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Out of those though, I'd only need to pick up the new zoom having 3X S5ii bodies and it would be my pick regardless as it is actually better in almost every way over the S9. Pity there is no real dinky Sony lens if I do pick up that ZV-E1 next year as intended which for work purposes would have the Tamron 20-40mm f2.8 welded to it. For a walkabout/travel, Tamron 28-75 f2.8 I also have would cover my needs but then again, my A7RV is not much bigger or heavier but far more capable so I'd take that with it's 61mp cropping ability. But sorry, polluted this thread with more dirty Sony talk. I will go wash my mouth out after just mentioning once more, especially for stills, the A7RV is an INSANE quality vs compact size camera 😉

Call me cynical but as the S5 already charged over USB then they could simply have removed the charger from the boxes to become compliant rather than make a whole “new” camera for a specific region. After all, the changes come in at the end of 2024 and it’s not as if the original S5 was going to have much of a life beyond that anyway as a new product. They could also make additional money by selling the chargers separately. I know that no manufacturer is going to say “we’ve got shitloads of these in a warehouse and need to get shut of them” but this stretches creativity in spinning that situation very thin. Also, the famously absolutely NOT part of the EU anymore UK government has previously stated that it wouldn’t align itself to this particular EU directive. Mind you, they say a lot of things. My conspiracy theory is that they took a production run of the old box camera and a production run of the S5ii and swapped the internals to make the new box camera and whatever the hell this is on the basis it would be easier to clear stock of a “new” S5 than the old box camera. I’m only kidding of course but it makes about as much sense as their given reason.

Some worrying thoughts are occupying my mind at the moment so it might do me some good to let them out for a run... Here goes. In the 1990s I grew up with the early internet, it wasn't very media rich due to the bandwidth constraints and it only worked well on a big screen with a keyboard at a desk, so it suited web pages and forums. Written stuff, basically. Come the y2k and we began to see the early social media sites like Myspace and then Facebook but you still had to use these at a desk. Which lends itself to being able to type long sentences and create art. Come smartphones, they couldn't offer the full world wide web experience, on a pokey slow browser, but this changed with apps. So fast forward a bit to the 2010s... There has been a proliferation of apps into our lives, but it wasn't really until Youtube and Facebook Groups got some serious traction that things started to change. I used to be pretty confident in the EOSHD blogging days that if I sat down to write a review, or opinion, or do some proper journalism or get a scoop and break the camera news first it would get some attention and traction, now I am not so sure it will as it is a separate indie .com website outside of social media, and this is very bad news for the internet because we cannot let Meta and Google and a handful of other corporations OWN the entire web. So to the making a living bit... For creatives like photographers and filmmakers the internet was a real blessing, it allows you to setup stall with a website and get your work out there. You get noticed and then you get hired, that's how it used to work. There has to be a strong demand from industry for those positions as well, no matter how good you are it doesn't matter if the cinema industry is in a downward spiral. Cinema and photography have to compete with other forms of content too. Again it comes back to smartphones. Neither cinema and photography are well suited to a small screen and even smaller attention spans, they are supposed to be viewed on a large canvas and in a socially interactive way like in a gallery or theatre. Now with stuff like streaming, this works fine when everyone has a subscription to one or two of the same platforms like Netflix and are stuck at home with nothing better to do like during covid, but after a while there is a total oversupply of stuff to watch, and a total ADHD mess of an audience who is getting constantly distracted by social media content in direct competition to the long form stuff. So we have a meltdown at the moment in the filmmaking industry, and even in the commercial videography industry where it is now so easy to shoot something, companies may as well hire an intern to do it or have some staff do it themselves, because the bar is set by social media and that as I said works best with very short authentic bursts of home made content, where production quality or even the camera doesn't really matter. With photography, if you're an artist trying to compete for attention with all of that stuff you are going to be in trouble if you don't do double-duties as a social media influencer, which of course means making YOURSELF the story and front and centre. Not a lot of artists are all that comfortable with that. I'm not. So the business model now is that your content has to be free, and you merchandise it or earn from advertising and sponsorship due to your social media reach as an artist. And I REALLY hate that because it cheapens what it means to be a photographer or filmmaker. At the end of the day, the photos and films should be what matter and they should be paid for. PS Have you noticed by the way - that the AI bubble has completely lost people's interest, the content is all so un-compelling? Why do you think this is... It's because there is so much of it... And it is disassociated with the artist's own hand... And that is exactly what all this tech has done to use filmmakers and photographers... The accessibility of tech means that there's now too much content, and not enough demand for the next piece. A big economic correction is on the way.

Yeah, not sure why there's the discrepancy. I also made a mistake with the S5ii. I accidentally gave the S5 weight. The S5ii is a little heavier: R8 + 24-50 is 671g S5ii + 18-40 is 895g S9 + 18-40 is 641g It should be noted that the S5ii combo is fully weather-sealed and it has an integrated fan. The other two have none of that. I have to hand it to Panasonic for give us a useful, weather-resistant kit lens at only 155g.

R8 + 24-50 should be 671, 24-50 is only 210g but some website report it as 270g

Wow, so Matthew Allard over at Newsshooter is reporting that the Shinobi MKII will have a new FW update that allows it to do touch focus AF with the Canon R6 MKII (among other non-Canon cameras). The R5C is not on the list yet, but this all seems promising. Here's an excerpt from the original Atomos press release: "At IBC, Atomos (Hall 11, D25) announces major new functionality for Shinobi II, the amazingly successful Photo | Video Monitor. Users get a world’s first: on-monitor touch auto focus and focus subject tracking, in both photo and video camera modes, and it’s a free update for all existing users. The first camera models to be supported are from Sony (A7 MkIV), Canon (R6 Mark II), Panasonic (S5 II) and Fujifilm (GFX100 II). Nikon is also now supported for photo and video modes, with auto focus and focus subject tracking to follow in future updates." Sorry if this has already been posted but don't recall seeing it.

Since many people already own usb c cables, packing a new one with every gadget results in a lot of waste. The reasoning is that not including a cable and charger with every product will both save millions of cables from being thrown out, and save a lot of packaging material since the box can be smaller. When people need cables they can buy one separately. I personally think it's great to standardize cables and not include them by default.

I agree 100% that it is getting harder and harder to make a living in this industry. What makes it even harder and what hasn't yet been mentioned is that the price of everything is also going up, so not only do you have more and more clients who want things for free or lower cost, your own cost of living is increasing exponentially. I still will never forget a really badly exposed cell phone mirror photo of Kim Kardashian got over 100M views and true masterpieces from some of the top photographers in the world would be lucky to get 1,000 views. These days true talent and art are not appreciated at all, what matters to the current generation is who is in the picture or video and what they are doing, not the level of skill or years of knowledge needed to create it. I personally have been affected by the current trends as well, I had to give up some of my service offerings because the level of effort vs what the clients were willing to pay meant I would be making less than minimum wage after expenses and my time were accounted for. Residential Real Estate Photography/Video, Weddings, and a few others I have dropped completely unless something really high end comes my way. I will say though that for the niche I specialize in (events, promo videos/photography, etc.) social media has also opened new doors for me. I do freelance photography/video work for some of the big ad agencies in my area and even at that level their clients are obsessed with social media. They literally host events with social media in mind, and where I come in is they hire me to film them. I filmed more private VIP social media inspired events this year than ever before and to these clients money is no obstacle as long as it produces something that will generate useable social media content. More big names than ever before are trying to reach new clients on social media and they hire people like me to create their content. They also scour social media to see what their competition is doing and send me their work and ask if I can create something like that for them; it is so odd using 8K capable cameras and thousands of dollars worth of gear to create 30-60s worth of content that will be viewed at 480P in the worst aspect ratio and orientation possible that its almost laughable. I literally had to rethink the way that I shoot and completely focus on anything that will grab the audience's attention for 2 seconds vs trying to be artistic or create content that truly took planning and was challenging to create because that's what my clients want because that's what their audience wants. Anyone who hasn't seen the movie Idiocracy should check it out, it feels like that future is already here in many ways.