Andrew Reid

It is very odd. GH6 first. Why do they need to do this Mark II monkey business at all? Really?

Disclaimer alert... Remember this is just one rumour about one camera, it doesn't mean there will be absolutely no GH6 in 2021. But I can't think why they would put this out when everybody is expecting something big. It's a daft strategy isn't it?

Thanks for the concern mate, I would thank anybody who did this but I'd prefer to offer something in a return like a colour profile so this is the best way to support EOSHD - to buy Pro Color or one of my guides. It's been a very difficult year but hopefully will FINALLY get back to regular blog posts and Pro Color 5 release soon.

Looking like a Blackmagic beater but in many key ways a backward step on 1D X Mark III. Strange world we live in 🙂

Complete unknown territory here - if the management have a clue, it is not enough in itself, they also need the investment! I would love to see them take a new sensor and processor, break the mould ergonomically, surprise us with ProRes, and even a dedicated small OM-D cinema camera or two. But this needs the big investment and the demand from customers. I just can't quite see this being the most likely outcome. Who apart from a very small niche is asking for an Olympus cinema camera? Well... an OM-D E-M1C at any rate. What a mouth full 🙂 It might be a lot easier for JIP to do what they did with Sony VIVO laptops. Chinese stuff with a fancy badge.

I'd advised Panasonic to go full frame, but I was asking for this about 5 years ago and they moved too late. Sony had the chance to mature - expand the lens line ups and get prices down, they even got round to reorganising their menus. Shocking I know. The Panasonic S1 was great but now people are too heavily invested in Sony E mount lenses or even Fuji. The autofocus situation didn't help. The S5 is fantastic bang for buck but the body feels like a G100. Too consumer, evem compared to the A7 III. And it has to compete with the X-T4 and Fuji branding / film simulations too. Tough market. Here's what Panasonic need to do now... Cull almost 90% of the lower-end Micro Four Thirds line and focus on a big exciting GH6 launch, make it do what only the GH6 can do - unique sensor size, fast frame rates, no rolling shutter, add what was missing from the GH5 (phase-detect AF and ProRes / RAW) - pitch it against Blackmagic and sell it for around $2200. Rebrand it CINEMA GH6 INSTEAD OF LUMIX GH6 FFS. Even a mini-XLR and SDI port could help sell MANY GH6 bodies. Stills is a different matter - in my opinion the market is pressing heavily toward full frame. It is in video too, but with stills cameras all being so similar, it is harder to give a small 2x crop stills camera enough 'uniqueness' to make it a viable alternative to full frame, especially now there are small full frame mirrorless lenses and the lower price Sony stuff like A7C. So the size and cost advantage of M43 is being whittled away even on the lenses side. Sigma 28-70mm F2.8 for L-mount anyone? Clearly Panasonic is 99% committed to L-mount now. I honestly think the writing is on the wall and there will be no GH6. It would be a huge mistake. My Kern Switar 26mm F1.1 is very tearful today.

Sony sensors are not made on the same production line as automobile chips! It could be that some obscure old components in the GH5 could no longer be sourced and Panasonic is bringing newer parts into to a like-for-like camera that is basically the same, just a new badge. However this does not excuse the lack of GH6! The chips that are in short supply are actually mostly for more mundane stuff. They come off production lines that have been hammered for demand and switched out. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the 5nm supply has been booked out by Apple at TSMC but that doesn't impact camera electronics either. GPUs are in short supply because everyone is stuck at home playing games. Again not really related to camera image processors. Sony has got the A7S III out and Fuji the GFX 100S so I am sure Panasonic can at least tease us with a GH6 development announcement?

Controversy is brewing! Ever since 2017 the very significant army of Panasonic GH5 fans and Micro Four Thirds users have been waiting for the GH6. They did not all go out and suddenly change to a $4000 Panasonic S1H. Our feedback has been continually piped to Panasonic HQ in Japan about needing a professional editing codec like ProRes, phase-detect AF, 6K, 8K or preferably 4K/120p would be a reasonable expectation versus the Sony A7S III and even an internal RAW codec like Canon now has on the EOS R5. Alas our dreams are probably ended by the fact our dream GH6 camera would have to cost $3000 with all that, minimum – and in the current market who is going to buy a 2x crop sensor camera for that much? Alas the never inaccurate Nokishita has leaked specs which suggest an almost identical camera will be re-released instead, with the same 20 megapixel sensor as 4 years ago. This strongly suggests there will be no GH6 for eager Micro Four Thirds punters to look forward to. What’s going on? EOSHD takes a closer look. https://www.eoshd.com/news/disappointing-panasonic-gh5-mark-ii-specs-leak-in-japan-where-is-the-gh6/

MBP are great. I may offer them the gear I don't manage to sell through a Gear Store on my blog which I'm getting up and running. I got my 1D C back in the day from them! eBay is a great shame as there's a lot of very good sellers on there. But the platform just takes advantage of them and fails them all the time, and we are all getting pretty sick of it.

No it remains 8bit. The hardware is only capable of 10bit to an external recorder.

Certainly seems like there's been an uptick of bad behaviour in COVID times recently. I was also the victim of postal theft in Berlin earlier this year, and my girlfriend was the victim of a serious identity fraud at the same time. Two cases were related. Police didn't bother to link them and never prosecuted. I even found the guy selling my stolen camera with same serial number and accessories later on eBay classified ads and so I set up a police sting where I arranged to pay cash on collection with him in a public place and he hands over the camera... I went there with the undercover officers and they did their thing. They did absolutely fantastic job, very skilful and forcefully arrested the guy - but as soon as the police bureaucratic detective department gets involved everything goes limp. I still haven't even had the camera back from the police after months as the guy won't admit he was handling stolen goods and now it has to be signed off by a judge. The back story is when this camera was ordered, it was delivered to a neighbour by incompetent DHL even though I was in. It had the very bad luck to arrive at the same time as the fraudster's goods we didn't know were being ordered from several online shopping sites to our address in Berlin! What I suspect these thugs do, is that they go round ordering a shit ton of expensive stuff on invoice using somebody else's name and address stolen from the internet, and wait for delivery by timing & monitoring it closely via online tracking. When it arrives they pounce... One of the delivery guys in Berlin was recently chased down a street in an expensive neighbourhood by a guy with an imitation handgun. In my case, some fucking jewellery the fraudster had ordered using my girlfriend's personal details was intercepted when the criminal sent someone round to bang on our neighbour's door, because DHL helpfully sign posted them to the right neighbour they had dumped the stuff on along with my camera at the same time. A delivery card hung on the outside door facing the pavement. Can you believe it!?! Zero fucks given for secure delivery. I was even in at the time and DHL didn't bother going up to top floors and knocking on the door. Our stupid neighbour handed over everything without checking for ID and that was that. Found the empty packaging later ripped open in our staircase and in a neighbouring apartment building. In this blog post, some poor guy has been through years of handling fraudulent eBay buyers... https://turbofuture.com/internet/How-To-Scam-People-On-Ebay He basically says what the tricks are they use. It is so easy. Pretty much describes the same things happened to me. These people know every trick in the book and know eBay let it fly and that the police don't deem it serious enough to prosecute. So basically eBay know there is a huge problem and do nothing about it. As long as buyers keep coming and the billions of revenue keeps stacking up, they literally don't give a toss. It is obviously a much more flawed platform than I thought and dangerous to trust. They advertise "Seller protection" on PayPal, etc. It's nonsense. Did't protect me. Didn't protect the other guy. If you do use eBay to sell expensive cameras I recommend taking everything off it immediately as this is now becoming a common occurrence.

They simply cannot be trusted. I was told one thing by their customer support, then the opposite and never any consistency in the way the cases were handled. It feels like you are being kicked in the head by several people at once including the buyers. Then there's the uncertainty. If you have a successful sale but some idiot comes back after nearly 1 month to get his refund, what do you do? Do you suddenly have to find a spare £3000 for the refund out of the blue all that time after? What will the state of the valuable be in when it comes back to you? Will it even arrive back with you? Will eBay refund them anyway without them even sending it? eBay can even directly debit my bank account. I am thinking of phoning my bank's fraud department and having them block all future payments to eBay and PayPal.

He keeps something much more valuable, which is the relationship with Sony. I do not blame anyone for wanting contacts at Sony or any other company but I'm not buying this 'poor Gerald' is left with nothing idea. This is an orchestrated sales pitch, coordinated across the internet by one company. It's still a sales pitch. If he isn't seen to be useful, he's out of the gang. In an ideal world he would go it alone. Buy the cameras himself and not have any PR contacts. And maybe shoot something too.

I could certainly try opening my own camera store here at EOSHD. Need a clear out and really would hate to be scammed over something like an Iscorama or Leica SL2. I think I will continue raising some awareness of how dangerous eBay is for sellers and then go my own way. Thanks for the support guys.

The full story is here: https://www.eoshd.com/news/story-of-a-fraud-nightmare-sellers-beware-ebay/

Obvious this is wrong of Small Rig but I just think nearly all companies are pulling similar stunts and content creators are happy to enable it in 99% of situations. I don't know this guy but it's good he has spoken out. But it is a bit like watching two sales people arguing about principals. If this was Sony sending him a free A7S III would he have called them out for blackmail? If Canon had sent him an EOS R5 but he didn't like the overheating, is this blackmail when they expect content from him? It is the unspoken rule. If you want free stuff, they expect you to return the favour and do your part. Is it a quid-pro-quo when nobody complains and blackmail when somebody does? No they are the same thing really. The only difference between Sony with Gerald Undone and Small Rig with this guy is the degree of subtleness.

So it's blackmail when they don't like the product enough to do a video. But THIS RIG WILL BLOW YOU AWAY *shocked face* if they do?

Yes I have confirmed this with Nikon's technical representative too https://www.eoshd.com/news/nikon-z6-ii-firmware-update-fix-for-eoshd-z-log-and-custom-picture-profiles-in-4k-60p/ All is fixed!

Version 1.20 firmware on the Z6 II / Z7 II notes from Nikon - https://www.eoshd.com/news/nikon-z6-ii-firmware-update-fix-for-eoshd-z-log-and-custom-picture-profiles-in-4k-60p/ It officially contains a fix for Z-LOG in 4K/60p and 50p where frame flickering / white frame corruption was occurring at these higher frame rates. You can now use the custom profile again in all modes!

I've been in touch with Nikon. Let's see what they say. They need to put a technical person in touch with me rather than PR, so I am waiting on them now...

Yes you can use Z-LOG at very low ISOs, no problem. Either external or internal.

25 mins doesn't sound right to me. How's the battery health reporting?

Fuji smartphone printer? I know which one I'd use.

This is a very small premium to jump from 24MP to 61MP by the way. That is class leading resolution. I am not suggesting this is the right camera for video users, but they did their best not to sacrifice anything on that side either. It still does 12bit 4K RAW, which is pretty amazing from 61MP. The A7R IV doesn't do that does it? Yet Sony charge a much bigger premium for high resolution, compared to the standard model A7 III. So for a lot of landscape photographers this is going to be a great deal, and for a lot of cine shooters who also need a compact high resolution camera (medium format league resolution!) what is the alternative exactly?

You can still disagree with someone you respect, you know.