Trek of Joy

Join the PPA and opt-in for the basic insurance coverage - $15,000 with a $250 deductible, no countries excluded (was worried as we've visited Myanmar, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Nicaragua, Uganda, Rwanda with Cuba still to come) - but extreme situations like volcanoes and war are excluded. Computers and accessories used to produce photos/videos are also covered. I carry a bag with $12k in cameras/lenses a computer and so on, the whole thing is well documented with easily accessed photos on Flickr, and a video on YT - and its all covered. There's a higher tier if you need up to $100,000 in coverage. They also do drone certifications and will cover drone loss as well. Lots of other benefits as well, like help with copyright violations and such. From the coverage guide: "Territory – “We” cover property wherever it is located. However, a claim must be filed in the United States ofAmerica, its territories or possessions." I emailed them a list of countries my wife and I are visiting to see if there would be issues (because every country we've visited isn't covered with our travel health insurance) and the reply I got back said to just follow the steps outlined in the coverage guide if we have to file and claim and we were fine. https://www.ppa.com/benefits/protection Cheers Chris I wouldn't travel without insurance, a couple hundred dollars a year protects everything you're carrying. I'm sure most people are protective of their expensive camera gear, but you can lose everything in a couple seconds. I've never had to use it, but its well worth peace of mind. I see lots of stories about stolen/damaged gear, and many times people don't have insurance. My cameras are worth more than the last car I owned, both have coverage I've never used.

That's always frustrating too. I travel and shoot a lot of stills and video, after downloading footage/stills I reformat my cards. I keep my stuff organized according to what country I'm visiting, and in all my Sony-shoot folders there are a number of sub folders with each day's content. It makes file management a royal PITA. Every other camera I've owned kept the sequential numbering, so I could just fill a folder with new content from reformatted cards. I went to a couple dozen countries with the XT2's and each country has an easily organized folder. I did the same with the a7r2/s2 and every folder is a mess. People have been complaining about file management with Sony's for years. They finally updated the menu's (I didn't say fixed because IMO they're still a mess), it seems like this would be relatively simple in comparison to address. Chris

Every Sony I've owned always has those goofy folder structures, DCIM -> 100MSDCF for stills and PRIVATE -> M4ROOT -> CLIP for video. F-in' stupid. Nice looking image outside of the warping. Yikes. Chris

Cool stuff. Next time I'm in NZ we have to get a beer. Cheers Chris

Amazing job! Does it have a name? Some of these devices have raised serious startup cash on Kickstarter - given the shitty camera control apps (Fuji, Sony), there's definitely a market for your widget. If you can figure out time-lapse and focus bracketing, you have a potential customer with every a9, a7r3 and a73 body sold. If it can trigger 4k recording, it'll make Fuji users heads explode. Cheers Chris

I have a generic extender pole I bought for about $8 USD in Malaysia. The 1/4-20 isn't the issue - if the mount doesn't have some sort of a lock it can twist or come loose. I just have to get an adapter like the one pictured below. I've seen PVC rigs of all sorts, yours sounds like a cool idea. I wish I would have been able to do that when I was snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef and the reef off the coast of Belize, but it wouldn't have been practical the way I travel. There are a ton of comparison videos with the FDR-X3000 (can Sony have a worse naming scheme?) and GoPros, the stabilization is other-worldly compared to most action cams. Its the main reason I'm keeping it over the Session5, despite the Session being a more convenient form factor. I don't want to use a gimbal and I don't like what GoPro's EIS does to the image. As mentioned the app is much better too, so for me not having a screen is no big deal. I hear what you're saying about paying for a newer model that offers so little IQ improvements. Since they all basically use the same sensor, year-to-year updates offer marginal improvements in IQ. Its been a few generations since the Hero3, it looks like you'll see significant improvements. Plus if you're doing HD like the video you posted, you can downsample 4k or zoom/reframe in post. Cheers Chris

+1 If your camera works for you, fine. But the endless thread trolling by NX1 owners in every single camera thread is so played and adds nothing to the discussion. So far I'm pretty happy with the update. Looking forward to tinkering with the focus bracketing since I don't own a macro lens - GFX users are doing stacks of 100-200 shots and the results are pretty awesome. Flog is nice, but I would like to see Eterna added at some point too - shooting at lower ISO's with DR400 internal speeds up my workflow. I get its too soon after the XH1's release to add it, down the line... Chris Here's a guide with all the new features/options -- http://www.fujifilm.com/support/digital_cameras/manuals/pdf/index/x/fujifilm_xt2_manual_01_en.pdf

Nice video you posted, crazy you're still using a Hero3! I have the Hero Session5 and the FDR-X3000 and the Sony is quite a bit better. The BOSS stabilization is far ahead of GoPro's and the image is cleaner as well. The newest GoPro looks like its less noisy than the Session5, but electronic stabilization is far worse compared to the optical stabilization Sony offers. The FDR-X3000 also has a mic input and the remote app works better than GoPro's IMO. At some point I'm selling my GoPro, the only reason I haven't is the goofy form factor of the Sony and the waterproof case doesn't play nice with my pole and GoPro mounts as it uses a 1/4"-20. I need to get a solid adapter as the GoPro tripod mount I have doesn't lock in any way. Cheers Chris

From a stills standpoint it clearly lags behind the d810, d750, d610, a7r and a7 - all released before the NX1. On the stills side its really no better than the a6000 IQ-wise. I still stand by my original comment on this matter - it didn't redefine photography at all. It was simply a good APS-c camera as shown below. The DR curve is different with Samsung, it does have more information in the shadows at the expense of clipping highlights easier - going from memory, that was my experience. I shoot over 800 a lot for event work in dimly lit rooms or outside at night, so for my real-world situation the Canon files were cleaner at higher ISO's. Plus Canon has faster lenses, which helps a lot. Had Samsung released a few faster lenses it would have been easier to live with, but they didn't. You can disregard any chart, but the DR wedge clearly shows the noise, and for me that was noise I didn't like. Its in the video files as well. And Sony is better still with the a7r2 - which arrived about 8 months after the NX1 was available in my area - I would call those cameras from the same generation. Even at base ISO's Sony's have more information in the highlights - IMO the DR curve is distributed more evenly compared to the NX, but that's a personal thing. I don't shoot strobe lit studio anything, so my comments are as a mostly natural light shooter. About the only time I have lights is a small 3-point kit for interviews. As always YMMV. I shot both side-by-side for awhile before moving to the a7r2, so I have some event files buried in a hard drive somewhere. I won't keep clogging up this thread, feel free to bash me with PM's. Cheers Chris The photography side of things is still a main driver in the ILC world. Its the reason Canon is still #1, Sony is making headwind and Samsung is gone. They just didn't resonate with enough photographers to make it a viable system, there was no presence in the pro market, and quite frankly the marketing message wasn't very good. They pushed it out and let it twist in the wind. It shouldn't have been a h265 only camera either, but that's another argument. Spec sheet stuffing isn't the driving force in a camera purchase for casual shooters - which make up a much larger portion of the buying audience compared to enthusiasts buying 5d's, a9's and expensive glass. I still disagree with this thread, Samsung sold about 315,000,000 phones last year. As I mentioned earlier, Olympus forecasted about 500,000 ILC's for FY2017, it would take years and multiple generations for Samsung to reach just half that. I would like to see their sensor and processing tech in another camera to break up Sony's monopoly (outside of Canon's larger sensors) in the camera sensor realm. Fuji, Olympus and Nikon could really benefit from sourcing their sensors from someone other than Sony.

Look, all I'm saying is that it wasn't any sort of a game changer on the stills side, and its certainly not as good as some of the FF cameras others are comparing it to - specifically the a7r2 and d850 as mentioned by SR. And its really no better than other APS-c cameras. I shot it alongside the 5d3 and it wasn't anything special, it wasn't better than what I was getting stills-wise with the 5d3 and in some cases it was worse - specifically noise. AF hit rate in low light was another huge difference, the 5d3's AF is far superior. So is the a7r2 that I moved to after selling off the NX1 and 5d3. I have no doubt Samsung could have solved those issues with future generations by copying Sony's eye AF, but that just doesn't seem to be in the cards. Of course its much better on the video side - though ML raw closes that gap considerably. If you're delivering in 1080p, the 5d3 with ML raw is a better option IMO. Even upscaled to 4k, the ML raw is still pretty good. Cheers

Zoom H4n and a cheap Zoom H1 - a surprisingly versatile little device for getting decent audio in the field during run-and-gun shoots. Chris

Awarded over 3,000 patents in the US last year, placing them in the top 5 for the 32nd consecutive year, and the #1 Japanese company for the last 12 years. And that's with other conglomerates like Sony and Toyota to compete with, amazing. Canon's patent filers are busy... https://www.canon.co.uk/press-centre/press-releases/2018/01/patents-awarded-in-2017/

Or maybe one for those with eyes and one for you. Not exactly earth shattering as seen below, the NX1's performance at moderate ISO's is pretty bad. And that's compared to a Canon released in 2012. You said it "redefined photography" - all it did was redefine the amount of noise reduction one had to apply to raw files. Combine that with the fact that the system lacked fast lenses to help keep ISO's down - F/1.4 and faster are easy to find in EF mount - and you have a good stills camera, but not great. But I liked where they were heading so I still bought into the system. I got out when there were whispers of them shuttering the NX line and moved to a vastly superior stills and very good video body - the a7r2. I'd still have my NX1 if Samsung was in the game and actively producing new lenses/bodies. No I'm not talking out of my ass. And the NX1 is easily over a stop behind the a7r2. It is what it is, a good APS-c camera from a few years ago that - like all APS-c cameras - lags behind FF from the same generation. The noise is just awful, in both stills and video and there's really no way around it. The d850 has superior DR as well, the NX1 is simply good for APS-c, and on par with Sony's APS-c offerings. Calling it anything else is hyperbole. But I haven't touched any NX1 files in a couple years. I'll dig some out from an old storage drive and revisit with LR CC to see how they compare to my current lineup of the a7r2/s2 and Fuji XT2.

The CM1 was an idea that was better than the hardware available at the time, plus Panasonic lacked the brand recognition and retail penetration in the phone space. If one of the current big players did something similar and got carriers to stock/market it, instead of just selling it unlocked in the wild, it would likely sell in much larger numbers and see more than a single generation. I've always said CaNikon missed the boat by not partnering with a phone company to provide optics and color expertise. Canon could be in a position to provide phone camera sensors with DPAF and really fatten their bottom line. Instead they're on the sidelines.

The Tokina 11-16 was a great UWA when I used it - though admittedly it was a few years ago. Can you find a shop and try one out? Chris

That's simply ignoring facts. Brick and mortar dominated the retail world every year in the 21st century. Walmart did $136 billion USD last quarter - its the worlds #1 retailer - a position its held for quite some time. Amazon and Alibaba are still behind. Best Buy is still the worlds largest electronics retailer. Brick and mortar are part of the reason CaNikon still dominate - they're literally everywhere. People spending large amounts of cash still like to touch products before buying them. Olympus board members would give their left nuts to have the number of retail positions Canon occupies. They literally can't buy that kind of visibility and market penetration. Ehhh, the NX1 didn't redefine photography at all, BSI was innovative, but IQ wasn't all that great because of the noise. I shot it alongside a 5d3, Canon's stills were much better.

The EVF and the LCD are much, much better on the rIII. The resolution of the a7rIII's EVF makes it much sharper and it doesn't get mushy when you magnify to focus. The a7III also lacks the LCD brightness of the rIII's LCD since it doesn't have the RGBW capabilities, and its a lower rez panel as well. Plus you have pixel shift mode - which for whatever reason isn't in any other body. I'm guessing like the PP's in the a9, it'll never get added to the a7III. Maybe the a7IV.... Chris

I'm a big fan of CCD's. There was a recent article on Dpreview about a photographer using cheap CCD cams, some of the later models are actually still really great cameras. My next camera will be one of the last gen CCD cams that shoots raw. Gotta go back to small memory cards too, don't think current 128gb cards will work, ha, ha. https://***URL removed***/interviews/5683481585/sofi-lee-on-digital-nostalgia The Canon XL2 was my first ENG cam, shots lots of great stuff with it - many times in addition to my own personal Sony HDR-HC1. 1080i and a box of HDV tapes baby! Took that little bugger to the Galapagos and Machu Picchu. Mini DV just got to be a PITA in the USB/memory card age. Chris

I'll bite. CIPA says almost 3.3 million mirrorless cameras were shipped in 2014, in 2017 its was about 4.1 million. Its been growing over the last few years, but not exactly setting the world on fire. This year is trending pretty far behind last year - mirrorless may very well have peaked in 2017 as the overall market continues to contract. If CaNikon goes FF like many rumors indicate - we're still talking lower volume/higher margin bodies at the upper end of the enthusiast scale. I'd love to be wrong, but there just doesn't seem to be a business case for a unknown camera brand to start producing ILC's. CaNikon going mirrorless is different than Samsung trying to resurrect the NX line. The big 2 have a massive advantage in terms of brand recognition, retail penetration and user bases to draw customers from, and over 100 million lenses produced by each to build upon with mirrorless offerings. If given the choice between a $3000 body from Samsung and the same from Sony, Canon or Nikon - few will opt for Samsung. And when you read Samsung's financial reports, their imaging and sensor production is focused on mobile and automotive applications. Backup cameras are pretty much standard equipment these days, and features that are becoming so popular like self-driving, lane warnings, surround view, night vision and so on mean the demand for multiple cameras in cars is rising sharply. If you can sell 250,000 ILC's - which would be about half of what Olympus forecasted for 2017, and probably far more than what Samsung actually could move - after extensive marketing, R&D and so on - or you can sell a few million to Toyota, a few million more to GM, a few million more to VW and so on, its easy to see what direction Samsung is going. I've been to 55 countries on 6 continents over the last couple years, every city I visit, I find stores carrying cameras - from specialty camera shops, to electronics stores, to department stores and CaNikon still dominate. Outside of Japan smaller brands like Fuji, Panasonic and Olympus were few and far between. Samsung was an afterthought to the buying public when they actually had a presence, re-entering would be an uphill battle requiring a massive capital expenditure for marketing. And then you have existing users/reviewers asking a logical question - how long until they pull the plug again? Despite Samsung being a tech Goliath, retailers aren't going to suddenly stock Samsung ILC's alongside CaNikon because they say please - that will cost large amount of cash. Again, not much of a business case for making a move back into ILC's. Just my $0.02 Chris

Are you seeing this in 4k? I've seen lots of aliasing/moire in 1080p samples, but I haven't seen anything too obvious in 4k yet. Chris

I'll see your eggs on a motorbike and raise you fridge's on a pedal bike. Love India...

Not sure about Canada, but that's against the law here in the U.S. courtesy of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/11/those-stickers-warning-that-repairs-will-void-your-warranty-are-nonsense-ftc-says/?utm_term=.ca4d3e8b506d Now whether you can win this argument with the sheep working at at Apple Store is another story. Chris

Wow!

Ehhh, not so much outside of their own sensors and AF. Sony takes the best sensor and then finds every way to cut corners in order to maintain margins. UHS-I card slots in a 42mp camera, no intervalometer like literally every other brand has, no PP's on the flagship and so on - SMH. They rolled with that crappy 28mbps AVCHD for a couple years past its shelf life and now we're seeing the same lazy 8-bit, 100mbps video in every subsequent camera they've released. A73 video looks like a lot of NR at higher ISO's, its smoke and mirrors with the blogger junkets raving about revolutionary features (eye AF, HDR video!). The gulf between the alphas and the FS line is pretty wide. And with the recent mk3's getting the same lazy video spec, it'll be awhile before anything changes since we probably won't see a new a7 body for another 2 years. The a7s3 is still a mystery at this point and at best it gets 8- 4k60p, the FS5mkII showed exactly where the alphas will not tread. They haven't even added higher bitrates or 10-bit to the alpha lineup - Canon will have a raw hybrid camera before Sony. But I agree with Jon, the first big player with raw will be Panasonic IMO, because as a hybrid camera Panasonic falls short on the stills side, so they need every edge they can get on the video side. Geez, Fuji has even passed Sony on the video side - again my opinion - but the 200mbps stuff out of the XH1 is a step above what the a7's can do. For all their technical prowess, they're hell bent on protecting the FS line, compared to the competition Sony's video has become just meh... All I can say is I'd be genuinely shocked if Sony is first to raw in a hybrid. I hope sales of the P4k move into GH5/A7s territory or even exceed them, that's the only way the bigger players will respond - when it puts a dent in their bottom lines. Sadly it'll likely be a small volume enthusiast niche camera, leaving us stuck with incremental "upgrades." How long has it been since the original Blackmagic Cinema camera - that goofy silver box with the crappy rear screen? Its been 5 or so years, right? Still no sub $4000 raw from any of the major players. Chris

Interesting quote from John Brawley about the cooling on the P4k: "Like all other BMD cameras, the fan is a constant on and hasn’t really been a problem as far as I’ve ever “heard”. The camera doens’t cool with a fan. Like ALexa, they use a solid state cooling system, piped to a heat sink. There the fan ensures the heat escapes quietly. So not like a Sony or RED where you suddenly get loud fan noises. Like an Alexa where it’s constant and quiet."