IronFilm

A friend is currently writing an AI trading bot. (one of zillions of such people trying to do this I am sure)

Phew, I was worried they'd forget about audio. But no headphone out to check the audio???

Are you going to be mostly shooting indoors or outdoors? If indoors, just be very diligent with your slating, making sure there is a loud clear clap (heck, do tails too?? So there is a double clap per take) and perhaps the audio can always be easily synced via waveform. You'll have a Boom Op / recordist too??

Am afraid the standard Zoom F2 is useless for using with TC, you need the Zoom F2-BT version. (plus the TCS Ultrasync Blue, and 2x TCS USO for each Blackmagic Pocket 6K. Oh, and TCS Ltd has been bought out by Atomos now) If you haven't yet got the Zooms, I'd recommend you get instead the Tentacle Track E instead, it is a better/easier setup. If you can wait, you might want to get the Deity PR-2 pocket recorder instead. https://deitymic.com/products/pr-2/ https://www.newsshooter.com/2023/04/18/deity-releases-the-pr-2-pocket-recorder-with-32-bit-float/ https://www.gothamsound.com/product/pr-2-pocket-recorder

AI video just keeps on getting better and better: The video to video feature is especially interesting, I could imagine a very rough video being made cheaply, then being heavily stylized to create a much more polished output for use in an advert. A longer look at AI tools for video:

Ditto, I'm surprised that places such as DPR and IR didn't go for the option of simply archiving the website, and have it be static with no new content added. And just slap heaps of adds on it. It would surely be profitable. But I guess the profits would be so small (especially after a few short years, once it had declined and new traffic had dropped away due to no new updates) that it would merely be a rounding error on their accounting balance sheet. And the oversight management costs and the distraction it takes away from their core focus, means it isn't worth the few pennies to them to keep it running along on life support. I'm eagerly looking forward to DPReview's reporting on the closing of Imaging Resource.

I felt a bit skeptical about that statement, so I looked it up: The tv series Game of Thrones, released in 2011, was shot on digital using ARRI ALEXA Camera, ARRI ALEXA Mini Camera, Red Epic Dragon Camera and Angenieux Optimo Zoom Lenses, Cooke S4/i Lenses and editing was done on the Avid Editing System. https://shotonwhat.com/game-of-thrones-2011 So I expect the vast bulk of it was shot in not even 4K, but less than that, with the ARRI cameras. With perhaps a small small portion (such as VFX plates) shot with RED Dragon (a 19 megapixel sensor).

If it was a lawsuit dismissal, and not a one off licensing, then yes, they could use it for the Z8 as well.

Yes, microphones (& ditto wireless too) have maximum dynamic ranges they can handle.

Forgot their name, they haven't launched any products yet which you can buy right now today. But they've been around at the tradeshows though, showing what they've got in development coming soon.

It just feels like nitpicking to me (and meh, you can find plenty of people complaining about Sony AF too! People can nitpick anything). And as people in the youtube comments point out he's mistaken with some of his points, he was just using it wrong. Heck, the YouTuber himself admits workarounds exist! But he just doesn't like them. A rather weak objection, just doing it for the clickbait and the views? As he himself says, the AF is very powerful, and he likes it and uses it all the time. Feels like 90% of his objection is with the UI, rather than the AF. That's certainly one of the easiest firmware fixes. (welllll... if the objections are genuine, sometimes UI "flaws" are more to do with personal preferences than objective flaws) And Panasonic is better than most with firmware updates. Thus the key takeaway is: Panasonic's best AF is already very good, and is only going to get even better.

There is no ad hominem whatsoever in pointing out that if a person is getting bad photos out of a Nikon D500, the issues is very likely not with the camera.

I'd presume the limiter in the camera is baaaaaaaad. Don't do that is my presumption. But like @kye said, give it a try and see how it sounds.

But the AF from a Panasonic S5mk2 is so close to Sony's performance, that I wouldn't let a small difference in AF performance be your dominant concern when choosing between them.

Millions of photos have been shot of athletes indoors, if an APS-C camera such as the Nikon D500 isn't "good enough" for you, then I expect the problem is with the user and not the sensor size. Properly lighting a scene is important for any camera with any sensor size.

Except in recent years they've been brought out and gone downhill. ("As many will know, Rycote Microphone Windshields — previously a small family-run but world-renowned business on the outskirts of Stroud in the UK Cotswolds — was sold to the Vitec Group Plc back in 2018. The management team stayed on for a few years before leaving in 2021.") If you dig into it, is kinda crazy just how many of the brands we know and use in the film industry are all owned by Vitec Group (now called Videndum) Rycote is still a good brand, just don't expect that past history will necessarily predict accurately future performance now. 2018 was an interesting year, also the same time Chris Woolf joined Røde: https://audioxpress.com/news/rycote-lyre-inventor-chris-woolf-joins-rode-microphones-to-work-on-the-development-of-new-shockmounts-and-windshields Many of the former people of Rycote have gone off and formed their own new company.

Rarely does it make sense to record beyond 24bit 48KHz (in my line of work you can for all practical purposes read "rarely" as "never")

Nobody should ever ever be recording in that though! (unless recording direct to camera, which often max out at that) 24bit 48KHz is the default standard that everyone should be using.

meh, just get an a6000 from eBay for mere pennies to take your photos with, and it makes for a handy B Cam / emergency back up to your FX30.

Normally I'd suggest X-H2S as the simply straight forward upgrade to do, but you've got almost no Fuji lenses, so it wouldn't be hard at all to jump onto another system. I'd suggest Sony FX30, unless you're doing more amateur / indy / hobbyist stuff with no higher aspirations of working with others, then that would push the Panasonic S5mk2 to the top of the list.

FS7 has probably shot more professional content in recent years than anything else. The FS7 was absolutely dominant in the mid/low end market until just a few short years ago. And the C300mk2 was the #2 player behind it. People playing in the no budget mirrorless world are very lucky to now have cameras such as the FX30 that outperforms the image quality from a FS7. (but no NDs, no SDI, etc... still a lot of reasons to prefer a FS7) And the Alexa when it first came out certainly was a big game changer in allowing to shoot in low light, vs what they typically used beforehand.

How many of us can shoot better than what was being made a decade ago? The equipment isn't limiting you, skill/time/budget is. Let's not lose focus on the big picture: the low light capabilities of cameras are far better than what most of us need. We're not shooting with Panasonic DVX100 cameras any longer. Because they're shooting at f11 then complaining about the noise, or they don't even expose it right in the first place. Or they don't use a light when they should. Or they don't realize when they're making completely unreasonable demands.

The Zoom H1 has the mounting point in the middle of it though, which makes it awkward to mount onto a camera hot shoe.

I'd of course want to suggest the Sanken CSM1 😉 But more seriously, I would suggest the Deity V Mic D4 https://deitymic.com/products/v-mic-d4/

The FX30 has low light performance people would have given their kidney for a decade or two ago. The fault is with the user, not the camera, if you can't get good images out of it.