't understand, it's irrational !? Now if you are a purist, only go to cinemas and choose those where you are sure of the broadcast quality... but don't force anyone to only see 24p which jerks at the slightest important panning. To say that 24p will disappear one day is not important, just a provocation... perhaps it will happen, I am neither for nor against it?

In my opinion as a software engineer at a company extensively using AI, it is a mistake to believe that there is anything humans can do that AI will never be able to do. ChatGPT was launched barely over a single year ago. Midjourney was launched less than 18 months ago. Imagine where they will be next year. Or, more fairly, imagine where these models will be when they are the age of a working professional--then remember that the models will keep learning indefinitely, not tied to a human lifespan. Just like machine learning models, all people--including highly skilled professionals--start with 0 knowledge, and their opinions and artistic vision/instincts are formed from sensory inputs. The building blocks of our brains are not complex, though humans have more training data and a lot more neurons than today's ML models.