Robert Collins

I dont think it is designed to compete with a GH5. I think it is a genuine 'hybrid' camera (for those that shoot 60%+ stills). By that I mean it is a no compromise stills camera (as good as the XT-2) that shoots excellent video. It competes with the a6500 or a7riii rather than an A7sii/iii in the Sony world. The GH5 isnt a true 'hybrid' camera in my world view (and the GH5s far less) on the basis that it is oversized compared to its sensor and overpriced compared to its sensor for stills - it is bigger and heavier than an A7riii that has a 4x larger sensor. Dont get me wrong. The GH5 is probably the best videocentric ILC on the market but it isnt really a 'hybrid'. How does it stack up against the A6500?

I seem to remember this guy has a pretty good track record in terms of predictions... More to the point, I like what he is saying about the Mavic Pro ii, so I am happy to believe him. Basically a P4P camera in a Mavic (slightly heavier and more expensive.) Sounds great in my opinion. Actually the Mavic Pro is pretty much perfect for me apart from the camera (by which I mean sensor.) Easily the best toy I have bought since the original iphone.

The full specs for the XT-2 and XH-1 are here.... https://www.dropbox.com/s/l4axfg0hwqbjr4w/Fujifilm X-H1 Vs. X-T2 Specs Comparison 2.pdf?dl=0 They look very good to me but I am more a stills/hybrid shooter than a video specialist.

True. However while our raw files are 14 bit which is great for editing and manipulating them - nearly all output is 8 bit jpeg with sRGB (a narrow) colorspace.

The specs for Fuji X-H1 show battery life shooting 4k video of 35 minutes.

Well I tend to agree. Here is an A9 v A7riii video... I think that rolling shutter is the same but 4k is noticeably sharper on the A9 and the focusing slightly better. Definitely nothing in the A7riii that would suggest you shouldnt put PP in the A9. And not having PP in the A9 is like putting a large sticker on the camera saying 'dont buy for video'. And yes please get rid of PP in still shooting - it is incredibly annoying! Maybe the A7siii will tell us. I think that the A7siii may not have 4k 60p dues to 'overheating' so I sort of wonder whether 'zero rolling shutter' (possibly based off the A9 sensor) will be its 'key selling point'.

If camera sales were largely a function of the underlying quality of the camera, I don’t think Canon would dominate the market!! Samsung should focus on the areas it has a competitive advantage namely sensors, processors lcds etc rather than tackle areas it does not lenses, market penetration, marketing. Samsung’s ILC sales were so low CIPA didn’t even collect the data.

Actually Godox do sell an slb60w which is battery powered and can also be powered by an optional a/c unit. What is neat about it, is that the battery a/c attachment both work with their 600w flash. The less good news is the price which is over double the sl60w.

It’s a good question. I have a slightly different theory. The A9 was sold on the basis of the almost zero rolling shutter in ‘stills’ due to the 1/160th sensor readout. I think Sony didn’t want people buying the camera for video essentially expecting zero rolling shutter as sensor readout for video is 1/30 (1/50 apsc). So they deliberately crippled the video capabilities. I also think we might get a better understanding of Sony’,s thinking when they release the A7siii.

Well the original GoPro was a rebadged Chinese camera!!

I think this is highly unlikely - it is essentially ending up with their most popular drone having no real advantage in its camera over the Mavic Air (apart from 4k 60p). Personally I think we will see 1 inch sensors on both the Mavic Pro 2 and the P5. However the 1 inch on the Mavic Pro 2 will likely be fairly basic - 4k 30p, fixed 26mm lens, fixed aperture, etc. For the P5, I definitely expect a more travel friendly drone in terms of size and packing. And I think we will see all the high end 1 inch sensor capabilities (think RX100) and quite possibly custom prime lenses. My next drone will certainly be with a 1 inch sensor. If the Mavic Pro 2 has one I will probably take even if it is not that advanced. If not, I will wait for the Phantom 5. One thing I feel pretty certain about is that DJI will come up with a product that will empty my wallet.

I dont really want to do a 'my drop is bigger than yours' but I saw this chart yesterday.... Rather remarkably it was 'up 66%' yesterday at US$2.29 but still 99% off its peak of US$177 roughly '3 weeks ago'!!

If you happen to particularly like Adobe Camera Raw, you can make adjustments in ACR, generate a LUT from those adjustments and then use that LUT on your footage in Premiere Pro.

Hmmm... rereading the rumor - it does appear to be in two parts. Part one, is that Samsung has designed/made a very high end (mirrorless) apsc image sensor. A lot of impressive detail in this part of the rumor. Part 2 of the rumor is speculation that this image sensor is going to be utilised in a resurrected NX2 (which sounds pretty unlikely.) But just because NX2 resurrection is a non-starter doesnt mean that they are not developing the sensor. Why should Samsung leave the high end image sensor market up to Sony especially as they know that Nikon and Canon dont particularly like sourcing from one of their competitors (Canon uses Sony's 1 inch sensor.) Canon and Nikon would be bonkers not to put this tech and this sort of sensor into their mirrorless offerings. And quite frankly from Samsung's perspective, these sensors in Canikon bodies will show off their smartphone 'image sensor' tech far more than any fleeting interest in an NX2.

Well there is more 'room' on the existing sensor - it is 18mm wide while the GH5 only uses 17.3mm of width.

We know that TowerJazz didnt make the Nikon D850 sensor because TowerJazz doesnt have BSI tech yet and the Nikon sensor is BSI. From a TowerJazz press release. The partnership will allow TowerJazz to serve its customers with BSI technology in mass production, at competitive prices, starting in the middle of 2018. The new BSI technology is aimed to high-end photography, automotive, AR/VR, and other CIS markets. YCM provides the BSI processing for both 200mm and 300mm CIS wafers. Of the 3 manufacturers with BSI tech we have Sony, Samsung (but they dont seem to make large image sensors any more) and Omnivision which are low end. So to speculate it is a Sony manufactured sensor is perfectly natural. But that is the problem with image sensors they are decidely high tech what with BSI, LSI, stacking and on sensor af. Consider that Canon is the 4th large image sensor manufacturer in the world but their tech is somewhat behind. Pretty much anyone can 'design' an image sensor but depending on the specs, there maybe very few that can 'manufacture' it.

I do have a personal theory. The spec for an MFT sensor measures 18 mm × 13.5 mm (22.5 mm diagonal), with an imaging area of 17.3 mm × 13.0 mm. And if Panasonic is using 17.3mm for 4:3, then based on the 'pixel specs' the GH5s sensor needs to be around 19mm wide. So the consensus is that Panasonic is using a sensor 'wider than MFT spec' in the GH5s. But this doesnt make a lot of sense to me - introducing a marginally wider sensor is an expensive proposition. Furthermore, you cant really have a partnership of many companies based on one sensor spec, that allows any of its companies to produce 'bigger' sensors - it is a road to breaking down that partnership pretty quickly. So what do 'I' think Panasonic has done. I think that Panasonic has given 4:3 a smaller part of the sensor (and therefore slightly greater crop - say 2.2x) in order to fit the wider formats onto the same size sensor. It makes sense on the basis that virtually noone is going to be using 4:3 with the GH5s in any case. Of course the only way to test this is to put the same lens on both the GH5 and GH5s, switch to 4:3 and see if they have the same FOV. I guess that the GH5s might be slightly narrower.

You know when Samsung exited the ILC market, I thought it was a precursor to teaming up with either Nikon or Canon. In my view Sony enjoys a competitive advantage in cameras because it is an electronics company in a business where cameras are rapidly turning into electronics products (a bit like telephones). And Samsung has shown (and certainly has the tech) that it is the one company that can easily out Sony, Sony. I still think that say a Samsung/Nikon partnership makes so much sense. Samsung would bring Nikon all the bleeding edge sensor, sensor af, processing and Nikon would bring its optics, camera infrastructure and commitment. The NX1 showed that even with the best tech in the world, Samsung couldnt make a meaningful (and especially meaningful to a company as large as Samsung) dent in the market.

I think you are taking the original post rather out of context (it doesnt say throw away your Sony glass.) A lot of video shooters using Sony are coming from Canon and have a lot of Canon glass including Sigma EF which they are adapting to Sony. The point of the post is that the Sigma adapts better. Others use multiple cameras and like Canon glass because it can be adapted to M43, Sony or used with Canon - Sony lenses cannot be adapted to other formats. Sony lenses are pretty much certain to work better for af than adapted glass because they are designed for both cdaf and pdaf and for Sony. Sigma lenses are considerably cheaper but if I was looking to buy Sigma lenses new for Sony FE, I would certainly wait until they make their announcement of Sigma Sony native art lenses later this month. Sony lenses work great and can be smaller but they are all fbw. On the A7riii image stabilization works better in video if the lens also has OSS (which Sony then uses for 2 out of 5 axis).

Most likely it is just the way that people are calculating the crop factor. The crop factor for M43 is 'considered' to be 2.0. But it is a 4:3 sensor while a 35mm sensor is 3:2. The crop factor is based on the diagonal but there is more of a crop on the width and less of a crop on the height with a 4:3 sensor. As in crop factor width = 36/17.3 = 2.08x And crop factor height = 24/13 = 1.85x

My guess would be that there isnt enough 'extra' in Sony's latest tech to make it worth the hassle and expense of making a new sensor. If you look at DXOmark both the Sony sensor and Nikon (Sony) sensor have the same '100' score, so the benefits of the Nikon sensor are presumably fairly marginal. Sony could probably have eked out an extra point or so but the current sensor is hardly old tech especially as it has had a couple of tweaks. So Sony focused on the myriad of other upgrades (many of which were needed) and upgraded the LCD, EVF, speed, focusing, battery and a host of other features for both video and stills. Anyways as Sony resolved most of things that werent good in the A7rii with the A7riii, I will give them a pass on not improving what they got right in the first place.

Thanks. You do get a choice of 'color modes' when shooting HLG - either BT2020 or 709.

So help me out here. I am really interested in the HDR HLG profile(s) on the A7riii. I am not really looking to make HDR footage for oled TVs - what I am looking to do is a 'picture profile' that lets me get good dynamic range and colors in a format that suits me. I do know of the advantages of s-log2 and s-log3 but I am a still shooter primarily (that is getting into video) and the whole minimum iso800 (+1.5 EV exposure) isnt exactly conducive to switching between stills and video. a big (potential advantage) for me of HDR HLG is that you can shoot at iso100 and expose normally. Now as I understand it Sony's HDR HLG mode shoots a very flat gamma curve and then applies a lut in camera. While this sounds a bit like 'smoke and mirrors' to me - if it actually means that I can get good dynamic range video while shooting at iso100 it does sound very attractive. From what I can determine it does shoot a flat profile. Here is a still shot shot in PP10 (HLG2) that I took in raw + jpeg. The raw shouldnt be affected by the picture profile and looks like this in adobe lightroom at default... Note the histogram.... And this is the jpeg (which includes the affect of the picture profile) And again note the histogram and how flat the profile is.... So, in principle this picture profile sounds attractive. BUT on the internet, there appears very little interest in it which presumably means that most people think it isnt of much use. Some have suggested that 8 bit hdr hlg is a joke or an oxymoron (although I note that Andrew Reid is mildly enthusiastic.) So is it something I should just ignore or is it worth digging deeper into?

Just EVF and LCD.

Here's some sales data (from BCN) showing top 20 camera sales in Japan last July. Canon has 4 mirrorless in the top 20 (mirrorless + DSLR) while say Sony has 2. And it is very easy to see why. Canon sells an M10 with 2 lenses for as little as 50,000 yen while Sony's entry level offering - a6000 (a 4 year old camera) + 2 lenses is 50% more expensive at 75,000 yen. Hardly surprising then that Canon had a higher market share than Sony in mirrorless in 2017 in Japan. Canon simply offers a much better value offering (and value beats out bells and whistles every time.) And its not just Sony - all the traditional mirrorless companies Fuji, Panasonic and Olympus - have been moving relentlessly upmarket over the past couple of years and that leaves the door open for Canon and Nikon. I am something of a Sony fanboy but I find them hard to recommend to people because their kit (especially their lenses) are ridiculously expensive.