Andrew Reid

You just have to appreciate how patents and technology transfers work Sony could be supplying for example the RED Komodo sensor. I am not saying they are, but if they are then RED obviously can pay for it in hard cash or they can offer to license the internal compressed RAW patent to Sony for certain products. If Sony were not asleep during RED's conception they may have patented internal compressed wavelet RAW themselves and perhaps be a lot richer. Innovation always pays!

Let's take it just as a stills camera... A GM6 if you like. Still a failure. What does it do as a stills camera that is particularly unique on the market? Aside from the fact it's $750? For that priced use you can get a Fuji X-H1!!!!!!!

Canon have compressed RAW codec, internal. RED have RF mount. Go figure!

I expect the A7S III to handily outperform the EOS R5 and EOS R6 for video. 10K Quad Bayer sensor (60 megapixel, 8K RAW, 4K Quad Bayer readout, no crop, good rolling shutter due to fast sensor architecture and multiple readout channels, a typical Sony strength) Whereas EOS R5 is traditional bayer, lower megapixel count and likely high rolling shutter. Also I can see on the codec side the Sony maybe doing something interesting with H.265 compressed RAW. I think right now if I were to only choose one flagship it would be the Sony. Doesn't mean I am going to bite the specs hype bullet though. EOSHD during both these launches will be an ANTI-hype machine Unless it is warranted and they put out a genuine marvel which is both practical to use not just with some dazzling high numbers on the box. I can see the A7S III, A7SH or A7H or whatever they will call it being the new flagship for stills above the A7R IV as well. There was a reason the A7R III and IV were just incremental evolutions.

Viewing distance acts as an anti-aliasing filter You should try some 1080/100fps clips on a cinema projector and sit back It actually doesn't look too bad. The pixel binning sensor readout always improved on the big screen compared to a computer screen.

Fuji have licensed PDAF on Sony sensor so I am sure others are allowed to as well. I think with Panasonic it's more that they have invested long term in a different technology and don't want to waste that. DFD with AI may get better in the future and rival PDAF. But they need to hurry up because the current state of affairs is just not good enough! Thanks for the suggestions so far. Great stuff.

Don't think he said redesign did he?... More like 'Everything is new compared to the 5 year old camera'. So obviously a new sensor, LSI, EVF and so on. I'll be very pleasantly surprised if they do a design adventure. Change the concept around. Internal ND. Small XC10 style camera. Brand new menus. But to be honest, despite the lack of adventures and bravery in new design concepts, I am quite happy with mirrorless form factor as it is. Hybrid stills / video is my thing. PS I cannot promise to review the A7S III or even EOS R5, because I will have to buy them and I think rather than putting $4k into another corporation's bank account we should reward innovation at better prices, from Fuji, Sigma, Panasonic and others. Canon and Sony have practically ignored us for 5 years and now suddenly they want our money again. Bear this in mind when you see all the stage-managed YouTube hype next month about 8K and RAW.

£3000 used to be Sony's standard price! And the want to go UP!

Also coming soon

Sony has confirmed that the A7S III is finally on the way this Summer, likely in July to coincide with the big Canon rivals - EOS R5 and R6. I have some more information on what we can expect from the new flagship full frame mirrorless cameras. New blog post: https://www.eoshd.com/news/sony-a7s-iii-or-will-it-be-a7h-and-canon-eos-r5-both-set-for-july-launch-as-sony-officially-hint-at-video-specs/

High ISO performance is already amazing on the Fp, rivals Panasonic S1H. Higher than ISO 12,800 is really niche. An audio module isn't a bad idea though.

The M50 is 2.7x crop like Super 16mm in 4K. The cut the 8MP window out of a 24MP sensor. Panasonic cut the 8MP window out of a 20MP sensor on the G100. It is about 2.8x crop in 4K. It used to be 2.3x when they cut 8MP out of 16MP on the GH4 and older 16 megapixel sensors. Panasonic solves this issue ages ago and so have competitors. The cheaper-than-G100 Olympus E-M10 Mark III does not do this 4K crop out - full width. The Fuji X-A7 is also dirt cheap and can do full 6K oversampling, no crop in 4K. Both are better options for bloggers than the G100 and superior in a technical sense too. So Panasonic's marketing team should not be making excuses and pseudo-reps on this forum should know better than to try and mislead us quite frankly. I have a lot of goodwill to Panasonic because it is well know what they did for enthusiast filmmaking and 4K on a budget. GH2, one of the all time classics. GH4, first 4K mirrorless. Today, the focus seems to be more on pros with S1H and GH5S, but still the S1 with VLOG 10bit upgrade is a total bargain for the image quality. When Panasonic put out totally misguided and lame marketing (like the Cinema5D video for instance where she cannot even be honest about the crop factor in 4K) they lose a LOT of goodwill with people like you and me. As a commentator and Panasonic user I cannot ignore such serious mistakes or gloss over them. Regarding the Canon M50. Yes, the M50 does seem to come high up the Amazon sales chart and the reason is this: Brand. It captures Canon users who can't afford the EOS RP - the mini "APS-C EOS RP" for cheap Overall value for money (specs for price). Vlogger crowd like the autofocus and 'good enough' feature set. Cheap kit lens For cash strapped enthusiasts, Chinese lenses on Amazon A lot of people can't justify $2000 for something better or even $1200+ for a Fuji X-T3 or Canon Rp. Problem for Panasonic? The specs and features and brand and marketing are all perceived as superior to the G100. M50 is not really an enthusiast camera, it is one of those VERY rare unicorns in 2020 - a successful consumer point & shoot with mass-market appeal. There is nothing particularly unique about it technologically, or in terms of ideas, innovation and design. I also think successes with cheap cameras are harder and harder to come by - sometimes are complete fluke. Perhaps only a brand like Canon or Sony can still pull it off. I don't know. But if the G100 is a sales success I'll eat my hat. Look at Nikon Z50. Superior technically to the M50 and also cheap but hardly selling at all from what I can tell!

Can Sony explain why we have had to wait 5 years for it? Arguably it is now a terrible time to release the camera, due to the virus situation and impact on film shoots, pro photography work and livelihoods. But I am glad the wait is finally over. It really does look like an exciting July is coming up with Canon EOS R5 and A7S III. If you've got $4000 burning a hole in your pocket that is! It is going to be a bit of a dilemma - which to buy - can't really justify both! I'd say probably the A7S III will beat the Canon but let's wait and see. *** What impact has COVID-19 had on your operations worldwide? It has definitely had an impact on production, and on procurement of supplies. But we’re working with all of our suppliers to minimize this. We have two manufacturing bases though – China and Thailand, which helps, and most of the supply and logistics issues have now been resolved. Operations at our factories have resumed. What do you think the effect of the pandemic will be on the photo industry as a whole? I think there will be very little long-term impact on production and logistics, but demand [for cameras] has been decreasing. The entire world is affected by COVID-19. However there are a lot of positive signs. For example in China, sales at June 18 shopping gala were higher than last year. We experienced strong demand for our premium lines, like the Alpha 7 Mark III and Alpha 7R Mark IV. So China is getting better, but in other areas the situation is different, obviously. Demand in the market is starting to recover in most regions though, and I’m not worried about demand [for our products] in the long-term. Where do you see Sony’s biggest opportunities in today’s market? Video is a big opportunity, and full-frame. In China especially, the full-frame mirrorless market is growing. We’re also going to continue to expand our lens lineup to meet the needs of professionals around the world. Those are our biggest opportunities, I think. Full-frame mirrorless and video. Demand for video is now growing in every region of the world. The Sony ZV-1 (left) is one of a new generation of cameras intended to appeal to vloggers and video content creators, alongside the likes of the Canon PowerShot G7 X (right) and the new Panasonic Lumix G100. You released the ZV-1 in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis - how important is the vlogging and live-streaming market to Sony? The content creator market is expanding rapidly, and the ZV1 was purpose-built to meet the needs of video creators at all skill levels. With the impact of COVID-19, a lot of people want to record their experiences with video. Demand for this kind of product is increasing, and with the ZV-1 we had an opportunity to meet this need. A lot of people will also enjoy the ZV-1 as a webcam when connecting it to a PC via USB. We will deliver a new Desktop application in July to enable this. Will the Alpha 7S Mark II be replaced, or has the ‘S’ line been superseded by the a7 III and a7R IV? We’ve received many requests, especially from professional video content creators, and I can confirm that a successor to the Alpha 7S II will be coming, later this summer. Right now we’re focused on the launch of the new camera, and it will be a complete redesign of the whole system, including the image sensor. Everything is new. We hope it will meet and exceed the expectations and requests of our customers. I’m very confident that our new model will meet their demands. The ‘S’ originally stood for ‘sensitivity’ but now I think it should stand for ‘supreme’ in terms of image quality, and expression. It comes from having really big pixels. I think that many professionals and high-end users will enjoy the new camera. What were the major requests from a7S II users? Mainly things like 4K/60p, 10-bit 4:2:2… really what you’d expect. We’re seeing Raw video being added to more and more consumer cameras - do you think there’s a need for it? We’re aware that there is a certain amount of demand for Raw video. As you know, our customers include a lot of professionals, so we’re working hard to be able to deliver Raw data capture to these people. What can Sony offer professionals right now that your competitors can’t? Technology and innovation. These are our strengths, and that’s what we want to deliver. We have strong in-house technologies. We have very advanced technology for both stills and movies. I am proud of the speed, the performance and the richness of the images [from our products] in various conditions. And also portability of the system. We’re continuing to evolve, to bring the performance of our products to a new level. We’re really not developing products in an attempt to compete with other manufacturers. We want to satisfy consumers, and surprise them - and create a ‘wow!’ reaction. Can we expect to see Stacked CMOS sensor technology make its way into more Sony cameras in future? Of course, it’s a unique, cutting-edge technology, and we want to make maximum use of these kinds of technologies. How will your autofocus technologies evolve in future? Increased detection speed and accuracy are what’s being demanded by our users, including professionals. And with demand for video booming, autofocus in movie shooting is very important. Right now we’re dedicated to developing autofocus technology further and further. How will AI influence future products? Right now we’re further developing Eye-AF, and we’ve added other detection technologies, like Animal Eye-detection. Object recognition using AI is very, very important for the future. What do you think will be the next major technological leap, in the camera industry? We’re very invested in AI technology, as I mentioned, but photography and videography need lenses, and the autofocus actuator in lenses is very important. For video, for example, if the actuator doesn’t work, doesn’t move quickly enough, that’s a problem, and if it makes noise, that affects the quality of the footage. So this is something we’re also investing in a lot, as we’re planning for the future. In ten, twenty, fifty years I expect that computational photography will be doing a lot of things that traditional lenses do now With computational photography technologies becoming more advanced, do you think that lenses of the future will look like the lenses of today? I’m very positive about computational photography technologies, but glass has a lot of advantages. In ten, twenty, fifty years I expect that computational photography will be doing a lot of things that traditional lenses do now. But in the near future - five years, say - glass will still be superior. In some devices, like smartphones or cameras designed to be easy to use, computational photography could be very useful. But if you want to create a masterpiece, or commercial work, real glass is better. And glass can evolve, a lot. For example with our lenses, some of them are very small but the quality is high. There’s a lot of technology inside our lenses. We’ll continue to innovate with our lens technologies. Do you think in the future that smartphones will start to work more like cameras, or cameras will start to work more like smartphones? Nobody knows that! But I think it’s good to have options, and choices.

In my opinion the Sigma Fp was a great milestone. As the first Sigma camera to shoot cinema quality 4K and the first full frame stills camera to record 4K RAW internally to SD card, Sigma have gained the attention of filmmakers and set a tone for a very bright future. New blog post! https://www.eoshd.com/news/what-next-for-sigma

You don't need to keep using bolt font to make your point. This is one of the most knowledgable forums on the internet when it comes to 4K video and mirrorless. The Fuji X-A7 is in the same class and doesn't have a horrible 4K crop. Oversampling from 6K, S35 sensor size. Flip screen for vlogging and cheaper than G100. The stabilisation with the Fuji 18-55mm F2.8-4 is very good too. Read the forum rules about DPReview links please and don't post more. None of these cameras exactly set the world on fire. Barely even worth defending.

There should be absolute freedom when it comes to fiction. People that think fiction should be about messaging and impact on society usually can't tell the difference between fiction and reality.

True but there's nothing wrong with being interested in what you love surviving. If my passion was wiped out I'd be pretty depressed.

Partly because they suck batteries dry in minutes.

Yes it is a disgrace. But that's often what happens when sales, accountancy and marketing department staff are expedited to the top of the camera over the heads of senior engineers.

A waste of NASA's lenses really wasn't it.

There are no micro four thirds users here!! What is a GH5?!

So basically the G100 is an unremarkable low end camera marketed at the wrong people. We are supposed to congratulate Panasonic for that? I'll tell you what the G100 really is... Lazy. In the context of what kind of innovation is needed for a 2020 connected device and social media, it is a kind of afterthought device from 10 years ago. That it is aimed at beginners is besides the point. There is no excuse for a lack of ideas. It doesn't matter what model number you dress it in, it still compares poorly to all the other small cameras in the same price range and same product class. I advise you to look what you can get for $750 used. All sorts of much more powerful and reliable stuff. Even the most absolutely small size obsessed cash strapped stills shooters would more likely go Canon M50 for the larger sensor and EF lens compatibility with good AF. Yes, that's worse than almost all the alternatives.

Which camera is the framegrab from? In my experience it isn't usually the lack of OLPF causing the moire in video mode, but sensor readout and sampling method. Like a downsample from 6K to 4K. If this frame was from a full res 6K RAW photo, I doubt the moire would be there, even with lack of OLPF.

Michael Woodford had quite an Olympus Trip

- Dedicated ISO on fn. button - Half-press shutter to come permanently out of focus punch-in, and yes moving it around frame whilst in it - Focus punch in ability during recording, if possible (why is this so hard for so many cameras?) - 2.8K RAW 10bit internal mode for reduced file sizes and SD card recording - 4K 60p in APS-C mode - Cup of tea making ability And yes definitely DCI 4K to SSD would be nice.