ND64

"it cuts out everything that distracts, limits, or stifle creativity". I didn't know a grip that helps me hold the damn thing distracts my creativity.

Its more like a successor for Z7ii Nikon would make, rather than Z8 competitor.

Being different for the sake of being different is not a good business plan. $2000 for a S9 clone while being more limited than S9 is crazy.

I guess an anti-science herbalism is going on in this case.

So the bottleneck is the CPU, not the sensor.

It can't be at Z9 level, but it looks better than 5 years old Sony https://www.instagram.com/reel/DF__vsMRosw/

Only Sony and Canon have fully functional AF for Cine cameras, and it only works with their own lenses. But with Z mount the AF capabilities will be available with lenses other than Nikkor. This "changes everything" for those people who invested in E mount lenses but want to use a cine camera other than FX6/Burano. Of course this would be less of a topic if Burano wasn't such a meh product, or Sony had a global shutter sensor in an affordable body.

Wish I could combine Panasonic' IBIS with Nikon's digital VR.

Its like 18-55mm kit lens situation. Everybody thinks its a junk lens, because they've seen photos taken by that kind of lens, and most of them are not impressive; so they thought its a lens problem. But in reality, the proportion of amateur photographers who were still trying to learn and explore, in total users of that lens, was very high (because it was a kit and shipped with their first DSLR), so what others were seeing wasn't the lens problem, it was users' skill problem. The small group of people who use $30,000 camera, are the same people who know how to extract as much as much as possible from their gear, know how to get perfect lighting, and how to color grade. So when you see a Alexa footage, there is big chance you're seeing a team of elites performance. You see a discipline among elite groups, and its that when they find a winning formula, like the combination of attributes we call "Arri look", they stick with it. Thats how they made us addicted to it; as we were seeing that formula over and over again in many different movies, to the point that we collectively call it "cinematic", like any other formula is either inferior or not legit.

TV business is probably gone. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-supplier-panasonic-cut-costs-101150905.html A sword sharp enough that beheads the iconic Panasonic TV, can kill Panasonic camera too.

Their sensor choice and body design contradicts their pricing strategy. You want to grab market share with aggressive prices before AI destroy everything? You make a compact body around a full frame 8k sensor with L mount; especially when Panasonic is hibernated as a bear in winter.

With that tiny sensor its probably equivalent to f/4.

Its funny smartphone brands trying so hard to fake the "DSLR bokeh" but Gen Z do the subject separation by flash light. They don't care about the brand's solutions, they find their own. I think physical controls is part of the appeal. Here is what my smartphone live view looks like when I want to change the most basic settings. Almost 80% of the screen is occupied by the UI elements: Now imagine I want to change the ISO. Not only a considerable area of the 17:9 screen is wasted due to 4:3 size of the LV, but almost the third of LV area is crowded with numbers: Compare that to G7x. Its a small LCD, but at least most of the area is junk free. And it was Canon that was the most aggressive brand in icon inventions: And then look at here, you can zoom in/out with your left hand when you're taking selfie or filming yourself. This control looks amateurish for us but its huge ergonomics advantage for TikTok generation: But no just TikTokers. Look how this cyclist holds the G7x. Some PoVs here are impossible to take with a huge 6.7 inch smartphone: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-AOlHAscs8/ BTW, Canon marketing never managed to make an advertisement with 1.7m views that this guy did while not even trying.

They don't listen.

For exactly this wrong definition promoted by institutions like IMF we had to hear ridiculous terms like "transitory inflation" from politicians that wasn't.

While tariffs make things more expensive, and MAGA crowd is dumb enough to not understand that, its not actually inflation, because inflation is caused by increasing money supply. When money supply is not increased much but some goods become more expensive for whatever reason, shift in purchasing happens. Meaning you stop buying things you were buying before. And that's recession.

Remember "Essential" workers in covid lockdown days? Did they become millionaires? No. Because a job's income is determined by the number of available people who are willing to do that, not the importance of the job. And there are lot of people who want to be essential workers. The only reason train operator income is relatively high, despite the high number of people who want this job, is unions that can keep the income artificially higher. There is no union for video shooter and content creators. And thats because the political left couldn't figure out how to extend it to the industries that didn't exist in those years Marx was alive.

Interesting stories in that Reddit discussion. I guess we're dealing with Chinafication of content creation: super fast, short, low budget, cheap consumerism.

Don't want to start 2025 with a negative post, but I saw this depressing new year resolution today: Nothing wrong with being a train operator, but we're at a point that being a train operator is a better career option than shooting pro video with RED cameras.

That phone camera is cool, but image quality comparison on compressed-to-oblivion platform like YouTube, with 4k maximum resolution, which is only 8MP, and even a crop on that resolution for the sample images, is anything but legit comparison. BTW, while I love to have 5x optical zoom on my phone, I'm not sure it stays in the market for long time due to complexities it introduces to the whole smartphone manufacturing which has already became too complicated. For example my Chinese smartphone has a motor driven selfie camera. It was the best thing happened by the industry in my opinion. The camera unit is inside the phone when its not used, which is a big plus if you care about privacy (and you want to know when exactly the camera is on. No hacker can see you when the sensor is physically blocked, and you'll notice when an app requests a visual feed), and as a bonus your screen will always be hole/island free. But Chinese abandoned it after one or two generations, and made the upgrade a massive pain for me, since there is that stupid hole on the screen on every new smartphone. Its very hard to come back to that ugliness. They said its a mechanical thing and a point of failure, but mine never failed, even after exactly 5 years of heavy use. Thats Toyota level of reliability in the smartphone world. So my advice is if you see a cool feature, grab the phone and keep it. This market has a giant backyard of abandoned good ideas. The moment they find a cheaper solution to give you a 5x zoom, even with crappier results, they'll ditch the expensive optics. Even if we're talking about $11.5 a unit expensive.

Taking risk is riskier for smaller player. Look at the internet backlash against Z6III new sensor problems. Nikon might sell fewer than it expected because of that, but the volume of this all arounder is enough to absorb the lost sales. With smaller volume, you have to be sure nobody will complain. I'm not saying they should be conservative, I'm saying maybe they couldn't find a trouble free sensor with the price they can afford. Maybe A1 sensor isn't for sale, or Sony's charging too much.

They sent modified Z9 to the space station. That alone is enough evidence that there will be no DSLR release. No customer is more conservative than NASA.

Its hard to believe Canon lose its domination. 1 in 2 photographers in the world own a Canon, and they see no reason to switch.

For exactly the same reason Nikon will release the updated P1000 superzoom with no change but USB port. At this point they can't add more than a penny to the BoM of this kind of cameras.

Nikon IBIS+VR combo at tele is best in class, and its intriguing that nobody figured it out yet how to reach peak performance at both ends, Sony is very good at wide focal length but terrible at tele.