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But enough of that. In a worlds-first exclusive that nobody asked for, I proudly present.... The anamorphic Charmera! It shoots open gate 1.55x anamorphic, has USB-C charging, and fits in your pocket! What's not to love*? (*note: don't answer this) Obviously the rig isn't dialled in quite yet.... Surprisingly it's quite easy to position as you can just look down the barrel of the adapter and you can see where the lens is easily, so that's cool. I think it loses its pocketability though!

Indeed. I have a bit of experience shooting like this actually. Years ago I realised I never got any establishing shots or transitions when shooting travel stuff, and it was because my camera was in my bag and I'd only ever get it out once we'd gotten the family out of the car, walked to the entrance of the zoo/museum/park/whatever, bought tickets, and then was inside getting our bearings. I had a GoPro Hero 3, which didn't have a screen, and wondered if that would work, so I shot some little outings with the wife as little tests, and the concept worked brilliantly. I worked out the general framing and because there was no manual anything to adjust it was just a case of pointing it in the right direction (framing the shot in your head) and hitting record. I named it a "shot getter" because it was so fast to get an incredible variety of shots. After that phones got good enough to replace the GoPro so I ended up going in a different direction. TBH though, despite the fact the Charmera is about as non-serious a camera as you can get, it actually fits a huge number of the artistic maturity elements.. get it right in-camera, slow down and take your time, be in the moment and bake in that artistic expression into the footage, etc. The illogical conclusion to the shoot wide and crop in post approach would be a 360 camera, which is a valid way of doing things, but in a sense with a camera this (terrible) the point isn't to capture quality images, it's to capture footage with as much personality and capturing content that is as interesting as possible (because the image quality won't save boring shots). I saw that in a comparison video and the quality was just as bad as the Charmera, but the thing is like 5x or 10x the size! Plus no actual screen! Definitely creative though. All the manufacturers follow my threads, so that's a given at this point 😉 I wonder how good that viewfinder is... like, I wonder how closely and reliably you can actually frame up shots. In terms of embracing the blind shooting with tiny camera approach (or semi-blind in the case of the above) that camera is definitely the leader as far as I can see. I did also run into the DJI Osmo Nano which is a similar concept, with detachable screen. It does look like it might be a tad larger than the Insta360 though: But, as soon as you want to compose, suddenly it's the size of an action camera again.

I've seen some before and after tests a long time ago and they do work, but it's reduced not completely eliminated. I understand your frustration because they seem to cost a lot and it's hard to know what you're getting ahead of time.

Yes, the Go is definitely the nearest competitor, but quite different actually. The Charmera is: - half the weight: 20g vs 39g (unsurprising given the processing and battery requirements) - similar in size: it's slightly longer but also thinner but probably the most significant thing is the Charmera has a screen and the Go doesn't, unless you add the case, but then it's the size of a GoPro again: The screen is really a differentiator for use, as the Charmera has a 35mm FOV that you compose by looking at the screen, and the Go is a 16mm FOV that you can't compose unless you use an app or "rig" it up with the case. Unsurprisingly, we're back to the fundamental differences between a normal camera and an action camera, only in this case both cameras are much smaller than a normal action camera! The size is interesting too, as today I took it out with me and it fit nicely into the tiny coin pocket that sits above/inside the normal front pocket of my jeans. If there was such a thing, this would have to be crowned the King of pocketability! I've fitted mine with a finger strap (not a wrist strap, that would be far too large!) and now testing that as a "minimalist rig". The people that use a keychain (like the one it comes with) only get video where the audio is the sound of the metal keychain links all reverberating through the camera body, so my finger-strap is made from a thin paracord. I watched a bunch of his stuff when I was first getting into photography and learning the exposure triangle and all that stuff, but I quickly outgrew his content as he seemed to be a very low-maturity "camera club" photographer, who only ever focused on specs and sharpness and practicalities, and when it came to what you did with the camera he seemed to be all about "the rules" and not about creatively breaking them or moving beyond them. In photography most people resent how the general public think that their expensive camera is what creates nice pictures, not the photographer, but the irony is that most of them don't create work that is really much beyond taking dull formulaic pictures with expensive kit, and Matt was squarely representative of that mindset.

No worries at all from me! Compositing used to be only green screens, but now you can do it in lots of ways. Considering that smoke is (mostly) colourless, you could just film against a black backdrop and then use the Add blending mode to put it on top of a shot. The path to understanding compositing is to have a clear idea of what the different blend modes do mathematically and then you can film something to match the blend mode that you want to use. You'd probably be better off using different modes and shooting setups for different things.

In that case, I've heard about this excellent pocket camera called the RED Komodo!

Yeah, definitely e-waste, although everything gets there eventually so it's all relative. I was thinking more about this challenge of getting a not completely rubbish image from the smallest camera and it's probably getting an action camera and using it in a crop mode to get a tighter FOV and using the stabilisation features so it's not so jittery. For example the GoPro 13 Black is 5599x4927 and 12-39mm FOVs. So the 39mm FOV will be a crop of 1722px wide, and I'm assuming you can have all the stabilisation etc enabled for normal video for that. The DJI Action 4 is about a 16mm FOV and with its 3648×2736 sensor if you cropped to 2x (its max) then you'd have a FOV of about 35mm and about 1824px wide, so a similar story. Of course these are drastically more expensive and far less pocketable, especially if you are like me and only carry things in your front pockets and therefore the camera probably wouldn't have a pocket of its own.

Really sorry to hear about this, hopefully it's temporary, the body can be more resilient than we think so fingers crossed for you and your family. Everything is a look, and there are no right or wrong answers... I just take exception with the people who run around telling people that the look of cinema is 8K and razor sharp F1.4 prime lenses and "accurate" colour science. Sadly, there are so many of these people sitting around repeating this BS to each other that common sense is hardly able to be heard above the cacophony, and when it is heard the mob chases those voices from the discussion for fear they'll realise they've wasted all their money and spent years sitting around looking like idiots when they could have realised it with a few downloaded reference images and 20 minutes in Resolve! Then the new people come in and see all the "experts" saying these things and because it's overwhelming they have to just swallow a bunch of it because no-one can possibly analyse and check every detail of what they're being told.

I've heard that this is quite common, although from larger cameras with more camera-like shapes. I wonder how many people have done this...

The example pictures online are actually cherry-picked. The images I'm seeing from mine are worse, to the extent I wondered if I got a fake. When I looked closer I just think they chose the nicest ones, which is really just how social media works! You'd be forgiven for thinking it's the lens, but it's really not. Here is a sample image so you can see what I'm seeing. Charmera - 1440x1080 - SOOC - 280K file size: For reference, here's a 1440x1080 280K image from my GX85 with matched FOV: The level of detail is incomparable. What happens if I take the GX85 image and 2x downscale it to 720px then upscale it to 1440 280K again? It's a lot closer, and obviously I haven't sharpened the crap out of it (just doing this quickly in Preview on Mac). But what happens if I take a 3x downsample 480px, then upscale to 1440 280K again? This is definitely lower resolution (the artefacts from the lower res are larger compared to the Charmera). Charmera crop: GX85 -> 3x downsample -> 1440px: GX85 -> 2x downsample -> 1440px: That's much closer. What does all this mean? The limitation is the processor. I believe that they're using a 1440x1080 processor (as they claim) but they're using it in a 720x576 20p readout mode, then sharpening the crap out of it, then upscaling it to 1440x1080, converting it from 20p to 30p, then compressing it to ~15Mbps. The colour isn't that great either, this may be a processing thing too, I'm not sure. The issue is that for them to use the sensor in a 1440 readout mode would require 4x the data rates, which is 4x the processing. If you want the file in real 30p instead of 20p padded out to 30p, that's another 50% again, so 6x the processing. As we know from compact cameras that try and be 4K or 6K and also small, that's overheating territory. It's also "batteries only last how long?!?!?!?!?!" territory. So it would need to be 6x more powerful. I'm not really sure how much extra space those things would require, although GoPro can now do 8K30, which is 16x the data rates of a 2K30 camera, plus its doing all kinds of stabilisation processing etc on top of that, so I'd imagine there is room for these things in such a device if someone was to make one. Someone said that this circuit is likely a very common circuit in all kinds of cameras like dash cams etc, so it's probably only through economies of scale that this can be done. There were quite a number of action cameras and other common cameras that had a real 1080p30 readout, so maybe the pro version could leverage one of those existing architectures of existing chips. That would be pretty awesome!

I got a Kodak Charmera keychain camera recently. It's terrible and you shouldn't buy one, but it is interesting. In case you don't know, keychain cameras are seriously tiny cameras (think smaller than a GoPro) and have gone viral in the last year or so. The Kodak Charmera is probably the most viral one, with multiple production runs being sold out very quickly and reissues etc. Here's mine in comparison to some other cameras, including a couple of GoPro-sized action cameras and some actually pocketable cameras (GF3 and GX85). Why is the Charmera interesting? I think the design is essentially perfect: It's incredibly small (obviously) and ridiculously light but it's actually quite tough It's got a 35mm equivalent FOV lens It charges from USB-C With almost any MicroSD card it has practically infinite storage It has a rear screen that is just large enough to navigate the (very simple) menu and frame shots It's super-simple to use, if you plug it into a computer it turns on, mounts as a USB drive (without needing any software), charges the battery while connected, then when you unplug it it turns off again It's a ~15Mbps motion JPEG codec It's USD $30 Why aren't I recommending it? The image quality is terrible. TERRIBLE. It says it has a 1440x1080 sensor, and that's the resolution of the JPGs and video files, but I think it's 2x2 binned, and heavily sharpened too, so it's a very poor quality VGA camera. I shot a resolution chart - the moire was practically psychedelic. JPGs are just as bad as the video files No control over anything and with its AE it's perfectly happy to clip the crap out of decent chunks of the image Why am I even bothering to write about it then? It's a new class of camera. We haven't really had cameras that were smaller than action cameras before, but not only have we got them now, but they sold out multiple times, so the world (or at least the trendy impulse buying world) has solidly suggested there is demand for them. As far as I can tell, the competitors are action cameras, or those that are smaller like the Insta360 Go, and that's about it. Those are 10x the price though, and larger and not nearly as fun to use. The image quality of them is vastly superior, but in todays market where I wish I could get a camera that was smaller, had a quarter (or sixteenth) the resolution, and was drastically cheaper, this is the kind of thing that didn't used to exist really. Even just playing with it around the house, I film things I wouldn't normally film. It feels different to use. This is a new product in the market that smartphones basically killed. Everyone used to have small point-n-shoot cameras but they all got killed by smartphones - the industry essentially got eaten from the bottom up. This is the first counter-example I'm aware of (other than action cameras). I would venture that everyone who bought one already had a smartphone, so this fulfils a niche that their expensive fragile dopamine-addicting smartphone doesn't. Retro cameras have enjoyed a resurgence recently, but I would suggest that this is different as it's a new thing rather than an old thing limping along. This might make executives take note - it's not that small cameras are dying slower than they think - there is active demand and innovation in this space. Tech gets better. Assuming this form-factor remains popular, the video quality will get better. I don't know why it wouldn't remain around.. kids aren't likely to want to record themselves less in future, tiny things won't stop being cute, having something so small it takes up zero space in your pocket (it's a keychain camera!) won't stop being handy, etc. What I'd really like to see is a 'pro' version of this camera.. one that takes real 1080p video and doesn't sharpen it like it's entering a butchering competition. Same size (or a little larger), same simple design, could be more expensive and still be interesting.

I've been thinking about lenses a lot over the last few years, and just to be cheeky I've put some observations into a framework. Level 1 is where we start - with zooms The normal start to using lenses is with zoom lenses, probably the kit lens. We know the thinking at this stage: its convenient, you stand in one place and zoom, hooray! Level 2 is what most YT lens videos are about - primes are better than zooms We all know the arguments. Primes make you "zoom with your feet", they make you learn about perspective, they're sharper, better in low-light, BOKEH!!!!1, you can learn the FOV and develop an instinct for it, vintage ones are cheap, "real photographers / cinematographers use primes!" There are approximately 1000 billion videos and tutorials explaining this, but this seems to be where the thinking stops. I've not seen that much stuff that goes beyond this, but this is really just the start. Level 3 is where understanding begins - zooms and primes have their uses Almost none of the discussion up until this point acknowledges that lenses create images, and images have aesthetics, and aesthetics are what is actually being discussed. Moving to talk about motion pictures now, and cinema especially, there is a bunch of nuance that Level 2 doesn't really discuss. People have decided that FF sensors are the most 'cinematic' and typically are used with FF vintage lenses. This means that the FOVs are 24mm / 28 / 35 / 50 / 85 / 100 etc, with maybe a 40mm in there if you're getting fancy. These weren't the FOVs of cinema though, because cinema was S35. So the FOVs of cinema using the 50/40/35/27/18 were really like 75mm/60mm/52.5mm/40.5mm/27mm. It gets stranger when you add anamorphic into the mix. If I go to B&H anamorphic cinema lens category and sort by best sellers, we get: - DZOFilm Arcana Anamorphic Prime 3-Lens Kit, which are FF and 32/45/75mm and 1.5x, so on FF they are: 21mm 30mm and 50mm - BLAZAR LENS Talon 50mm T2.1 1.5x, which is FF and equivalent to a 33mm - Sirui Saturn 35mm T2.9 1.6x which is FF and equivalent to 22mm If you're using the standard FF lenses on a FF camera, you are using the FOVs that stills photographers used, rather than those that cinematographers used. Shooting on S35 sensor size (or crop mode) with FF lenses can create some of these in-between FOVs too. People at Level 2 thinking probably won't be swayed by the above. I would imagine the thinking is take a step forward or back, what's the difference? Level 4 is where understanding begins to mature - enter the feedback loop The feedback loop is where you realise that the focal length changes how you shoot. A ridiculous example to illustrate it. You decide to shoot on only a 28mm on a FF camera, but when you frame up a close-up shot, the distortion makes the talent look awful, so you take a step back and now the footage feels more distant because we're not seeing the talents face so much because there are no close-ups. We all know about perspective from level 2 thinking, but the level 3 thinking was that taking a step forward or back was no big deal, so which is it? This stuff is subtle, but (like all feedback loops) it pushes us to act differently and this can create a cascade of changes over time. Level 4 thinking realises that this dynamic is powerful and pervasive. I shoot in public, so I don't control the environment. I discovered that if I shoot with a 35mm FOV then I can get environmental portraits of my friends and family from close enough that people won't walk in-between me and them, but moving beyond a 45mm I'd either get shots of them that were tight and didn't really show their environment that well, or I'd step back and be struggling with people walking in-between me and the subject, which is a completely different situation. How would I respond to this? I might shoot from eye-level instead of chest height. Now I've changed the shot angle because of a FOV change. If I shot from eye-level for a while I might notice that I get more attention and now I find that the people interacting with my subject are more aware they're being filmed and keep looking at the camera. Now my subjects are acting differently because of a FOV change. If I asked someone the difference between shooting with a 35mm and 45mm would they think it would change the shot angle and subject behaviour? Not with the Level 2 thinking of "primes are sharper! duh!!", or the Level 3 thinking of "just take a step back! duh!!". What about controlled sets? Sure, on a controlled set there aren't random people walking in-front of the camera, but now we're talking about actors and all the dynamics that goes on there. Can great actors deliver amazing performances while the matte-box is only inches from their face? Sure. Do YOU have actors that are that good? I don't think so. Can great production designers change a set to accommodate a camera being further away, while keeping the frame looking the same? We know that as we move the camera back the subject gets smaller in frame, and that as we do that the background gets smaller but not nearly as fast as the subject does. This is great if you are only filming the subject and don't really pay attention to the composition of the entire frame. But you're a talented cinematographer, so you want to move back a bit and keep the same composition, which means that production design needs to 'cheat the camera' and basically rearrange every item in frame that isn't in the very background. I remember shooting a student film in a cafe and every setup required moving the vase of flowers on the table the subject was sitting at. That vase probably used two-thirds of the area of the table! I watched a video recently where a street photographer tested a 40mm prime for the first time. They didn't know what to make of it, having only a week to shoot with it before they had to release their video review. What struck me wasn't that they didn't know what shooting with a 40mm was like, it was that they didn't seem to understand that there's a period of learning that goes on, they didn't understand that the feedback loop exists. I realised they had 'learned' each focal length by memorising its attributes (which Level 2 photographers will crap on at great length about), rather than having learned them for himself by following a process where you explore the feedback loop and see how it makes you feel and how it makes you act and how the world responds to that, and how you respond in turn, and how the loop feels and matures over time, and how to make the loop go faster etc. I recently spent some time in a small town in rural Japan and shot the same location with FOVs equivalent to 71mm, 82mm, and 100mm. I went out for a walk each night with one of those lenses, going out for perhaps an hour or two. Shots that were possible with one were not with the next, shots that were great with one were lifeless with another. As I walked down the same road from my accommodation seeing the same shots night-after-night and making different framing decisions with each lens (and deciding to take the shot or not to bother as it didn't work) I noticed that I made different decisions to walk one way or another as certain subjects required different FOVs and distances to make them. I've also spend a lot of time, over several trips, shooting night scenes with 68mm and 71mm FOVs. In some locations I can make some shots and not others, while in other locations I can take different shots. If I'm shooting across a road then the width of that road (combined with my FOV) determines the type of shots I can take. After taking a number of those types of shots I start to adapt to how I'm shooting these locations. The more I shoot the more everything feels different. Level 3 thinking says "just take a step back, what's the difference?" and when shooting in those situations the difference between a 35mm and a 50mm feels like it's a span where there are several complete aesthetics in-between the 35mm end and the 50mm end. Thinking about shooting a 50mm FOV vs an 85mm FOV feels like travelling to a different country where things look similar but feel very different in practice. I know I'm barely scratching the surface of Level 4, and perhaps there are levels beyond this that I'm unaware of, but it's just amazing to me that almost no-one seems to talk about anything beyond Level 2. It's probably controversial to say, but I deliberately avoid almost all stills-only people because the thinking seems so rudimentary in comparison to people who shoot moving images. You can feel the limited thinking and the "well, actually!!!!" responses where they miss the entire point entirely because one lens is sharper or something ridiculous. Anyway, hopefully this helps. I've not really heard anyone talk about this stuff, which seems a shame as the rabbit hole is very deep and to only talk about ankle-deep water seems silly.

Interesting points and I definitely see the challenge and how this potentially provides new potential solutions to some aspects. @eatstoomuchjam mentions having something mounted on the brim of a hat, and this does in some way create an alternative option. Perhaps the added feature of the head tracker is that you can track the direction of the head without having the camera on the head, which makes me question where would you have it? The further from the head you put it the more parallax error, and unless it could have some sort of offset (which is probably possible) then the framing might be off. Maybe it's better as a more walk-around camera rather than if you're stationary and what you're filming is mostly stationary. I do see "those shots" in docos from time to time where the footage you're seeing wasn't shot well but is pivotal to the story and therefore included in the edit. For example when crossing a border into a war zone the audio is of the border guards talking with the producer and the visual is the camera seeing the back of a car seat, or everyone is running while chaos ensues, etc. I can definitely see that it's an alternative to a chest-mounted action camera where the ultra-wide is capturing far too wide a FOV, and where the head-mount would capture the action with a much tighter FOV. I can also see someone doing BTS rigging one up with an NPF battery and mini desktop tripod and body clamp and just wandering around with it constantly turned on but not always recording, and the fact that it's always on and always moving would mean it would become invisible after a while, making the footage it captures much less influenced by its presence. Interesting stuff. I guess it's probably a thing where the right uses for it are almost invisible. Like how shoulder-mounted ENG / doco cameras can be used to create footage that doesn't call attention to itself, but in certain drastic situations such cameras do really call attention to themselves, this would be able to capture footage that doesn't call attention to itself in situations where no other camera setup could. Great discussion!

I was reminded of this one too.

What will you use this kind of thing for? You seem very excited, but I don't really know what I'd use this for.