BTM_Pix

I'm really fond of my Osmo Pocket but as I mainly use it as a little travel camera, the last thing I want to be doing at my age is having to do some sort of ninja walking so I do have trouble with it when doing walking shots as it is prone to quite a lot of bobbing. So, I started looking at some of the Z axis add ons for it and found this one from Ulanzi. For £20 I thought it was worth a go so ordered one and it arrived yesterday. First impressions are that it is certainly lightweight enough not to be much of a hindrance to carry around. You pop the Osmo into the housing and it retracts back into the case to give it far better protection when travelling than the pouch case and you gently push it again to release it and it softly ejects like a decent quality cassette deck of yore. For fans of Alan Partridge, he would definitely declare this to be a "nice action" if he was viewing it privately in a local branch of Tandy. The base of the case also has a tripod thread which is a handy bonus. In terms of operation, you are provided with an allen wrench to adjust the tension of the spring and this will need to be varied depending on your natural walking style so its a bit of trial and error. One thing that bothered me a bit is that there does seem to be a bit of lateral movement caused by the arms seeming a bit loose but I don't think it would be too much of a problem to remedy and it didn't seem to impact performance too much. So, talking of performance.....is it any good ? Well I've only had a brief time with it and to say the weather in London was inclement when I was testing it would be an understatement but I would cautiously say Yes. Because the weather was so shit, I wasn't about to go stopping and starting and pissing about tweaking the spring tension with the allen wrench but even on the guesstimate setting I had it on it definitely took care of a decent amount of the bobbing motion. Here is a quick video I did to show it with and without and as I say with a bit more tweaking I'm pretty sure it can be improved even further. Obviously no special walking techniques where used in the making of this video other than puddle avoidance.

Looking at the spec and trying to reconcile that much functionality with Canon's track record of holding things back certainly has me thinking "Trick or Treat" about that camera. I used to really like playing horror video games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill but have never really been interested in watching horror films for some reason. But then again, I would never in a million years eat a prawn cocktail but I'm quite partial to prawn cocktail flavoured crisps so I'm awash with contradictions

C-LOG, RAW, 10 bit 4:2:2, seemingly FF rather than APS-H, DPAF.... If you look at it as a mark II of the 1D-C at not far off a third of its original selling price its pretty compelling. It augurs well for what a pro EOS-R could do as all that video spec would be enhanced further with the shallower mount for the vari ND and PL lens capability etc. They'll find some way not to do that though of course. Or at least not for a good while.

Oddly enough, I'm currently sat on a train with my FZ2000 and not really getting why the hidden screen on the X-PRO3 is considered revolutionary I do like the small info display they've included though. Hopefully, used prices of X-PRO2 might get down to "oh go on then" in twleve months as I've always fancied one and this new one doesn't really give more for me for what I'd be using it for.

Well, considering 31st October this year is supposed to be Brexit day..... • what r u gonna be Poorer and with the right to live and work in 27 other countries ended. • past costumes (post pics) Bread queue chic from our glory days of the 1970s. • fav candies These ones that we had to use to do our homework with during that same 3 day week era. • halloween movies??? Can't think of one containing a more scary bunch of clowns than this.

No microphone input on the previous ones though. Aside from the mark II which could use the Multi Interface smart adapter in the hotshoe port. Something which they should have kept in for the subsequent versions but which would have contravened whatever secret accord manufacturers have not to offer a microphone input on compact cameras.

The X-Rite checkers are one of those things that are expensive for what they are but cheap for what they enable you to do. In lens news, does anyone use these Meike cine primes? There are obviously some discussions about how closely they, erm, "resemble" the now defunct Veydra's products but at under £350 a piece and with the 12,16,25mm set due to be rounded out this month by 35,50 and 85mm they are very interesting.

Any NLE that supports AU, VST or AAX plugins will be compatible.

I followed the first one. This is precisely one more than I would usually follow. Story of my life.

Ah...hang on. What I've just shot doesn't follow any of them apart from the lens bit. I hadn't actually read them as I was primarily just here for the heckling regarding the Soviet sphere of influence post World War II. Oh well, in the bin it goes.

OK, give me an hour

The camera was tilting up a bit on the original which was making the distortion look even more pronounced so I've re-done it. They are now closer but the Tamron still shades it if you move it in to 17-18mm so it matches the FOV of the Panasonic and the distortion is actually reduced a bit further. For added context, I have included a Canon 16-35mm f2.8 L lens (on the speed booster) for comparison and well.........

Mmmm.... I've flawed that test a little bit. Give me 20 mins to fix it.

As was Poland but you allowed them in There are a ton of very affordable quality East German lenses out there from Praktica/Pentacon/Meyer-Optik Gorlitz/Carl Zeiss Jena as well to be fair. The Contax Zeiss lenses that most people are familiar with (the C/Y mount versions) were made in West Germany* rather than East Germany by the way * and Japan as well Looking in my shamefully burgeoning lens drawers, the evidence suggests that I need to find an excuse to sell a few !

If you are looking for a single lens allrounder that can be alternative to your Olympus then adapting a Tamron 16-300mm f3.5-f6.3 might be worth thinking about. On a speed booster it becomes slightly wider on the short end (and has a lot more range on the long end obviously ) and a few stops faster. The speed booster also brings the f6.3 long end back to f4 as well so you won't be losing out there either and can just run it as a constant f4 if you want. I've just done this quick comparison on the P4K for you between it and the Panasonic 12-60mm f2.8/f4 (which is typical of the uncorrected wide end of the native lenses) so you can see the difference in the distortion at the wide end with walls and edges. EDIT>>>SEE POST FURTHER DOWN FOR RE-SHOT TEST Whilst the Tamron isn't exactly distortion free either, it shows far less than the Panasonic. Also, if you go in by a fraction (17-18mm unboosted versus 16mm unboosted) then it improves quite a lot more. Size and weight wise, its a bit less than the Olympus. https://***URL removed***/products/compare/side-by-side?products=tamron_16-300-3p5-6p3&products=olympus_12-100_4p0_is_pro It also has pretty decent stabilisation and the big kicker of course is the price as they can readily be found used for under £250. Its not without its faults (it isn't particularly sharp at the very long end but the speed booster does alleviate that somewhat) but as a run and gun all rounder it is a decent alternative.

What would posses anyone with any semblance of quality control of their output to publish images like these ? I get that there is a race to get things out first amongst those type of review sites but fuck me. As for the video, the least said the better.

You'll need to open it up to all former members of the Warsaw Pact now.

Getting the cellular upload bandwidth to file the videos impressed me more ! The original series of the same guys from 2008 is an interesting insight into how the camera technology moved on in the intervening decade or so.

As I say, for what I would be using it for, the AF performance would be moot for me - at least until more affordable L mount lenses show up - but yes I would be hoping that Sigma will have moved it on performance wise from the SD Quattro !

Lack of EVF and mechanical shutter won't do it any favours and no wifi/bluetooth connectivity will be a drawback. Set against that from my own personal point of view though is that, as with the Leica T/CL, the L mount cameras are great platforms for M lenses. With offerings from Voigtlander and particularly 7Artisans offering fast and compact M mount lenses, the FP will make a great combination as the overall form factor will be smaller even than the diminutive Leica CL despite it being full frame versus APS-C.

Yep, to say I have buyer's remorse about that WD is a bit of an understatement but I can't say you didn't warn me!

Unless there have been firmware updates for the other manufacturer's adapters that specifically enable it, it is only the Metabones adapters that have any type of focus control from the Pocket4K.

The cables are purely for remotely start/stopping the recording on the camera. The Pocket4K doesn't have that capability. The focus control on the EF lens is done between the controller and the mount adapter so should just work. If the aperture control is working then that proves its communicating with the lens. At the risk of sounding completely patronising, make sure the switch on the lens is set to AF though

This would be a good resource to find out from I think. He does proper conversions so you could have yours done without having to scour for a pre-converted lens. http://aiconversions.com/index.html I'd also ask Leitax the question that if you do get it converted would it then be possible to use their conversion kit. If they say it is then I'd be tempted to ask the converter guy the question if you buy the Leitax kit could you send it to him and he does the whole job for you ? Other than that, I guess you'd have to find one of these typical non-ai conversion experts to see what they think