BTM_Pix

Locked off shots and not using ISO One Billion to make night time look like broad daylight, what sort of heresy is this ?

I certainly think that Sigma manufacturing all of it’s cameras and lenses in Japan would qualify for them to be in that category. https://www.sigma-global.com/en/about/manufacture/

Well it looks like you can’t keep a good man (and his Lamborghini) down. It is currently going about as well as expected.

And.... Hang on, you are him aren't you ?

I will mainly be spending the festive period on very long walks of self loathing and contemplating the sheer scale of the hubris involved in this statement. In 2025, as part of my ambitious expansion plans, I plan to fail miserably at delivering those five products and an additional two new ones.

Funnily enough, the Nikon rumour mill was churning out that Nikon are making a version of the FTZ in 2025 with a motor for screw drive lenses a couple of days ago. Monster already do such a one for adapting to E mount. https://www.monsteradapter.com/products/la-fe2-nikon-f-mount-lenses-to-sony-e-mount-cameras-adapter-with-af-motor-built-in

The circular shaped piece of concrete ? That the bottom layer of the sponge cake they served me. And is likely to be incompatible with water from anywhere else.

To be fair, maybe they gave me the day old ones after looking out of the window and seeing me having the temerity to do this.

Also, whilst we are at it about Leica, the cakes at the cafe at their museum in Wetzlar are dry.

I’ve been in a few camera shops over the years….ahem. Across all those times in different shops in different cities and different countries, I have only been treated with that sort of contempt twice. Both times were in Leica stores. It was very much like this..

And a parfocal zoom from Arri

I can't keep up with the different camera every day but I'm proud of you for just leaning into the addiction 😉 Have you got some sort of camera advent calendar situation going on with Foto Meyer ?

Indeed. Any notion that the vagaries of Apple II based sampling/sequencing systems of yore is of any interest to the birds is, as they say, "for the birds". Hang on, I may have crossed the streams there. Live scenes as they react to my tales of 1984 technology

Sadly, I've reached the point where I have to choose between retaining a detailed knowledge of long forgotten music and recording technology or doing more than surface skimming a new camera spec sheet that I'm only vaguely interested in and thereby risk making erroneous assumptions. I can't do both so I'm off to sit on a park bench with my thermos flask of tea and a tartan rug where I will wax lyrical to passing birds about how to manipulate the tape sync and sequencer functions of the Greengate DS:3 to fool it into becoming a de-facto AMS 15-80S for live triggered drum replacement.

I'm doing this a lot recently. I need to take the hint and retire. Ignore everything @Andrew Reid

Perhaps the Nikon Z50ii might be the solution ? There is no need to switch the IBIS off when it doesn't have it in the first place😂 People seem to be clutching their pearls because it uses the sensor from the D500, which is a clear indication that they’ve never shot with the D500. And it moves the video side of the story on massively as well from the D500 of course. 10 bit 4:2:2 N-Log with the RED lut compatibility, single button access to custom built profiles, waveforms, wireless timecode, headphone jack etc etc. If you want to shoot 4K60 then the additional crop will be less significant to you if you're shooting on S16 lenses and its worth bearing in mind that the D500 had an additional 1.5x crop to shoot 4K25 etc so thats a win anyway ! If you want higher frame rates for the occasional shot then up to 1080p120 is available without penalty. All with the Z mount which will take every type of lens even hoarders like us can throw at it. With the TechArt you can have AF as well if you want it for all the vintage glass. The native Z mount DX lineup isn’t stellar in it’s breadth but with the Megadap adapter does that even matter when it turns it into more or less an E mount native camera to massively expand that choice of compact lenses? I might have talked myself into getting one.

Within a minute of me posting those musings, someone wandered by with an X1D-II doing a bit of street photography. I’d forgotten how compact it was and then remembered that Hasselblad make a focal reducer adapter for the HC lenses that restores their correct FOV on the smaller sensor. The hips gave a small jiggle.

Z8, GFX100S and Sony a1. The Z8 because it just doesn’t give a fuck about restricting specs and for the mounting options. The GFX100S because it had a tiny bit of flaking so was ridiculously cheap *and* it’s party trick is to not only be able to adapt all of my F mount lenses with AF but also my Hasselblad HC lenses. That’s a new lease of life for those lenses, particularly the HC lenses as my H3Dii39 is beyond economic repair. The a1 because used ones have got a lot cheaper in the last ten days with the impending mark 2 versions and it hits a sweet spot of resolution, power and compactness. Also, I have seldom seen anything other than very, very nice video coming from it. The other thing that stopped me was the nagging feeling that a mark 2 Fp-L or higher res ZF are possibly coming over the horizon. At which point the dance will begin anew.

Went here today where they had hands on units. It feels *maybe* a little narrow but a small grip will sort that. My advice is if you don’t want to buy it then for God’s sake don’t have a play with it because you will very likely walk out with one. Unfortunately, they aren’t released here for another week by which time I’ll be back on Monkey Island so without a pre-order I expect I won’t see one available for a while. Incidentally, the orders for the X100vi are still suspended even here in FujiFilm’s own flagship place so you have to wonder at how fluid the supply of the new camera will be too.

Oh I bought two lenses too as soon as the paralysis wore off 😂 They were easy though as I needed two more servo zoom MFT lenses for a project and the herd is thin when it comes to those. I *think* there are only four (two each by Panasonic and Olympus) so I now have the full set.

Needless to say this absolutely did not happen. Again. Been in and out of camera shops for the past 10 days and just can’t make the decision. Three really strong contenders caused a serious case of paralysis by analysis. Two more days here but realistically it is not going to happen. Maybe next year.

Not sure. I’m guessing the wheel might be a mirror of the servo zoom control or assignable to focus. Although, with the camera hidden inside a Perspex box and not exactly looking particularly finished, I could also equally speculate that it is the steam controller for an internal coffee machine hidden behind a secret cover! No, I didn’t see him. The Sigma booth was predominantly a very patient and polite man with a cart full of lenses putting them on cameras for people to test so I didn’t linger there long enough. The Nikon booth was very busy though with them doing presentations about the RED lut stuff whilst the RED booth next to them was a lot about using their cameras in broadcast situations with box lenses etc Nikon were showing their prototype servo zoom lens but also showing RED Kimodos with F Mount lenses. I was quite intrigued by the latter at first glance thinking they’d produced some sort of adapter but they were just using a dumb 3rd party F-RF adapter. You’d think that through the acquisition of RED they’d make their own smart adapter now they had both parts of the puzzle but who knows the legalities of the deal RED had with Canon that would prevent that. I doubt it sits well with Nikon to have that situation last longer than necessary and I wonder whether we might see the inevitable Z mount version of the Komodo be a Nikon branded product.

Bit of an update.. Fujifilm have another stand with an equally perspex cased unit that doesn’t lend itself to being photographed but this one has the new lens attached.

Live from the exhibition floor… Well, it’s here but as expected it’s in a Perspex case making touching it impossible and the reflections and dim environment not exactly easy to get a decent picture of it especially on my ageing iPhone. What I can confirm though which Is what everyone wants to know is that it does have internal ND.

I’m going to Inter BEE tomorrow so I’m looking forward to seeing this in the flesh.