BTM_Pix

I think this a pretty significant release. The lack of IBIS wouldn’t bother me for a few reasons. Namely, that I can do without the destructive warping, a lot of Fuji lenses have OIS and the options for post stabilisation are now both more plentiful and more sophisticated. $799 reminds us of how things used to be in the golden days of MFT before we all slept walked into accepting the received wisdom that three times that price was the price of a low-mid price camera body.

Fujifilm have had Panasonic’s pants off with the X-5M release today. It’s offering the upgrade from the compact MFT cameras that Panasonic refuse to do and cuts the price in half from the still sat on the launchpad S9 and has appropriately sized lenses to boot. It also leverages the kudos that the X100 has created in the market that they are trying to break into. Panasonic should’ve made this camera two or even three years ago - particularly when Leica vacated the APS-C area discontinuing the CL and TL - but instead they put an MFT sensor in a FF body and priced it even higher. They definitely need to do something along those sort of lines as the “me too” stuff is not moving anyone’s needle. The head start they had by being in mirrorless early has now disappeared.

Fuji have just announced the X-M5 which is another swift kick in the goolies for the S9 (albeit "only" APS-C) and at $799 is the sort of price point and form factor that Panasonic should've been looking at for a new GX80. 26MP X-Trans BSI CMOS sensor X-Processor 5 with AI-powered subject detection AF On-sensor phase detection Fully articulated 3", 1.04M-dot LCD 20 Film Simulation modes, including Reala ACE Continuous shooting up to 8fps (30fps with E-shutter and 1.25x crop) 6.2K 3:2 video up to 30p, 4K up to 60p with crop 10 but 4:2:2 External mic and 3.5mm headphone socket https://fujifilm-x.com/global/products/cameras/x-m5/

They might well be working on one but the one they've actually released today is another one with the very much have used before APS-C sensor size. The X-M5 might be IBIS and EVF-less but it packs a big punch for $799. 26MP X-Trans BSI CMOS sensor X-Processor 5 with AI-powered subject detection AF On-sensor phase detection Fully articulated 3", 1.04M-dot LCD 20 Film Simulation modes, including Reala ACE Continuous shooting up to 8fps (30fps with E-shutter and 1.25x crop) 6.2K 3:2 video up to 30p, 4K up to 60p with crop 10 but 4:2:2 External mic and 3.5mm headphone socket https://fujifilm-x.com/global/products/cameras/x-m5/

So this could either be rumours of a new firmware version or him testing the version without the recording limits then. Removing the recording limit for the S9 does add to its utility because with a dummy battery it was likely not going to cause the same sort of heat issues that necessitated the limit in the first place so it would’ve been an artificial restriction for that use case. Fumbling the initial launch with the wrong lens and now fumbling the re-launch with the right lens and dodgy firmware is not a good look though. Though it will certainly benefit us S5ii users looking for a cheap companion version as the used S9 prices tumble due to these fuck ups !

Call me cynical but as the S5 already charged over USB then they could simply have removed the charger from the boxes to become compliant rather than make a whole “new” camera for a specific region. After all, the changes come in at the end of 2024 and it’s not as if the original S5 was going to have much of a life beyond that anyway as a new product. They could also make additional money by selling the chargers separately. I know that no manufacturer is going to say “we’ve got shitloads of these in a warehouse and need to get shut of them” but this stretches creativity in spinning that situation very thin. Also, the famously absolutely NOT part of the EU anymore UK government has previously stated that it wouldn’t align itself to this particular EU directive. Mind you, they say a lot of things. My conspiracy theory is that they took a production run of the old box camera and a production run of the S5ii and swapped the internals to make the new box camera and whatever the hell this is on the basis it would be easier to clear stock of a “new” S5 than the old box camera. I’m only kidding of course but it makes about as much sense as their given reason.

Something the S9 has going for it over the other S cameras is the hybrid zoom function. Its 1.5x in 4K so this new 18-40mm becomes an 18-60mm with that extension so it actually makes the whole combo a more interesting proposition as a package. I'm guessing that Panasonic not giving it to the other cameras is a deliberate differentiation for that purpose so they can offer compact packages albeit with slower lenses that still maintain some of the range people want. If it was launched as this combo from the get go then I think a lot of the "I'm trying to be positive about this camera because they've flown me all the way here to shill it for them" lukewarm fixed grin "reviews" would've been a lot more positive. Because with this lens - and I'm guessing a similar tele companion version won't be far behind -the S9 makes a whole lot more sense. As it was, they blew that by having the silly pancake lens with it for the launch so all compactness would have to go out of the window by putting the usual L mount lenses on it.

Live stream for the announcement of whatever it is they're announcing.

Yeah, as per usual, he's serving up more half baked nonsense.

Not for the onlookers though 😉

Or their father who has abandoned them inside the log cabin to keep the log fire stoke while he does an urgent emergency live rumour broadcast from the verandah. With only one day to go before this announcement, if this announcement is something as major as the v2 of the S1 cameras then I would have expected to see tweets from the usual suspects humble bragging about the strains of having to go overseas as they are wolfing down Takoyaki in Osaka with the rest of the bros. But there haven't been so maybe it isn't significant enough to take them all to Osaka. It doesn't rule out them having been sent them or there being localised events but my reading of this is that this is (white) smoke without a lot of fire.

I do now. They REALLY want you to use the ATEM (which is what I have it for anyway) but if you buy the zoom demand add on then you can assign one of its buttons to trigger the AF. However…. The P4K/6K have a beta firmware that uses the same Ethernet control now so I have developed two different controller options last week in preparation for getting the Micro Studio 4K G2. Just tested them and they work well. I’ll be doing a third type this week as I’m trying a different approach. So I’ll personally be covered if I want to use it outside of the ATEM environment but I’m not convinced enough other people will be interested in doing the same for me to commercialise it. It’s laughably small when put next to a regular P4K so it would be great for a lot of applications but the Bluetooth omission is definitely borderline kinky.

It might help if a) Every piece wasn't introduced with the breathless "hey look what I made with AI". It should stand up whether you did or didn't and it just comes across as being inauthentic. Which, of course, it is. b) It wasn't being pushed by the same NFT/Crypto/Whatever this week's fad is shills. c) It evolves beyond more or less just remixing existing content. People aren't moved by it because they get the feeling they've seen it before. Which, of course, they have. I remember in my 30s going back to a hip club that I frequented when I was in my teens and very early 20s and feeling completely out of place and absolutely not getting it. Its a bit like that for the internet with the internet now.

I'm curious to know if anyone has any experience with their Nikon to GFX AF adapter as it looks pretty decent from what I've seen and could make the GFX100 more appealing to me as a home for my Nikon collection if I don't buy a Z8 as my forever camera.

Instead of an actual new FF sensor (which would go against the grain for them of straddling both sides of it), I'm wondering whether they might simply do what Panasonic did with the LX100 when they used an MFT sensor but only used a portion of it. So in this case FujiFilm could use their existing 50mp GFX sensor (or the 100mp if they fancied it) to make a virtual FF camera without having to go down the route of having a new sensor and processing. With the fixed lens there would be less restrictions size wise in not having to accommodate that big lens mount so they could make significant reductions in size and have a far more compact version of their GFX-50R. If they've no intention of getting into FF as a system then a pseudo FF camera like that would be a fast turnaround product that if it wasn't priced insanely would do pretty well.

To paraphrase Tony Wilson of Factory Records, Sigma protected themselves from ever having to have the dilemma of trading the camera's low light capability for image quality by having no low light capability whatsoever. On the upside, there's absolutely no need to carry ND filters around 😉

Maybe when they’ve got their act together sufficiently to produce enough of the current focal length version to meet demand they will think about it! Having said that, their approach with producing dedicated wide and tele adapters for them is an OK halfway house. I had the wide for my original X100 and it performed well, although the 0.79x and 1.4x respectively of the adapters is a bit conservative but I guess those were the optimum to not degrade performance too much. At the time that I bought my DP2m, I had a Nikon D800 and a Hasselblad H3DII-39 and couldn’t imagine that it would live with them but it actually did. I bought it on impulse really as I was at a dealer picking up a lens for my actual job and they had just started a price slash offer on them to clear stock and I thought I’d take a chance as I’d looked at it before but at £900 it seemed way overpriced. Turns out it wasn’t even at that price and I even ended up using it for work as well for certain roles. I then kept my eye out for the DP1m and DP3m at used prices (which plummeted because the new price had been cut) and picked them both up as well. It’s interesting that they completely write the JPEG’s off in that video as for work because of the live editorial fast turnaround time of it I used JPEG quite a lot! The ultimate quality is only to be found when using the Sigma software though and, as I said, that really does bring you back to the slower paced days of developing images. Funny thing about prices is that because I paid smaller prices for mine, looking at the current used markets, they are the only cameras that I have ever owned where I could make a profit ! Which I suppose takes us back to the “value” in cameras as even if I had paid full retail for them then they would still be about 65-70% of the original cost. My D800 and H3DII-39 on the other hand…. Yeah, let’s not go there. By the by, it’s interesting to see the iteration of Chris Nichols in that video compared to the current one.

I think there is a lot of merit in that. Whats interesting with this new Q is that Leica are actually mirroring (or mirroringless) what Sigma did with the DP1m and DP2m cameras and have actually chosen the same focal lengths. It might suggest that they will go the whole way pretty soon and bring out a third one, this time with a 75mm lens like the Sigma DP3m. A real bargain at $21K for the Leica set, of course. For anyone looking to have that choice of no choice on a smaller budget then the DPm cameras are worth looking at. They take the shooting experience back in time by having basically a choice of ISO100, ISO400 at a real push and ISO1600 in Black&White. In camera writing time and battery life is so bad that its the equivalent of only having two rolls of 36 exposure film. To add that final touch of retro, the files are so slow to process in Sigma's software that it more or less mimics sending your slide film back to Kodak for processing. If you can past those limitations- and of course we should never forget how many incredible images were taken in the past under those restrictions - then the image quality is your reward. Having said all that.... Never, under any circumstances, go and try a Leica Q3 in a shop as all logic goes out of the window when you pick one up.

The Atomos stuff can be a bit fussy sometimes over its HDMI input source but this would do the trick to get it into a Ninja for example if you were using composite or s-video sources. Alternatively, if you are using component output gear then this one would do the job.

The batteries I got for the Canon MV20 duly arrived, were charged, put onto the camera and.... Fuck all. Well, slightly more than fuck all as the powered tape eject mechanism works which shows they were doing something but there was not a sign of life otherwise. Pondering that my "search by cheapest" method of selection might have been flawed I decided to power it off the mains. So, as the original is lost somewhere inside the storage room of shame, I ordered a variable voltage PSU using the search term "cheap but not likely to kill me" and it duly arrived this morning and I plugged it in and ... Fuck all. Well, it too also does the powered tape eject mechanism and, to taunt me, also appears to be charging the battery when attached. My carefully considered technical analysis of the situation leads me to the conclusion that it is, indeed, fucked.

What stood out for me is that it can do both regular timecode as well as wireless with the Atomos UltraSync Blue system. If it can convert the incoming timecode from the UltraSync Blue into regular timecode to output to the camera (and vice versa which is more unlikely) then that would be very useful. To do this otherwise would need an UltraSync One which is roughly 75% of the total price of the FR-AV2. The bluetooth headphone monitoring can easily be replicated with cheap add ons for other recorders but its good to see it integrated. The additional $100 over the F3 isn't onerous and if I didn't have an F3 then this would be my choice.

It’s the resolution bump for live view with the animation firmware of the Canon cameras that gives them the edge for the software. https://www.dragonframe.com/camera-support/

I agree with this. If the primary purpose is to use with the animation software then I’d be led by that and Dragonframe do seem to recommend the Canon models above the rest for use with their software. Canon do charge an additional fee for the animation firmware upgrade but if it makes it more functional for your primary purpose then I guess that is a price worth paying ? Not sure what impact it has on the rest of the regular functionality in terms of this replacing it or just being additional functionality. https://www.canon.co.uk/support/consumer/products/cameras/eos-r/eos-r.html?type=important&detailId=tcm:14-1955953&productTcmUri=tcm:14-1723696

From the perspective of using it with an ATEM, this camera is stupendously good. With the ATEM MINI ISO, you do your live stream with the cameras (and have full remote control over everything in it), and it saves your switching as a project file for Resolve. Afterwards you load the file into Resolve, get your full switcher performance back (which you can then tweak) and automatically replace all the video elements with the 4K BRAW files from the cameras. It is fantastic. Imagine then not adding a Bluetooth capability to let the camera be operated remotely without the ATEM. It’s not like you are then offering a free lunch as if you want all the extra capability that the ATEM offers then you need to buy an ATEM anyway.

Wrong presumption by me. Dont get why you can’t control it over the SDI port let alone the HDMI port. Its just weird choices they’ve made here. This is the only viable solution for external control. I’m getting this camera next month for use with ATEM but there is development scope there for me to make an interface for external control by that method. I’ll let you know.