Trek of Joy

NAB seems like a perfect time to drop the A7sIII with 4d AF and 60p to compete with the GH5 on the spec sheet, though Sony doesn't exactly follow any sort of schedule when it comes to new cameras so who the hell knows.

I would say a standard zoom would work best and the 17-55/2.8, Canon's best all around APS-c zoom lens. You can go wide to tight with one lens and 2.8 is more than capable of giving you shallower backgrounds if needed. Cheers

+1 The guy is making $120k/mo off his channel and he's pulling in $$$ from Samsung, CNN and others along with getting tons of free shit to review or just get mentioned in his videos. He's creative and his stuff obviously resonates, kudos to anyone that can carve out a niche and make a living doing what you like. I'm still amazed that people making videos of themselves playing video games are even more popular, or applying makeup, or many of the things I don't do that seem mundane. While searching for guitar technique videos, I stumbled across videos of a beautiful woman with a big rack that just plays covers on a guitar wearing low cut tops and she gets millions of hits. I'm on her level guitar wise, no way I'd get more than a few hundred hits. Go figure. Cheers

I'm going to tinker some more over the next few days when I can spare the time from sightseeing and shooting. The touchscreen focus is nice, wish my Fuji had it. And IBIS....

The 55-200 extends and its not well sealed judging by the mess in my lens even though everything feel really tight, though I've used it very little since arriving in SE Asia as the wildlife isn't very abundant in the temples and such. I've been very conscious about wiping dust off the lens and trying to prevent intrusion as much as possible. The 10-24 doesn't extend, just really poor sealing I guess. Neither are WR lenses. Disappointing as they both look like a star map inside, tons of specks. Nothing has made it to the sensor - its all internal and its really looking bad. I'm heading to Fuji's showroom/service center tomorrow. Hopefully I can get a quick turnaround on a cleaning. Sorry to go OT. As for the GH5, I realize 30 minutes with a camera in a store is not comprehensive by any means. But as we ran through the AF, I was impressed. The EM1.2 was still superior, PADF really makes a difference locking on to a moving subject. That's the one bugaboo about the GH5 for me since I'm using my cameras everyday to take hundreds of photos and lots of video - so I use AF a lot - and I need to be able to depend on it regardless of the light. I'm up before sunrise about once a week to drag my ass to shoot something, and I shoot sunsets and blue hour stuff a lot because I like the look. The DR/noise hit going down another sensor size make me nervous as many of the landscapes and historical sites we visit are destined for large wall prints. For video I'm not as concerned about noise, as others have mentioned, being out of focus is about the only thing most viewers notice.

I'm in Tokyo right now and I went to Bic Camera's 8-story megastore to tinker with the GH5 and the EM1.2 - my Fuji lenses are sucking dust like a damn vacuum - so I'm considering a switch to m43 and Olympus Pro lenses. Anyway, super impressed with both cameras, IBIS is great and AF was fantastic. I spent some time tinkering with both, there were Oly and Panny specialists in the shop that ran me through a bunch of the features and whizzed through the menus to demo the various AF functions. I have to say after walking around the the EM1.2, the IBIS is in another league compared to anything Sony and the GH5 - zero rolling shutter helps - but the Oly is so freaking smooth. The GH5 is larger and heavier than I expected, AF with the touchscreen was very impressive, but I didn't try a lot of tracking. I tried the 12-35, 12-60 and 35-100 on the GH5 and the 7-14, 12-40, 12-100, 40-150 and 300 Pro lenses on the EM1.2. At 12mm I was able to get reliable focus on my face vlog style using the touchscreen with both cameras. I used the 12-100 on the EM1.2 to follow my wife as she walked around the store in front of me, it did a better job tracking then my XT2. The only thing holding me back is downsizing the sensor after going from Sony FF to APS-c with Fuji. I shoot a lot off stills and m43 gets really noisy from 3200 on, but getting lenses cleaned every few months isn't realistic given the fact I'm on the road all the time so the GH5 and EM1.2 are on my radar as a photo/video dual camera setup. I've been in a lot of dusty environments lately including Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and India - later this year I'll be in Africa and then Central/South America. I love my Fuji's, but the weather sealed zooms are huge and the 16-55 is not stabilized - not very travel friendly. I always keep my camera in a shoulder bag or backpack when not shooting and never changing lenses in the field (I carry two bodies and choose my lenses before heading out for the day) my lenses are full of dust and its easy to see in the images, I've uploaded a few images from the countries we've visited here with more to come: https://www.facebook.com/pg/trekofjoy/photos/?tab=albums Side note: Bic is just an awesome store with everything electronic and lots more like toys, booze, bikes and so on. Fun place to roam for a few hours and tinker with all the gadgets as they have demo models of everything and you can freely try them out for as long as you like. My wife even had fun there, its great.

I paid $2500 for a 3/mo old iMac with the 4ghz processor, 4gb video card, 1th flash drive, 32gb ram and 3 years of AppleCare. To get a PC with a 10-bit 5k monitor and similar spec would not give me any real cost savings, and I wouldn't have the seamless software/hardware integration. So what if I can't update the graphics card or add a new processor, when my AppleCare expires I sell for about 50% of new price update to a "new" lightly used machine - so I'm on a 3-year cycle. My machine has no issues with scrubbing through 2 hours of 4k video (no proxies, hundreds of clips) and it renders/exports faster than high spec Pro's. In Lightroom it stitches 20 image/750mb panos in a couple seconds. And it has the best monitor I've seen. Part of my move to Mac was the constant issue of Windows/driver/software updates and issues with various components would pop up - like my sound card suddenly not working when editing video or audio. Those hassles were a regular occurrence with Windows because you're relying on multiple companies to update their products and that doesn't always happen in a timely manner. I ran a program teaching media production to high school students for a large non-profit and keeping 25 lab computers working smoothly with the Adobe suite and high school students endlessly surfing the web required a full time staff member maintaining the system. The company IT guys would run the security updates overnight and we always had an issue that had to be sorted, which usually meant backtracking to a previous image to restore functionality. We switched to iMac's and all those issues disappeared while still running the shitty adobe suite. After moving to Mac apps - most notably FCPx and Logic - all of the Adobe crash issues disappeared as well. No viruses, no spyware - nothing but 25 smooth running computers. And we still ran Windows to connect with the rest of the company. I'm done dealing with drivers for all the components and the negative impact updates have on software/hardware crucial to my work, even if it means paying the Apple tax. Time is money and we lost a lot with PC's. Again YMMV.

Yes the iPhone is a cash cow, but Mac sales have increased over the last decade as well. The Pro is the only real misstep. Like others, I've used PC's and Mac's, just prefer the Mac OS and FCPx and for me OS X has been much more stable than all recent versions of windows. Plus I'm virus free without running any system clogging anti-virus software. Just my preference and what works for me. YMMV. Cheers

Agreed. Sony can cram a FF sensor *and* IBIS into the E-mount, just adding IBIS seems plausible since there's a lot of space around the sensor. The a6500 body is smaller and they made it happen. I don't buy Fuji's reasoning. I do believe the R&D costs are too significant for a camera line that doesn't seem to turn much - if any - profit. Shame they couldn't just license it from Olympus, IBIS is really all I'd like to see added on the hardware side of things.

Had the DS1 and couldn't stop it from drifting to the left (common problem, google it) despite spending countless hours trying to get it sorted. Took a big hit selling it used because they wouldn't replace an obviously defective unit. Beholder is dead to me. Cheers.

+1

When I shot stills with the 5d3, I never had a SD card in the slot, it was faster just using a CF only setup. Strange.

The 5d3 doesn't have UHS-II support, write speeds are far slower than the CF slot. Even the best SD cards are hardware limited to about 21 MB/s.

I'd like to see Sony revive the smaller VG camcorder line with the a6500 innards, just call it the FS3. The VG's were way ahead of their time - and way under spec'd with that crappy mic and line skipping 1080p - so they were DOA from the beginning. Now we have the MIS and the XLR adapters, so the goofy built in mic could be eliminated. Plus we finally have the lenses to make it shine either with E-mount or adapted. Touchscreen and PADF make it more user friendly. Do it!

You missed my point completely. Its not about the minuscule difference in speed/acquisition times, its about following your subject with a simple tap on the screen - which Canon DPAF is superior to everything else and light years ahead of Panasonic. No casual photographer is shooting high bitrate video of birthday parties and school plays in 4k60p on a $2000 body, SMH... Notice how DPAF is on all volume selling Canon bodies? This is where the gap is the widest - and where the most units are being moved - and where Panasonic is so far behind. There's hope since IBIS was first introduced on the lower end models, but they're still far behind the competition and the gap grows wider with every Dpreview puff piece showing how easy it is to focus on moving subjects with a Canon body. Cheers

I have a hard time believing that one. A few hundred pixels out of 20 million, please. But what I would believe is the additional engineering required to have a competent PADF system while shooting stills and video was beyond the budget/time allowed for release, especially given the recent restructuring - they're trying to reel in costs in a sharply declining market. They've had years to figure this one out, the gap between Panny's AF and others will get wider as face detection, eye AF, and AF-c tracking get further refined. The 4k/60p filmmaker market is minuscule compared to the general buying public - PADF on the GH5 would have tricked down to the volume models - which is the segment that needs it the most. In 2016 ILC sales were down another 12% to over 11m units, compacts continued to crater and shipped 12m units, for the first time in ages 2017 will see more ILC's shipped than compacts, of course due to phones. When soccer moms go to buy a "good camera" to move up from their iPhones and see the difference Canon's dual pixel AF makes compared to DFD as only one stays locked onto the subject walking around the store, its an easy decision. Personally, I haven't seen anything that constituted a "vast improvement" in IQ. Marginal yes, vast no. The current gen of m43 sensors has pretty much peaked IQ wise, until Sony goes BSI or the long rumored organic sees the light of day, there are no vast improvements to be made in m43 IQ world. Or any other for that matter, its always incremental. The GH5 still looks like a great camera, if I didn't shoot 25k+ stills a year I would probably get one. But for me, DFD doesn't cut it. As always YMMV. Amazing, I agree with others, a grading tutorial that demonstrates the steps you posted would be something I'd bookmark.

The lack of PADF makes it really tough to for me to pull the trigger. 60p and 10-bit are really awesome, but no PADF means no sale for me as I shoot a lot of stills and CDAF is so 2012. For me to go m43 I'd have to shoot the EM1.2 as well - and since Oly and Panny can't collaborate on lenses to enable full compatibility - I'd have to own overlapping lenses to take full advantage of their capabilities. For now I'll stick with the XT2.

Why not get a Panasonic lens to take full advantage of the AF, focus by touch and such? The Sigma is nice, but the 12-35/2.8 can be had really cheap used, other zooms for less. Mic input/IBIS/60p leaves you with few choices.

The new FW update might help with that a bit since Fuji is enabling refocus while recoding. Looks like we'll be able to replicate what I did the with A7rII - use the BB AF to refocus while recording - with the added bonus of being able to move the AF point a lot easier. Face detection with PADF should (*fingers crossed*) be a boost as well.

Once we get closer and see the pre-show announcements/leaks, I'll probably have a few. Thanks in advance. Questions about unannounced products always get the same canned answer - "we cannot comment on future products." But its good to keep prodding them to show there's interest.

I didn't see your other post. Given your response, I won't bother. Enjoy your camera. Cheers

I never get statements like this, the same could be said for any f 1.2/1.4/1.8 lens, or FF vs APS-c and so on - the incremental differences are never reflected in price as faster lenses and constant aperture zoom are more complex designs. The benefits of a f2.8 zoom are not shown in any of your sample images. Go shoot a basketball game - or any indoor/night sport and the differences will be obvious. The same could be said for many budget lenses and plastic zooms, in good light and at certain apertures most capable of producing images indistinguishable from more expensive options. The 55-200 is my travel zoom and its a great lens, but I could really use a faster lens at times so I could keep my ISO's down and/or shutter speeds up. Wider apertures make it much easier to shoot at higher shutter speeds if you're capturing action. The focusing and IS of the 50-140 is much better, light gathering is obviously much better at 2.8 through the range and bokeh is much smoother with a pronounced difference in subject isolation. I left my 50-140 behind because of the weight as I'm traveling around the world for a year on a tight budget. If I didn't have to carry everything I own in a backpack and a smaller camera bag, I would have brought both 2.8 zooms.

Lots of video focused improvements in the upcoming FW update, glad to see a histogram, the ability to use the eye sensor to move between EVF and LCD while recording, tap the shutter or AF-on to refocus while recording and change the ISO while recording. Looking forward to the AF improvements the most. The XT2 is already really good in that regard, but the face detection compared to Sony's is awful. I don't even use it, I just move the AF point around with the joystick to follow my subject.

Fuji already has the best APS-c video hybrid - the XT2. Anything better is just icing on the cake for Fuji shooters. Those new cine lenses look sweet, can't wait for them in X-mount. I have my credit card waiting Fuji....

Really, really nice edit. Well shot too. And I agree about the dance, very clever way to make it visually interesting.