Robert Collins

Here in Bangkok my speed in my house is 50/15 for US$12 a month unlimited. My mobile is US$20 a month for 40GB. I could get much faster for a small premium but when I tried it, I found it less reliable. The worst internet I have found is in France. In Paris, I stayed in a US$300 a night hotel that only had internet in the reception. In the house I was staying in the Dordogne, there was no mobile phone signal and the internet was 50kbps when it worked!!

It does seem disappointing. The lack of a tilt LCD which was an obvious addition points to the likelihood that this is going to be a simple/careless refresh. And that is a pity. The LX100 is something of a Panasonic icon/flagship in a lot of peoples eyes.

Yes. Of course I have heard this 'explanation' but it makes no sense - there is no logic to it. If the 'needs' of pros and enthusiasts are very different it doesnt make sense their 'wants' are the same. And conceptually, advances in 'camera tech' and mirrorless in particular offers is a 'democratization' of video and photography... the ability to get 'professional' results with 'ease'. Small size is a boon for a traveller but is probably unergonomic for a pro. Eye-af at the push of button is great for an amateur but probably pretty useless for a pro who can focus on the nearest eye without thinking about. Af in video is pretty much a prerequisite for many but many pros are happy or prefer to shoot manual. The same can be said for ibis ...Or WYSIWYG EVFs.... Ultimately, a key advantage of mirrorless is that it circumvents many of the 'skillsets' that are required to operate a 'pro' camera.

Yes, I dont see why mirrorless manufacturers like 'Sony' have such a focus on 'pro' needs. Afterall the 'needs' of 'pros' are very different from what you would imagine are their target market. Pro photographers are relatively impoverished (with a median income well below the US national median income) and arent even a particularly large demographic. You would think the natural mirrorless target market would be women, the young, and affluent travel enthusiasts.

I sort of feel that pro photography will dramatically change over the next 10 years rather more than the equipment. Those rugby scrum photos look kind of 2000s to me. How many of those photogs will have a job in 10 years? I just dont really see the need to pay 300 people to take exactly the same photo at 10 frames a second in a modern world. Most likely people will be taking stills from video at sporting events like the Olympics and World Cup.

Yes, I think Canon is very well placed for mirrorless. Thom Hogan recently estimated that the Sony 'A' series had 3% market share of ILCs. It might (optimistically) be 5% in 2018 and that would be a reasonable market share of FF which is about 15% of ILCs. Sony's APS-C strategy seems to be a bit of a mess. High end bodies with low end lenses - no 2.8 zooms. They are supposed to launch a a6700 camera by the end of the year - for what US$1500? US$900 gets you a Canon M50 + 15-45 + 55-200 or a Sony a6300 body only. Canon is the only mirrorless manufacturer focused on the low end asp-c - everyone else - Sony, Olympus, Fuji and Panasonic have gone relentlessly upmarket.

Well as nikon has far more market share than Pentax, Fuji, Olympus and Panasonic combined they can probably afford a fairly broad range of offerings.

I think we sort of do. Conceptually on sensor pdaf cannot really match a dedicated off sensor pdaf array because the off sensor array can have much larger sensors which gather far more light...

It is quite a good video. But it seems the first point is glossed over with a pretty glib 'DSLRs will gradually die' approach. I simply dont think you can compare 'milcs taking over from DSLRs with DSLRs taking over from film.' Consider this. Take a D850 owner who likes its form factor and OVF, has US$15,000 of F mount lenses and doesnt shoot video (my guess, is that most of them dont). And let's heroically assume that Nikon comes out with a 45mp mirrorless that is as good as the A7riii in a 'more ergonomic' form factor. What possible reason would the D850 owner have to switch to Nikon mirrorless (or any other) when their existing lenses wont work nearly as well on the new camera or they have to sell their lenses and buy anew? I dont really see what mirrorless brings to a 'core' D850 owner now or in the future (well apart from silent shooting with a VF). And so Nikon mirrorless and DSLRs are likely to have to live somewhat uncomfortably side by side for a long, long time. That it is why I think Nikon's marketing of this product is going to be interesting - and perhaps rather different from what many people are expecting.

When I was looking for a back up for my A7riii, I tried an A7iii but ended up getting another A7riii (lightly used). I have definitely seen examples where the A7iii has better detail in FF 4K. Some say the af is better on the A7iii but if it is it is very marginal. Same can be said for low light. A7riii does offer some advantages... Better EVF Better and brighter Lcd No crop in 4K 30 Having said that, the premium is difficult to justify unless you want higher mp stills.

For me the big advantage of Sony is ease of use. You get uncropped 4K, slo mo, good low light, shallow dof with standard lenses, decent af and ibis. Everything you need so you don’t have to bother with manual focusing, adapters, focal reducers or even gimbals a lot of the time.

The market share numbers are exaggerated by the fact that neither Canon or Nikon have launched a new FF in the past year. The A7iii though is an incredibly strong product offering especially at its price point. It’s strength is that it has no glaring weaknesses - it does pretty everything well or very well for both video and stills. I tend to disagree with most people here about the ergonomics. I do get that people who are used to a dslr want a mirrorless that feels like a dslr. But I have never owned a Dslr and whenever I pick one up it feels like a klunky relic. There is some something very intuitive about large sensor small body. I guess I am mostly a photographer so my wants are different. The form factor of the Fuji X-H1 is popular here but it hasn’t resonated with photographers. I will be super impressed if Nikon comes out with a better mirrorless than Sony (I will be totally gobsmacked if Canon does). I don’t think Nikon actually needs a better mirrorless to outsell Sony -their brand name should do that with a fairly solid offering.

The big advantage of a high resolution sensor is that it gives you a lot of flexibility to crop. Essentially with an A7riii you have 42mp FF, 18mp APS-C and 11mp M43 all wrapped up in one. Makes your lenses very versatile.

Given these cameras are appear to be based around Sony Starvis sensors, they won’t have OSPDAF and mirrorless afc is pretty poor without it.

But when did someone last buy a phone that was too slow to do anything - they even put delays in the phone so the apps open in a visually pleasing manner. And when did people last buy a phone with a crummy screen.... It all. Seems measurbating to me.

I heard that people shoot 4K for YouTube because the 4K videos get ranked higher in search

Well the first SliderOne pro I had worked fine by itself. Ants the motion box (only released a month ago) worked fine by itself. But the two working together resulted in ‘uncontrolled shudders’ for a few seconds every 5 minutes in a time lapse.Edelkrone sent me a replacement SliderOne and so it seems to work pretty much perfectly. The app is superb. Always connect, very fast and easy to use and extremely intuitive. I have been using it mostly for motion timelapses though and haven’t done much straight video with it. I did this as a sort of test looking for jitters but it looked pretty good to me.... https://1drv.ms/v/s!Arx347dcSG470FwxQpUfppsqk-TR

Yes me too. I bought the SliderOne pro and motion box.They didn’t work well together. They sent me a replacement SliderOne and it was here in Thailand within 4 days.

...plus 4k 60p, HD 240p, internal 12 bit prores raw and a global shutter....

Yes I have A7riiis and I hate the mode lock. What for? My theory is that there were suggestions for putting a lock on the EV dial (which I rarely use for photos) and they simply put the lock on the wrong dial.

Looks like Mavic 2 announcement is August 23rd (same day as Nikon Mirrorless.)

Still if they fixed the 'scan line' corruption with a 'y axis stretch' of 1% you would think they would be smart enough to also stretch the 'x axis 1%' too.

Hmm... As the fix for this is to expand the X axis in post 1% or presumably decrease the y axis by 0.7% or something (maths not my strong point). I would conclude. Option1... hot fix for dodgy horizantal lines. A 1% adjust wont wont fix that. Option 2... Digital lens correction. Well then it would appear in both 24p and 30p Option 3... FCPX bug. Maybe... Option 4? Sony is down rezzing the video from say 5 or 6k to 4k and screwed up its algorithm. Quite probable.

Well done. Havent laughed so hard since watching 'who is America?'

You should probably save up for the A7siii which will use Sony's stacked cmos technology and hopefully be out before the end of the year.