BTM_Pix

Well I'm guessing that whatever massive feature set these new cameras have that a level meter isn't one of them

Watch here

That’s really interesting to know as I was considering that lens with an Fp-L (yes, I’m considering doubling down!) as a kind of sort of nearly improvised Leica Q3. Despite the typical pissing down on a Sunday summer afternoon weather yesterday it was still bright enough to have to use have the Vari-ND on max on those shots as I was using vLOG. I used this one which I have to say does live up to the promise of no X pattern even when at max.

Loosen it one turn from this original orientation (XLRs up) Gets you to this (XLRs down) Then the battery tray is accessible on the other side like this, so you the don’t have to remove the F3 from the handle to change batterries.

Panasonic 35mm f1.8 L Mount. Frame extracts from 4K file on my Panasonic S5ii. It isn't lacking in sharpness that's for sure.

Take away that downside and put down that hacksaw for me then.

For anyone looking to a roll your own version of these top handles, here is my S5ii and F3 handle. Advantages are cost, 32 bit float, wireless sync with the UltraBlue and flexibility in mounting orientation and position (XLRs up and mounted forward in my case). Downside is that the F3 has a pair of mounting bars to enable it to be strapped to a pole or a wrist and they make it awkward to mount with a regular 1/20 to 1/20 screw from the handle to it base so I need to get a longer one at some point. Downside is presuming Zoom might have been silly enough to not make the mounting bars removable.

It'll do it if you are shooting the event through a window 😉 I think the 10 minute record limit will help in terms of limiting the impact in respect of giving it less opportunity to roast the balls off it (likely intentional) but those tests are at 4K30 so your particular mileage may vary as you will be using higher frame rates. Of course, there is no "gold standard" (sic) review as he threw his toys out of the pram with regard to the S9.

After that shithousery was exposed by the work we did on here with it you’d have thought that recovery times and techniques would be front and centre of these “reviews” but sadly not. Particularly in this instance when the reviewer in question can’t exactly plead ignorance over it.

Or the whole thing is completely overblown because four minutes of shock content on that is far easier to produce than four minutes of representative content produced by light from the great outdoors actually hitting the sensor. I'm absolutely no fan of this fella but this is a far more representative real world performance evaluation (queued up to overheating section). In looking at that section, he didn't have the screen out and maybe the fro was acting as a shade and no mention is made of recovery time and would have been better using a dummy battery in that situation etc etc. So, despite this looking far more indicative of what to expect when actually using it then, again, as I say, without any explanation of the mitigation/recovery it still leaves question marks. Funnily enough, I was in a real life camera shop (well plural actually) a couple of days ago with @Andrew Reid as we were looking for an S9 and talking to the staff about what its like etc and they didn't have a clue. Not because they're not knowledgable, its just that they don't get any hands on with any of them until months later if at all as its now all about just pre-orders getting collected. They don't have any training courses or even reps from the manufacturers coming to visit to show them the cameras any more either. Everything is about the first few weeks leading up to and following the online launch and getting those pre-orders in. The whole business now - and this direction is driven entirely by the manufacturers - is all about direct marketing through YouTube and other "influencers" and it is a complete disgrace that people are getting so short changed by shallow first look "reviews" and such obviously dubious relationships. Its difficult enough for bricks and mortar camera shops to keep going without wasting the experience and knowledge of the staff and reducing the experience of dealing with customers to just handing over a pre-ordered box that has been bought on the say so of some bearded dick in a baseball cap who is in the pocket of the manufacturer. I don't know who was more depressed about the conversation we had about the situation, the two of them behind the counter or the two of us on the other side of it.

Not particularly to be honest. There is no comparison to the overheating performance of the Mark 1 and in his actual review of the Mark 1 he writes off any overheating concerns in literally a single second. And yet in this review of the Mark II he devotes around 30% of the whole video to it. Curious, no ? The thing is that the original Mk I actually had a widely reported (and click baited) furore around overheating which his review singularly failed to mention let alone highlight. Interestingly, it was actually one of the few reviews where he actually went outside with a camera and used it like someone would, so that may be related. The furore around the Mark 1 (fuelled in large part by people using it for two hour live streams) went away with the combination of the High setting, the screen flipped out and the use of dummy batteries. So, the latter points the finger firmly at the issue being the battery/chamber. Now the Mark II has a completely different battery and chamber so it is really relevant to understand whether the performance in terms of overheating is different and whether the same mitigation works. Like all the cameras that I have ever seen labelled with an "oh my God this is fatal" overheating "issue", I'm always wondering how many camera shops are overwhelmed with returns of them and the manufacturers having to withdraw them from sale as that reality doesn't seem to chime with the pearl clutching. In the case of the Mark I, it is extremely popular with its target audience, which strongly suggests that the real world usage of them by those people isn't unduly impacted by this, so if the Mark II is markedly worse or different then it is incumbent on "reviewers" to contrast and compare. These tests tell us nothing about real world performance not least because they do not take into account recovery time, which is the biggest debilitating factor in evaluating overheating. Once again, I find myself bewildered by how many people consider him as some sort of gold standard of reviewer. At the very least, the disparity between less than one second of evaluation of the overheating of the Mark I and five whole minutes on the Mark II warrants some sort of evaluation. Maybe overheating didn't drive the clicks in the same way when the Mark I was released.

How does it compare to the Mark 1?

Feature list here (lifted off a sales page so may include hyperbole) : Powerful 26 Megapixel APS-C Exmor R CMOS sensor Designed for vloggers, content creators, & streamers 3” Vari-angle Touch Screen allows touch focus, tracking & shutter Shoot in 4K at 60 frames per second (oversampled from 6K) S-Cinetone picture profile, cinematic vlog settings, & creative looks Get creative in post-production with 10-bit 4:2:2 colour sampling Improved Active Mode with focus breathing compensation Capture fast-paced moments with continuous shooting up to 11 fps More than 70 compatible Sony lenses, from wide-angle to telezoom Upgraded Real-time Eye AF system recognises humans, animals, & birds The dedicated bokeh switch creates a defocused background Product Showcase mode for quick & accurate transitions Upgraded internal directional microphone for improved audio £999 with the new 16-50mm OIS power zoom lens or £925 body only. Still no IBIS but the e-stablisation looks decent and the kit lens has OIS so I don't see it as a big deal for its target market as it certainly didn't deter them buying the mark 1 version in their droves. An FX30 for cheap really and I think they'll sell bucketloads. S9 or this at two thirds of the price with a lens included ? I think its a really tough sell for Panasonic for that market now, particularly considering the lack of appropriately sized L mount lenses for the S9.

There are some tiny (and cheap) 3D gesture scanners available that could achieve this mapping movements to controls. They generally recognise up to 9 different hand/finger gestures so there is a lot of scope. Similarly, but at the expense of more power and increased size (though not massive and still hot shoe mountable) there are a lot of cheap single AI unit cameras that can be used if you want to do the same with facial recognition. If they were powered by the camera then the form factor could be reduced further. The advantage of the AI camera route is that it can be turned facing the scene and do other things too.... This is a rough and ready demo of a face detect AF system that I made for the BM cameras that demonstrates how they can be harnessed to not only detect a face but specific individual people's faces if you train the AI. The video shows the face recognition in single AF-S mode, AF-C mode and the wide AF-C mode. With wide AF-C mode, with it being an outboard system with a much wider view of the scene it can detect the subject even when they are out of the frame and be ready for when they step into it. I left it off the main AFX development as it wasn't quite there at that point for a couple of practical reasons but I'm going to look at it again as things have moved on a little bit in the subsequent four years since I made it. Being able to decide who's face amongst a crowd of many would satisfy a lot of AF uses as, after all, what YouTuber would't want full on Narcissist AF mode 😉 It has practical implications for narrative to though as it can easily switch between specific performers in scenes.

Yes, I'm me on here and the designer for them when I'm not on here! The AFX sold its production run out (the webpage shows the original Android/Tilta fusion product) and then the COVID supply chain nonsense kicked in which hit us over a couple of components so we paused another run and then have now moved on to other products. Well, its moot now but with an AFX you always have a very accurate tape measure sitting on top of the camera 🙂

They all differ but the AFX range is 12 metres so it is definitely horses for courses in terms of application although a lot of lenses hit infinity way before 12 metres so it becomes moot in a lot applications anyway. With regard to bright sunlight, most of the development work I did for it was in an "oh my eyes, my eyes" area of Southern Spain and I never had any issues with testing and operating outdoors although it has to be said that not all sensors are the same in that respect. I built the AFX in my own lens hoarding image so it can store 128 lenses ! A big downfall is the bewildering reluctance of users to want to put in the effort of calibration. They want the miracle of AF-C of manual lenses on any camera or AF-C of electronic lenses on BM cameras with having to use motors either but spending 15 minutes to do a one off instantly recallable calibration ? Nah, fuck that. There is no absolute relationship between the camera sensor and the lens though, other than it being visually in focus obviously. The relationship that matters is between the lens position and the LIDAR unit measured distance at that position (which can be arbitrary) with the camera acting as the visual confirmation of focus so you are free to place it wherever you want as long as you respect the original location of the LIDAR during calibration when using it. Even then, without making this sound like an infomercial for the AFX, it also has an offset parameter to enable you to move it forwards and backwards from its original position without re-calibration to accommodate rig changes. LIDAR is a tool in the box and in some instances the only tool if you want to do certain things but its absolutely not the be all and end all in isolation. The interest for me at least is in using its inherent speed and absolute accuracy as a component within a broader focusing system.

I have this in the AFX in differing combinations. You can set four focus points and then transition to them manually with the stick on the controller (or the Tilta wheel if you have connected that to the AFX) or with different transition times including one called "NATURAL" which is based on the difference between your current focus point and the target. The transition times also work when it is in AF-C mode to keep the transitions as smooth or as instant as you prefer. You can also use the first two focus points to set up a ring fenced area between the two where the AF system is only active for targets between the points. And then of course there is the focus recorder function where you can do real time record of up to two minutes of focus movements using any combination of live LIDAR acquisition in AF-S or AF-C, the four focus memory position recalls and manual focus and then play it back as it was recorded. As I say, its the combination of all differing methods that, to me, makes the difference between a type of focus and a focusing system.

This is a comparison that I did between the internal CDAF of a Pocket 6K versus the lens being driven directly (although it uses the same internal motors) by an AFX. It highlights the general speed issues with CDAF in lower light and lower contrast situations of course but also on when the lens is being driven from near to close targets and its these which are most likely to cause it to not lock and to give up the ghost completely. Despite Panasonic's interpretation being a lot better it can still have these issues in my experience. PDAF isn't immune from this stuff either and in the S5ii which uses a combination of both PDAF and CDAF I've had it struggle in lower light. Low light or absolutely no light doesn't bother a LIDAR based system like the AFX in the slightest of course 😉 As I've said numerous times, the fully sentient AF system doesn't exist and an operator chosen combination of AF-S, AF-C and manual focus is still the one that yields the best results.

I used the Animal Eye AF on my S5ii the other day for the first time and whilst it was reliable in stills, in video it was certainly less so as these frame extracts show. When it worked, it worked well. But in a lot of cases it preferred his nose. This was with the Panasonic 85mm f1.8 so there isn't a massive margin for error but it also has to be said that Rolo is what can politely be described as a lazy little fucker so he's not exactly doing a lot of leaping about to overly tax the detection and tracking. Maybe it thought his nose was a built in Owl and it was picking up its eyes.

What was the problem with the Pocket 3?

The price for a brand new one and going to the correct counter at the airport and declaring it to customs is £630 versus £899 in a UK store so its still a massive saving. And I always go to the correct counter ... Funnily enough, the new ones seem to have gone short supply there too and I'm wondering whether its to do with them bundling them with the S9. The S9/28-200mm bundle works out at a fully legal import price of £1524 versus the S9 body only price in the UK of £1499. Thats a lot of lens for £25 ! For anyone who is looking for the S9/28-200mm bundle without the travel and who don't mind a dealer who is a "parallel importer" then Cotswold Cameras have the bundle for £1699 https://www.cotswoldcameras.co.uk/Panasonic-Lumix-S9-Digital-Camera---28-200mm-f-4-71-Macro-OIS-Lens-Black I have never dealt with them so have no idea about dealing with them but the Trustpilot reviews are here. https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/cotswoldcameras.co.uk It not until December so I should be able to comment on its weather resistance (or not!) too.

I read the title and thought your S5ii had been naughty. On my next holiday, I’m taking the camera and buying the lens when I get there. So, I’ll be taking the Sigma Fp and buying the Panasonic 28-200mm lens for the typical used price in Tokyo of around £400. The big draw for the Fp is that this lens is optically stabilised and is an appropriate size for it. It’s not the fastest but that keeps the size down and it’s a great range for travel. The beauty of the Fp is the modular nature so I can take off the EVF to strip it down to go with a couple of the fast compact M mounts I’ve got that I’ll take as well. Incidentally, for anyone interested in this lens and the S9 then Panasonic are bundling them together and the lens then works out at around £400. Like with the Fp, that’s a good package for a full frame roll your own cinecorder.

It means someone or something is unrecognised or unsuccessful to the extent that, for example, they could run stark bollock naked down the high street without garnering any attention or interest. So, all about irrelevance rather than immunity for US Presidents.

The newer pro camcorder versions of the FZ such as the HC-X2 have internal 4:2:2 10 bit now. Yeah something more like the XC10/15 lens range with the internal 10 bit 4:2:2 would be eminently doable for them. But they won’t because they hate us 😉 Panasonic did actually release a new bridge camera this week though (FZ82D) but they’ve gone with a 2/3” sensor and a quite insane 20-1200mm equivalent lens! I doubt it signals a refresh of the FZ200/2500 but you never know.

They'll be on a hard drive but I wouldn't hold your breath as both the drive and the camera are in a different country than I am and won't be to hand for a good few months.