The Chris

Stumbled across this: offered $650 for the Beholder DS1 and the seller accepted it. http://www.ebay.com/itm/351629954488?rmvSB=true

I'm sure one will be announced at NAB 2016, with a ship date of July.

From using the glidecam pretty extensively and a Defy G2 gimbal on a few shoots, You do have to be smooth in your movements. You can't just stomp around and expect smooth results. I call it the ninja walk.

Please keep posting thoughts on the DS1, I'm *this* close to hitting buy. I'm going to be using it with the A7s and A7rII. I have the 16-50pz as one of my options. Samsung has a similar lens, which will allow you to center the camera a lot better instead of the chunky 16-50s, and you don't really need the wider apertures when on a gimbal most of the time. Samsung also has the pancakes.

Try white balancing with warm cards? http://www.warmcards.com/WC1.html

The d750's LCD is horseshit - especially when you magnify to focus, glad to see they've upgraded to more pixels.

I have yet to use the clear image zoom because things like this usually results in a noticeable drop in IQ. Gonna have to try it out. I've resisted buying anything longer than the 70-200 because of the bulk, but occasionally something longer would be nice. Plus like you say, primes suddenly cover more FL's. Great tip.

The little 16-50 kit lens that comes with the a5100/6000 would be a great match for the FS5 and a small gimbal.

Functions are identical in both modes, just cropped, everything including eye AF and so on is fully functional. Stills are 18mp in crop mode. I have crop and FF lenses for the A7rII, mainly the 10-18 and the 16-50pz to use on a gimbal that I'll be buying soon. I've been debating getting a speedbooster to use smaller lenses in APS-c mode with less crop.

I'm in NYC every year, always take a day to visit B&H and a few otter electronics shops. It takes a good 4-5 hours for me to get through there, gotta try the lenses on whatever body I'm carrying, tripods, fiddle with lots of bags to try and find "the one" and so on. It's awesome.

Not true at all. A7rII shoots FF 4k, in addition to s35 with less noise at high ISO's compared to the NX1. Plus you can use a speedster with the A7rII if you want the cleaner s35 files, with a FF look. There are many profiles that give great colors SOOC on the A7rII, just don't use Sgamut with SLOG2, this is well known. Battery life is better with the NX1, but generics are $10 on the Sony, I have about a dozen. DR on the A7rII is much, much better, about 2 stops better according to DXO. DR in stills is significantly better as well, so is the AF in stills or video. I've owned both, the A7rII is a better video camera, IMO.

These look fantastic. I'm going to be spending the next few weeks doing a crash course on color grading to improve my skills, I've never used a LUT before. Thanks for sharing.

WB above 5000k works with the blue highlight issue. Its been discussed a lot, and it works. Here's a sample

That was awesome. I love the crazy day commercials for the outlandish stuff that always happens to the subject. The boxer made me laugh, nice.

Agreed. Since people are talking a little more, the main problem I had with the movie was that it just throws everything at you without any hint of a story, nothing about Han and Leia in the last 30 years, a sentence about Luke, the contrived moment on the bridge, a bunch of shallow characters with no depth - and they don't bat an eye at the destruction the First Order throws their way. Obi Wan felt a great disturbance, these guys - nothing. Geez. I know there's only so much you can do without it being 4 hours long, but since we all went in expecting a film that's setting up the next two, how about a little more backstory with Rey, Ren and the others? But that's not JJ's strong suit judging by the Star Trek films. That said it was fun to watch, even though it was pretty easy to tell the big gasp moment was coming about 30 or 40 minutes in. Hopefully we'll get a Empire quality movie in Ep.8.

I ran a RedRock Micro top handle kit on my 5d3 all the time and I do the same with a single handle like the OP's pic on the A7rII. If there's any real concern, just get a small cage.

I seriously doubt Sony cares about Shogun owners feelings, or Odyssey 7q owners, or Pix E5 owners, or any other third party device owners. Was the extended recording "locked out" of the A7RII? Seems like an engineering improvement, which may be possible to replicate in the A7s. With the A7sII still being very new it won't happen soon, but I can see the A7s getting an update in another 6 months like the XAVC on the a6000.

I can't imagine that's the case, when it overheats and shuts down the camera and battery are really hot, raising that would increase noise and potentially cause damage. After 30 minutes with 3.0, the body and battery are not as hot IMO. I'm not going 2.5 hrs like the guy in the video, but there's definitely something different going on inside. I don't have one of those cool infared thermometers, so I can't check the difference.

I liked it too, not as overly JJ as those Star Trek movies, but the whip pans and shallow DOF quick zooms are as played as the flares, so glad he's not doing the next one. My only real complaints is the plot was pretty transparent, nothing at all was surprising. Second, it's basically a remake of the original, but I get it, they're bridging the old with the new. Lastly, they changed the pitch of the blasters and put too much bass in the light sabers, they sound funny. I watched Empire and Jedi earlier in the week, I think they should have kept the same sounds. I agree with others, Kylo Ren is badass, a much darker dark side. Love it. Saw it in a packed theater, every time one of the old favorites appeared on screen the place erupted in cheers, a cool moviegoing experience.

And he's not using the grip, wow. The battery is one of the main culprits, they get hot when you get close to the 29:50 time limit. I'm going to do some testing outside when it warms up, it's a frigid 55f in Florida right now. Will be back in the 80's early in the week though. This is really great to see.

richg101 - Why not just run a dummy battery? I saw one somewhere that could connect to the larger portable charger batteries, but a quick search isn't turning up anything at the moment. Maybe it was on ebay. http://www.amazon.com/Indipro-Universal-Power-Pod-System/dp/B0156XQ2N4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450455864&sr=8-1&keywords=a7rII+dummy+battery I change batteries frequently to prevent overheating as they generate a lot of heat. I'll be getting one of these soon to remove the heat source from the body.

Not a fan of Slog, but I've used Samuel H's Flaat on the A7s with good results. He says it works well on the RX100IV too. Going to do some comparisons with the A7s/A7rII over the holidays. http://similaar.com/foto/flaat-a7s/index.html

From Sony, more improvements on the two biggest complaints about the RII outside of the price, though there are a number of complaints about the 24-70 front focusing on Dpreview: File Description This utility updates the ILCE-7RM2 system software to version 3.00, and provides the following benefits: Improvements over version 2.00: Improves 4K movie recording time when using the vertical grip (VG-C2EM) or when the APS-C/Super35mm mode is activated Improves picture quality Benefits provided by previous updates and included in version 3.00: Adds the selectable feature for uncompressed 14-Bit RAW image capture Adds support to output video via HDMI during use of the Remote Camera Control software (still mode only) Reduces the chance of the camera changing to front focus when shooting certain scenes. Note: This symptom rarely occurs. Decreases chroma noise when Long Exposure NR (Noise Reduction) is set to Off. Note: The noise does not occur when Long Exposure NR is set to On. Improves continuous shooting at Hi speed so that it can be used just as long when using the flash as without the flash

Dan Chung posted this comparison with the A7sII, the FS5 is not looking so good. But its at ISOs that turn the NX1 to mush as well.

^^^ those framegrabs look really good, nice job