Andrew Reid

There is absolutely no doubt it is a sweetheart Sony deal not a public tender. The giveaway is how specific the tender is. "Eye tracking. 24-200 equivalent lens. 15 frames per second/no blackout." A tender shouldn't be this specific about a compact camera if they really had any intention in making a deal with companies other than Sony or even hearing from all the camera companies at all.

From memory I don't think it improved with Metabones EF adapters in that update - the limitation is more on the adapter side than the camera side. I could be wrong, as was ages since I tested.

Yep it is infuriating, but maybe it isn't Panasonic's decision. It's possible that Sony just refuses to grant them the license, knowing it will be the death of a major rival's camera division. Sony will give a license to OM System and Sigma (Fp-L) as they know these are more of a niche system. But Panasonic and Leica they seem to want them pegged. Is it a 6 months wait then? That's a bit of a pity. You may want to wait and sell the old cameras later, because at this rate nobody is buying a new one! There's going to be some big shortages and limited units manufactured. This will push up the price of used cameras a lot in the coming 12 months, by my reckoning.

To be honest you don't really need 10bit unless doing heavy grading with LOG, and even then very good image processing can overcome the limitations of 8bit to a degree. I can see why Olympus, or OM, or JIP or whatever it is designing this camera chose 8bit for Olympus picture profile colour science - same as JPEGs and nobody is going to notice a difference to 10bit because it will be a good codec and a high bitrate in 8bit. A big fan of the ergonomics (from the look of the body anyway) and the huge EVF. 0.83x at 5.76 million dots is on par with a GFX 100! The computational photography modes are really welcome. Wish live ND could be made to work in video mode for 180 degrees look at fast shutter speeds. I didn't think the OM1 would generate much excitement in the full frame world. Especially as E-M1X reception was lukewarm to say the least. Nobody seems to like big expensive micro four thirds cameras, they go against the grain. But maybe with the quad pixel AF and the rest of the camera being such a big upgrade, maybe they are onto something. Time to sell my E-M1X and E-M1 II.

The Fuji 18-55mm F2.8-4 is due a sequel isn't it! I am a big fan of the Sigma 17-70mm 2.8-4 on EF mount, it makes a nice do-it-all lens on X-mount with the Finger adapter. But a native 18-50mm F2.8 would be superb, or even an F2.0-2.8 like the famous Samsung 16-50mm S lens.

@Attila Bakos Do you mind if I draw attention to your video on the blog's main page? Let's get Fuji's attention.

Might be fixable if it is. I remember on E-M1 II which also has phase-detect AF, actually it could be quite decent in stills mode with EF lenses... But in video mode, it all went to shit. Which is probable, when you consider the limitations of the EF lens bandwidth and that the adapter probably needs to do a lot of translation on the fly or can't use it as optimally as a native EF camera can. I'd be curious to see if the OM1 is the first M43 camera to give us MC-11 like performance with Canon glass though. That would be huge. I'd dust off the Speed Booster for that!

If only there was a lens adapter to use Micro Four Thirds lenses on Fuji X-Mount? 😉 They just need a 24mm F1.4 in the mix now and a telephoto F1.4 prime, 135mm equiv. Wonder if Sigma will jump on the GFX bandwagon later too? Their 85mm F1.4 EF lens already covers!

And he was I thinking 2x crop sensor cameras are dead at £2K!! I may have to order an OM-1 as well.

Photo is the perfect analogy for GH1 / GH6! Even down to the colour scheme. At the very least they should make a motorised tray that retracts into the grip, and slides out over the sensor when in use. The tray will have the ND glass in it. The glass could be of the E-ND type. If a Fuji X100 can do clever things like sliding an EVF into an optical viewfinder, and it costs under £1000, I am sure it must be possible to do a similar thing with the sensor glass!

Camera companies got sent a public tender from the Associated Press, who previously had chosen Canon gear. The tender however is a covert list of Sony specs! I have retyped it. Original document is not shared in order to protect the source, but this NEEDS be public knowledge. My comments are in brackets. STILL CAMERAS Camera Body 1: Professional level camera that will be the workhorse of AP photojournalists worldwide. Silent operation with electronic shutter and a mechanical shutter for flash sync. Hi-res electronic viewfinder with fast refresh rate. 20 frames per second in silent mode. Full frame auto-focus sensor. Weather sealed. Built-in Gigabit Ethernet. Built-in WIFI. Full remote control via Ethemet. No shutter blackout. No rolling shutter that distorts/manipulated images. Full range of native lenses for system (we'd like to avoid having to use adapters on non-native lenses). Facial recognition capabilities with eye tracking. Integrated phone app. Video capable 4K. (That is a Sony A9 II then) Camera Body 2: Professional level camera for use for specialty assignments like entertainment, fashion and portraiture. Silent operation with electronic shutter plus mechanical shutter for flash sync. 50 megapixel or larger. Minimum 10 frames per second. Higher resolution view finder (oled viewfinder). Real time face and eye tracking. 4K video capable. (How oddly specific... That'll be the A7R IV then!) (It gets worse...) Camera Body 3: Reporter level camera that can be easily carried in a pocket or backpack. Super compact real time eye tracking. 24-200 equivalent lens. 15 frames per second/no blackout. 4K video. Audio jack. (Perfectly describes the RX100 VI right down to the exact focal length) ********* Can you imagine if you were somebody at Nikon or Fuji for example and you received this quite specific description of 3 Sony Cameras? So what went on? Was a deal stitched up behind the scenes first? If so, why bother sending a tender out to other companies at all? If you have any more info about this tender process please let me know so I can continue investigating.

He didn't go into detail or put any more out on Twitter as it would jeopardise the sale of the site. That's what he told me. Hopefully when he is 100% out of the industry he will be able to blow the whistle. If he doesn't, I'll be disappointed.

No wonder Canon leads sales and colour science when Fuji is messing around with silly X-Trans technology then.

Ah so not X-Trans in fact. I have noticed similar things with other cameras in foliage. Remember the Samsung NX1 vs Canon 1D C video on EOSHD? Are we sure it isn't a GPU decoder / NLE problem and it is definitely the camera?

Good point about X-Trans. It's probably one of those pragmatic Fuji compromises like 4:2:0 in video mode. At least they are not chopping IBIS out of a $4500 EOS R5C! Could be worse. Fuji's JPEGs and colour does have a nice smooth look most of the time... and now we know why? 🙂 It isn't necessarily horrible, but it clearly has downsides for certain kinds of shot when viewed at 1:1. This is a great find though (and it's one of the best advertisements for Magic Lantern RAW I've ever seen).

Are you all using Resolve? Better check it isn't an issue with the software.

My theory is Fuji is doing this on purpose as a form of hidden noise reduction. Or maybe it's industrial sabotage from Sony when they supply the sensor. 💩

Great work. I wonder if the same issue is present on the GFX 100 in ProRes RAW to an external recorder?

It doesn't take up a huge amount of room either, the diameter of the front of the camera is only a bit bigger than your average EF lens. I wish the camera companies would recognise the importance of this mechanism and put it in. Canon C70 manages it. FS5 does it. It's the Japanese obsession with small widgets that stops it from going into mirrorless cameras. Just make them 10% bigger and be done with it.

Pocket 4K in Cinema DNG was up there, before they nurfed it. I still have my original firmware! Would have thought the finest grain award goes to URSA 12K. I also liked 5D Mark II ML RAW in 2K. Very digital Bolex like at ISO 1600 especially with a black and white grade. 5D Mark III was a bit too smooth by comparison to the older one.

Indeed, when given the choice between buying a Sigma lens in E or L mount, one of the big reasons for buying a modern lens rather than using classic stuff is AF. So if they can't sort out AF, the entire mount dies. No rush then!

I agree on the importance of AF. Especially in a mirrorless camera. In terms of the market, Blackmagic seems to have got a free pass though. Shit AF all round from them, and nobody complains and the cameras sell like hot cakes. So what's going on? Sony, Canon and Nikon all AF obsessed and producing very capable systems in both video and stills mode. Fuji is patchy. I thought maybe it's Sony patents holding Panasonic to ransom, or past mistakes. But then a literal Olympus CORPSE comes out of a graveyard and gives us Quad Pixel phase-detect AF on sensor. It's absolutely bizarre the whole thing isn't it? As for GH6, I have one but am under NDA so can't say anything about it until it launches for real.

Does it come with a free ticket to a Wallabies game as well?

Why's it got an Olympus badge??

Nope. An investment firm bought the Olympus camera division. Olympus themselves, outside of just cameras still exists. Japanese government is nothing like China. It isn't communist for a start!