Emanuel

I think that word “affinity” is actually more important than people sometimes admit : ) On paper we can reduce everything to specs, codecs, lenses and prices, but after a certain point a system also has to make you want to pick it up and use it. Sony can tick practically every box and still somehow not be the answer (I know exactly what you mean there : ) Since you are very much a hybrid shooter, and stills seem to matter at least as much as video, I would probably look at this slightly differently. On the L-mount side, before changing anything, I would certainly try the Lumix S 24-105mm f/4 Macro O.I.S. It is not an exotic lens, but for somebody moving constantly between stills and video it is exactly the sort of lens that can make a system considerably more useful: sensible range, stabilisation, very useful close focusing and one lens that can stay on the camera for most of the day. Sony is tempting for a different reason. Beyond the enormous stills AF lens catalogue, E-mount also gives you an unusually broad selection of genuinely affordable full-frame AF glass (the AF-AFF route, AutoFocus to Affordable Full Frame ; ) And then there is the increasingly interesting cine side. The compact Samyang V-AF primes are a good example. They are relatively affordable, matched as a family, and the 24mm in particular is interesting because it makes perfectly good sense on full frame while also becoming a very useful lens on something like an FX30 (a cam I am particularly used to : ) Add Samyang's 1.7x anamorphic MF adapter and AF becomes MF. But put something like DJI Focus Pro LiDAR [ 1 | 2] into the equation and you can effectively bring automated focusing back again (the AF-MF-AF route ; ) And you no longer even need to go through that slightly mad route if you simply want AF anamorphic. Blazar now has the Apex 1.33x S35 AF lenses and the Talon 1.5x full-frame AF line, while Sirui has its 20mm/40mm T1.8 1.33x S35 AF anamorphics plus the new Astra full-frame AF series. So E-mount is beginning to look less like a one-off anamorphic experiment and more like an actual affordable AF-anamorphic ecosystem. The interesting part is that some of this does not necessarily lock you into Sony either. The Samyang V-AF 24mm has already been shown working with AF on the ZR through the Megadap ETZ21 Pro+, so at least part of that E-mount investment could potentially follow you across. And Sirui already offers native Z versions of its S35 AF anamorphics. Blazar had actually announced Z-mount for the Apex originally too, although the production lenses have so far remained E/L. So for me the real attraction of Sony in your case would not simply be "better video AF". It is the combination of the huge hybrid/stills lens ecosystem, lots of affordable AF glass, the possibility of adding something like an FX30 without changing lenses, the Samyang V-AF route, and now a growing choice of genuine AF anamorphics as well. At the same time, the ZR increasingly looks capable of borrowing some of those advantages without necessarily committing yourself completely to Sony. Which, unfortunately, probably makes your decision harder rather than easier... ; )

Well, two years after the X4 and one year after the X5, here we are again : ) This time it actually looks like a proper generational jump rather than the usual yearly refresh: X6 brings dual 1/1.1" square sensors (33% larger area than X5), 8K50p (for smoother capture 'cause this is 360º shooting, folks! ; ) 10-bit I-Log and even native in-camera Dolby Vision. There's also a new 2600mAh battery design (finally no longer doubling as part of the actual camera body : ) rated for up to 140 minutes at 8K30. https://www.insta360.com/blog/insta360-x6-launch.html Funny enough, going back to the beginning of this thread, we were already asking for larger sensors, 10-bit LOG and better DR back in 2024... so they have been reading us after all? ; ) For me the really interesting bit is not the "action cam" side of the thing anyway, but how far 360 acquisition has now come as a tool to shoot first and decide framing/camera movement later. 8K was already making that increasingly usable with X4/X5, but larger sensors + 10-bit I-Log is another story for post. 8K50 is not exactly bad news either : P U.S. shooters will have to go down to 6K for getting 60p if needed. The usual guy. Looks like the X-series finally got the upgrade we were waiting for : ) Comparatives against the current 360º contenders or merely dethroned now? And against the other current action cams. Introducing auto editing features by AI, no less ; ) Their new PanoMind model is actually built around understanding the whole 360º scene rather than a conventional flat frame, powering AI Director, Auto Edit 2.0 and Moments Pro. AI Director can even go through your footage inside the X6 while the camera is charging, pick the highlights and have an editable finished cut waiting in the app afterwards (now that's actually useful AI! ; ) Auto Edit 2.0 can take one or several clips and handle the reframing, virtual camera moves, cuts, transitions and music automatically, while Moments Pro takes it another step into the cloud: give it the subject, mood, style and duration you're after and let it build the edit from there. In other words, the whole old 360º idea of "shoot everything now, decide where the camera was pointing later" is increasingly becoming "shoot everything now and perhaps don't even have to decide that yourself later" : P That's precisely where AI actually makes sense here: it addresses one very specific 360º problem: the absurd number of reframing decisions you can end up making in post. Maybe not yet refined but the concept is here : ) Computational cinematography has just landed... Photo Mode X6 vs X5 (who said higher resolution doesn't count? ; ) source (here's a new interesting tool to compare 360 cameras from this same guy, on topic) - EAG

Same here :- )

I have one URSA Cine 12K just waiting for... ;- )

One of my fave ones ever! : ) I have 4x units of them (the perfect steal for 100 bucks each ; ) and am usually recommending it as a primary cine camera for every newbie willing to pursue a career in this industry ;- ) - EAG

Yeah : D Get a good excuse and go for it! : ) And let us know what you think about it afterwards! ; ) We are all ears... Quite a temptation indeed, to say the least :- X

Sure : ) That's actually how this thread started back in January, and I updated it again in March with the 9.9.2 firmware update : ) So yes, PDAF itself isn't the new part here. What I meant by "quite an update" was 10.2.2 as a whole (and AF finally graduating from beta), especially "10-minute pre-record" and all on the "Same hardware" (which is why those were the two bits I put in bold), that's the news! No need for a new camera ; ) alongside 4-channel audio, Cloud Streaming and the rest. And yes, you were already asking for the URSA Cine 12K LF back in January... let's see if that one comes next ; - )

Now this is quite an update... Blackmagic Camera 10.2.2 brings PDAF, continuous autofocus, face and object detection to the Cinema Camera 6K, including adjustable AF transition speed and the ability to pause continuous AF by holding the focus button. But 10-minute pre-record is probably just as interesting (and maybe even more useful in the real world). Up to 10 minutes before you actually press REC... : -) Also added: • 4-channel audio recording • Blackmagic Cloud Streaming • AF mode shortcut assignment • selectable pre-record duration from 5 seconds up to 10 minutes What I find particularly interesting is what this does to the value proposition of the original BMCC 6K. Same hardware, but it is becoming a considerably more capable production camera than the one people originally reviewed. Blackmagic seem to be doing something quite clever here: features developed for PYXIS and their broader production ecosystem are progressively finding their way back into the Cinema Camera 6K. Firmware extending the useful life of hardware rather than giving us another body every year... I can live with that! ; ) EAG :- ) article BMD support page PS: And I even paid about half thanks to that promotional price mentioned on these same pages... remember? : P

This has to be fixed! I'll ask Jarred about this (particularly about the possibility of a lighter R3D NE option) and see what he says (E. :- )

There is one important point here : ) A Japanese decision invalidating the Japanese patent does not, by itself, kill equivalent patents in the US, Europe or anywhere else (even if they belong to the same patent family). Patent rights are territorial and each national right has, legally speaking, its own existence within its own jurisdiction. So no, compressed RAW has not suddenly become free for everyone everywhere : ) What is interesting is something else: if the claims are substantially equivalent (and that is obviously the important bit), the reasoning used in Japan may well become useful ammunition in other validity challenges. That is why, for me, the really interesting question is what Panasonic (or anyone else) does next. If equivalent RED claims start falling elsewhere too (particularly in the US), then yes, we may be looking at a very different landscape. - E. :- )

The funny thing is that 8-bit cDNG on the FP would actually make the challenge more interesting, not less : ) Sigma really does offer CinemaDNG internally in 8, 10 and 12-bit, so “8-bit RAW” is not an oxymoron here. The FP even uses a different dual-base ISO behaviour for 8/10-bit CinemaDNG than for 12-bit RAW. Which could make a nice test in itself: how much of what we normally attribute to “8-bit limitations” comes from bit depth, and how much comes from the usual baked codec / chroma / processing pipeline?

Go figure, I still have a 4K BenQ TK800 gathering dust 'cause, for what I actually need most of the time, our little 1080p GV50 units do the job perfectly well ; ) And then there are our 1080p XGIMI MoGo 2 Pros too. We actually bought several of them for our facilities instead of going for the newer MoGo 3 Pro or even the MoGo 4 (the latter even comes in a Laser version), although both were already available by the time we acquired ours. And yet, I religiously keep my good old 22-year-old XGA (1024x768) BenQ PB6200 in my office! LOL : ) BTW, 768p has pretty much become our new norm for the MiniMax H3 work we've been doing locally on our Olares system, even though 2K is available in the cloud. And there are some pretty good ways of bridging that gap in post anyway: Topaz Video with Starlight Precise 2.5 when maximum quality matters, SeedVR2 through ComfyUI when we want to keep the whole workflow local, or simply Resolve Studio 21's Super Scale when we want to stay inside the NLE. Different tools, different trade-offs, same principle. For me, in the end, what matters with every new tech development is simply what we can actually do with it. Horses for courses. Nothing more. No need to be fanboys of any particular brand, format, sensor size, resolution... or even of any poster here! : D Brand-agnostic, format-agnostic, tech-agnostic ; ) Use whatever gives you something useful, for the sake of the art and whatever the state of the art happens to be. (E. :- )

This is turning into quite an interesting rabbit hole, good call starting this thread : ) Well, at least we have one thing in common this time ; ) the GX85 is in my arsenal too! ... That also makes the format issue particularly relevant. Since the GX85 records video in 16:9 rather than genuine 4:3 open gate, a 1.55x adapter would produce a rather extreme 2.75:1 image. The more practical 2.07:1 combination would require an open-gate body such as the GH7. A potentially more practical option might also be one of the smartphone anamorphics with a standard 37mm rear mount, such as the Beastgrip 1.33x or 1.55x MK2. These could be attached to lenses such as the Panasonic 14mm or TTArtisan 17mm with ordinary step rings, making mounting and alignment considerably simpler than with the 17mm-threaded Neewer.

Again? : ) Nobody said they are equally important. Not even close. That is not the position anyone here has argued at all, but a dismissive caricature of it, no less. And misleading. Period. What has emerged from several contributions here, including yours and mine on the importance of DR, is simply that their practical value depends on the shot, purpose and workflow. Extra DR matters in both controlled and uncontrolled high-contrast scenes, perhaps even more so in the latter. Fair enough. In other cases, reach, reframing, stabilisation, VFX or high-resolution frame grabs may matter too. Budget hybrid cameras, you said? ; ) Correct. Those are real-world uses as well. So saying that none of this relates to anything anyone here actually does is rather sweeping, given that more than one person here had already pointed to practical uses for higher-resolution capture while also acknowledging its limits. Nor is this only about one camera. More will come, including the Pocket 4 Pro with those extra stops, and naturally we will discuss where such advances matter and where their limits begin. This is a camera forum : ) It is the right place for disagreement about cameras, specs, footage and real-world use. Not for theatrics, personal point-scoring, showing off or ego contests. None of us needs to perform as the final authority here, as so often happens on internet forums. “More useful for one workflow” is not the same as “practically irrelevant to everyone else”. Either way, life goes on, and so does this thread. Your contribution has been useful, as have those of others. We do not need to agree. You are one of my fav contributors here, and clearly one of many people’s favourites too. That gives your words more weight, but also more responsibility. Being a valuable contributor does not give any of us the right to be unpleasant to others. And that last reply was unpleasant. And unbalanced. Prima donna behaviour is no more attractive on a forum than on a professional set. In my work, I simply cross prima donnas off the list. I have neither the time nor the patience for them. That is worth remembering for all of us. You, me, everyone. And there is no drama here. This is only a disagreement about cameras. You were the one who announced you were “done”, as though an ordinary disagreement had become rather more serious than it really is. Perhaps you're simply in a bad mood today (it happens to all of us). But your interlocutor should not have to pick up the bill & pay the price. Almost impossible to take a different position from yours without it turning personal (if not at first, up there you kept escalating until it did, at least this time...), as if disagreeing on a point meant challenging a supposed “authority” : X (phew) No hard feelings anyway, count on it :- )