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A bit serendipitous after me discovering my long stored DVX100 last week and getting all "you know what, this thing is so much more appealing to go and shoot with" before wishing there was something similar with a modern spec comes Sony launching two new camcorders. They are basically exactly the same thing but with the Z200 having 12G SDI and being able to use the MXF container at a later firmware update (albeit one that is bizarrely listed as being June 2025) and tick every modern spec box including Fully variable electronic ND AI Autofocus S-Cinetone and S-Log3 20x optical zoom 10 bit 4:2:2 4K60 Active Mode IS 4 channel audio Dual card slots At $4K and $3.2K respectively, they aren't exactly great value propositions versus rolling your own solution with a larger sensor mirrorless body and lenses (although good luck finding a par focal 20x servo zoom lens for your mirrorless) and yet... There is a huge upside in the operational value of having everything integrated when it comes to actually picking it up and going to shoot with it, particularly that variable ND and the 24-480mm zoom (which becomes a lossless 24-720mm with the clear image zoom). Yes, yes, of course you have to look past the sensor size "only" being 1" but its versatility and ease of use for past paced situations means this is an enormously powerful all round camera for making money with.

I was surprised by the pricing, I was thinking more like $4.5-5K. $3300 is very competitive, they are obviously looking to take out the Canon XF605, which is fine by me if that makes the XF605 used prices go down. These cams aren't huge but I would also like to see a compact version, the size of my XF405 is perfect for me, not sure that'll happen though. This market is probably too small now to support two or three or four models from each brand like in the past, so now we get one mid-sized model from each. Which also means no more overpriced flagships like the $7000 XF705, which is good.

That's the issue I brought up earlier in this thread; it's been reported by other users as well, always with Panasonic focus-by-wire lenses. It first happened to me during an overseas shoot. The same lens has never shown this behaviour on my OG Pocket, and the contacts on the BMMCC were clean (I cleaned the contacts on the lens and the camera, no change). I saw similar reports on the Blackmagic Design Cinematography forum and other forums. I think you just have to forget about focusing until you hit record. The cause isn't clear and it doesn't affect all users so it must be a camera-specific thing (the lens will be fine on one BMMCC but not another). It doesn't seem to be firmware-dependent either: when it happened to me on my first BMMCC a few years ago I was running the final firmware update that BMD released for this camera. I subsequently bought a secondhand BMMCC as a b-cam and its firmware was a few generations out of date; before I updated it I tested it with the Panasonic 12-35 and it exhibited the same focus issue (defocusing after I hit the record button). Updating the firmware didn't change anything. I've never had the infinity focus issue on mine. I only use manual lenses on my BMMCC now, but of course this means I have no access to any lenses with IBIS. I have an OG Pocket for lenses with electronics and IBIS.

FWIW, you can record in anamorphic-friendly modes on the fp, but you can't do it in raw (so you'll be limited to a mediocre h264). The trick is to use the director's viewfinder feature. I ended up trading in my fp and fp-l because I realized I was never using them because they didn't actually do anything better than any of my other cameras - and when set up to record 12-bit raw, even with the darkpowerlabs rig, they became as big as my R5. Thanks for the heads-up, though, on the KEH sale! I hadn't heard of it - my CN-E set (currently 14,24,50,85) just grew to include a 35. 😃

Swiss Rig launched an app today called sr RAW which unlocks 14-bit cDNG raw video recording on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. Has anyone tried this? I went out earlier today and shot a video (featuring my music :) as soon as I heard about it, here it is below. I had switched from Android to Apple a while back and was kind of missing the Motioncam app on Android which also allows raw video recording, so seeing this app today was great news! Even if it's more convenient than motioncam as it records cDNG directly (no transcoding required), this app is still very much in its infancy. It's really limited at the moment. It can only record up to 1080p and can only do that if you pay a subscription 😞 . Also this being cDNG raw means that it records footage cropped 2x, so everything is zoomed in - kind of reminds me of the earlier days with Magic Lantern on the Canon EOS M where you could only get reasonable results using the crop modes. For now you can't control the shutter angle and autofocus doesn't seem to work whilst recording so that's not great. FPS is limited to 24 or 25 only. Can't select ISO although don't know if that's necessary anyway as it's raw video. So whilst I think I've gotten some fairly nice results with it so far (though it does look a bit mushy and my grading probably isn't great), I'd say it doesn't make much sense using this for now, given how good the Blackmagic camera app is, but will be interesting to see where this goes especially if they can unlock 4k recording. Here's the website for the app: https://swissrig.com/sr-raw