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The final line up for the 2024 season. From left to right… S1H with battery grip, 70-200 f4 (not shown, Rode WG2) permanently on tripod shooting static full length ceremony & speeches, manual focus, 4k 25p. Z6ii + adapted Tamron 70-180 f2.8 (not shown battery grip arriving tomorrow) with option Tamron 20-40 f2.8, stills only but can do video in an emergency. Sling on shoulder. S5ii + cage + Sigma 28-70 f2.8 + Rode Micro as my all day run & gun, gimbal ready, 4k 50p unit (so 42-105mm equivalent). Right hip. Zf + 40mm f2 candid stills but can also do video in an emergency. Left hip. Single backpack with all lighting, all other audio, all spare batts, cards, power bank, chargers, gimbal etc, but actually lives in my cart along with the 2 big light stands, 40m extension reel and 500W portable power bank.

Thanks for the reply! Darn, if the Sigma 28-70 f/2.8 only had lens stabilization, it would be a no-brainer for me. Partly because, in the USA at least, Sigma will replace lens mounts free of charge, so if I decided to move from Panasonic to Sony at some point, then it would be an easy swap.

And while I think of it, the only other lens that really stands out for me in L Mount land is the Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 which of course is crop mode only so more like a 27-52 which for those not really requiring anything longer than 50mm, IMO is a gem of a combo. I came very close actually to doing just this and opting for it’s forgotten brother, the 50-100mm f1.8 other than for the fact that the S1H AF is not as good as the S5ii and the 50-100 has shit AF AF! Maybe…just maybe, if the ‘S2H’ is the absolute dogs for stills and video, I might be tempted next season, but then again, that ship may already have sailed and I might consider replacing my remaining L Mount gear and going all in on Nikon next year with Z6iii…

The perfect lens IMO, at least for my needs, whether 28-70 FF or 42-105 in crop mode, stills or video. Personally, I always shoot stills FF and use longer lenses for reach with say 24mp, but with something 60+ like some of the more recent Sony’s, I’d be quite happy to keep my lens sizes down and crop instead. In fact, I am fairly sure that the Sony A7RV in crop mode is 26mp so a little bigger than the native 24mp FF sensors. But the Sigma. Perfect size, weight, reach for me. I’m not much of a wider angle shooter and if so, I have a 20mm for that very limited (but still needed) requirement and prefer to shoot slightly longer lenses so 28 over 24, 40 over 35, 90/105 over 85 and rarely (but do need) anything over 150 and for that I have 180. I shoot this combo crop mode all the time now as whilst I don’t need every bit of footage slow mo, some bits I do want to slow to 75% and other stuff to 50% and remembering to change back and forth between 25p and 50p when also shooting stills has caught me out too many times and the quality difference is marginal. In fact, if you want better AF, shoot cropped. Liked the 20-60 that came with my original S5, but really only used it as a day time wide, otherwise a bit slow for my needs and tastes, so sold it. I’m an f4 day, 2.8 night, at their slowest kind of guy. I will generally shoot video wide open, but not always and stills generally the same or stopped down a bit, but a lot of my work can be low light and slower than f4 is a hard no from me. That little Canon is a great lens. I had that adapter on my Fuji XT3 as a ‘75’ and it was a great cheap workhorse. I do prefer primes in principle and would shoot them exclusively if it was practical for me to do so, but being able to be shooting at 180mm, rotate to 70mm and then flip (camera) to 40 and then 20, over 2 bodies, well it would need 4 bodies + 4 primes or a very handy assistant to do that otherwise! But the Sigma 28-70mm f2.8 is a 💯% from me. The Sigma f2 and f2.8 Contemporary primes are also A Grade as far as I am concerned with better build, feel, style and character over the Lumix f1.8’s plus have aperture rings and AF on/off switches on them. It’s above 90mm where L Mount loses me…

I hope you're right - but when I hear comments like this it makes me think alot of us are probably in for a big reality check on the impact this will have on mainstream content. I'd also say that we already have ample signs that there is indeed a huge appetite for content that isn't human. It's called cartoons, animation, CGI, etc. I'm not sure of the history of animation's rise but if there was a backlash to that tech - it obviously didn't last. Also I'll say it again: my 5 year-old will not have these moral attachments to human vs non-human content - and it is them and future kids that will be driving all of this. But again, I hope you're right.

theyre marketing themselves in a way that makes the tech seem special to try and gain infinite investor money just like any other tech company does

It's a joke...the topic seems a little funny to me. " tripod improves image quality much more than 10 years development " "Warm water is less hot than boiling water " 😄 The AF, the IBIS are remarkable advances when we do reporting... When we do cinema, a tripod, a crane, manual focus are widely used

This is a ridiculous post. What is the context? There are some situations with some camera/lens combinations in which AF is undoubtably superior. Indeed, AF can make shots which would be hard if not impossible with MF straightforward. There are, equally, some situations when MF is perfect. I prefer MF lenses but I regret that preference time after time - there are things I’d like to do but don’t have the talent or skills or resources to do with MF. To make a blanket statement about your experience with no context is nonsense. Your scoop is possibly better used to serve mashed potato.

Perhaps the critical concept is that AI is calculators trained with only human input data. This whole thing is like when people learned anatomy. At first people thought that we couldn't possibly understand how the body worked because it was made by God. Over many hundreds of years we've basically worked out more and more of the organic chemistry and various principles etc, and now no-one who is familiar with modern medicine would question our ability to understand the physical body. Now comes AI, and we're back to saying that we couldn't possibly understand or replicate what it is to be human, because we're etherial magical special and knowable only to God. I think that line of thinking will suffer the same fate, and will suffer it at thousands of times the pace.