BTM_Pix

I have also arrived and will be available for ongoing hot dog updates as long as I get on the right train to the show. Otherwise you can expect updates about Cologne cathedral. And hot dogs within it's immediate vicinity.

Who was that with?

Being a complete cheapskate, at more than £3K saving per lens against the current Leica offerings for the SL then I can live with the compromises though

Sorry, I left the wink emoji off that !

There shouldn't really be too much of a mystery about the 24mp version of the Panasonic . If you can't wait until next Spring to see what it can do there are loads of example images from it here https://www.flickr.com/groups/slleica/

I took a hacksaw to an ef-s lens that I got cheap to fit on a speedbooster. The performance of the lens was so crap though that I might as well have sawn both ends off it.

How much are the hot dogs?

As you say, disregarding the wind noise, I was quite surprised how good it was when he was reading the names out. I'd be interested to in how much you could get away with in a pinch if it had a set of the Rycote Micro Windjammers attached.

Funny you should say that because are actually being taken to Photokina on Thursday afternoon and can be evaluated at the official EOSHD press event. Well, when I say official press event, I actually mean wherever on the show floor I end up bumping into @Andrew Reid

Can't believe they didn't announce the fourth member of this new alliance that is making compatible products for Panasonic and Leica cameras

You might want to consider using a viewfinder app for your phone like the Cadrage one. It simulates the FOV you will get from all different formats and lenses so you can quickly get a preview of what you are going to get before you set all your real gear up. It works with the common wide angle adapters on the phone as well to simulate much wider lenses. It might be useful in your situation as well @kye as I know you like to keep stealthy so would delay the moment at which you get your real camera out of the bag in the situation you described above https://www.cadrage.at

You mean convertible as in the mount swap service Sigma currently offer or an adapter? Novoflex do an EF to L mount adapter already but its quite expensice so I'm hoping the first thing that comes out of this relationship is Sigma releasing is an L version of their MC-11 adapter.

The crop factor doesn't put off as many people as you'd imagine as the weight, size and cost benefit versus using the native SL lenses are quite considerable. Something like the 23mm Summicron is a great compact option for SL owners looking for an affordable compact 35mm equivalent. With the 4K being an APS-C crop on the SL anyway it doesn't hurt them there either as they have the same FOV in stills and video. Obviously the other way round is a rarity due to the physical size and price tag of the SL lenses but with affordable versions that would change to be as it is with other APS-C cameras where people use FF lenses with them with an eye to the upgrade path of using them with FF cameras down the line. Unless Sigma walk away from Foveon, which seems unlikely as they have a commitment to it which goes beyond financial, or they pull a rabbit out of the hat with it's low light performance, it's always going to be a specific use camera. That is fine but the problem comes with getting people to make a commitment to a camera like that when it has a restrictive mount that means when you aren't using the camera you aren't using the lenses either. By having a shared mount, not only will Sigma be able to have cost benefits from not having to produce short runs of lenses for their own camera but it should also stimulate sales of the cameras themselves if people can see additional use for the lenses. When I'm not using my SD Quattro, the lenses for it sit idly in the drawer as well whereas if it was SL mount then they'd see more use and probably entice me to buy the next generation of it and more lenses. A case in point is that I would love to have the 50-100 ART for it but I cant bring myself to buy it in SA mount when if I bought it in EF mount it would see far more action on multiple different cameras. I can't even try one out if I wanted to as no dealer is keen to hold the SA mount version in stock and on demo which is something that will ultimately kill off the SD Quattro range if it carries on like that.

For Panasonic? Because it exists and is a known entity for them so they can get it out quickly and I imagine their lets just say ''close" relationship with Leica in terms of developing the existing cameras that currently sit behind it means that it will be license free as well. Plus, its already been proven through 3rd parties to be AF adaptable with EF and newer Nikon E lenses so it isn't a dead end from that point of view which will be appealing to early adopters. The potential immediate additional market for them for lenses is not just SL owners though but also owners of T/TL/TL2 and CL which shares the mount, all of whom would welcome some alternatives to a similarly limited (in terms of range not necessarily quality) and price restrictive lens line up for APS-C. For Leica, it would also act as a gateway drug for those owners to step up to an SL and ditto for SL owners to pick up a TL2 or CL as a backup camera. And also, of course, for the Leica clad versions of these new FF cameras that will follow a few months behind. For Sigma, it also means their next generation of cameras can benefit from having a mount that is less restrictive than their current SA one. Its a big win for all three of them in my view and, as I say, for early adopters of the Panasonic it takes away a lot of the concern about investing in 'yet another new mount'.

No, you actually gain on the wide end. If you look at the picture of it side by side with the GX80, the portion inside the rectangle is what you would get if you used at the MFT setting so it is exactly the same FOV as the GX80. But because that particular MFT lens covers a much wider area than the 80% of S35 that is usually the case you can set it to 100% of S35 to be able to use the rest of the image, hence the 12mm is now a 10mm. Being able to select the scale mapping is like having a lossless wide angle adapter built in when you need it and the Prime Zoom function is like having a lossless telephoto adapter built in when you need it as well. I've done this for you with the SL and FZ2500 to see it in context with a couple of other cameras. It won't get smaller than that (top handle removed here) but obviously deepening on what you attach to it then it can get much bigger !

And if you add a cheap £20 LANC zoom controller like this one you can have focus control on the camera zoom rocker and still have zoom control (servo or Prime Zoom) on this.

Its lens dependent (and there can also potentially be a few nasties in terms of edge performance that you need to watch out for as well as vignetting) but you can push most of them further than you think. I don't have that particular Olympus lens to illustrate it but I do have the cheap and cheerful 12-32mm wide zoom that I've just knocked up a quick (and very rough ) illustration of how the VSM typically works for you. You can set the scaling to whatever you want (with 100% being S35) and its preset for MFT lenses is 80% but this is pretty conservative. As you can see, setting it to 80% and using the same lens on a real MFT camera (the GX80 in this case) gives you the same FOV but note how much additional area outside of this 80% is available. So in this case with this particular lens we can get quite cheeky and set the VSM to 100% and get a bonus increase on the wide end so our 12mm is more like a 10mm. With different lenses you might have to tweak this to say 90 or 95 but its still a nifty trick to have and its another plus against something like an FZ2500 which isn't as wide on the wide end as you might ideally want. I THINK YOU'VE GONE IN A BIT HIGH THERE MR. ROCKERFELLER NO WAY IS IT WORTH MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED ;)

I don't think they are unreasonable assumptions but I'm a bit curious about why they didn't announce the price or even ball park it. A conspiracy theorist might suggest that they obviously know how much it's going to cost as its not their first rodeo ehen it comes to making lenses but that they are gauging reactions and guesstimates in forums like this to see how much of a cinema lens tax they can get away with adding to it

Yikes!!! That is way less than I, sorry, erm, the hypothetical person I was referring to paid for his.

I don't know anyone that has done it but I don't see why not. By the way, if you use one of the Panasonic PZ servo zoom MFT lenses like the 14-42 or 45-175 (I think Olympus did one as well but I can't recall it off the top of my head) then you can map the zoom rocker on the camera to drive them.

Thats the problem with them really in that they've largely been overlooked since the 5Dmk2 but they've still been ticking along in the background getting better with each iteration. As a consequence, the majority of stuff you see online is still of the event/ENG type so doesn't really spark with a lot of people looking to do cinematic enough for them to look under the hood. There is now definitely the air of camcorders being "something your uncle uses". Forgetting that Spielberg is still someone's uncle

I haven't used the UX-90 but, yes, looking at the spec and some videos it does seem to share much of the muchness of the FZ2500 so your progression path is sound from that point of view. But I think its the much of a muchness aspect that might tie you up in a few knots in terms of choosing which of these systems to go for. I don't think you can go that far wrong with any of them for what you are talking about and for the FZ2500/UX-90 combo you could just as easily read RX10x/Z-90 if you wanted to. Having said that..... If you break this down to basics in terms of wanting a camcorder then by camcorder you are basically saying something as a single self contained item you can put in a bag, take out, switch on and start shooting. No mode switching, no additional filters, no lens swapping, no adapters, no dual audio, no rigging....Nothing. The funny thing about the Swiss Army Knife LS300 and the gazillion mount adapters and speed booster options that we can use to get it to play with almost every lens under the sun is that we often overlook the fact that it can actually be used in exactly the same way as the camcorders that you are looking at. Just because it has an almost infinite interchangeable mount capability due to it having the MFT mount as its base, it doesn't mean we have to use it. If we put a native MFT lens like the Olympus 12-100mm lens on it and leave it there then it is exactly like those other camcorders, with a similar footprint, but with one crucial difference of course which is its much larger sensor. And that will give you much more of a muchness than the muchness of the other ones The flexibility of the LS300 that is afforded by the mount then becomes an expansion option that you can choose to exploit or not rather than just its raison d'être as its often viewed. If you never take that option and just leave the Olympus 12-100mm (or something similar) on it then it will just be a camcorder like the ones above but with a bigger sensor. Which makes it a 4K Super35 sensor camcorder with 10x zoom for about £3.5K that you can add 4K60p, significant monitoring and ProRes recording to for another £500. These are two really interesting videos from a few years ago by Rick Young about using the LS300. The first is about just using it with MFT lenses and how surprised he was about how well they performed against his expectation but the second one is probably of more interest in that it looks at using it in the real world as a camcorder. Obviously, the job he was using it on was what we would call "video video" rather than cinematic so disregard the aesthetic but it offers some good honest insights as to how it performs in the true sense of being a camcorder rather than adding a load of modified lenses to it. I remember you thinking about using a C100 for event work so I think it might also be informative from that point of view if you wanted to use the LS300 in that role. Anyway, short answer, pick up a used FZ2500 and get on with it. Longer answer, pick up a used LS300 and 12-100mm and get on with it in exactly the same way with a bit more room to breathe.

Ah....cheers. They should have that system for Trump's tweets.

What do the things in brackets relate to Jon?