UncleBobsPhotography

Phones are definitely eating up the camera business from the bottom up. First they replaced point and shoots, now they are replacing low-level DSLRs. This should tell us they will continue upwards eating up more and more professional equipment. However, there is also one thing speaking in favour of the camera business. Photography and videography is simply MUCH MUCH bigger today then it has even been before. Wanting to become an influencer, instagrammer or youtuber is so common you can't throw a rock without hitting one, and since the userbase is so large there will be a lot of people who will want to get that edge from using professional equipment, even if the gap closes.

These priorities comes down to where in your career you are. For someone just starting out, it can make sense to choose a system based on cost and to optimize hardware to save cost. For someone in the height of their career, the frustration of using an unfamiliar system or having to wait for h265 to transcode might be much higher than the cost of the hardware their using.

One issue is that the first release does not really have any proper workstations. However, the MacMini is fairly cheap (for a Mac) which means it might be worth it even if a significant stronger machine is released late 2021 or in 2020. In the short term you will also have to consider if your editor supports the new ARM architecture. I think Final Cut Pro is supposed to have early support, but that Adobe Premiere has some way to go before it runs natively on the new computers. It doesn't do much good to get a new computer if it doesn't run your software yet. I am sure all the major editors will support the new architecture eventually, but it might take some time.

I would not buy any Intel based mac at this point, they will probably not be supported for that long, and the advantages of the new M1 just seem to strong for video editing. However, nobody has really tested the new macs either, so its a bit of a gamble to get one this early. You can wait untill the M1 units have been tested properly, wait untill the second generation ARM based Macs come out, or if you need something now, cross your fingers and order an ARM based MacMini or MacBookPro now. It just depends on how urgently you neee to upgrade. I am personally planning to wait for second gen ARM based Macs, but I've got a decent desktop PC to do they heavy lifting.

I think you've understood the situation quite well. h265 is more efficient, but high bit rates in professional cameras can make up for it while using less efficient codecs. h264 is a safer codec to use if you want to minimize frustration. h265 support has improved a lot recently, and will probably improve a lot the next 1-2 years, but we might end up with a situation like ProRes vs h264, where people prefer ProRes even though it's less efficient because it's easier to work with. At higher bitrates h264 will perform good enough anyway, so why not make life easier for the editors?

Komura Kodak/Eastman Kodak But I am not sure how compatible all of their lenses are with your focusing system...

I assume it was a reference to the iPhone 4 with a 960×640 Retina display. I was quite happy with my iPhone 4 though, so I dont really mind the marketing speech in this case.

Too late to edit, but it seems like Apple designs their own GPUs for the iPad, which makes it likely they do the same for the M1 chip

The first sentence doesn't seem quite right, ARM designs chips, they don't produce them. Apple license one (or more likely several) designs from ARM and combine them with their own designs and possible also others into the M1 chip. IMO, integrated graphics is the way to go for laptops, but not desktop computers. One of Apple's problems has been that they went with Radeon and Intel Iris GPUs. Both nVidia and standard Intel GPUs are much better supported than Radeon and Iris. Going for ARM processors they might use something like the Mali GPU. It will be crucial that whatever GPU they uses works well with Adobe Premiere Pro/Resolve, but it's hard to predict how it will go as neither of those currently run on the iPad Pro as far as I know.

I am very positive towards ARM CPUs. My biggest question mark is whether they are able to get graphic solutions that compete with nVidia. ARM's earlier graphic solutions have been power-efficient, but not really comparable with the Geforce series. I hope the new relationship between nVidia and ARM means they will end up with nVidia GPUs as well. I have only had bad experiences with Radeon/AMD gpus.

I wouldnt disapprove of IBIS either, but for a camera that can be powered and controlled over ethernet, it doesn't exactly target the same users that needs IBIS.

One oddity in the specs, it has high res anamorphic 10 bit in 50p, but not in 60p. Most cameras have the same specs for 50 and 60p these days

I've also come to the conclusion that IBIS is less important for me than I thought. Tripods, sliders and dollys looks better, and I usually have the opportunity to use them. I've been eyeing the Z-Cam's for quite a while, but given the choice I would rather pick up a new Panasonic if they provide similar specs because of the reliability Panasonic has shown. The GH5s sensor is good enough for me anyway, but I'm curious to see the final specs.

I see your point now. Keeping the whole file in memory before writing to storage is definitely not a good idea for video. In theory I am sure it's possible to come up with a workaround (encrypting and writing parts of the file at a time), but that doesnt adress the issue that the camera lacks the prosessing power to encrypt video. So yes, the best approach would be a hardware solution. Maybe it would be a niche small enough for one of the smaller camera companies. Pentax, this is your chance to shine!

I don't understand this problem. When writing a file to the memory card, the encrypted file will reside in memory (assuming a software solution) untill it is written to the memory card. After writing to the memory card, the encryped file on the memory card can be compared with the encrypted file in RAM before being removed from RAM. It's not necessary to decrypt it just to ensure that the write operation was successful. I agree with most of your points though, and my proposal is more like a DIY hack than a proper solution to encrypted cameras.

I am pretty sure you'll be happy with the pictures from the R6, C70 or a C50. Make sure you look at the price for the whole system. Most RF glass is silly expensive and the adapters are out of stock (although i am sure they will come back in stock at some point). How important IBIS and lack of overheating will be is something only you can decide. I got the GH5 because I thought the IBIS would be game changing, but I have realised my filming style relies entirely on tripods... still happy with it though.

It's possible to override the autopower function of the NTG, but I believe the function is worth the tiny bit of power it might draw from the camera.

I am sure it's possible to make a more user-friendly solution than the one I described above, but the safest way to avoid in-field decryption is to make the camera unable to decrypt it. This could be a usable solution as long as it's easy to toggle encryption on and off. Even the people who need encryption will probably not need it for 90+% of their work. I don't know whether additional hardware is necessary for sufficient encoding speed. I would guess it's necessary for encrypted high quality video, but that encrypted photos at a slower framerates can be done with current hardware?

The camera doesn't need to know the private key. Give the camera a public key the first time you set it up. To view the content, decrypt the material with a private key from the safety of your home on your home computer (or through a cloud based system). The main hassle would be that you would never be able to review your material from your camera, but neither would the authorities/whoever you are encrypting it from.

In addition, the few DOF scenarios we are not able to achieve on M43 are generally setups I wouldn't want to use for video anyway. I can't match a 85mm full frame f/1.2, but at the same time I want BOTH the eye and the eyelashes in focus at the same time in my videos.

Metabones have made one: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1526307-REG/metabones_mbspef_efr_bt1_canon_ef_to_canon.html/amp

Sony has tiny writing where it says "with a zoom lens attached". Could as well have written "worlds smallest interchangeable full frame camera with an orange lens mount".

The K2 Pro also seems quite sweet. It's basically 2xE2 syncronized in a single box. It's possible to acquire, but seems to be in the prototype/beta phase.

Size is more timeless than technology and will for many people be more important than megapixels or 4k60p. Making comparisons purely based on specs misses the points when it comes to compact cameras. I've used the RX1RII a lot, and this seems like a decent alternative. I would still prefer the RX1RII over this for light weight photography, but at least it has a lot of quality of life improvements such as MUCH better battery life, IBIS and 4k.

Exactly. An LED panel is in itself a soft light source (as long as you don't get those with 6 LED diodes), the only thing it lacks is size. Adding diffusion in itself doesn't do anything, what is needed is to increase the size. For an on-camera-light, that's pretty much impossible without making it cumbersome to use. I use the Aputure HR672C a lot. I would estimate that it is as soft as most of the diffusers suggested in this thread except the umbrellas and it's still fairly small. On the plus side it's a single unit and it doesn't lose any output through diffusion/reflection. If it's far away from the subject it will still be a rather hard light, so to get as much softness as possible out of it I sometimes cram it as close to the frame as possible.