Andrew Reid

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

Most logical post I've read in ages. Thanks @Mokara

The EOS R, Z6, even S1 are a hard sell in the eyes of the average customer, who don't really see these doing anything particularly unique compared to Sony, long established on the full frame mirrorless market, or compared to the kit they already have. I am sure some of us and early adopters love the Z6 and S1 in particular but I just can't see sales rocketing up... Panasonic made a mistake with the lens pricing and AF, whilst Nikon couldn't decide which customers to aim at. When China joins the party, the established players are going to be even more fucked.

Leica M adapter, Leica Noctilux 50mm F0.95, sorted No the E-mount lenses won't go on, but not a lot of difference between F0.95 and F1.2 for low light really. The S1 is also extremely clean at high ISO so it's questionable you even need faster than F2 for nightclubs.

Actually taste counts for a LOT and that includes taste in camera images.

Uh oh.

Thanks buddy. I am glad you are not silent any more and enjoy the forum

Barney at DPReview is obviously fine with depriving his readers with access to more knowledge, to settle a personal dispute. 3 years of the ban now and it is starting to really get me down.

Good luck with the sale. Some really nice stuff there.

Samsung have lost the plot with this phone.