BTM_Pix

Wow indeed, its like when Dylan went electric.

Scary stuff. Glad you got it sorted. I was a victim of something mysteriously draining my bank account recently myself and here I am on my to tell my wife that our account must have been hacked.

If those were the lenses that "most" Nikon owners have been buying for the past 15 or 20 years then Nikon wouldn't have had enough money left in the bank to buy a mirrorless camera system let alone develop one

Absolutely. They'd need to make the changes for themselves too as their own remote solutions can't currently do it either. I have a sneaking feeling the SL alliance might do it first though.

The challenge is in translating the track of the physical input to the lens position. You can do a test calibration of the lens to determine the number of discreet focus positions it has (a typical MFT lens has around 150 for example) and in an ideal world you would then map them around the steps of a rotary encoder as your input source for the operator, so position 124 on the encoder would equate to lens position 82 for example. Unfortunately, the current situation is that, remotely, you only have the ability to do offsets from the current position, often in single steps. So, for example, if you are currently at lens position 82 and need to get to position 65 you need to send 17 minus commands to get to 65. This is less of a problem when you are trying to do an automated A/B transition (although the transition speed between two very distant points is limited in how fast it can be due to the number of commands that have to be used) but it becomes a real problem when you are doing anything that involves manual real time user input. The amount of focus change and the speed with which it can be achieved with a manual focus wheel is too difficult to track in realtime because the lens cannot currently electronically be told to go to a specific position and it all has to be done with offsets. So if you turn the focus wheel to what the encoder knows is position 124 and it has to go to position 82 on the lens then depending upon where you start the turn then at best the tracking will be probably be bumpy but at worst incredibly laggy. If changes are made by manufacturers to allow driving a lens remotely to specific positions then a universal motor and hassle free solution for wireless follow focus would be easy and cheap to produce. Until they do, every solution where you want manual control is going to be hamstrung by this tracking issue.

Everything I've seen thus far would certainly seem to bear that out.

Yes, I do. The good news is that it isn't that bad on the BMPCC really, although lacking a bit of speed and flexibility. You do the push focus to lock it and in the main it does catch it reasonably quickly and you are helped here by it being a fairly narrow aperture lens even at its widest so its reasonably forgiving. The issue of course is that if you then want to switch focus mid take as it gets a bit messy but, as I say, for what it is which is a very compact and cheap wide angle that is probably going to see most of its use with deep depth of field on a gimbal or for fixed wide shots then that might not be a problem depending on your application. The better news is that if you do want to use it on a BMPCC then if you connect a LANC controller that has focus control then you are actually able to manually focus it using that method. When it comes to using it on the Pocket 4K, its a bit good news/bad news really. The good news is that with the touch to focus option then it will be a lot more usable for focus change on the fly than it is on the original Pocket. The bad news is that the Pocket 4K has dispensed with the LANC port so the manual focus option isn't available. What it does have though is Bluetooth LE and the focus far/near is part of the spec in the developer documents for what can be controlled so it does open up that opportunity again for a 3rd party to create that via an app or a hardware controller. I know someone who is definitely working on the latter......

Whatever the legalities of it are, it is, as we say where I'm from, a shithouse trick and one that will hopefully be remembered long after whatever product they're shilling has been discontinued.

Indeed Someone has done exactly that with an LX100 and it is an applicable hack for all of these cameras. Annoyingly, Olympus do have a smart shoe adapter for their PEN M43 cameras that lets you use an external mic input for about £70 (the kit actually comes with a lav mic as well) but as with Sony and their similar add on for the earlier versions of RX100 they have decided to sign up for the "Lets make them buy the next one up if they want a mic input" treaty with the rest of them. Oddly enough, the smart shoe adapter, like the EVF they do with the same connector, is also compatible with the Leica M so if you ever fancy having better audio when shooting HD video on a rangefinder (and who doesn't) then you can use the Olympus one for a fifth of the price of the Leica branded one.

2. Use a soldering iron and some wire somewhere within the area shown in red to attach a 3.5mm jack socket to the hole made in step 1. If you choose the wrong place in step 2 then take the item in the blue circle and drag it vigorously across the underneath of the item in the green circle.

We've all been there

I was about to say I'd been to see a Nigel Kennedy performance as well, until I saw the word "bottles" at the end there.

A lot of it is laughably blatant. Whatever happened to subtly and subliminally pushing your brand at people? Anyway, I'm just going to have this cup of coffee and watch this develop with a keen interest.

Step 1

Its OK, its a double bluff to get him to stop at the Leica X Vario. Oh balls, I've done it again.

My ultimate aim here is to keep laddering him up to the point where has no alternative but to get the new Zeiss ZX1 so we can all get a free review

Never mind the limitations, feel the liberty ! It got you challenged and engaged on making something with what it had rather than feeling blocked by something it didn't have. Based on that approach but adding another layer of quality and a bit more flexibility into the mix without straying too far from the small and simple, maybe a used LX100 might be something to consider for your trip? I'm seeing them for under £300 and that will drop further when the mark II hits the shops in a few weeks.

The salient point was about adapting with AF though.

Whoah..hang on a minute there... Letting shots breathe for more than 0.5 seconds, a faint whiff of a tripod and no drone shots?!!??! What a weirdo that filmmaker must be

I can maybe see myself buying a Z6 down the line but no way am I going to re-buy any of my collection of F mount lenses in the new mount. I fell for that ruse with all my vinyl albums when CDs came out

I think EF has definitely become the "safety" mount to have lenses in. It can be used on their existing mount of course but AF adapted to their own new mount (with ND as well), their M mount, Sony E, Fuji X , MFT and the existing and upcoming SL mount cameras. At least that means people can dip their toe into the water with EOS-R, X-T3, A7iii, GH5, Pocket 4K, Panasonic S1 etc without having to go all in on one system. It also means of course they can use the savings to buy 2 different cameras (X-T3 and Pocket 4K would be a good combo for example). That's not great news for Nikon

Be careful, thats how people end up with a Leica Q

A terrible choice of name though as Weeble definitely has a distinctly unstabilised connotation for anyone over a certain age.

Another day, another M mount. This time its the Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 VM III Super Wide Heliar again but on FF this time rather than APS-C

If you're looking for something compact, versatile and with one eye on not being too far out of pocket if it gets stolen or breaks then...... You might want to consider a used DJI Osmo Plus. Its small, stabilised (obviously ), has 3 times optical zoom, can take a microphone and has a few tricks it can do that would be useful on a trip such as motion timelapse, subject tracking and also the instant 180 degree selfie mode. It also doesn't scream pro camera either. As a bonus, it actually that novelty factor about it that will more likely encourage people to engage with you out of curiosity to what it is than shy away like they would with a pro camera. The Osmo Plus gets a lot of hate for what it isn't and what it can't do but nowhere near enough credit for what it is and what it can do. For the sort of trip that you are talking about, it might actually be a very appropriate option. The bigger bonus is to pick up the M1 module which means you will be able to take the camera off the handle and replace it with the M1 to turn it into a fully fledged Osmo mobile for your iPhone. This gives you the option then of a bit more stealth and looking like a tourist if you want it without compromising the stabiliser aspect and, again, being able to take advantage of the motion time-lapse and subject tracking etc.