Andrew Reid

Yes I do, Lammy. So your moral high-ground attempt won't work with me I'm afraid!

It's up to the filmmaker what moral position he takes in his work. It isn't up to us to force one on him. Clearly Clarkson in the mould of a 'filmmaker' (well actually it's very much a team effort) has clearly taken his position. He's going to pack in the jokes and boys-own adventures, playing a certain type of character almost like an inflated version of himself. Editorially, he's taken the position that the motoring content should be presented in vivid not vague turns of phrase and sometimes that gets him into trouble. Jeremy's an artist. It would be wrong to force YOUR tone on another artist. If you don't like the tone, don't watch it.

Don't you think you're overreacting just a bit Dan. It goes back to my point about moralising about entertainers. They are not here to uphold our values for us or cure society's ills. We are. Clarkson's just making a comedic motoring show. That's his remit. Leave him to it. If you consider one of his jokes racist, you better check with the producers first to see who actually wrote it. It might not have even come from Clarkson himself. You can't beat up a character on a TV show because he's playing a certain part that you don't like.

​It's a storm in a yorkshire teacup! It goes without saying bullying and fist fighting are unacceptable. You're absolutely right, if the producer had hit Clarkson he would be dead and buried. Career over. But if the Queen smacks Prince Philip in the mouth if he hasn't cooked he goose properly, you don't throw out the entire royal family. The producer and Clarkson until last week had had a happy working relationship for a decade. James May says he can't remember what happened because he was "blind drunk" as a result of that drink in the pub on an empty stomach. In the 70's and 80's we had professional snooker players swigging beer on TV during the world championship. In the modern professional climate, a hellraiser or firebrand is considered someone who pops outside for a cig break occasionally. The BBC needs its hellraisers like Clarkson. Otherwise blandness will ensue. I'm tempted to say it already has looking at 99% of their presenters. The BBC are indeed between a rock and a hard place politically on this one, they had to act. Agree 100% for them to turn a blind eye to bad behaviour now would be political suicide given the current climate. However you have to give creative license to your hellraisers and some leeway morally, as inevitably they occasionally throw a wobbly or cause a fracas. He's not the pope. He's not an Ambassador for Good Manners. Clarkson's responsibility to us is to entertain us, not morally reinforce our values. He should absolutely 100% apologise to his producer, take him out for a lunch and have a hug in front of the cameras on the next episode as well. It really should be that simple. Otherwise, he will be off to Sky like half the BBC F1 team. Jobs will go. Extreme Facilities supply Top Gear with GH2 / GH4 drones for example and their contract is with the BBC. Sad to kill such a consistently creative and popular show over a bit of bad behaviour. If Clarkson is not bigger than the show, as the BBC claim, then pulling the show because of Clarkson implies the opposite. Also I was really looking forward to the Ferrari vs McLaren vs Audi shootout I'm not even a petrol head. I like the humour. I like the bravado and the journeys. It's a travel adventure and spectacularly filmed in parts. Of course some of the blog post is speculation, none of us are truly a first party to what went on. We get our info through the papers and the internet. Therefore we have to remember that there's a whole section of the left wing political spectrum out to get Clarkson because he's a buddy of Cameron. Most of the earlier Top Gear controversies were hyped in just the same way, in order to damage Clarkson and Cameron's popularity with the public. In some ways, Clarkson actually doesn't deserve the reputation of oaf. In real life I expect he's a caring dad. He's playing it up for the cameras in the same way an actor would play a character. At this rate we'll be hanging Eastenders characters in the street when they murder someone! Occasionally a flippant remark will be attributed to him rather than to the script. Nobody is going to be pitch perfect over a thousand hours of scripted television especially when it's also improvised on top of that. You are going to have a joke go wrong or cross a line or go creatively wrong and it's simply unreasonable for the BBC to have no tolerance and to pander to every person who might be offended because they claim "Clarkson's a racist dickhead". That isn't a sustainable way to run a broadcaster. They had 150,000 complaints over the way a dog was handled on Crufts! A bloody dog show!! Looking at the numbers, you have to say Crufts is cruel and should be taken off the air. At this rate the BBC will have a lot of empty spaces in their schedules....

So you don't want that Alexa then leeys. Bit snobby is it?

The Sigma 30mm F1.4 (old version) is a surprisingly good fit for the 54. Very sharp at F2. Flares up nicely. Good physical fit too.

You see my dilemma...

Yes size is a clear benefit but the X-T1 with 35mm F1.4 is barely any bigger than the E-M5 Mark II with Panasonic 25mm F1.4. Sony have done a pretty good miniaturisation of their FE lenses too. The A7S with 50mm F1.8 is pretty tiny. The zooms may be slow but they still give you a shallower depth of field and better low light performance on the A7S than a faster F2.8 zoom on the Olympus. I am big Micro Four Thirds fan but starting to doubt it vs the competition a bit.

I think you need to reduce horizontal resolution to make the lines roll faster off the sensor. Cropping the sensor vertically would have same effect on rolling shutter as doing the crop in post. In the end, a line of 4K is 3840 or 4096.... that's a lot of pixels compared to 1920.

Hopefully the fact you are offended is ironic given the subject matter! ​Call me blind but I did recently watch a BBC documentary on UKIP, where one party member (reasonably high up) brought one of her friends into her living room, who then in full view of the camera started talking about how she didn't like people with "negro features".

So close yet so far away. Micro Four Thirds needs to go high end if it is to remain a serious prospect for stills. I know people who wonder why ANYONE would shoot stills on anything other than full frame. Well you have lenses to compensate for that, on APS-C - the Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 is one. The Fuji 56mm F1.2 and 35mm F1.4 too. On Micro Four Thirds you have noise problems above 3200 and difficulties getting closer to the full frame look. This was fine when the prices were low (GH2), or video spectacular (GH4) but when Olympus is serving up 2011 vintage E-M5 image quality in 2015 you do start to wonder whether it is all worth the effort any more. It's not like we have a lack of alternatives!! What I think will happen is that the high end mirrorless market will go to the A7, the X-T1, etc. I am sure the lower end consumer stills market will still love the E-M5 II but Micro Four Thirds need to also compete in that high end mirrorless market as well and it is losing the battle there.

As far as stabilisation goes there's no doubt the only reason to buy the damn thing is the stabilisation. The X-T1 beats it for stills and the GH4 thrashes it for video quality. That's a real shame because in many respects the E-M5 II is an inch from greatness.

​Well said. We are being molly coddled. I know it's a cliche, but it's true. Too many people are offended about offence. The US networks have their own version of Top Gear. It would be interesting to see the difference. I very much doubt it is edgier.

Suppose you've got a TV show with 350 million worldwide viewers. It's sold around the world for £50m. One of the most watched BBC shows in the world. Do you decide to protect the content, sorting out disagreements behind closed doors or do you cave into a vocal minority and the press, taking it completely off air, before launching a month-long investigation? Read the full article

​Those portrait shots are the best case scenario and they just about pass muster for YouTube. You will notice a massive distance on wider shots with a focal point that isn't bang in front of the lens.

It's £1099 compared to 1099 euros. Exchange rate is 1.36 euros to the pound. Edit - ah my mistake it's actually £899 in the UK.

​That's pretty optimistic. I don't see the 7D II and 5D III leading the sales charts at the moment. The 7D Mark II body in the US market is only 17th on the Amazon rank for DSLRs, placed 249 in the overall Camera and Photo sales rank, well outside the top 100. The 5D Mark III is number 5 in the DSLR ranks but there are 3 cheap Nikons ahead of it. The D750 isn't far behind at 7. This chart excludes all the mirrorless stuff. Look at that rank and you will see Sony in places 1 to 7. Stuff like the A6000 and A7 Mk II is selling very well. Even better in Europe and Asia where mirrorless has caught on. Canon USA won't even release a new mirrorless camera in the states. They are too scared or cannibalising their DSLR sales.

​How do you explain the Samsung NX1 then? APS-C, 28MP and yet does 4K with full pixel readout. Barely gets warm. It's cheap. The processors for 4K are already even in smartphones.

  ​Interesting spot, however a fixed lens 1" camcorder doesn't sound much like a GH4 competitor to me.

This is probably the most revealing interview I can remember with a Canon exec. Barney Britton and Rishi Sanyal at DPR have asked not just tough questions, but the right questions! Canon imply a small GH4-like 4K camera is "under consideration" and they want to satisfy demand from the news media industry. Read the full article - http://www.eoshd.com/2015/03/canon-exploring-4k-gh4-competitor/

​It might have some advantages. - Finer noise grain - Less banding (this can be caused by scaling) - Less rolling shutter And 1.68x crop is tiny over 1.6x crop Canon APS-C standard, nobody complains about 1.6x vs 1.5x APS-C standards do they? I think the difference will be smaller than imagined.

​I will be showing this with my full review, of course. The first article is just that, a first impressions. It's obvious to me, by shooting the E-M1 and E-M5 II side by side though which has the better quality 1080p. The difference is pretty big. That's because the E-M5 II seems to carry over the same or similar old Sony sensor from the E-M5, whilst the E-M1 uses the Panasonic GH4's sensor with the addition of phase detect AF sensels, allegedly.

​And this method is totally useless.

​Nice post

Yep but probably not for another couple of weeks as busy with other stuff. Love the NX1 internally so much, it doesn't really need the Shogun!