Andrew Reid

I think Nikon is at risk altogether, existential crisis going on. Canon will be greatly diminished and more focussed on business to business sales, or other markets entirely like medical and network cams. Panasonic are doing the right thing long term. Sony are quite diverse. Fuji is doing superbly. Olympus and Pentax probably will withdraw from market but I dearly hope not. That's my perception of the big 7. I think there will be newcomers. Especially from China if DJI uses Hasselblad brand on more mirrorless cameras and not just medium format. They have already started branding drone cams Hasselblad so clearly the medium format brand isn't sacred. Market is wide open for others to join if the main companies continue to fall back.

If only they flew proper shooters and journalists around the world instead of the influencers. I'm all for a close technical relationship with manufacturers. But the places are more often than not taken up by blaggers with high social media numbers. Sony is by far the worst, when it comes to this. They have disconnected from a great deal many serious users, journalists and generally people with any substance, for the sake of big PR marketing events aimed at influencers. It's time they reprioritised. The influencer trend will be corrected soon, when everybody realises it's just hyperbole and that they can't be persuaded to buy everything new every new day. Hopefully, people will recognise the YouTubers and proper shooters with substance in their content like @Mattias Burling and I dare say dear old muggins here

It's the camera industry's "climate emergency" moment. Unless they take radical action and quick, they're going to sink under the murky water. Sony's earnings are due on 30th July, so keep an eye on this page for those - https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/ Also good reading, is Fuji's CEO and his book Innovating out of a Crisis - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Innovating-Out-Crisis-Fujifilm-Vanishing-ebook/dp/B00OFK46V0/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Fujifilm+crisis&qid=1564310458&s=gateway&sr=8-1 This shows how the company diversified after the film camera era responsible for 60% of their income vanished over night. They got back on track in digital and have done very well. Very ironic that now one of their most successful and profitable lines is instant FILM! The crux of the matter is that digital technology killed the film market and now the tech sector is doing the same to dedicated, stand-alone digital devices. The tech sector doesn't just make money selling hardware, like smartphones... It's the apps and online services which are so important. The Japanese companies have so far failed to appreciate this. Blackmagic at least gets it - selling a camera to further uptake of Resolve and their other products. Most of the eco-system around cameras wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for Chinese companies. The software side is largely ignored by Canon and Nikon especially. Canon should, for example, have bought Adobe a LONG time ago. Look how profitable they are now, with their evil subscription model. Look how poor PlayMemories was by Sony. They do not have the staff. Sony at least did enter the smartphone market, but aren't doing that well. No real USP or imagination. Just solid, well specced phones is not enough. At least TWO of the dedicated camera manufacturers should also have entered the smartphone market in a big way, but they only so much as dipped their toes in the water and fussed around with wifi. So what do they DO ABOUT IT now?? The ship has sailed. All consumers now have incredibly powerful computational imaging devices, connected services and software in their pocket. Camera makers must now look to how the market might evolve in 20 years with A.I. The work on the next gen processors must be done by Canon / Nikon / Fuji / Panasonic / Sony and not only by Apple or Samsung. We are talking cloud based, deep learning, mega-chips, able to apply artificial digital lighting in real-time, able to sense depth and build a 3D map of the entire scene in real-time, able to apply any lens focal length and depth of field convincingly without errors, able to perform with a small sensor in low light from an incredibly thin wafer of semiconductors in the pocket... And bring all that technology to the screen and consumer in an imaginative and beautiful way. It's a big ask when Canon can't even get rid of the crop in 4K Personally I think they are doomed in consumer market and we may even sadly lose Olympus and Rioch completely.

This will be a wake up call. Canon going to be back on form in the not-to-distant future. It needed to happen really... The longer they had it easy, the more complacent they became.

Maybe they should have listened to EOSHD earlier! Read the full article

The Resolve dongle that came with the first BMCC in 2013 still works with Resolve 16 Studio for me Incredible. This was a free dongle with a camera. But no matter how good the competition is, coming off Premiere is like trying to stop smoking. Not easy due to the years of muscle memory.

Yes it looks that way. In the end, it isn't even about specs, but how the technology is applied in products. The products are lame. Great specs but lame. Lame to use. Unenjoyable almost. Canon went on a big technological push as well once - with CMOS lead DSLR revolution between 2004-2010. Then sat back. So there is definitely a precedent for the strategy.

Creative Cloud is anti-competitive, locking users into a perpetual payment plan with no guarantee of future costs. What started at Adobe has spread like a cancer in the software and creative app industry with subscriber-only plans rather than a one off purchase price. Our subscriptions as businesses, enthusiasts and consumers are stacking up and becoming a real monthly headache, and it is time governments looked into regulating the subscription software industry - starting with the king bastard of them all, Adobe. Read the full article

If you read this hyperbole, it isn't just a YouTuber thing. It is established backbone of the photographic press. DPReview. ImagingResource and all the tech blogs like The Verge. https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2019/07/25/sony-rx100-vii-offers-the-flagship-a9s-speed-eye-af-plus-4k-video-tweaks-in I don't mind hype when it's justified. Sometimes hype can be close to the truth. This time it's a fucking transparent shit show of shill-like Sony influenced PR spin. First bear in mind that the RX100 VII is the SAME as the VI, but it has a mic socket and the screen flips at an angle so you can do selfies. There are a few tweaks, the AF has got a BIT faster but it was already fast PDAF on the last 3 models. Same lens, same sensor size, same image quality, same body design, same EVF, same screen spec, same fundamental specs. $1200 upgrade for VI owners like me. So with that in mind, I'd like to know how IR's writer Mike Tomkins justifies any of this hyperbole: "Buckle in for the ride" "We referred to [previous mode last Summer] in our headline as "an A7 III in your pocket". Well, with the RX100 VII, Sony is... delivering what it's referring to as "the speed of an A9 in your pocket." "Yes, you read that right -- we're talking the performance of a US$3,000 flagship, professional-class full-frame mirrorless camera in a device that you can slip into a pants pocket." (Because the AF is 5% faster???) It reads like a marketing man's autocue on stage. They are that desperate to get clicks from even the most boring camera update, and do the bidding for free of a massive corporation that is exploiting them and using them for all they're worth. And not just one of them, but all of them repeating the same lines like "A9 performance" as if from a script. Even if the AF speed is close to an A9, for me "A9 performance camera" is code word for full frame performance, and refers to far more than AF. It implies the image is similar. It's a lie, repeated again and again in clickbait headline after headline. We know it's a complete different class of image quality to full frame without the look of a full frame lens, but the average consumer on Facebook doesn't. Liars. Plain and simple shilling.

It's the same on the front page of Google for most search queries. The internet is going to be in crisis at this rate. Trust already at an all-time low. How long before people see through the hype and clickbait? Or are they all just too fucking stupid to notice or care... The corporate shill machine is the direct result of company marketing strategies... BIG dollar spends shifting from traditional media (TV and print) to online... Namely social media and influencers. But the lack of backbone on behalf of the influencer takes it to a new level. These people would go to the opening of a fucking envelope. Why don't they be more picky FFS.

God the hype. It's unbearable. The camera is virtually IDENTICAL to the last model. Seems all Sony need to do to restart the YouTube hype machine is change the fucking number on the front of the case. Last year's was not a mini-A9. Still had very fast AF, just like the year before, and the year before that. Suddenly it's a mini-A9. For me, a mini-A9 would be full frame, not a P&S compact with shit 1999 Canon IXUS style body design. How about you fuck off and go and lick Peter Mckinnon's ass.

I am told the 4K is not unlimited at all!

Japanese Cartel

You'll be stepping down video quality too much on original A7. It barely looks like 720p and has moire. The A7S is much better in 1080p internally. No 4K. What are you recording externally to? It does 4K via HDMI. The A7S is very old, but still not *that* cheap used. There are cheaper nice 1080p full frame cameras around these days.

I think we should talk about the hype as well. Sony adds a mic jack and all the YouTubers go mental. Meanwhile Sigma Fp announced with Cinema DNG RAW video and they're all "EH". Fucking joke.

Yes for us the Sigma FP and Panasonic S1H are a breath of fresh air. Sony on the other hand... Just about numbers now, it seems.

All sorts of innovation remains. Not just larger numbers on the box. Modularity. Add ons. Different grips. Different interface jacks at the side. Slot in LCDs. Wireless modular follow focuses. Exposing at 1/50 F2 in daylight without pissing around with filters. Better dynamic range. More film like colour profiles. Better design and styling of bodies and lenses. More soul and character. More photographic DNA. Better controls. Larger screens. Better touch screen interfaces designed afresh from ground up. Human-like focus pulls using the AF system, not the quick digital looking racks. A.I. Apps. Wireless focusing modules. LiDar. The list is fucking endless... But all Sony sees is higher megapixels and faster processors.

I understand that the honest truth in written form is hard to take for fanboys, but remind me now who needs to grow up.

Tomorrow I'll be doing a blog post with my favourite submissions in it. In the post I will clear up how we go from here... I suggest we go for 1 more week of submissions. However to make the blog post more interesting, I am going to reveal one of my choices of camera and post the video I shot with it tomorrow. Maybe it will give some people some ideas and spice things up. The voting will then take place after 1 more week of shooting... You can reveal your choices of camera too, but after the voting in a week. If I reveal mine straight away, that would make for a more interesting blog post and not affect the results, as I am not eligible to win. I will however be making one of the submitted videos under an anonymous pseudonym, which I am eligible for in the forum vote Time to get registering that Fake forum account

Amazing actor. Embodied Bladerunner's whole concept in one character. Amazing sense of that he felt the role for real while acting it. Time to die. But never to be forgotten in a billion years. RIP!!

Stuck in an iterative rut with no experimentation on form or concept, with no imagination or new ideas, Sony is in danger of becoming merely a "specs" company, designing only by committee and median user feedback. Read the full article

It's not THAT funny, it's one of those things that works better if you think it's real, than as an obvious comedy. Quite subversive. Creative scene is definitely ripe for piss-taking that's for sure. Especially modern music scene with the "gangster" white hipsters and their edgy tats and dreadful taste in music. Get a drum machine and talk over it = art? Fuck off.

Why not? You get it with a smartphone. Dude, this is 2019. This camera is an expensive upgrade at $1200 just to get a fucking 5 cent mic jack component and a different hinge. Sony is the new Canon.

Rich kids being gangster. Nothing worse on this planet. It's all a bit Spinal Tap... But so close to the awful truth of hipsters in the creative industry

I think I may extend it a few days, not too long, but people who were first to post their videos, definitely have bonus points in my eyes.