BTM_Pix

Controversial 😉

I was using the 200 mbps HD intra for these which gives the added bonus of extra at the wide end and a lot more reach at the tele end. And the stabilisation is easily good enough to hand hold even at 500-600mm equivalents. The amount of different shot size coverage you can get out of this camera as a consequence is ridiculous.

The only comparison that we all really need to do is of footage that we make from cameras that we own and of what other people are making with it. If theirs is better then the camera isn’t the problem and we should stick with what we have until we can make ours as good. And then don’t think of “upgrading” until we do. With any camera from the past five years (at least), the ceiling that we hit is usually our own capability rather than that of the camera. And, yes, I am absolutely flat broke after not being able to follow my own advice on this !

And yet the FZ2000/2500 that is the camera for ticking every single one of these boxes can’t get arrested. Same sensor size as the Super 16 film format that was used in classic BBC travel docs such as Palin’s Around The World In 80 Days but with an optically stabilised zoom with a huge range, internal ND and without the flightcases. Cheaper than the iPhone as well.

As well as the add on wide angle and anamorphic lenses, it does have a decent virtual zoom with a good ergonomic operation using the thumbtack. Its range is dependent on your resolution of course but for the purpose as a travel camera its pretty good.

It is a bit of mystery, especially with the option of the magnetic mount anamorphic lenses and ND filters. Feels like there was much nicer stuff being made with the first one but you could argue that the GH cameras have followed a similar curve in absolute terms.

Then the little cheating fat bastard is dead to me now 🙂 I was watching it and at about 750m thinking "nah he's going to have to try another day" and then he just crowd surfs his way to the front. What a moment. He has another shot today but honestly I just hope he can hang on to the end of the race as the last stage is an individual time trial from Monaco to Nice and he deserves what will effectively be a 33km lap of honour. I might not be able to resist the urge to head down there to see it in person.

Obviously, England are being run by a manager that is so risk averse that here he is taking a bath so, the overhead kick aside, we are an insomniac's best friend and stinking the tournament out.

That was some display of Main Character Syndrome by Ronaldo last night though taking every single free kick and then the penalty though. It was very weak and potentially catastrophic from Martinez not to substitute him at half time of extra time after the penalty miss when he clearly had become an emotional wreck. You could argue he got redemption in the end scoring one in the shootout but it was really horrible as a neutral watching him fall apart like that so God knows what impact it was having on his team mates. The brilliance of Costa dug Martinez out of a big hole. I wouldn't be starting Ronaldo in the next game as his body isn't responding to him any more. The talismanic effect of having him in the team has been lost if he's seen to crumble like that and make it all about him. France are not hitting any heights in this tournament so I think you have a reasonable chance of overcoming them but you can't do it with a passenger.

It shouldn't be beyond the means of Panasonic to create a hotshoe mounted 9 axis IMU that embeds the data in the files via BLE so you can have the option of both. The drawback to the L mount series is how few optically stabilised lenses there are for it as well. Baffles me that Sigma in particular don't make any (other than the 100-400) with OIS as if there is any camera in L mount that could do with a helping hand regarding stabilisation it is their own ones. All of it just emphasises how nothing beats a tripod. IBIS means we can stick it to the man by snatching shots where tripods would likely be unable to be used but if the end result is irreparable warping then its a pyrrhic victory really isn't it.

Shooting with the S5ii a few days ago with the 20-60mm I was noticing some weirdness from the IBIS in terms of distortion and wondering whether its interacting (badly) with the lens correction for barrel distortion. These are two consecutive frames and there is a tiny horizontal change which the IBIS is correcting but its causing quite a distortion on the edges. Its subtle but its very noticeable on the building on the right. However, when you do a difference action between the two frames you can really see how it is spreading the distortion from the centre (where its barely anything) outwards.

What's delusional is using a single verbal incident in a race situation as some sort of proof that a rider is doping when he has never been implicated by involvement in any other indicator nor anecdotally by his accuser or any other rider, let alone failed a test! The incident was related to a feud between Simeoni and Lance Armstrong (quelle surprise) about Simeoni exposing Armstrong's own association with Dr Ferrari of whom Simeoni was also a client. Simeoni was a prosecution witness against Ferrari and this racing incident was a clear way in which to intimidate him against testifying. The other riders involved in giving Simeoni abuse when he was sucked back into the peloton were reacting to the racing incident which was against the accepted conventions of road behaviour within the race and in support of the yellow jersey (Armstrong in this case) who is de facto leader of the behavioural code within the peloton. So it had nothing to do with doping per se as Armstrong was still essentially "clean" in 2004 and everything to do with the etiquette of the racing. If it had been about doping then surely Simeoni being a prosecution witness would have implicated Nardello? Which, of course, neither he nor anybody else ever did. He didn't look like he was going to last the first two hours at one point on Saturday. Today is the first flat stage but its very debatable whether he can challenge for the stage. Well, this is where my hypocrisy will catch up with me if he is ! I covered quite a lot of those stage wins (and more than a few of this last 300m mishaps) and I have to say that they were amongst the most exhilarating things that I've shot so I have a massive soft spot for him. Logic would say he has done it clean because he has managed - unlike Wiggins and Froome - to not be implicated even in the shady whiff around the UK Cycling/SKY setup that he was a part of or anything else outside of that. If he has though then, to me, I'll view him in the same category as the rest of the cheats that have gone before and it will be meaningless. At least if he was then he managed to not be an absolute psychopathic cunt with it like Armstrong was. Well, except to the press, where I was in a few packs where we were on the receiving end of his, erm, "spikiness" when things weren't going his way. And sometimes even when they were.

Well as I asked before: I thought I'd given you the answer at the time but obviously I didn't . Trying to get "absolute certainty" is the cop out to hide behind the "everyone was at it" defence thrown up by Armstrong and his enablers when he was eventually forced to admit the truth. No one can be "absolutely certain" of the actions of another person at every moment of their life. Armstrong himself used the "I've never tested positive" benchmark until it was discovered he had but had colluded with the UCI to cover it up, thus muddying the waters for everyone else as well. So, again, because of his shithousery, the benchmark then gets lowered to suspicion to justify it but even that doesn't make the "everyone else was at it" defence stand up to much scrutiny. Even if we take out all those with subsequent failed tests in their whole career and/or implication in the known indicator stuff like Festina, Michele Ferrari, Bologna raid, Puerto/Fentes etc then are there any that match a top ten finish that you are challenging ? Of course there are. Asking for just one is pretty facile so here is one from each of Armstrong's seven Tour de France "winning" years. 1999 - Daniele Nardello (7th) 2000 - Daniele Nardello (10th) 2001 - Andrei Kivilev (4th) 2002 - Jose Azevedo (6th) 2003 - Haimar Zubledia (5th) 2004 - Jose Azevedo (5th) 2005 - Cadel Evans (8th) The 2006 edition, following Armstrong's first retirement from cycling, five of the top ten finishers hold similarly "clean" records. So, no, they weren't all at it. Anyway, the 2024 edition starts today so lets enjoy the spectacle and hope the little fella gets that 35th stage win.

Was the a7RC not the compromise play ? I haven’t looked at it closely enough but I’m guessing there were compromises there for your work?

A lot of manufacturers have some sort of variation of it but it’s the implementation of it that is key for me at least. The Variable Scan Mapping of the LS300 was the one that really caught the imagination because you could map it to the zoom rocker so it was really intuitive. You can actually use a LANC controller for it instead and map focus to the rocker switch for a great solo solution. Incidentally, you could do this with Clear Image Zoom on the Sonys such as A6500, A7Rii etc with cheap compact zoom rockers that plugged into the remote port too but I’m not sure whether the modern ones allow it? For the Z8/Z9 and now Z6iii Nikon have their Hi-Res Zoom function and have the hardware MC-N10 grip to provide a tactile control. There is always a lot of “durr but you can crop in post dude” reaction to this sort of functionality and, whilst this is true, there are plenty of applications where virtual zoom makes a lot more sense. For something like the LS300, if you are shooting live or handing media off for as live then obviously it gives you the way to get a tighter shot in camera that wouldn’t be an option otherwise. To paraphrase Nigel Tufnel, if you’ve got a 24-70 on the camera and you need the shot to be tighter … The other scenario is not having to shoot in a “wasteful” resolution just to give you the option of cropping later. With something like the 8K Z8/Z9 you are getting up to 2x hi res zoom and still be shooting in 4K whereas the Z6iii is a bit more limited in that it is only 1.2x whilst still being 4K but that might be all you need for that extra push over the cliff. As I say, it’s horses for courses and will be of minimal use to a lot of people but it definitely has its applications where it’s an absolute boon. It also forces you to make a decision about framing whilst shooting, which is anathema to the “I simply MUST have maximum post shooting noodling capability” crowd of procrastinators. Fucking cowards 😉

Considering he was using 180deg shutter angle it’s actually not that bad. Good thing about the gyro stabilisation like this in the BM and the Sony version cameras is that, unlike IBIS, it is non-destructive to the image so you can tweak it later. That’s not only good for the now but it also means if someone does come up with a better method then you can re-process the files and rescue or improve shots. With IBIS, those warps are there for good.

Wide end of the Panasonic 20-60mm kit lens on an S5ii capturing some people so desperate to avoid the outlandish parking charges at British seaside town that they've decided to parachute in.

Good article about the shooting process here https://www.leitz-cine.com/interview/lukasz-zal-psc As with 'Belgravia' it was shot on a Venice. Although, going the Shane Meadows route, they had ten of them rolling simultaneously.

I've just had a skip through a couple of episodes and the only really jarring shots to me are when they've gone with very wide aperture on longer lenses in bright interiors. Because of the sharpness - particularly when characters are sat on furniture with detailed fabrics - it lacks the smoothness of the other shots, particularly the lower light ones, as the focus just falls off a cliff. A lot of the exteriors suffer from it too to a certain extent with shorter lenses with narrower apertures. I say "suffer from" but the whole thing still looks pretty damn good.

I’m in.

There is a setting for the default shooting direction to switch from Forward, Backward or Last Setting. The Last Setting interacts with and resumes the last shooting mode before power off so it may have been on face tracking with the orientation being set to backward when you powered it off. Page 16 of the User Manual. https://dl.djicdn.com/downloads/DJI_Osmo_Pocket_3/UM/20231020/DJI_Osmo_Pocket_3_User_Manual_v1.0_en.pdf

This is from a BTS about the series. Nothing looks off in the camera settings. Has the look changed from season to season ? I think that is from season 1.

GH7 Full specs here https://www.panasonic.com/uk/consumer/cameras-camcorders/lumix-mirrorless-cameras/lumix-g-cameras/dc-gh7.html

Funnily enough, only yesterday I picked up a piece of gear that you featured in a previous episode. Not the camper van unfortunately but the cart. Currently on special in Aldi for the bargain price of £44.99 So, thats the transportation sorted for the kinky amount of 135mm lenses I've acquired over the years. Will need the camper van for transporting the therapy triggering number of 24 and 35mm lenses.

Well I was about to post about using the Expodisc white balance cap but now I have The Bangles playing in my head. Thanks for that.