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It is fun fun fun times, both my main career (filmmaking) and my backup / previous career (i.e. the CS/IT world) are going through very rough patches right now. Want to go back to how it was a couple of years ago when I could be working 100hr weeks if I wished (& I did!).

when I bought my set of leica r lenses more than 10 years ago, I was very careful with the versions and the focal length and user experience, to only buy lenses made in Germany. you are right, some of them are from Minolta.

$7k!

There is certainly a brisk business in disposable film cameras; apart from the disposables and instant cameras there aren't many new film cameras being made these days. But disposables are very popular and my film lab sometimes shows photos of the huge crates of processed disposables that they have to put out on the curb several times per year for trash/recycling pickup. Film's popularity varies depending on where you live. I'm in Montréal, which has a high population of young immigrants from France, and film is huge in France. Most of the people who work at my lab are French and there is often a line out the door of people who want to drop off their film for processing. I'm usually the only person in that line over the age of 30. I see almost as many film cameras out on the street here as digital, but in the areas frequented by tourists it's mostly mirrorless cameras and of course phones. Sure, film is back and has been for quite a while but yeah, the claim that it's outselling mirrorless cameras is ludicrous.

I present some of my photos on beautiful landscape views to others, who usually view these photos on their phones. some of the photos were taken with 18 mp cmos cameras, some were take with 5 mp ccd cameras. guess which ones do you think they like?

Film, vinyl, cassettes, etc - these formats were never gone. They just fell out of relevance with the 'mainstream' consumer and became 'niche'.

Perhaps film is growing faster (from a very low starting point) than digital cameras. Doesn't mean there are more of them being sold though! This video merely refers to one brand (Fujfilm, who dominate the film niche of new sales with their Instax subbrand). And it's including not just the sales of the cameras, but the film too (which can easily stack up to being even more than the camera itself!). So the headline of the video ("😱 Film is BACK and Outselling Mirrorless Cameras!") is totally misleading and false, as this isn't at all true for the wider camera industry once you add in Sony/Nikon/Panasonic/Pentax/Leica/etc sales.

I really enjoy this series at the french blockbusters

The Xiaomi 11 Ultra, yes. Superb video quality. Superb sensor. It would be a very good candidate, but the ergonomics are never going to be great with a hefty (by smartphone standards) piece of glass on the front.

Leica have always walked a fine line between the money you pay being for the engineering and design, and the money being for the branding. They've got to be more transparent about when they are using software correction on a very basic cheap optic made in China.

They're all pretty bad/cringeworthy now, but sure - here's one where you can see me confused by the Osmo Raw. Apparently airflow matters a lot. While it ran for about 13 minutes the other day and merely felt warm to the touch, I set it up by the window of my house today. The house is about 25C inside, but there's no breeze like there was by the river aside from it being a bit warmer. After 12:10 of recording ProRes 120p, the BlackMagic app stopped recording due to high temperature. When I picked up the phone, it was uncomfortably hot and so was the CF adapter. So rolling long takes at indoor concerts doesn't seem like it'll be a thing!

True, I can think of lots of firmware updates the FR-AV2 could get but not so much the F3 could do. Yes, as while the FR-AV2 is a nice two channel record, Tascam is totally AWOL in the world of prosumer or professional recorders for anything more than two channels. Where is the Tascam DR701D mk2? Where is the Tascam HS-P82 mk2? Where is the Tascam DR680 mk3? I hope the FR-AV2 is a hint that there will be a future FR-AV6 / FR-AV12 / etc in the future.

These guys already have it on small form factor: https://www.youtube.com/@BACKBONEca/videos Pity no option for the best of them (Insta360 Ace Pro) too so far...

How about the 11 ultra? @Andrew Reid It sports a 1/1.2" sensor, so still 16mm territory and worthy of C-mount lenses imho. Waiting for a tutorial of the mod and more raw video to see what the Aquos R6 is capable of.

It's also not really a new thing that Leica partner with a consumer brand for cameras and even some lenses. https://forum.mflenses.com/the-leica-minolta-collaboration-t77452.html The Leica R3 and R4 were basically Minolta bodies with a different mount. And a number of Leica R lenses were also Minolta rebrands (mostly zooms, but the 24/2.8 R lens was one too, as was the 15mm fisheye). At least one R lens was even made by Sigma - and that's not Sigma of 2024, but Sigma of before 1995. Imagine paying Leica prices for a 28-70mm zoom lens only to learn later that you'd just bought a Sigma.

An interesting mod, looks irreversible - but still worth it. The Xiaomi 12s ultra would be a good candidate for this too.

One inch S16 sensor estate on that phone? That would mean Super16 4K raw for 400 Euro if I got that right. Could the 1" 20MPix sensor be the well tested sensor of the RX10/100 series? I am pretty happy with the colours in photo Raw on my LX15 which also sports that Sony 20Mpix imager. Pretty sweet! Thanks for posting! @Cosimo Is there a more detailed instruction video how to do this mod?

A bearded review:

I posted about this over a week ago! 🤣 😂 😆 As the specs got leaked a while ago. But posted not to here, rather to a subreddit specifically for production sound: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProductionSound/comments/1fl0rn9/new_tascam_frav2_is_coming_a_zoom_f3_killer/ I agree with the first post from @BTM_Pix, the fact that this is able to treat TC normally (rather than the hacked up weird way TC is done with the Zoom F3, although yes, the Zoom F3 is technically "timecode capable") means the Tascam is a better idea than the Zoom F3. (although I suspect the small $100 difference in RRP means that the average buyer who doesn't even know about will end up choosing the F3 instead 😕 However I suspect within 18 months we'll see the Tascam street price getting closer to the F3's RRP) So true that many "Boom Ops" lack the necessary skills at the indie level. (in a way this is due to the extremely low value placed on the Sound Dept. Where they think the entire department could be done by just one person. And if we do get a 1st AS that it is basically a glorified PA position, not that their skill level has to be at the same level as a 1st AC or Gaffer. Honestly even getting two people who can each properly boom one person at a time is often a tall ask. That they will get it in close enough, and on axis, and with no shadows, and with no reflections, and do all of this while this one person is moving. On an indie no / low budget shoot I feel lucky if I get even one Boom Op who is competent at all of that. If they can lav people up too, then I've hit gold. Yup! That's why I just said "If they can lav people up too, then I've hit gold". And is why in the vast majority of these scenarios I will have to lav them up myself. But on bigger budget / professional film sets, where you have actually skilled people in your department, then it's the normal process for the AS (usually the 2nd AS) to be doing the lav-ing rather than the Sound Mixer. For a long time I went hard wired. But eventually I felt the audio quality sacrifice of using Lectrosonics wireless on the boom was worth it due to the practical benefits. If you've got a person dedicated for being the Mixer, not someone booming at the same time, then I don't think it's that hard for them to grasp basic gain staging. Ohhhh.... where did you see this? Wish the Tascam FR-AV2 would also let you record the 3.5mm stereo input as well as both XLR inputs. (currently it can only do one or the other, not all four inputs at once) If the new Zoom F3 mk2 could do that and does TC sensibly (not only via BT!) and does 24bit 48KHz BWAV, then I think I've found myself my next backup / supplementary / compact recorder. That's true, due to firmware updates for the OG F8 then it's almost identical to the latest F8n Pro.

For almost any other camera, I'd suggest that you should post some details about the camera, etc - but in this case, I think it's perfectly valid to just yell the price. 🤣

Panasonic FZ2500?? (or the even older Panasonic FZ1000) https://www.dpreview.com/products/panasonic/compacts/panasonic_dmcfz2500 Or the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX10/LX15 or similar?? Panasonic GX850/GX800?? As all of these share Panasonic DNA it might be also easier to in a pinch have them act as a C Cam to your Panasonic S5 if you wish.