BTM_Pix

No

Don't drag me into it I have by virtue of its more flexible lens mount and the more or less comparable form factor but better quality stills of it versus the Panasonic GX80 reached what I would describe as a cordial understanding with it. I don't love it on its own merits necessarily but I'm liking it a lot more when viewed as a poor man's Leica CL. Like many strained relationships, we have saved it by indulging in a little role play !

Let me see... You've only ever made two posts on here. Both about DJI products and both with links to their official online shop. Give me a minute to work out what might be going on here...

Ah...that makes sense. Thanks

I'm not going to say "Its only 11 days to go until the 3rd of September" but, well, it is only 11 days to go until the 3rd of September. Are BM going to drop a big surprise and stick to that date or is there anything even semi-official regarding an actual new date?

Which just makes matters all the more confusing when you have them at exactly the same price in the case of the D850 and the Z7. If I'm looking to swap my D810 for example (which I am) then I'm now being asked to decide between the camera and the spec. Except its a bit more than that because no way would I, or anyone else who has even a modest Nikon lens collection, be looking at buying any of those new 'meh' lenses so we wouldn't feel the benefit (if any) of the new mount until some vague point in the future. So we are also reliant on the adapter giving 'as native' performance on our existing lenses in the meantime otherwise we will be suffering from inferior AF. There just isn't the incentive there to give up what they're asking us to give up and especially not at the same price. But I'm just one (small) part of their target market so they will hopefully fare better with the rest of it !

I've no idea (other than an even more expensive Z8 that has what they've left off this one included) why they would do it. They clearly didn't watch enough of The Godfather when they were coming up with how to create a mirrorless version of a D850.

There aren't any compared to Nikon's other higher end cameras such as the identically priced D850 that the Z7 is offering the alternative to. As @jonpais mentioned, I have posted about this in the other thread about the camera and as much as the specs are - as anticipated - very compelling the fact remains that Nikon have made some odd choices here. Those choices have got absolutely zero to do with the reduced body size either as the multi selector dial on a D850 is exactly the same size as the PASM dial on a D3400 and ditto the buttons as well where they've chosen to give priority to an FPS button for example over having the image lock button. These are choices they've made rather than had forced upon them. Now, either Nikon have decided all of a sudden the ergonomics they have in their high end cameras aren't as good (clue - they are far, far better) or that a different set of ergonomics are needed for mirrorless (clue - they aren't its still just a camera without a mirror). Or, of course, it is neither of those things and they are playing the segmentation game with a camera but with a camera that costs exactly the same price as its mirrored equivalent. I can kind of almost maybe see past it with the lower priced one but we need a reality check here about the Z7. Its £3500. That is £600 more than the Sony A7Riii. If you walk into a shop and pick these two cameras up, which one is going to be more appealing? the 3rd generation of an established product with the now very comprehensive range of native lenses or the far more expensive first generation of a new product with a native lens lineup of one slow zoom and two slowish primes? The opportunity to differentiate is with the ergonomics and they've not delivered. People get very het up about who makes the sensors in cameras and I'm not really that bothered myself so I don't care if its a Sony on the inside but I do care if its a Sony on the outside. I understand that people will say you can't judge these things until you pick the new camera up and try it but I'd also suggest that they go an pick up the old camera at the same time. As I was at pains to point out in the original post, I'm not being some boring old fart pouring water on the excitement over this camera because it isn't a mirrorless D5 but for everyone who is lauding it as a mirrorless D850 then I think its fair comment to highlight that you will be getting more spec but, in my opinion, less camera.

Its a pity about the lack of IS and its a good grounding for learning the trombone when you want to go between the focal lengths but its plenty sharp enough and actually reasonably compact.

And thats just the Houses Of Parliament.

Actually, I did forget one other 35mm option I have which is the Canon 35-350mm f3.5-5.6 L that I picked up for £350 last year after a bit of haggling. I've never used it on the Sony A6500 as I'd bought it for the LS300 but I've just put it on to take a few shots for you outside to show its range and it AFs very well with the Sigma MC-11 converter. If you want the flexibility of 10x zoom range then look no further than this one!

Sounds like a modern day drive around some parts of London in the past couple of years.

I'm just wondering whether by the point at which you're talking about making the purchase that the increasing downward pressure on the price of the Sony A7Rii might have it down in a range where you might consider it a contender? From a pure stills photography point of view, you're not going to find it wanting to say the least. From a video point of view, its got a lot of flexibility particularly with the APS-C mode when it comes to low light. In point of fact if you just kept it in APS-C mode you'd then be looking at accessing the small cheap Sigma stuff which is actually far better than it has a right to be. With the A7Rii you've always got the option of going full frame whereas with the other two what you've got is what you've got. I know you don't want to do adapters and you know I am legally obliged to mention the TechArt Pro adapter in every post I make but I think its particularly relevant to the sort of vintage primes that you're in to. I've got most of Fuji's fast primes and zooms and they are excellent but I'm not going to say that my 90mm and 50mm Summicrons don't fart in their general direction. And of course, these lenses will cover full frame as well. To put this in perspective, I hate my Sony A6500 with a passion as its all spec and no camera but I can't deny that its utility is winning me round as with the small Sigmas its a good compact system in its own right, with the TechArt Pro its a poor man's Leica CL and with the Sigma EF adapter it is the viable Canon 4K mirrorless that Canon don't make The only drawback aside from the ergonomics is that it isn't full frame. Which is where the A7Rii would come in, for me at least.

To harmonise with the rest of Europe would be my guess. The drive on the right thing was a by product of Paris having a keep right rule for horse traffic and then Napoleon spreading this custom through his conquests, hence why the resistants to being conquered (i.e. us and a few others) didn't adopt it. Of course we then passed that defiance on to our colonies and it stuck. Japan had an entirely different reason to do with Samurai swords and the scabbard being on the left (as most people are right handed) so you could pass another rider without the swords clashing and causing any accidental "hey did you just knock my sword" fuelled duels kicking off inadvertently. It also meant that you could get on and off the horse easier without stabbing yourself in the Jerry Hall's. The good news for us is that Japan have kept this up which means we can import lovely little vehicles like this Toyota Prixis Mega and revel in its devil may care squareness without having to worry about the steering wheel being on the wrong side.

Not to mention whether the IBIS on it will smooth those out

This is what happened in 1967 on switchover day after Sweden made the decision to go from driving on the left to the right hand side of the road. I bet you there's still people waiting for that bus to show up !

The front control is recessed as per the other Nikon cameras but I'm presuming the other one that isn't is the rear one

Steady on, I think you'll find that its you lot that drive on the wrong side of the road.

I think the perspective is perhaps over selling the compactness a tiny bit there but it is a nice looking thing I'll give it that. Agreed and I wasn't expecting it be a D5 alternative but I definitely think it was a good opportunity to leave the locking PASM dial out and use the switched one instead but segmentation isn't only a Sony/Panasonic/Canon game I think they might get more pushback over the ergonomics of this from D800/810 upgraders than people might anticipate though.

And still no Cinelike D I'm going to wait for the Leica version of it so I can feel as let down but with a slightly more elitist glow.

I'm just going to chime in from the perspective of someone who uses Nikon pro bodies for work and would be looking to swap out his D810 against the Z7 versus perhaps going for a D850. Its not going to be some moan about wanting to hammer nails in with it or tow it in the water behind a speedboat or some such but it is about the ergonomic differences between the pro bodies and those that use the PASM locking dial. This will also hold true for anyone who uses a D850 in anger and was looking to swap over. I'm not sure why they've gone to a locking PASM dial when the mode selection keys at the top of the dial of the other cameras (like the D850 for example) offers fast access to WB and Meter Modes as well as the PASM selection. Not to mention being able to switch Quality modes without having to go into a menu. And it looks confirmed as per the post the other day that they've removed the dedicated lock file button which is absolutely nuts considering how vital it is. Strange choices to be honest. Quite surprising as well when you'd have thought that they would want to tap into their existing user base and offer them a seamless transition in to this brave new world of mirrorless. This is not me just being an old fart and complaining about not wanting anything to be changed by the way but their existing ergonomics weren't broken so I don't get why they've tried to 'fix' them in this way. The beauty of that top dial in their existing cameras is that you can change everything about the mode, the metering and the white balance with one finger of your left hand and scrolling with your right thumb without ever having to take your eye from the viewfinder. I've no idea why the fps mode suddenly becomes important enough to have its own dedicated button either. There are also a few other omissions (such as the multi pin front remote connector) that are surprising but the AF/MF switch seemingly disappearing is quite baffling, even for users of Nikon's lower range DSLRs. For the benefit of people who don't use Nikon bodies at the moment, the AF/MF switch also has a centre button which enables you to switch between AF modes really quickly using the thumbwheel when you hold it down and, again, all without taking your eye off the viewfinder. Its really puzzling what's happened here and as exciting as the new aspects of it may be, I'm not convinced they've done what everyone has expected them to do which is to make a mirrorless D850, irrespective of how close the specs are because it isn't comparable in one of the most important aspects of all. If this thing is significantly cheaper than the D850 then those compromises might be acceptable but if its anything like the same price - and I've not seen anything to suggest otherwise - then I, for one long time Nikon user, won't be jumping on the merry go round this time round. I'd completely accepted that a D5 style version will be somewhere further down the line but I'd definitely thought that this would be closer to a like for like D850 which suggests that there is likely a Z8 to come which will be even more expensive. For someone coming late to the party - and having seen the lens lineup from Sony improve dramatically in the interim - I don't think they've gone big enough at all here with the Z7 especially when they are trying to push a new mount as well. None of those choices have been governed by the body size either. Puzzling and a little bit troubling to me but probably less so to the intended market.

Its slightly different when it comes to Contax cameras though as Contax was originally a camera model name of the Zeiss Ikon company before becoming a brand name in itself but still owned by Zeiss. The modern Contax cameras were produced as a manufacturing joint effort with Yashica after an aborted link up with Pentax and Zeiss still retain the rights to the Contax brand name. Its semantics I suppose but a Contax branded product is still technically a Zeiss branded product as Contax is a Zeiss brand. Just spelt differently

Agreed but it was RAW on the Pocket and now 4K RAW on the Pocket II that has thrown the focus back on Panasonic and Olympus most sharply in terms of expectation of the camera when used for video. JVC threw in the curve ball about having a Super35 sensor sat behind it of course

I think the adoption of it by BM has taken it in a direction they probably never envisaged. When they look at what their intentions probably were in terms of it being an interchangeable bridge camera and then saw people hanging PL lenses off it and demanding 4K RAW I imagine they must be doing this

The trick is to get the SA mount versions of the Sigma ART lenses and then use their MC-11 adapter to put them on E mount so you get double duty out of them. You can often find these versions of the ARTs are cheaper because dealers have them sticking round for waaaay too long and want to get shut of them. If you want to use old glass with them, the M42 adapters are about £10 and open up a world of cheap options.