Andrew Reid

#Copyright Panasonic Corporation 2019

Indeed, it'll be stuff like Java won't it? The actual firmware is closed.

They could also use a much slimmer bezel on an OLED display, like the Xperia 1 series phones, with square edges, which would eliminate the massive chin on the current camera LCDs.

There is a chance to go past 3" screens on the larger mirrorless cameras. All they need to do is reposition the joystick and get rid of the large jog wheel. Then the buttons below the screen can be screen icons as touch screens work better 5" rather than 3. When the screen is flipped out, it won't be any heavier as we'd use an OLED panel and titanium frame. At any rate it would definitely still be much lighter than a smartphone as it is just the panel, no internals like battery. So it shouldn't unbalance the camera when in use, and I'd prefer it to flip out rather than twizzle out anyway. Why haven't we gone past 3" do you think? Lack of demand, cost, or something else?

8K via YouTube won't look true. It will have been manipulated by your display for a start, downscaled to fit. Compressed to hell. Any sharpness in the original image will look worse. I miss the days when people were a bit more savvy about pixel peeping. Downloading the original files from Vimeo... Looking for signs of aliasing. And in-camera colour science was more important prior to the everything being shot in LOG format.

Something tells me the R1 is not the last 1 series EOS R camera to come... https://www.eoshd.com/news/hint-wait-for-the-canon-eos-r1x/ After all, back in the day they did split the 1D and 1DS didn't they?

8K with that firmware update for 500Mbit 10bit 422 is what the a1 is all about The super 35mm mode is your usual 5.8k downsampled to UHD... That has been around since the a7r II. No complaints with it but the full frame 8K is stunning. When the R1 hits $2000 on eBay as pro cameras tend to do... and Sony a1 comes down under $3k used, things will start to get very interesting again for enthusiasts.

Absolutely. The Fuji X-H2 does this for $1500 350 Mbps is more like it. Remains to be seen whether it is any better than H.265 at that bitrate though and it being not really RAW (as in unprocessed like Cinema DNG). Probably looks very similar to H.265 for all but the most extreme grades. We at least get a fan this time, so in a way all the controversy was worth it. No matter what though, It just isn't worth £4500 to me in today's market. Between the Sony a1, Fuji GFX 100 and Panasonic S1H I have the bases covered. There is no way the EOS R5 II beats a GFX 100 for stills and manual focus glass either. Canon FD glass looks so much more atmospheric in medium format. The GFX 100 is going for under £3k used in mint condition now BTW. The GFX 100 II is definitely worth saving up for when it comes down in price.

6K 60p Standard RAW – 2600mbps 6K 60p Light RAW – 1800mbps These are the bitrates for 6K RAW on the Canon R1 Do people still mind about manageable file sizes? For me I never tend to go above 700Mbit. Of course for 8K RAW on the R5 II the files are going to be even more gargantuan (2600mbps+) One thing both Canon and Nikon continue to omit is any sort of anamorphic mode as well.

The Z8 and Z9 shoot ProRes RAW as well though, not just N-RAW. They are in pole position for future cameras as well due to the infamous patent and RED ownership. What if they say to Canon - no more RAW for you? Unlikely, but Canon could end up paying significant royalties if there is a time-limit on the current patent swap with RED. By the way - depending on what was swapped, Nikon could now have the rights to use RF mount!! That would be funny. Far fewer resolutions, frame rates and crop factors. That is truly a camera for the faithful.

There is no line skipping any more, it is done by pixel binning and more intelligently merging groups of pixels. Sensors have come a long way since the 5D Mark II. Unfortunately for Canon, the competition's sensors have come along further than they have. If the trend continues then Canon will have to pay a heavy price for Sony's best process... And are not fully in control, but at the mercy of a rival. I am very curious to see if existing R5 and R3 owners in the current financial climate decide that it is worth it to upgrade.

That price difference is absolutely nuts. The R5 II is objectively worse than a Z8... Not by a lot, but in terms of the overall technology under the hood, the fact it needs a fan, the lack of ProRes and the worse RAW codec, and also the worse lens mount which cannot accept adapters to Sony E-mount - and I am not sure there is a autofocusing Leica M adapter either? Or Super 16mm c-mount? So that for me, is what killed the EOS R3 vs Nikon Z9 and it is same with the new models. Overheating times don't make for great reading either: https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canon-eos-r5-ii-initial-review/2 Seems like just the original R5 with a re-worked fan from the EOS R5C in terms of thermals of the processor and sensor. And what's up with the R1 - for something that has cooked for 3 and a half years longer than a Sony a1, you'd think it would move the bar a lot higher - instead it is a reheated 1D X Mark III! That for me is a bit of a shocker. I was expecting something completely new and something which really put the relatively old-ish R3 and Z9 in the shade. I guess Canon decided that sports photographers didn't want the extra file sizes of 50MP+, so they played it relatively conservatively?

Canon G1X which was their largest sensor compact ever at the time... Micro Four Thirds size sensor Example shot is from RAW, no AI... Canon G12 typical small sensor (1/1.7"), RAW no edits Same RAW from the G12 but with the Adobe Camera Raw AI optic corrections activated: Can you tell that apart from the G1X any more? The difference is now virtually unnoticeable.

It didn't slow down much, have you seen what generative AI is capable of when you feed it a source image? The progress of that is huge in just 2 years. The processing power of Generative AI is in the cloud, which makes it an app. So it is a very short leap to embed this in the default iPhone camera app or the default Samsung camera. The question is financial... Who pays for the cloud processing and how much.... When do smartphone GPUs reach the advanced threshold required to do this processing on the device rather than it needing a subscription? 2018-2023 is only 5 years of debate, and it saw 1" sensors become mainstream on flagship smartphones, often 100MP+ and a readout architecture fast enough for 6K RAW video, with no crop. They don't need to go to APS-C or even MFT size sensors in smartphones, because Generative AI is here. They don't need triple gain sensors when they have a full sensor readout at 240fps The current multi-shot HDR algorithms work very well. The dynamic range of a years old Huawei is close to a Fuji GFX 100 RAW file. There's been a lot of improvements to the optics too. Sony have a folded variable periscope zoom which is tiny and thin. Apple have a mass-market folded optic, a 135mm equiv. prime lens in an iPhone. Which would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. This is an incredible lens, capable of stunning results. The advancement in cinematic video is also very large in the latest models. The ability to simulate any full frame lens is already possible with software, let alone generative AI. I disagree. If you feed a 1" sensor Xiaomi 12S Ultra image from a few years ago into Adobe Camera Raw and apply the AI optical corrections you basically have the look of full frame and can't tell it apart. The dynamic range is there, the resolution is excellent, the main lens is fast and capable. The telephoto also. But you can shoot raw DNG. This overcomes anything and everything you don't like about the smartphone image processor for taste reasons. The DNGs benefit like the HEIF files do from the multi-sampling, quad bayer, multi-frame HDR and contain a fantastic amount of image data. Even on a relatively modestly priced Pixel 6 from 4 years ago. The more you shoot RAW the more you realise that the hardware is really fucking good, and that the processing built into the low level hardware and sensor output can be as natural as a mirrorless camera. Then once you have the colours to taste, you can then apply AI optics on top in ACR

Yes, Sigma Fp-L and Fuji X-H2 They have the very high resolution sensors for it to work at MFT crop So you can put your 2x crop lenses on one of the above cameras and maintain 4K detail I had that adapter made for MFT lenses to Fuji... It is a very small niche though, maybe not commercially worthwhile. Even the X-H1 did a nice MFT crop in 4K

Clear Image Zoom is a crop at native resolution, so on a Sony camera 2x clear image zoom at 4K looks like 4K That's the same with the FP-L which has a 60 megapixel sensor, so enough resolution to do 4K at Super 16mm crop factors. It's very detailed and not a digital zoom or blow-up. In stills mode only I think?

Why would you not get a second hand Nikon Z7 for same price? Far wider range of lenses for cheap.

F2 is where the magic rendering starts for me, but no matter what look you are going for be it shallow or deep DOF, AI will be able to apply it all. To anything with a small sensor. Much harder to get rid of a shallow depth of field baked in by the optic, than to take a deep depth of field and make it shallower with AI!

For that app you still need a smartphone though don’t you?

Some of my thoughts here: https://www.eoshd.com/news/ai-will-mean-lens-prices-have-to-be-completely-reassessed-by-camera-companies/

One of the best uses of a clinical sharp image recently has been Zone of Interest. It's truly chilling. The clinical, clean, 'psychopathic' deep depth of field extenuates the banality of evil, and there is something very Nazi-ish about hyper crisp detail that really suits the mood. But then I never expect anything less than genius from Jonathan Glazer. Oscar was well deserved. Just proves that even anti-cinematic cinematography has a place... Sometimes.

Test files on the way to you now.

I am going to release on the blog a little EOSHD LOG C3 profile for Panasonic's full frame cameras and perhaps the GH6. Happy to give it out for free to any of you folk who'd like to try it out in return for a bit of feedback and some test shots. It will make your camera compatible with the ARRI look library and ALEXA LUTS. It should also be a bit easier to grade than V-LOG. It also brings ARRI LOG C wide colour gamut to the Panasonic cams. No need to wait for GH7 and pay $200 for the privilege! Happy to answer any questions relating to it and what cameras it'll work best on...

I don't think many people starting out are considering DSLRs over mirrorless. The stuff I see, even a bargain like a $1k D850 just seems to sit on the store shelves. The Z6 III isn't for people starting out anyway, it is aimed at existing Nikon DSLR users and owners of the Z6, and Z6 II... Plus they are hopeful a bunch of people might switch from other manufacturers, but it would be a brave beginner who drops $2.5k on their first camera body and a further $3k on lenses. So the $1500-2000 market and beginner market are two very different things. I am talking about the $1500-2000 range of enthusiasts who aren't beginners. The Z6 III is priced about $1000 too high for them especially in the UK. They have a massive range of mirrorless cameras to choose from on the used camera market. X-H2, X-H2S, GH6, A7 IV, A7S II, A7R II, A7R III, A7C, Z6 II, there's loads... Over at WEX they even have a special Z6 II Ukraine War Edition: ... It's sponsored by Leica, with pretty Sony crayon mode dial colours. Saw a GFX 50S for £1200 the other day, so if we take video out of the equation for these people... And realise they can go medium format 50 megapixel for that price... the Z6 III doesn't even come into their thinking at all. Why pay double the price for half the image quality?

And this is why one shouldn't get hung up on imatest The whole point of RAW for me is that the RAW sensor data is exposed in the final image, including grain texture and shadow noise. Also this seemingly standard method in tests of exposing CMOS sensors for highlights, then ramping up the blacks - think about the impact that has on colour in the mids and tonality in the shadows. Yes you are showing what kind of dynamic range is possible but in creative terms it is a step back. And when you start applying NR to the shadows in some misguided uncreative attempt to squeeze out that last 0.5 stops of dynamic range, you may as well shoot H.265 It would be interesting to take the uncompressed Cinema DNG cameras... Blackmagic Pocket 4K original firmware, Sigma Fp-L, 5D Mark III Magic Lantern, Digital Bolex and compare the image aesthetically to N-RAW and ProRes RAW, in terms of how close one or the other looks to film. And film remains the gold standard for atmosphere, warts and all. I always look at images and not so much the numbers especially when we are talking less than 1 stop differences between cameras. Unless it is a case of Alexa 35 which is far ahead of everything else.