BTM_Pix

Many years ago, when footballers were still earning only a bit more than the average working man, they used to have their wages further reduced in the summer period when no games were played. One of the finest players of that era, Tom Finney, told a great story about his colleague Tommy Docherty trying to get a better pay deal for himself. "Tommy came down from Celtic, and had a fairly good season with us. In those days we used to line up in the corridor before going in to the manager to find out our terms for the following year. I went in to see Bill Scott, the manager, and he said I'd be on the same terms as the year before, £12 a week during the season, and £10 a week in the summer, which was known as 12-and-10. Tommy went in after me, and was told he'd be on 12-and-eight. `I'm not signing,' he said. `I've just found out that Finney's on 12-and-10.' The manager couldn't believe it. `But Finney's a far better player than you,' he said. `Not in the bloody summer he's not,' Tommy said." I've been reminded of that story again by numerous comments I've been reading about the S1-H and its AF system. Yes, the R5 and A7Siii might have much better AF systems than the S1-H but not when the camera has overheated they haven't.

Out of interest, have you tried taking the TC off that lens and checking the sharpness? There aren't many vintage (or even modern) 2x TCs that aren't going to soften the image. So you may find swapping that for a 1.4x or even a 1.7x might do the trick instead of changing the lens as you seem to have a lot more range in hand with the ETC mode. If you've got a speedbooster then there are a lot of inexpensive used EF lenses like Sigma 70-300 that are worth considering. The speedbooster will cut a bit of range but it will give you more back in light and also sharpness as well as giving you OIS and at least a little bit of AF if your speedbooster supports it. You also have the option of putting it on a non reducing adapter to get the full 300mm range back. Either way, I suspect you'll end up with a sharper image from that lens than with the 70-210mm once you've got that x2 TC on it.

What does that have to do with what I said about testing ?

I read earlier today that their cloud image backup service has gone down and they have actually lost a lot of user's images. Smells a lot like a hack and obviously Canon were concerned enough about potential ransomware vulnerabilites in the cameras last year to issue firmware patches so I hope its not related. Its not exactly going swimmingly for them at the moment is it?

Have a look at some of the Sony,Canon and Panasonic HD palmcorders as well as many of them have LANC controls which will make the simultaneous controlling easier and they are usually very cheap used. The form factor is quite useful too as they all tend to be quite narrow which could be a benefit in placing them for overlapping coverage. Good luck with it.

Probably overheated 😉

I've been using one of these £12 Rocketek combined USB3 CFast and SATA readers.. The drives show up independently in your file manager so you can easily copy media between them too.

The Sandisk Ultra3D is a good low cost alternative and ticks all the boxes on the Ninja V tested and approved compatibility chart. https://www.atomos.com/drives

Just as a proof of concept you could just go with six lowest budget action cameras that you can find that have real time HDMI output. You won't get the simultaneous control but neither will you need it because they are all fixed focus autoexposure models anyway and it will be adequate to check your realtime stitching process. I'd be inclined to get one with a narrower FOV and whilst I can't give you specific models there are plenty of people on here who use action cams who are up to speed with what the latest and greatest clone ones are. EDIT> If you want to step it up to a level above action cameras once you've got the stitching working then you could go with a set of used Panasonic LX100s which you can do full image and zoom lens control by wifi with the added bonus of 4K. They are readily available for under £200 used these days so £1200 for a large format video camera with 3x integral zoom isn't unreasonable ! I've just remembered that the LX100 does not have a live HDMI output so would be OK for recording but not for live stitching. Something like used Panasonic FZ1000s would do the same job albeit with a smaller sensor though. You'd need something custom to control six of them simultaneously from one base unit but thats not insurmountable if you know someone who's into that kind of thing... Above that, then six BM Micro Cinema Cameras would be an option but you'd be then into finding six matched lenses etc so you'd be looking at about three times the cost of using something like the FZ1000s.

The bottom line with this is that until there is absolute clarity on the pattern of the thermal response escalations and their associated recovery periods then Its less of a camera and more of a booby trap.

That thing reminds me of the propensity that old Mods had for maximising forward illumination and rear view coverage for their Lambrettas.

This video from the excellent Media Division channel is a good run through of doing it purely as an experiment with a single camera. The challenge to do it with multiple cameras is the rigging and sync of the controls. Small sensor in a box cameras like the BMMCC and the Z camera would be ideal as they are compact enough and are easily controlled remotely so that the controls can be ganged. The Sigma fP would be absolutely ideal if it weren't for the shortsighted decision to make the only way to remote the camera controls being through the same port as the recording media so you can do one but not both. Pocket 6K in vertical orientation would be workable as they can be timecode synced with each other and a single control solution to control multiple cameras simultaneously would be doable by someone industrious if there was a need.

Well, its funny you should mention shutter release for cameras that don't have them as we have literally just finished creating a one-off custom PBC system to do it mechanically for stop frame animation for a customer for on a Pocket4K. Unless you are powering the camera from the mains, trying to do it over wifi is going to be problematical over any great length of time due to the battery drain. Mechanical is definitely more straightforward, providing that, again, you have power for the Arduino or whatever you are running it from. As long as you can position it correctly and the shutter button stands out from the body, then a simple servo can be used to activate it and an Arduino programmed easily to control it. There are plenty of options from that basic point to be able to finesse it in terms of how you trigger it so you can have a basic wire and switch attached to the Arduino or add a radio or IR sensor or even a BLE or WiFi module if you want to do it wirelessly.

The F mount versions are good though so it would be a shame if they didn't produce Z mount versions. They've got their hands full with L mount though so it could be a while.

I know. I was being petty.

I'd be very interested in seeing any links you've got for the great reviews of any of these Sigma Z mount lenses. Meanwhile, here is the Sigma CEO saying that they haven't decided whether they will actually make any. Have I missed something ?

Hawaii Five Overheat

With this test, it doesn't really need anything more than a testing oven and a wifi connection to a testing app so I don't think that is at play here. This method is how they would, of course, have achieved the guideline figures that they initially published so it has been done at one temperature at least and it would seem implausible that they didn't then turn the oven up and do more tests. So I would be confident that those figures at different temperatures do exist somewhere in the test department so, yes, the "story" would be where the decision to deem them acceptable was made. Sending cameras out to YouTubers in different parts of the world to do different things with them would no doubt yield some valuable feedback for Canon on operational issues, as well as the free promotion of course, but performance testing shouldn't be part of that remit. That needs to be done in far more structured and controlled environments by actual software testers.

Erm....yes, that is precisely what it does so there is absolutely no falsehood involved. There is a TempStatus property in the firmware that causes the camera to react in various scaled responses. These are : Normal Warning Indicator Reduced Frame Rate Live View Prohibited Shooting Prohibited Degraded Still Image Quality Restriction Of Video Recording At some point, all of these different responses will be triggered if the temperature begins to increase. The reason the different record times and behaviours are seen by different "testers" is that the temperature of their camera is different so different ones are being triggered at different rates but at some point they will all trigger. This status is externally readable on the camera so Canon could easily provide the simple test tool to these "testers" to create a real structured test instead of the scattergun ad hoc ones that are happening now. I have got no idea why Canon continue to let these unstructured random tests play out in public without doing something official about it. The only reason I can come up with is that the noise generated by these contradictory "findings" is giving them cover while they work away in the background to remedy it. The TempStatus pre-dates the R5/R6 and has been part of the Canon firmware for a long time and is there for a reason for that so none of this is new for them in testing so it begs the question why more seemingly wasn't done to test it in simulated real environments.

Obviously on a technical level it would be trivial for BM to incorporate NDI but I can't see them doing anything that would aid and abet Newtek further establishing it as a standard. I think if BM were going to embrace NDI they would have done it a couple of years ago as part of their Mini Converter range but didn't because the obvious by product of that would be more Tricaster sales for Newtek or software sales for vMix. Its a pity though as a BM version would likely be far cheaper than even the budget one from Birddog. The supposition from the Stream Bridge would be that BM are looking to make their own version of NDI which they will no doubt have to do at some stage anyway as those big multi point routers they sell will eventually have to give way to IP based ones.

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I have the Sony 18-105 f4 and it is a very good all rounder, particularly for a one lens travelling setup. With it having the zoom rocker and with the clear image zoom extending that range on to about 210mm, it effectively turns the A series cameras into APS-C camcorders. The downside is that it is f4, although I'd rather have a constant f4 than a variable f3.5-f5.6 which would be common with a lens like this. With it being f4, you aren't going to get shallow depth of field at the wide end but you do actually get decent separation and smooth bokeh at the long end. The OSS and AF work well but whilst its by no means a soft lens its definitely fair to say it could be a bit sharper but thats less of an issue for video than it is for stills. The focus by wire is a bit rough but that comes with the territory. Also, its quite hefty in size if not weight so it can make the A series cameras feel a bit unbalanced but I don't mind it being a bit of a lump as it aids stability as far as I'm concerned when its planted in your hand. This video is a very decent and fair view of its pros and cons. With regard to the Sigma, I haven't got that one but I've yet to see anyone who has have anything but fulsome praise for it. If you are looking for an interesting bargain for E mount, one Sigma I do have is the now discontinued Sigma 60mm Art f2.8 which you can pick up very cheaply secondhand now and you'll have few regrets checking one of those out.

The circular buffer would only be two tracks, itself and the main output, so that is more manageable than the five needed with the full ISO recordings. But yeah if you are continuously recording fragments you might as well be recording the whole thing, so it would be two continuous tracks, one of the preview bus and the other of the main output. That would give you the same capability of changing your cut points after the event. Looking at something like vMix which offers ISO recording, the track capacity is related to overall CPU/GPU power of the computer you are running it on so its possible that the hardware difference over the Mini Pro is a beefier or even additional processor just to handle the ISOs I'll get the screwdrivers out and have a look when it eventually turns up !

It would have been even cheaper for us Ninja V owners if Atomos hadn't mysteriously dropped the AtomX module ! The downer about NDI if you wanted to use it in these small ATEM Mini link up scenarios is that you'd need an encoder at one end and a decoder at the other unless BM introduced NDI inputs which I suspect is not going to be on the cards. What they could do though is add their own format as an input to yet another ATEM Mini product which they will no doubt announce within 24 hours of me receiving my ATEM Mini Pro ISO. A two HDMI matrix switcher output version of the Streaming Bridge that could pull in four or eight network inputs would be a good add on too.

Yeah, that would be a great little product. If they extend the functionality to be able to operate the Pocket camera controls from the studio end as you can with the ATEM then BM would sell a lot of cameras at the moment to broadcasters having to bring in remote feeds from talent who are working from home and may not be the most camera tech savvy !