Trek of Joy

No doubt. Spent the first five months of the year touring around Asia, my wife and I had a rolling joke about the number of KFC establishments. They are literally everywhere.

How can you compare image quality without using actual images? SMH.

Big internet shops like Amazon and B&H have put a massive hurt on lots of specialty shops - especially shops that sell expensive hobbyist stuff. Its the same with high end cycling, lots of local bike shops have been shuttered because people get better prices on the net. Hard to compete with virtual stores that have fewer employees and aren't paying rent in a high traffic location. Cameras, bikes, cooking utensils, home appliances, Audio/Video shops and so on ... very little these days (at least in the U.S.) outside of big box and internet. I live in Florida, closest camera shop is in Orlando, ~90 miles from where I am in Tampa Bay. The being said, I spent the first 5 months of the year traveling around Asia, there were camera stores - large and small - in every city I visited. There are certainly fewer than before, but it was really cool to be bale to walk into shops and check out gear I've never seen/held before simply because I don't live near a dealer and I only go to NYC/B&H once a year.

+1 A7s2 is much better in low light, after 6400 the R2 really gets ugly with noise and a color shift. The S2 at 25,600 looks as good as the R2 at 6400 IMO. 51,200 is still good in some situations on the S2. There's another comparison I can't find at the moment, just someone sitting at a desk in a dimly lit room and it really shows the shadow noise that creeps into the R2. There isn't a m43 sensor that's as clean as the A7s2 at 12,800, and none of them shoot at a base ISO of 100, same for the XT2. For lowlight shooting the A7s2 is clearly ahead of everything m43. I agree with Mattias though, pick what features and such suits your shooting best. But for lowlight video, Sony's FF is tops IMO. Same for stills, lift shadows and pull back highlights a couple stops - which is what I do when shooting in midday sun conditions, there's clearly more latitude in A7r/s2 files compared to the XT2, and the gap is wider with A7r/s2 and m43. Cheers

Send me a link to order a couple

Best Buy sells in the US only, I'd suggest looking at things globally. As far as sales numbers, 2017 will not be dramatically different from 2016, things shift slowly, all projections are flat. Smart TV's are dominating, most being sold - about 2/3rds - are still 1080p. Last year only 40 million of more than 200 million tc's sold were UHD. Don't know why some of you guys can't seem to understand actual numbers instead of making assumptions based on your opinions. This discussion is going in circles, I'm exiting it. Cheers

They're fine for transferring docs or music when you just want to plug something in quick. For the rest there are the rear ports, which are plenty fast on my 4ghz iMac retina. Cheers I'm not using the keyboard to move large files, just for the convenience of a USB at my fingertips and a much better keyboard pared to the wireless one. I have enough fast ports on the back of my iMac retina.

Tried VPN, it slowed down my connection too much in India and China, even a simple site like Facebook took a few minutes to load in China, no way I could have streamed or downloaded anything - it was like dial-up internet without the cool noises.

I still use the wired aluminum Apple keyboard from a 2010-ish iMac - mostly because of the USB inputs (so I don't have to give my machine a reach around every time I want to plug in a thumb drive), the full width keypad with real arrow keys (I use them a lot), the typing feel and no batteries to futz around with. Pair it with the Magic Trackpad and its nirvana. They can be found super cheap. I have a spare in case one craps out on me. Got one like this for $5 new in box. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Wired-Keyboard-With-Numeric-Key-Pad-Compatible-With-Mac-OSX-v-10-6-8-/263065547648?hash=item3d3fedb380:g:d3cAAOSw9~5ZVyRN

What "it" are you referring to? I couldn't access a lot of "it" when I was in India for the entire month of March. All of the Netflix shows I watch were "not available in your region." Same goes for Amazon Prime Video, despite being a paying customer from the U.S. And still none of it is available in China which is a far bigger deal. Population has nothing to do with individual's purchasing power. China has a much, much larger middle class than India - therefore its a much, much more important market. For example, last year almost 29 million vehicles were sold in China. By comparison India was just over 3.6 million, which is a slight increase over 2012 numbers - sales of cars have been flat in India for years because there is little expansion of the middle class. Meanwhile China has gone from 9 million vehicles sold in 2008 to well over 28 million last year. More of everything will be sold in China, regardless of how many people there are in India - especially since the Chinese middle class continues to expand at a breakneck pace. China has more than 700 million mobile phones in use, India around 300 million. I could go on...

Your data is old. Through the first six months of this year - according to CIPA - shipments and sales of ILC's are up over last year. You still offer zero in terms of actual facts to back your assumption anecdote filled argument. And a graph still doesn't say anything about the state of Canon from a financial standpoint. Again 10q and 10k's are your friends. Cheers

VW posted a $5.4 billion profit last year. And they're still sitting on something like $30 billion in cash, even after buying my Golf TDi back. VW is a very healthy company and showing growth in key markets like China. Profit isn't the only indicator, its just part of the overall financial picture - cash reserves, debt, earnings, return on equity and so on are better indicators. That's why I keep saying read the 10k's and 10q's, because you get the complete picture from an accountant and a balance sheet - not a press release or some Cnet article that's essentially a repost of a press release and a report pulled off the AP Wire. But that also requires an understanding of accounting and how to read a balance sheet, which judging by the comments by others attacking me for simply stating facts, doesn't seem to be the case. You can cherry pick companies that have failed or sold off divisions, but most aren't direct parallels because of the various factors that contribute to an individual industry. The Fukushima disaster and a busted development in Georgia has slowed Toshiba's nuke program. I'm an active investor with an economics background before getting a journalism degree. I read financials all the time for investment purposes. The continued "my friends/generation" stuff is also nothing more than anecdotal - and that's my other point. Its simply not based on actual facts. Cheers.

Ad hominem attacks say it all about you. And you continue to use Kodak and be willfully ignorant of facts - Canon isn't bankrupt, they're flush with cash and they don't rely on cameras to survive - that's a key difference. The collapse of film and the lack of diversification beyond that is what drove Kodak to bankruptcy. I really can't say any more because you can't seem to understand that. If you actually knew economics you would be able to read their SEC filings, try a 10k report and get the facts instead of anecdotal "my friends" stuff - something no economist would ever use in an argument. Milton Friedman is rolling in his grave right now. Everyone calling the lack of 4k in their DSLR's and mirrorless cameras leading to the collapse of Canon is again being ignorant of factual information. This drum has been beating for years, here and other places - especially when the GH4 was released and then again with the A7rII - yet they're not losing any market share. Everyone below them are just eating each others lunch. I'm well aware Kodak still exists, and it has actually come out of the ashes to post a small profit recently. Kudos to them for starting to turn things around. most of their revenue is on the industrial side, they don't actually make the phone either, its just their name and design. They have thousands of imaging patents, time to put them to work. But with the attacks I'm ignoring you. Cheers

Sony is not even top 5 in smartphone sales, nobody cares what Sony puts in a phone and they're one of the few phone makers that can't make a profit selling them - go figure since they make the sensors for just about everyone else. Top phone makers in order - Samsung 23% share, Apple 14%, Huawei 9%, Oppo 8%, Vivo 7%, Lenovo/Xiaomi/LG all between 5-6%, the rest far behind.... My TV numbers were from 2016, the most recent year available, forecasts for 2017 are flat - about 1/3rd UHD vs HD. Smart TV are outpacing 4k tv's, people want connectivity, not 4k. That is crystal clear, don't know why some refuse to see it. I'm not saying what makes sense or not, just what people are actually buying vs. what delusional posters here seem to think people want instead of what they're actually purchasing. Canon is following what the larger market wants with major releases like the 6d2 and the APS-c line, not what niche users want. But they do cater to niche markets with the C1/2/3/500's and the 5dsr. What anyone's friends are doing is irrelevant as there are 200 million TV's sold annually, anyone's circle of friends is so insignificant compared to the big picture its laughable to even mention them. Plus you have to look at what's happening in China and India - since those two countries account for 2.6 billion people and are the fastest growing markets for most consumables. Netflix, Amazon, Youtube and Vimeo don't even exist in China (blocked by the Great Firewall of China, poof no 4k in the worlds largest market) and most of their content is unavailable in India. Cheers

Most don't care about 4k because there's almost nothing being produced in 4k, globally there are very few 1080p broadcasts, much less in 4k. Why would anyone buy a 4k set only to have virtually nothing to watch in 4k? As others mentioned 4k is being pushed by Sony and Panasonic because they have 4k TV's to sell, not because of overwhelming consumer demand. Most don't care about 4k, because a vast majority of TV owners don't own a 4k set (the number of HD LED/LCD/Plasma sets sold in the last 15 years globally is many, many times higher than UHD) and have no plans to upgrade when it does nothing but drain your bank account since there's virtually no 4k content to watch. Most don't care about 4k because a vast majority of people shoot photos and videos and never do any editing or anything beyond sharing and filling up phones and hard drives. 1080p looks great on their 1080p TV. And finally most don't care because a majority of web video content is being viewed on portable devices - phones and tablets - 4k really doesn't do much on a 5" screen. Its not BS - TV sales tell you everything, HD still accounts for two-thirds of all TV's sold despite the fact that 4k prices have plummeted - people are still buying similarly priced 1080p sets in far greater numbers - and TV sales have flatlined after the flat-panel boom in the mid-2000's. Canon's camera sales, that people here continually bitch about, tell you everything. 4k is great for content producers and I personally love it to death, but for the rest of the world - which makes up a vast majority of camera purchases - 1080p is good enough. And I'm pretty sure Canon's market research goes a little deeper than "they're too dumb to know 1080p sucks, no 4k for the 6d2" SMH

If you remove Nikon, Canon's market share completely outpaces all others combined, and with Nikon its still not far off. What's different is people are buying Canon's in much greater quantities than the rest. 4k obviously has very little to do with that, or Canon wouldn't be so dominant. People on forums like this want 4k - but there are millions of camera buyers that don't care about 4k, DR, rolling shutter and so on - the vast majority of the buying public wants a nice image and doesn't care about all the technical aspects because most never do anything more than shoot in auto mode with a cheap kit zoom, and post stuff online, email or print at places like Walmart. Amazon's sales rankings are a pretty good indicator and the top of the list are a bunch of cameras that can't shoot 4k. Right now 4k is not a driving force in the camera or cell phone market. I doubt it will ever be a 'must have' feature for a casual shooter that never edits anything. Most of the world isn't even at 1080p yet, much less 4k. I went to an 8k demo in Tokyo from NHK Broadcasting, while awesome and a preview of the 2020 Olympic broadcasts - other camera geeks were the only people in awe. Nobody else really cared.

Read the financial reports and go back and read Kodak's SEC filings when they were still a profitable company, they tell you more than your incorrect anecdotal experiences. Canon's imaging bottom line is getting whacked by a shrinking market and the cratering of compacts - this is a fact that Canon even states in its financials. But Canon's business model isn't like Kodak's - which was essentially film, printers and goofy store kiosk's to try and get people to print digital images, Kodak doubled down on film and lost. Canon is diverse - its cameras, lenses, printers, copiers, high end medical instruments, broadcast cameras, sensors for security cameras and so on. If you'd bother to read their reports, imaging is a smaller division than office and business systems and medical is growing. So your Kodak analogy absolutely makes no sense because even if Canon never sold another camera it wouldn't be bankrupt. Kodak didn't have other highly profitable divisions and when film went bye-bye, so did Kodak. Please educate yourself before telling me what's correct, what my friends and your friends are or are not doing with a camera is irrelevant to Canon's financials. Calling Canon the next Kodak is just being willfully ignorant of the facts. Cheers

Geez, $600 for 4k recording/monitor and XLR inputs. This is an all-in-one solution for DSLR shooters. So tempted....

Twenty years ago when I first picked up a guitar I got one of those, could multi-track on a cassette. It was a revelation. Then a few years later I discovered Cool Edit Pro and went completely digital. I gave the Tascam to a friend for free as it was just collecting dust in a closet. Like all my old cameras and the white Les Paul Custom that had aged to a yellowish tint and weighed more than any other LP I've picked up (11 lbs, it was a tone monster) - I wish I had it back. Anyway, small cameras, like small recorders allow you to just hit record and capture something without all the extras and calling the roadies. I got the 5d2 shortly after it was released and I haven't wanted a "traditional" camcorder since. When those were announced, I was absolutely going to get one. Sad they never saw the light of day, entry cameras start you on a path to upgrade-itis that is never cured.

Analogies like this make no sense. Gopro essentially makes one thing. Kodak essentially made two - film and cheap cameras. Competition and market shifts killed both. Canon's other divisions generate more revenue than cameras, even if they lose market share (which hasn't happened, Sony's gains are replacing the other's losses) they still have other divisions that continue to be revenue drivers. As much as people keep wanting to call Canon the next Kodak, its simply not true. SMH.

Andrew must have an exceptional copy of the 35G or he likes the wide open softness this lens exhibits. I shot the original A99 for awhile and it was the worst A-mount lens I tried out of all the G and Zeiss lenses. Every copy I tried was soft at apertures wider than f/4 - for me the IQ was just to poor, even at heavily discounted used prices. The 24-70 was clearly sharper at the same apertures, so that's what I shot with most of the time. In fact my copy of the 24-70 was so good it almost never left my camera in the 3 months I owned it. With the A99II bump to 42mp and actual 4k/1080p resolution in video its flaws will be more obvious. Its smaller and lighter than other 35/1.4's because its was released in 1998 and its optical design is not competitive with modern designs in terms of sharpness and aberrations, the E-mount 35/1.4 is a modern optic and far superior in every measurable metric - thus the lens is larger. The overheating bugs me too. Sony has a beast with the A99II, but it needs a few refinements and a few lens refreshes to make it viable for me. Some discount the AF issue, but for one-man-band, run-and-gun stuff, AF is a valuable tool. The workarounds are silly, Sony can fix all the issues. I just don't think the A-mount sells enough to dedicate significant resources to make the needed improvements when compared to the E-mount - which is clearly driving the robust imaging sales we've seen over the last couple years. Disabling the aperture is not a viable workaround if you want to use the lens at more than one aperture without having to take it apart every time. Are you getting two channels of audio directly into the camera on the A7sII as well? If so, that pretty convenient. I'm thinking about switching back to Sony from Fuji and this would be another reason to make a move for me. Thanks.

I own two XT2's and have shot about 10,000 stills and many hours of video over the last few months as I'm traveling around the world with them. What I like -- love the image, the controls are nice, body is rock solid, battery life is good for a mirrorless camera (I fired off over 1,000 stills and a half hour of video on one battery), the 10-24, 18-55 and 55-200 are great video lenses and the camera is very fast in operation - dual UHS-II cards means you're not waiting for the camera to finish writing to the card very often. AF is really good, but not as good as Sony's when shooting video, Fuji can't track people like Sony and when shooting stills Sony's eye AF is way ahead of everything else. Given the AF improvements made on earlier models, I expect Fuji to make improvements to the XT2's AF over time. The funky tilt screen is very functional when shooting in portrait mode, I've used it a lot more than I thought I would. You can assign pretty much everything you need to custom buttons so after the camera is setup there is minimal menu diving - everything else goes into My Menu or the Q menu for easy access. What I hate -- the mode dial/switch that you have flip if you want to move from stills to video. There needs to be a record button. If you're not shooting both at the same time its not an issue, but video is 4 clicks from single shot mode - flipping between them is cumbersome and it gets annoying after doing it a couple hundred times in a single day. So for me - as a travel camera - it sucks donkey balls. Also there are no stabilized primes and the best standard zoom - the 16-55/2.8 - is not stabilized. Rolling shutter is as bad as the other oversampled APS-c/FF 4k mirrorless cameras, so using any of Fuji's stellar fast primes or the 16-55 handheld means jello-vision. Also, as noted in the giant XT2 thread, internal lens compensation can change exposure mid shot on the wide zooms. No internal Log either, though as with the AF I suspect it will show up in a FW update down the line. IBIS would make stabilization a non-issue, but Fuji isn't going that route and as of now won't put OS in any primes either. For me this is getting closer to being a deal breaker with every passing day and has me considering moving back to Sony or possibly getting something like the EM1.2/GH5

I think its a big deal too, outside of the 5d4 and 1dx2 you have the XC15 and ..... And all of those have shortcomings that aren't as appealing to me, the 5d4's crop and no EF-s lenses (unlike E-mount that can use FF or APS-c lenses), the 1dx2 is a lot to carry for one stretches, the obnoxious file sizes of the mjpeg 4k are a few things that stick out in comparison to Sony. If you're looking to shoot stills and video from the B-cam, something like the A7r2 makes for a much better B-cam IMO. Plus you have a63/500 and the RX1005 among others as B/C cams. Or you could use the A7s2 rigged up as your main video camera, the r2 as the B-cam and the RX1005 for cutaways, slo-mo and so on. Many more possibilities with Sony for sure. Personally I like the C200 and will rent one when it comes out to test for a couple docs I want to shoot, but I shoot a lot of stills (easily 25k a year or more) and its hard to go back to a Canon sensor after Sony's DR. Now if the 80d's replacement has 4k, and the next Eos M has 4k it'd be a different story as we'd have great B-cam options, but that's just not the case. For C100 shooters looking for 4k, the C200 is a no brainer. For hybrid shooters (like me) and those looking to keep a smaller kit, its a tough sell compared to Sony. Cheers Chris

I didn't go refurb, I got mine from a private seller on ebay and verified it had the AppleCare. Took a few tries before I finally won at $2k. I wanted the i7/4gb vram/1tb ssd setup because I made the permanent move to 4k and started stitching large raw panos on the stills side - until last week's announcement that was the most powerful iMac config you could get. I added the 32gb ram as well, so my total cost is another $300. Tough for me to say what the difference between a i5 and i7 will be when working, someone with more knowledge will have to chime in. But I will say I am traveling the world and editing 4k over the next year with FCPx on a tiny 1.2ghz core M5 processor, 1.5gb on board video ram and just 8gb ram - the 12" MacBook is basically an iPad Pro with a keyboard. Again, I don't use proxies because its time consuming to generate them. I just take my time cutting and let it export when I'm doing something else. Cheers chris

I was talking more about having options in addition the A99, a A99s would do what the A7rII/A7sII combo does only with the SLT. The A7sII is just so much cleaner at higher ISO's and A-mount shooters really only have two options right now - and the A77II video is crap. Sony is hitting niche's with the A7's and now the A9 - the A99 body is perfect as is, just would like to see more options as A-mount the future doesn't seem very bright. Just my opinion. Cheers