Andrew Reid

Nikon has registered several new models with the wireless agencies worldwide, with rumours that a high-end mirrorless Z9 is due to be released this year, along with a more affordable Z5 aimed at the lower-end of the full frame market around $1200. The first affordable Nikon APS-C DSLR to shoot non-cropped Super 35mm 4K is expected to be the Nikon D5700. Read the full article

So we should all rush out and but the camera with the best product market strategy!? Doesn't seem like much fun to me. Personally I will buy what works for me, preferably that which is well designed and innovative.

The A6300 was a dog back in 2016 when the competition was far less, no X-T3 or G85 back then, or E-M10 III. X-T3 is a similar price now to when the A6300 was released back in 2016. The X-T3 today is $1399 new (less used) and the A6400 is $900 so a difference of $500 max, the price of a low-end Sony E-mount prime. The 23mm F2 and 35mm F2 Fuji X lenses are cheaper than their equivalent Sonys and the 18-55mm F2.8-F4 zoom is superior to any Sony APS-C zoom equivalent for just $300. I don't see why people would be interested in paying more for the A6400 + primes + decent zoom than the equivalent Fuji kit. If you look at the A6400 body in isolation, sure it's cheap-ish. But it's also naff-ish, 2-3 year old tech with terrible rolling shutter and bad ergonomics. The target market is a prime area to do some innovations... flip out 5" touch screen for example. All-new user interface and menus suited to touch screen operation. Better touch-pad AF interface. Better smartphone integration and Bluetooth LE. Sony took the easy option and did nothing.

It's baffling!!

Google search for C-LOG LUTs. It works with any Canon C-LOG to Rec 709 LUT. Even the Rec 709 option built into most NLEs will do the job.

This cut-price unimaginative attempt to corner the Vlogger market is a load of shit. Oops. This will be a short blog post. Read the full article

If you enjoyed my Super 16mm c-mount adventure on the new EOS M50, you might want to take a look at the latest Magic Lantern endeavours on the original EOS M. Pictured above is mine with the Kern-Switar 26mm F1.1. Read the article

This is a really surprising by Nikon, as I expected Sony or Panasonic to do this first. Nevertheless the Z6 and Z7 will be the first mirrorless cameras to offer 4K RAW via HDMI to an external recorder - namely the Atomos Ninja V. Read the full article

Second that! Enjoy the show

Here's my top 5 cameras of 2018. Of course we all know "there's no such thing as a 'bad' camera" any more but there is such a thing as a dull, boring rip off. Then there's the stuff that has a shelf life of a few months, that you just know is a stepping stone before the real deal arrives. In many ways 2018 was a good year to keep hold of what you have and wait for the dust to settle. An eventful one for technology, especially in the second half where we saw some glimpses of the future. In 2018 we had six truly great cameras for filmmakers and a few that didn't make my top list like the RX100 VI but which are nevertheless still useful in one way or another. Read the full article

I'm confused. Is just the sensor colour sampling bayer raw, or entire codec is RAW data in that mode? How can HEVC support RAW video?

I recognise that guy... Blackmagic customer support boss!

Still not following you I'm afraid. Are you saying that the image is noisier at ISO 4000 1/50 F4 than ISO 4000 1/50 F1.8? In that case your exposure is brighter by nearly 2 stops due to F1.8 vs F4 so you cannot be exposing both shots the same with both the 50mm and 24-70. A brighter exposure always shows less noise at high ISOs, no matter what the camera.

Since you don't tell us your other exposure settings it's hard for us to tell what is going on. What exposure mode are you in? Manual at 1/50? Aperture priority? Why would you need to go to ISO 4000 at F1.8 in a well lit bar? And of course any sensor underexposed has more noise. That's how CMOS works. It's not just a Z6 thing. You give it more light, move the lows into the mids, less noise.

Seems a 60MP model is coming at two prices then. One with kick-ass video and one which is more stills orientated. With so many sensors, Sony might have to expand the camera range. A new dedicated hybrid video model anyone?

Japan just wants to sell electronic goodies. It's not representative of what consumers want. If anything, the consumer electronics market is now lead by the US and China. BS8K pretty much sums it up for me. BS!

Did this data sheet come from a hack or something? It says version 0.3 and has a placeholder [Product information] showing that it is incomplete. If true, 3840 x 1080 at 480fps would be very tasty.

A bargain. I also have their BMCC cage. Quality was superb. By the way when is the BRAW firmware update due for the Pocket 4K?

Sony has developed a duo of 8K capable full frame sensors, which will soon be released in two Sony cameras. Read the full article Got the specs sheets @androidlad?

Set the Zebra display threshold to 235 and it will work.

Where do you get all this info from?!

It's not so much whether it makes sense for pro stills photographers or not. It's a pro camera. Whatever you do with the pro camera, you will mix at some point with other pro cameras. The other cameras will be delivering LOG and this won't. Therefore to match them is going to be tricky. Say for instance your job is 99% photography for a news channel - but you've shot the odd video and it ends up that the editor wants to use that video, in the midst of a section shot on proper cameras like an FS7. All that FS7 stuff is going to be LOG. The A9 should be as well. No excuses. Sony has ballsed this up. So has Canon leaving Canon LOG out of the 1D X Mark II, because it's "a stills camera". I'd love to be an editor working 99% with LOG footage and then the photographer gives you a 1D X II video clip shot in Vivid! Good luck putting a LUT on that or matching DR. On the R&D side, for some reason you're speculating as if Sony need to start again from a blank sheet of paper. It's actually the same sensor as the A7 III but with a DRAM chip solder bumped to the back instead of the traditional RAM buffer sat on the mainboard far away with a bus in-between. Integrating the buffer with the sensor allows it to exploit the full speed of the sensor. Which is why the image is identical between the A9 and A7 III aside from the shooting rates and rolling shutter speed. You can read out the same sensor much faster into a stacked DRAM chip, than you can going through a bus to the mainboard and image processor. Sony have already done the ADC, gain settings and colour science for that sensor. To think they need to start again on all that separate R&D just to change the gamma curve? Think about it dude. Hybrid LOG Gamma is just a gamma curve and colour gamut on the image processor, that can be applied to the raw sensor data. So if the sensor is the same, they don't even need to tweak anything. The buffer is different. The sensor is the same. Anyway it's probably an existing function of the image processor already, just turned off in the firmware... The code might even already exists in the camera, just commented out. It's easier to comment out or disable something with a variable, than to rewrite the firmware without it in or rip pieces out of the codebase.

Try shooting 25p at 1/50.

What R&D costs? It already exists. A simple firmware patch to copy the existing code to the A9 firmware, as easy as slotting in an existing procedure to existing codebase. Plus a bit of internal testing / QA. It might even already exist in the firmware, but is hidden in the menus.

I wonder why Sony don't give the A9 picture profiles. They are not losing money on it if somebody picks up an A9 instead of an A7 III for video. It has a higher margin than that model, surely. I am going to see how close to Pro Color I can get one of the Creative Styles with a LUT, but the dynamic range will never be as good, unless we get LOG gamma curves in there.