IronFilm

haha, like Curtis Judd? ? It is quite something seeing him next to "normal" people:

Bringing two cameras at all times with you (even if you leave the back up in the car) is indeed a very solid plan! And I'm not just referring to a mechanical (or electronical) failures of a focal reducer, but also optical "failures" as well, what if you get a weird flare you can't be rid of, then it is handy to be able to swap out the focal reducer to a simple dumb adapter. Wow, just wow, LensRental really does love to "cover their ass"! Tonnes and tonnes of pros uses a Speed Booster on paid shoots. No wonder LensRental went overboard in their excessively cautious statement saying "the URSA Mini is not suitable for professional work". (which did a lot of damage to its reputation at the time)

That is very weird that you're having this problem even in manual focus?! As that should override everything else but your direct changes on the lens, so if manual focus was broken I'd expect it would be broken on the DSLR as well and not just the GH5

I'm "happy" enough ish with the current Zoom F4/F8 limiters, they give you an extra 10dB of headroom, so if you're recording conservatively (as you shouldn't be driving your limiters hard even if you have a 633/Maxx/SX-R4+/etc) with a single extra safety track (for the boom track, I usually don't worry about the wireless as you're more likely to run into issues earlier in the gain staging on average than at the final recorder end of things) that you've set levels for sensibly beforehand then I have nothing to worry about with Zoom's limiters. And if they become even better? As we expect. Well I'll certainly be very happy with them as well I'm sure!

Fair enough, 1080 60p isn't a deal breaker for everyone though, so I thought I'd at least float the idea as worth re-considering.

Thankfully NZ is not quite as bad!

On this topic of affordable anamorphics, this video is very much worth a watch: But before you reply, note when that video was uploaded this year, and check out this update as well:

Yes, that is what I noticed from the video, and I wondered if its positioning needed to be further tweaked to help fix that or if it couldn't be.

What will never happen, dropping to a third of their current cheapest prices? Never say never! One day a company will make the gamble that the volume of sales will make it worthwhile to streamline the manufacturing process and cut their margins to sell it rock bottom.

Oh! http://taipeigeek.blogspot.com/2018/05/jason-lanier-removed-as-sony-artisan.html I didn't know he'd been dropped by Sony. Never been a fan of Jason Lanier, although I sometimes watched his videos, but I did admire his promotional efforts as at one point he did seem to be everywhere you turned to look.

LOL! But seriously, it is mildly tempting now and then to start up a film festival, HOWEVER I'd charge fair and reasonable entry fees which actually reflect the costs of such a low budget start up film festival. As it could be worthwhile just for the experience of running it, and the networking you'd create with a world of other filmmakers out there who you'd otherwise never get to really know. Exactly! Like this.

If you're already bringing a D5500 for stills, then I'd seriously think of sticking with that one body for the rest of the time. (but bring say a pocketable RX100 as a back up, and say for the gimbal shots, as then you can bring along a very very lightweight gimbal) A 50mm prime is very lightweight, and takes care of lowlight and thin DoF, maybe bring another lens or two as well and you'd still be under the weight limit of if you'd picked out a whole new camera body + lens + new batteries! Yes, you'd have some limitations/drawbacks to work around with the D5500 as your main video camera, but I reckon it is worth it for the weight savings / flexibility gained (as you could bring an extra lens or two more for the D5500, than if you instead brought along a second body) Although.... I kinda glossed over that point. So you really do want TWO bodies, as one will be dedicated to time lapses. Why not use the teeny RX100 for video just at sunset/sunrise while the D5500 is doing a time lapse, then use the D5500 as your main video camera for the rest of the time? That would maximize the usage of your camera weight being brought with you, which would seem very important for such a trek.

True, although I think anamorphic lenses even at a third of their prices would still be very premium items that rental houses would buy. Another problem is that rentals won't necessarily decrease linearly with the purchase cost, so I might still not find it cheap enough to rent. Anyway, if anamorphic drops to a third of their cheapest price currently then I expect you could find a lot more DoP's owning their own personal set. At the moment I can't think of anyone I know locally who owns some! But if Rokinon/Samyang brought out anamorphics which are say only 50% more than their Xeen lenses then I'd likely end up knowing a few people locally I could perhaps rent from other than just rental houses.

There looks like there is still a bit of a T/S effect going on in those video clips?

Problem is many people have a different idea of what "affordable" means. If they dropped to say a third of their current cheapest price, then well I still can't buy it, but it does make it "affordable" enough that rentals can be on the table for some projects I'm involved in. So that would be good news indeed.

I'll find it impossible to not talk about it! Although, got a massive back log for my YT channel already that I should sort out.

And now I've got *my* shipping notification from B&H sent to me! That my F8n is on its way and I should have it here in New Zealand by early next month.

Well no, just like an a6500 with a focal reducer is not the same as an a7S or a7R Plus we still don't know everything about the Mavo LF, such as what is its price?! Or all its specs.

On the Mavo S35, yes!

This video is kicking up a fuss over in the REDuser forum that he isn't shooting the rest of Avatar movies on a RED!

I've been in VR experiences which I myself helped create (did the photos for the photogrammetry to create the 3D models for VR) and it still can be a spooky feeling even for myself!

Oh hang on, I got it wrong, BMD does have AWB now: https://www.newsshooter.com/2018/03/22/ursa-broadcast-camera-news-shooters-dream-camera/ Even so, I highly doubt we'll see great autofocus from a BMD camera any time soon.

Exactly! We're much much sooner going to see AWB in a BMD camera than worthwhile AF, and even AWB hasn't happened yet.