Andrew Reid

Yeah, this has an amazing image in good light. It's really an ISO 200 camera max, but it delivers. Global shutter Super 35mm sensor for that price is pretty unique now. Will be interesting to look into what the firmware update history was like... Ages since I used it.

Yes the 7D is also good. https://www.eoshd.com/2017/06/magic-lantern-raw-video-current-camera-capabilities-updated-2017/ 7D - 1728 x 972 – APS-C (14bit 16:9) - 2048 x 930 – 4.07x crop mode (14bit 2.2:1) 50D - 1536 x 1056 – APS-C (14bit 3:2) - 1536 x 864 – APS-C (14bit 16:9) - 2000 x 852 – 3.8x crop mode (14bit 2.35:1) https://www.eoshd.com/2013/08/canon-7d-raw-with-magic-lantern-1st-sample-footage-in-the-wild/ Disclaimer is things may have changed a bit since... development on the cheapest cameras 50D and 5D2 seem to have been more of a focus than some of the others including the 7D with it's tricky dual CPU setup. Even some of the SD card cameras are now shooting pretty well in RAW thanks to the 10bit mode. https://www.eoshd.com/2017/06/enabling-10bit-raw-video-mini-canon-100d/ Update: Ah, I see the 50D now does "3744x1080 23.976fps /w realtime preview". That's in 10bit RAW. It's a crop mode though, so not Super 35mm full width of the sensor. And the aspect ratio is whacky. The good thing about the 5D2 is the 3K crop mode is S35-ish... around 1.86x. The 5D3 is king with the 3.5K / 1.5x RAW crop mode but more expensive than a used 5D2, by upward of $1000 difference. For 2K cinema like an Alexa, the full frame look is what I use most on the 5D2 and 5D3 and here there's less difference than you'd think! Both very nice! The article wanted to focus on dead cheap stuff $200 to $1000. Of course if you spend more, you can get a Pocket 4K, or a GH5S, Canon 1D C or even a Nikon Z6 with RAW output (coming soon)... and so on... But I still think there is a lot to be said for the down and dirty older cameras and how cinematic they are.

Hard to believe it, but EOSHD is nearly 10 years old! 2010 was a big year for digital cinema. The 5D Mark II was in full stride kickstarting DSLR filmmaking. Arri's first proper digital film camera the Alexa was released and revolutionised filmmaking at the highest levels. Now all these years later I'm still looking - not for the sharpest, highest K, most featured packed modern camera but for a camera costing less than $1000 which has the most Alexa-like image. Not on a technical level, of course, but in terms of the feel of the images and how cinematic the end-results are when viewed on the big screen. Read the full article

Really, the Alexa is impractical for most people and I agree with Ed that there are better buys even at £5k It has such a nice image but easy to make an impulsive decision based on the name. This might even get you close to the image for MUCH less https://cvp.com/product/z-cam-e2c-4k-cinematic-camera And RED Dragon 6K getting down towards £6k now. Worth keeping an eye out for those. Much lighter at 2.2kg, so more like an Alexa Mini. And much more res plus a better raw codec, all internal.

Apple and Google phones don't real generate random numbers, which are necessary for secure encryption. Government backdoor right there. I am sure these US bluechip companies are thrilled at the empty order book thanks to Donald Tit. Intel for example is set to lose potentially billions of dollars over next few years in lost Chinese orders. That Trump has so many people believing in his business skills is a neat trick. Unravelling the entire US economy is his other lesser known neat trick and this is the start of it. Huawei can afford to lose Qualcomm as can other companies. Snapdragon is replaced by Kirin 980 already in the P30 Pro and many other handsets and I can personally vouch for how fast it is. However, if the Chinese wanted to withdraw a few services.... Let's say "manufacturing"... Where does that leave important US tech giants like Apple and Google? What if Foxconn closed the order books on those companies? And on RED? A trade war is like any other war. Nobody wins.

Huawei will no longer have access to Android and Google Play Services for future devices (nor updates for current ones) after Google suspended business under pressure from the Trump administration. This has implications for Leica as well, who have a partnership with Huawei on the flagship camera phones such as the P30 Pro and Mate20 Pro. Read the full article

Yes a few scorch marks from the engine and the plastic over the focus scale has melted off. Bit of tape over that!! It has resulted in a nice price though. Usually they are 3 grand on eBay!

Let me know how the Japan store camera hunting goes. Some great shops there. I found a Canon 200mm F1.8 EF in Berlin or 1150 euros last week No idea how I am going to fit it in my hand luggage though.

I would do, but it's probably going to die at some point It's also a heavy beast, so my back might die even sooner that it does. I wish we had got a smaller Alexa, in days gone by - for around £25,000 which could now be picked up for £5000. I suppose we'll have to wait a big longer for the Alexa Mini to come down in price!! I wonder how much it would be to insure an Alexa and how much it could be rented out for? That would be one way to make the £5k back. Talking of depreciation... I just bought a 1DS Mark III with 28-70mm F2.8 for 900 euros all-in... That combo was over 10 grand in 2008.

Fantasies do come true for people willing to work hard over many years but sometimes, a dream can be realised simply by sitting down for a very long time and doing nothing, until the object of your desire becomes a bit old and tatty. Yes, now is your chance to own an Arri Alexa. Read the full article

I hope you are successful GM5 with your efforts at the DPReview forum. I feel it is a matter for them now. This is a very old thread - 2016 was 3 years ago. I don't think we should be obsessing over Ebrahim again, it brings back bad memories for me and bad memories for the people he scammed. Therefore I'll lock the thread from this point onwards.

$949 for a manual focus 50mm F2? Not exactly an outstanding bargain or a unique lens optically. Maybe put a nice 35mm F1.4 on a Fuji X-T3 or X-T30 instead. Both made in China!

Blah blah blah. Somebody's been watching the news! Somebody has probably been listening to Trump as well, blabber on about how dreadful the Chinese are. Well you make a political post, you get a political response. Or somebody showing you the facts on why they're wrong about Chinese manufacturing. Given time they will not just match Zeiss or Leica for lenses but surpass. Even this early in the life of the lens manufacturers, they are doing quality items. You infer they are not, and that the whole country is basically evil. Look at the images from this and tell me it isn't worth $700. https://phillipreeve.net/blog/review-zhong-yi-mitakon-50mm-0-95-iii/ Or put your money where your mouth is and pay Leica prices. And just because I am pointing out to you some facts, doesn't mean to say I am suddenly a communist. Sure, the Chinese government is not a democracy. I hardly think a two party system like we have in the US and the UK is really all that much of a democracy either, but that's a separate discussion for another forum... And sure, criticise the Chinese companies for 'exposing their workforce to pollutants' but I don't see very much what this has to do with a camera forum... You started the topic based on quality of their technology, not the quality of their environment. Trump is running scared from China, and clearly sees their advancements as a threat to various underperforming US blue chip companies. I see this belief and fear is starting to take hold in some of the public as well.

I detect a lot of anti-Chinese bias! It's reasonable enough to raise the topic but save us the old "China makes junk" cliche, it's no longer as simple. China is a developing economy and all countries go through eras of churning out cheap products during this phase. Japan did it. Even the US did it to some degree, but in a very different technological era. Looking at the camera companies - Sigma did it - made very cheap lenses in huge quantities for a LONG time before they started to do the high-end quality stuff we all respect so highly. What is going on at the moment is Chinese home-grown technology is cost competitive and technologically becoming on an even par with western stuff, so that combination makes it a huge threat to US businesses like Intel and Qualcomm. There are political reasons for smearing Huawei. There is also a distinction between IP, design and assembly / manufacturing. Most of China's developing economy has been based on assembly and manufacturing but now they are becoming big on original designs and products, which is another threat to the US economy. Especially in chip design and telecoms. As for quality, perceptions and stereotypes always vary... You're entitled to your views. I find them outdated. RED cameras and iPhones are hardly poorly put together products - both made in China. Foxconn. No doubt if they had been made in an American factory by American hands you'd think they were better made, but that says more about prejudiced opinion than the actual facts or the skills level of the Chinese workforce. Across Asia there are a lot of people highly educated and dedicated to their work otherwise they wouldn't do the things they are doing. And Chinese space programme is another flagship advancement, whether we can agree on their politics or not, the writing is on the wall. The US is no longer top dog. "There will be nobody left in China to do business with. Very bad for China, very good for USA!" --- Of course when you have this twat starting trade wars, you're bound to get people whipped up into a sinophobic frenzy. Let's look at the facts. It's hard to imagine a President so out of touch with US businesses, who have benefited massively from cheap Chinese labour and manufacturing. There isn't a single major US technology or camera company around today that doesn't need Chinese manufacturing or parts supply. And yet Trump thinks attacking that is very good for the USA, because he has a simple world view - "we can make stuff here... it's easy... just build a factory"... For a start, if you look at the quantities of natural resources, rare metals and energy required to make mass produce fundamental parts for modern technological devices and appliances, the US doesn't have any of it easily to hand like China does and digging them up at the scale required would cause massive pollution right on your doorstep. Is that would you want? If smartphones were all made in the US they would cost 10x more at retail and wouldn't sell a single unit vs cost effective competitors. The technology doesn't even exist at the required scale in the US to build the stuff, like it does in China, Japan and South Korea. We're talking here about the machines that make machines. Vast majority of the equipment is Asian. We are talking vast scale of manufacturing, where a single factory is the size of a small city and employees over 1 million people. Add up the cost of those people with US wages vs doing the same thing in China and you start to realise what a fucking amateur Trump is when it comes to business and why he has made enormous losses and write-offs in every one of his business ventures.

Try inter-frame NR off. It might be related to that. I'm wondering if this is all a bit pixel peeping gone mad to be honest. All cameras look shit if you shoot at F8 with lens cap on don't they, and try to pull up garbage from the compressed shadows. Even raw looks a bit rubbish in that circumstance.

Said it before, will say it again. Try H.264.

IMX586 lacking in low light? I think it's superb in 12MP mode on the Mi 9. Nice job at Samsung on the new chip though.

Try H.264 instead of H.265... Oh and take the lens cap off

Yes good points Kisaha. 2) especially. Then again, the Nikon FTZ adapter doesn't seem to be helping the Z6/Z7 sales. My Z7 cost me 3800 euros. 5 months later, I am struggling to shift it for £2300 on eBay and it's practically new with all the original packaging. I am a bit livid about that. Perhaps the worst investment I've ever made... Z6 just seemed to kill it. Way too similar. Way too expensive on the Z7 pricing. At the least, the Z7 should have been a different body style aimed only at pros.

The beauty of Quad Bayer are the video capabilities and big ass resolution sticker on the box. No need to drop to a maximum of 24 or even 12 megapixel to get a full pixel readout quality 4K readout going. 8K / 48 megapixel stills at same time as 4K in low light to match a 12 megapixel sensor with big fat pixels. Stacked design makes the readout really fast too. Sure Sony can do a 48 megapixel sensor with all of what you mentioned, most of it is new to me though, so maybe I am completely out of my depth with things like Pyramid Surface Diffractor... But why, when Quad Bayer works so well? By the way I get usable ISO 12,800 on the Mi 9 camera... On a phone... In video mode at 4k 60p.... Incredible. ISO 1600 in video mode looks so clean, it may as well be an A7S II.

Sounds like HDMI black levels are wrong on quite a few displays out there. And perhaps on computers too. Display calibration has always been borderline fucked on Mac OS.

Funny thing is you're both right. There are pros and cons to the EOS R and it's a case of deciding what you need. I need full frame, with minimum quality of 4K.... Not the usual Canon Not Even 1080p level of detail. I already have very good Super 35mm for $1000 from Fuji and don't need to spend over double to get it from Canon, with even more of a crop at 1.8x. Why not just use a GH5? OK, the autofocus is a strong point on the EOS R but most of my favourite lenses are manual focus any way. I need good slow mo. EOS R has the worst looking 120fps I've ever seen. May as well be 480p standard def with moire. I need handheld stabilisation, and I don't care how it's implemented as long as it works brilliantly like the Olympus E-M1X does. The EOS R's doesn't, and it crops in even further. Also the rolling shutter in 4K is a big problem for handheld shooting. I also need very good low light performance and again the EOS R is found wanting. Finally I like a camera with a bit of a soul, not a charmless body but some photographic DNA In there. The EOS R doesn't really do it for me in that department either. Then again these are just my needs... Others are entitled to their opinions. Some don't even need video and will look at it purely as a stills cam or a work tool. And yes the battery life is pretty mediocre too. The only things it really leads in are: Colour science Nice EVF with good peaking Canon lenses Dual Pixel AF... But then again Sony, Fuji and Olympus (E-M1X) are all doing great video AF and tracking now... Dual Pixel AF is less of a draw.

Apple certification, license fees, can't be that expensive or difficult as Blackmagic manages it all the time on much cheaper cameras than the Panasonic S1. Sort it out Japan!

This is sad news and maybe premature, but in my opinion all the new full frame systems all have strategic flaws. The BCN numbers are out in Japan which show a limp launch for all the new full frame systems, followed by a tanking of sales soon afterwards until they're a fraction of the Sony A7 III. The bottom line quite literally is that Canon and Nikon are failing to take business away from Sony in the full frame mirrorless market (at least if Japan is anything to go by). Read the full article

I am convinced Sony will go in the direction of Quad Bayer stacked CMOS sensors for the A7S series and it's a major reason we've waited so long for it. I also think the FS5's electronically variable ND filter will be in the camera too. Quad Bayer answers the conundrum of balancing low light performance and megapixel count. It is the best of both worlds and allows a 48 megapixel 8000 x 6000 image and 8K video - at the same time as 4000 x 3000 and 4K video with better low light performance. The proof of concept is sitting in my hands right now. Step forward the mighty Xiaomi Mi 9 smartphone with 48 megapixel Sony Quad Bayer sensor and 960fps slow-mo. Read the full article