Dimitris Stasinos

1. Bluetooth connectivity issues. External mouses and peripherals don’t work properly (including MM2). 2. WiFi issues. Over 3x times slower than previous models in some cases. 3. USB issues. Don’t expect to see speeds above 400 Mbps on any external drive. This is quite low even for a USB 3.0 controller. The list may be longer but these are the most known issues so far. Various reports and videos have been posted on reddit and YT by thousands of users. I won’t post any links to keep this thread clean but those reports are all over the place. Some of those issues may be resolved through software updates but that won’t happen if nobody talks about them, right? Apple has a bad history of fixing things, my 2015 iMac still has bluetooth connectivity issues and my 2019 4500$ MacBook Pro still has audio issues (pops, crackles etc). I am also excited with the new architecture but i would think twice before purchasing an unfixable machine with major issues like these.

Finally, after a couple of global financial crises, a pandemic, 10 seasons of Walking Dead and just 4-5 years before the first crewed mission to Mars we have a proper EOS camera with nice ergonomics that doesn’t cost a fortune. Actually it does if you buy a couple of RF lens but their new EF adapter coupled with a used 24-70 2.8 solves this as well. Netflix Certified? Why not?

It seems that they are pushing sensor sizes up on every category, even on point & shoot cameras, in order to widen the gap between cameras and smartphones. Thus this full frame madness and there is even a rumour that Sigma and Leica are pushing Panasonic to replace their entire MFT body collection with L-mount APS-C bodies (in contrary to recent statements from Panasonic representatives about Full frame and APS-C overlapping issues). As a hardcore GH-line fan these are bad news for me (and many others) but i am quite sure that in 2-3 years from now, 1-inch and MFT sensors will be used only on drones and action cameras.

Exactly. And this is why i am getting mad every time i step on arguments like “What if the R6 overheats? No one forces you to buy the camera so look somewhere else”. Because if that “somewhere else” dies then we are stuck with a couple of companies that are so hungry for cash that will do anything to make us pay more for less.

I am getting goosebumps only by thinking this. It’s the only established company right now that prioritizes usability and reliability on low cost hybrids. I am going to buy the S5 and ignore the R6 and whatever Sony will announce this month.

To my knowledge it took over a decade for RED cameras to penetrate this market and finally become an industry standard. But that was a time where the debate between film and digital media was on it’s peak and RED had a double challenge to face. BM has definitely the dynamics to become the next RED. If Ursa 12K proves to be a reliable body, it offers too much innovation for anyone to ignore. I think this is the first time that sensor technology, codec and editing software are placed into a straight line by any company, no? Even the mighty Sony tried to maintain such an ecosystem and failed.

It seems that while i was sleeping last night, binary computing stepped up. I feel so old now that i have to stick with my good old 8K camera which i haven’t bought yet. A paradox maybe?

The footage looks really good indeed. But that latest official statement by Canon is a joke. Did they actually suggested to use an external fan? Lol. Now people are making jokes about wet towels wrapped around R5. They are aggressively marketing this body as an 8K camera for the past six months so it’s quite fair for anyone to expect, well… a camera. Great tool, bad marketing.

Ok got it, you are one of those guys. Go have some fun with your 8K smartphone.

This doesn't make any sense at all. Crippled specs? That thing has every feasible recording option in conjunction with the tech it carries and is a proven workhorse camera. Canon should do their homework on what Panasonic achieved 4 years ago and deliver a better product.

Pushing tech forward and pushing existing tech to it’s limits are two different things.

This seems like a nice addition to Canon’s R series but i have to agree with Andrew that many things here do seem quite wrong. At least according to my own needs i can’t see this camera fitting any shooting scenario. It seems like a camera that was designed to work like a RED Monstro but only for 20 minutes per session. I can’t imagine a shooting session where 8K DCI recording is needed but overheating is not an issue at all. In hotter environments (and our planet has become quite hot lately) this translates to roughly 10 minutes of shooting. And we are talking about a combo that costs over 7.000 bucks if you count in a native lens plus some CFexpress cards. This feels like an OM Magic Lantern implementation to me (yep i have taken that route too). I can’t blame Canon for trying to deliver a nice prosumer camera but i feel that this Full Frame - Infinite K madness is leading the industry away from our actual needs. There is more than enough tech around for any company to build a nice APSC camera with proper AF, IBIS, 4K DCI, decent autonomy and nice ergonomics. Who needs more in this price range (2000-4000$) after all?

According to Apple this is software related but it could be hardware as well. A fast way to replicate this is to open a project in FCPX, enable audio skimming and then hover the mouse pointer above any clip in you library's browser (play/stop commands in timeline will also produce a pop). Here is a video i made about this:

Hi Andrew. Yes the new speaker design is sweet but don’t get carried away by the sound. Those machines are a nightmare for audio editing tasks. There are 2 huge threads on MacRumors and many videos on YT about the intense audio popping that can be noticed inside Logic, FCPX and many other apps. I am experiencing this issue myself on a 2019 15 inch unit and the only solution is to use an external audio interface (or headphones). Apple is aware of this issue for almost 10 months now and has done nothing to fix it.

Since yesterday photographers are receiving 0.10$ for every single download. Here is some press coverage: https://fstoppers.com/originals/what-wrong-shutterstock-489338 https://petapixel.com/2020/05/27/shutterstock-unveiled-a-new-royalty-structure-and-photographers-are-furious/?fbclid=IwAR1hNMmYyJQtCMR4uVpZWMlGrlE8klO3fVnT1sUBb4BLLCjUPRrAvwqM98E https://***URL removed***/news/7607355790/shutterstock-announces-new-earnings-structure-contributors-are-anything-but-happy Update: It seems that they are trying to keep their top performers on board by offering them the previous paying structure until December. Many of them have already deactivated their accounts.

Actually i saw a lot of unexpected movements on a FB contributor page with over 18.000 members. Many of them have already disabled their portfolios on Shutterstock and are gathering online signs against Shutterstock’s decision. Of course i am not that naive to believe that actions like these will make any difference but these are healthy reactions of people who are loosing a big chunk of their income. I didn’t created this thread to start a rally against SS here (although i strongly disagree with their decision) but just to let you know that almost 500.000 active contributors took a big hit today. I am personally building my portfolio on 3 agencies: SS, Pond5 and Adobe Stock, so I will stop uploading new stuff to SS from today but as i said, stock footage is more of a hobby for me. Anyway, this is not about SS only. There are some dangerous corporate consolidation trends crawling around these days and after the pandemic. Of course these are justified to a certain degree but it’s always painful to see the most fragile social groups (and especially artists) absorbing all the shocks of an industry which they obviously can’t control on their own.

Actually no contributor will get rewarded by this system, even the competitive ones. It is just a clever way for the company to rip off people who have focused their efforts on stock footage while giving them false perspective. All contributors reset to level 1 every January first, so even if your sales are over 25000 (this is impossible for a single individual and only companies are reaching numbers like this) your pay rate will get from 40% back to 15% when the next year begins. This means that you will need 25000 more sales to reach level 6 again from scratch. And these have to take place before June as you won’t see any real benefits if you reach those in December. The vast majority of SS contributors will never reach level 4 in order to see that 30% again on their consoles. This plan also encourages quantity over quality as you have to maintain a huge library to reach even level 4 before March. So their collection will get full of garbage sooner or later plus no one will decide to enter the market after this. These are not signs of a company that is trying to survive long term through a crisis. They just decided that this is the right time to redeem their success while ripping off the artists.

Net income may be a key to judge the company’s growth but only short term. The fact that their revenue decreased only 1% (compared to the first quarter of 2019) to 161.3 millions, clearly shows the dynamic of this market as we are talking about a period where numerous healthy companies collapsed on almost all fields. So when you read the income statement of any company, it’s quite wrong to pay attention only to net income. I can bring that almost 70% down in my own company by investing in a marketing campaign and yet sustain my revenue while securing a gradual increase for my future sales in Q2 and Q3. And probably this is going to happen with SS.

I doesn’t work this way. We are talking about 5.000 gigabytes of footage that have to be uploaded and pass the curation process. And you are wondering why this would take months? I can see your point of view. But these are the same words that they are using to justify their actions. The truth is that the stock footage industry saw a significant growth during the pandemic and while other stock footage agencies like Dreamstime decided to help the community by increasing their royalties with 10%, Shutterstock saw a chance to make more money and attract new investors. Of course this is their service and they make their own rules. This is true for all companies after all. But If we where all so cynical to accept this as a justification for any injustice against working people then i guess we would have more serious issues to deal with.

An average portfolio of a full time stock footage provider consists of 5.000 to 10.000 clips on average. As @JurijTurnsek said, uploading all these clips and moving metadata on another agency will take months. And even then it will take longer than a year for these clips to start selling again. Adobe Stock and Pond5 are more contributor friendly regarding their paying schemes but Shutterstock is leading this market for the last 10 years through aggressive marketing. As i said i am not directly affected by this as i have a tiny collection but i always considered this market as a great side job for content creators especially now that the market has taken a big hit and almost every summer shooting session is cancelled. This is one of those changes that are taking place in total silence (i guess major news portals won’t even report this as Shutterstock sponsors all of them) even though millions of people are affected. They even delete commends on Twitter and Facebook as content creators are furious and their only chance to be heard is through social media.

Shutterstock is about to make an unexpected change on June 1st regarding the company’s paying scheme and cut every contributors share almost in half. The company used to pay 30% per license to it’s contributors (which was also a bad deal but at least an acceptable one) and now introduces a new payment structure, where that percentage will vary from 15% to 40% according to the amount of annual licenses that are sold from every individual artist’s portfolio. Of course you have to sell 25.000 licenses (this is impossible) in one year to reach that 40% and even if you do, every January 1st your level automatically resets to Level 1, so back to 15% until you reach that number again in the end of the year (spoiler: you won’t). This practically means that the vast majority of contributors will experience a 50% reduction to their income from SS. I am a SS contributor for 5 years now and only a tiny fraction of my income comes from stock footage but i know many people who have invested on this and they are making a living from selling clips and photos on micro stock sites. I guess this is a legal move on paper and it’s definitely covered by one of those filthy pdf agreements. But given this hard period we are all crossing, those unethical moves made by greedy CEOs in order to transfer the loss on the back of content creators have at least to be judged and condemned by our creative community.

The Air 2 is somewhere between Mavic 2 and Mavic Mini regarding size. I am waiting to see some HDR footage from Air 2 as the first clips in YT looked interesting. I don't expect much though as i saw no real benefits by using HDR in Osmo Action.

Just before the coronavirus outbreak in Europe, me and my wife decided to make use of some tickets we had booked 2 months before and visit our friends in Kiruna, Sweden. It proved to be a risky trip as many flights where cancelled one after another and we could stuck at any airport during our transition or return but it also proved to be one of the greatest trips of our life so far. I managed to squeeze a Mavic 2 Pro and an Osmo Action into my luggage (sadly my beloved GH5 and it’s accessories had to stay back in Greece) plus a bunch of masks, gloves and alcohol wipes… So, short story, below you can take a glimpse of our 7-Day trip into the Arctic Circle. The vast majority of these shots (almost 95%) where taken with an OSMO action (handheld, no accessories) and i was personally amazed with this little gem. Of course i missed my Lumix, my motorised slider, my gimbal etc but on the other hand, if i had all of these with me i wouldn’t have the ability to walk 10 km into the frozen Abisko National Park while interacting with my companionship.