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No worries Kens site is a pretty good resource - his depth of knowledge is matched only by the strength of his opinions! Sometimes I disagree with him, but at least you know he's speaking his mind and not pulling any punches. He writes well and is entertaining and informative - I really like his site. Some fun articles with lots of opinions in them: https://kenrockwell.com/tech/how-to-win-photo-contests.htm https://kenrockwell.com/tech/carry-less.htm https://kenrockwell.com/tech/upgrades.htm https://kenrockwell.com/tech/artist-or-technician.htm https://kenrockwell.com/tech/spectator.htm

I agree. There are still many many thousands (millions?) of Canon and Nikon lenses out there in the wild, and it costs a lot of money to change systems. Canon has continued making a profit despite providing quite poor video quality compared to others. Assuming they can make high-quality adapters for their own lens lines, this will continue to be an advantage. Ken Rockwell (a long-time Nikon follower) mentioned that sometimes Nikon included a feature in a lens in advance of it being supported by the body and wouldn't advertise that feature until it was fully available to consumers, and that this gave them an advantage over third-parties who could only support features that were full enabled, so who knows what tricks lie dormant in these lens catalogues that can only be unlocked by them. Source: https://kenrockwell.com/nikon/nikortek.htm (IIRC he spoke about this much better elsewhere but I can't find it). But the moral of the story is that the company that manufactures the lenses has a very real advantage over other parties, and Canon and Nikon have huge customer bases. Even if Canon or Nikon waited until many people have converted to Sony / m43 / other systems, this would simply mean that the second-hand price of their lenses would be even lower, so if they released a good camera at that point there would be a huge availability of cheap lenses to entice people back to their systems, or new users to start with them.

With the introduction of Prores RAW and the soon-to-be-released BMPCC 4K, professional quality codecs are now really entering the prosumer market. We've had some contact with RAW and High Quality codecs through BlackMagics BMPCC and Magic Lantern, but this is probably only a small percentage of us, even on these forums. There are quite a few challenges I see associated with this, including: Absolutely huge data rates Most 1080 prosumer cameras are around 25-100Mbps, BMPCC went up to around 600Mbps (6-24X prosumer), Prores RAW is 640-1120Mbps (6-45X prosumer), but the BMPCC 4K will go up to around 4352 (44-175X prosumer data rates!!) RAW requires extra processing in post-production DaVinci Resolve includes this functionality but it might require a separate piece of software for other packages, and will take significant time to transcode to large proxy files Image quality beyond 'good enough' The image quality from these RAW / HQ cameras is potentially more than is needed - in many cases shooting RAW 1080 or compressed 4K for a compressed 1080 output is going to be almost indistinguishable from shooting RAW 4K Commercial TV workflows are perhaps the best place to learn how other people manage these issues and why. I think they are better suited to our concerns than feature films because Prosumers and TV shows shoot over and over again using the same setups, so issues like scalability, efficiency, and so on are relevant here, whereas feature films only have to be done once. Who has worked on serial productions with RAW / HQ cameras, and what can you tell us before we fill our HDDs with RAW 4K files?

I'm not sure if you're being literal, or sarcastic (it's so hard to tell on forums..) but I think that fixating on just one aspect of this camera is a bit silly. It's also a RAW camera, a prores camera, a BM colour science camera, a m43 camera, a non-IBIS camera, a fixed-screen camera, etc etc etc. All equally relevant aspects to discuss. Talking about shooting 1080 in a thread about a camera that shoots RAW 1080 seems quite relevant to me, especially considering the enormous file sizes of 4K and high image quality of RAW 1080 I think a lot of people will shoot various flavours of 1080 with it when it comes out. My prediction is that lots of people will be viewing this camera as a BMPCC where they fixed the battery issues, the screen issues, the sound issues, etc, as well as the people who will be viewing this as a camera that shoots 4K. I'm not aware of many discussions around the BMPCC v1 where it was criticised for the image quality not being sufficient, and I'm sure that lots of cameras in 4K are poorer performing than the Pocket 1 or 2 are in RAW 1080.

Does anyone know how IBIS actually works? I mean, from a circuit / logic / engineering sense? Unless we establish that then we're all guessing.

This is the tech of the future for non-professional shoots I think. It's the perfect answer to recording everything and then sorting out later what was interesting and what wasn't. The fact you can hold it out in front of you and extract multiple camera angles from it and then cut between them is absolutely genius. It's basically a flying multi-cam setup that can record: You Wider shot of you in environment Where you're looking Interesting things going past etc. and all in a package that's no larger than a fat selfie stick. I imagine taking this to fairs, concerts, and on holiday. When it gets 8K capture with reasonable codec it will have the resolution required when you crop in, but currently consumer 4K doesn't cut it except for wide shots.

Not speaking for anyone else, but my imminent move to FF is motivated by getting shallow DoF from zoom lenses with good AF-C. This choice is important in a practical and artistic sense because my film-making is fast-paced, unplanned, and often in situations where I have little to no control, (eg, on the top deck of a tour bus when there's no spare seats and you're not allowed to stand while the bus is moving). The images I want need to be in focus, could range from wides to tele shots, and I want the DoF to give some depth to the images. The Sony A7III / 24-105 F4 combination that is currently the best offering for me (bring it on Canikon!) can't be beaten in one package by non-FF. Smaller sensors need larger apertures to match DoF which are normally provided as native primes (no zoom), or with a speed-booster which dulls the AF performance. My XC10 has good (but not great) AF, 24-240mm zoom, but doesn't have the DoF and so I am missing the 'look' I want.. a pity because it's a great camera otherwise. In a sense I agree that people might be getting too caught up on FF - if I was missing one of these three criteria then many more options would be available to me, including the Pocket2 which looks like it will be an absolutely phenomenal piece of equipment.

@Charlie @zerocool22 I've struggled to find places that talk about creativity rather than equipment too. There are a few threads here, but I think the real artistic knowledge is worth money and is held mostly by people too busy making films to hang out online or the people who do hang online are selling that knowledge via online courses. There is a lot of debate about "should I go to film school" and one of the arguments for and against it is that the best way to learn is to practice and actually make films - the people who say avoid film school say make lots of films instead and the people that say go to film school say that it's good because it forces you to make lots of films (as well as other advantages too of course). I've found that EOSHD is good for equipment discussions, forums like https://liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php which is about colour grading and post production, and manufacturer specific forums where users of that software/hardware sometimes talk about creativity, but they're often rare. I like liftgammgain because a lot of what colourists do is artistic judgement so those topics come up quite frequently.

@anonim thanks for the video - it's very nice! @sgreszcz I think there are degrees of low light performance. I have found that you need ISO 6400 to record anything with normal indoor lighting (unless you have heaps of lights on) which means anything after sunset, so birthday parties, dinners, etc. However, cameras these days like GH5 have relatively good ISO performance, but things like my Canon 700D get significant noise in even the highlights at 6400, so things are relative! @tellure pace is an interesting thing. The way I think about pace is from a few perspectives. 1) we often perceive pace according to our mood - if we are in a fast paced mindset then something slow and delicate (like @anonim's video) will seem too slow, but later on when we're in a slower mood it might seem fine. 2) I think the way we experience each shot is over four stages: "what is this", then "look at all the interesting stuff in here", then just enjoying the feeling of the shot / music, then "bored now!!". Obviously the art of editing a shot is to cut before we get to the "bored now!" part. 3) The length of a video, or each section, or each sequence, is kind of like the above, and this is where the storytelling aspect comes in. The trap of editing your own footage is to be too precious and include too much. I shoot and edit home videos and my sister (who worked in the film industry for 20 years) would always tell me to cut things out, and she was always right. The test for me is to get a narrative for each shot / sequence / section / film. In @anonim's video there were things like "the buildings are old", the shot with the note might be something like "these places have meaning for people" and the shots of pulling focus between the buildings and plants and buildings and the view is to kind of paint the picture that the buildings are overgrown, or that it's a rich and fertile area, or that the buildings are on the side of a hill facing the ocean, etc. The challenge is to understand what it is that you're trying to say, and then to say it with as few shots as possible, whilst not going too fast for the overall pace and music choices you have made. One piece of advice I thought was wonderful was that your video should feel "a bit too fast" but not a lot. So keep cutting until it's just feeling too fast and then stop. In terms of pace, I thought that @anonim's video had roughly the right shot lengths as it suited the music, but perhaps some shots could have been cut as they had the same story elements as other shots. However the Gone Fishing video of the little girl that @sgreszcz posted seemed way too long in parts - especially the shot of the girl walking which was way too long and was then followed by another shot that didn't offer anything new either! Yes, children are much more interesting to those who know them and love them, but there are limits and I think this might have pushed those even for relatives! @tellure I liked your video quite a bit. Beautiful place. @stv Your video was really quite wonderful. I think the filters you applied were actually contributing to the overall vibe of the film, and because they were aligned with the music and cutting style and subject matter I think it worked really well, despite them being really heavily applied. I am also not a fan of micro-jitters and camera shake, but I found your footage to not have too much of them, and the ones that were there suited the filters etc you applied. As I've mentioned before I think duration is a matter of cutting until the content moves fast enough. Much is written about the short attention spans of Social Media people, but look at Casey Neistat whose YT channel has almost 10M subscribers, 2.3B views, and whose top ten videos include five videos longer than 8.5 minutes. IIRC his total watch time averaged something like >5minutes per video, and his most popular age group is something like 10-12 year olds (happy to be corrected here - the stats aren't visible anymore). And then look at how many people watched 10 seasons of Friends, 5 of Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones is still going strong, etc. The answer is content. Keep the pace up and you can almost go for as long as you like. My kids watch YT for hours, and will watch meme mashup videos that go for 30+ minutes, even without moving or even taking toilet breaks, and we talk about how people spend so much time on social media that it's is "addictive". People have huge amounts of attention - if they're not spending it on your content then it's the fault of the content, not the viewer! I've seen people setup gimbals with a quick-release plate that is balanced nicely (normally for the middle position on a zoom lens if that's what they're using) and then taking the camera on and off can be done very quickly. Shown at this point of this video (the rest of this video is really useful too):

Very impressive! Well done!! I think it's difficult for people who haven't done it to understand what an achievement it is to create a project with custom hardware and software and get it to actually work. Let alone be reliable, physically tough, etc in the real world. Large companies spend millions of dollars on R&D like this. It is a bit noisy, but I would imagine that with different servo motors this would be mostly / completely eliminated? But if you were using a longer lens and sound via a shotgun mic on a boom pole it would probably be inaudible anyway. Good luck with your wireless conversion - I would imagine that the system architecture would accommodate this without many issues? Perhaps just putting the wireless transmitter / receiver between the potentiometer and the processor? What kind of film-making do you use the setup for?

This is interesting and I can see the logic. In that sense RAID 6 is what you want. I'm being really pedantic here (and may well be telling you what you already know) but RAID 1 will need rebuilding if one of the drives fail. Yes, the disk will keep working in terms of having your data still available, but if you have RAID 5 and a drive fails it will also have data available too, so the RAID needs to be rebuilt in both of these situations. Rebuilding is the process to return the array to a state where it has one or more redundant disks. In terms of SSDs, do people run them in RAID? Is this a thing that is commonly done? I would imagine that for large data rates you might have the drives in parallel without any redundancy perhaps?

An analysis of the video previously posted, plus some conjecture.

Ah, I didn't know about the DX mode, and your optimism about both providing a crop mode and digital zooms is encouraging. 24-105 with the option to go 2.25x more is really a great coverage and F4 on FF is enough DoF separation, for me at least. Great stuff!

I thought you were joking about all three, but the first two are actually competitors. Or maybe I'm confusing myself. When I said that you said that I said...... ? I think FullHD to 4K took 10 years. I bought one of the first half-reasonably priced FullHD computer monitors 11 years ago, and one of the first half-reasonably priced 4K computer monitors 1 year ago after the first one died. I agree about diminishing returns for 8K but we're not talking about 8K display, we're talking 8K capture and we already have 6K which is half-way there, so in theory Sony should release an 8K downsizing camera in about 2 years or so! I agree it won't be 2 years, but it'll be closer to 10 than it will be to 20

The pixi is pretty short, but you might still be able to use it like this? You'd have to use the articulating screen to tilt up a bit. It might be a bit cramped but worth a shot and gives you an extra contact point.

I figured the 8K was an 8K camera competitor.. but cinema cameras are a long way from where I play. The XC10 used to be a cinema camera on Canons website when it launched, but it's been moved since then!! I figured you were joking with the Kinefinity and Z Cam, but I looked up the prices and they were in the same ballpark as the A7's! They're basically the same size as XC10 or A7III. By the time you put a microphone on the top for directional audio (so my footage of my kid in a go-kart doesn't include the parents sitting behind me gossiping - true story) and a handle / rig of some kind (so the video at 10x zoom, which is 240mm, is minimised while being hand-held in places like tour busses where you can't fit a tripod or monopod - also true story) then the rig is the same size. I started with a pocket camera and have gradually navigated to my current setup one change at a time to address a real issue or limitation I hit while actually shooting. Anyway, let's hope that Nikon make a camera as small as they can while still including the features and ergonomics they designed in, rather than something that makes retired ENG shooters feel like they're back on the job!!

I know you come from a history of larger cameras and are comfortable with them. By contrast, I'm embarrassed to be seen with any camera that attracts attention from non-camera-people. I recently went on a sunset cruise in the tropics and was sitting with my family on the top desk enjoying a cheese platter and the sunset, and grabbing the odd shot with my XC10, Rode VMP+ and Gorillapod. It was lovely and relaxing, but when the table next to us had a 25 minute conversation about my camera I was a lot less relaxed and it took me away from enjoying the experience. In this way it was the classic problem of "don't let the photography get in the way of enjoying your holidays and time with your family" but it wasn't me doing the photography that was the distraction but the size of the equipment and other peoples reactions to it... If the RX100 or my smartphone could do 4K for 30 minute takes with a 10x zoom lens and log profile with decent IS and directional audio then I'd ditch big camera rigs in a millisecond and never look back.

Photography and videography are creative pursuits. Creativity is an emotional task, and if technology gets in the way of that, making us angry or frustrated or even disappointed, then we're not going to be as creative, or enjoy ourselves as much. Buy the camera that supports your creativity the best.

*sigh* I don't blame canon for wanting you to spend more money, I blame them for assuming that if I want good video (a nice codec and ILC) I'm willing to carry around a huge camera body. I know that some people don't think the C200 or C100 are large, but when you look at the A7 series, or their XC10, they're enormous.

well, ignoring the Red Weapon competitor you slipped in there, these are really Pocket 2 competitors not A7 or CaNikon competitors. I think the only reason that the Pocket 2 is an A7 competitor is because you get RAW 4K60 and it's cheaper. Otherwise they're really for different markets. For me, the A7III is almost the perfect camera, but my brain thinks "yes, A7III is wonderful but the Pocket 2 has RAW 4K60 and the Pocket1 looks gorgeous in so many shorts that the colour science must be really easy to work with and I know the A7III can do similar DR but it will require work to learn to grade it, and I know that I normally hand-hold but 4K60 RAW!! Maybe I can learn to shoot films completely differently? I can learn to use tripods, and vloggers seem to use their gorilla pods as tripods and do static shots all the time. Of course the Sony 24-105 with crop and digital zoom is the equivalent of a m43 12-120 F2 lens which doesn't exist or would cost the earth so I'd have to get primes and then I'd have to shoot much slower and make quite different films, but fark me 4k60 RAW!! Maybe I can become a completely different person because of this camera???" It's kind of like at school when you'd see a gorgeous girl who liked football players and you'd think "maybe if I changed my entire personality I'd have a shot??" ??? I believe they included a 24-70 F4? Well, Moores law states that computer power doubles every 18 months or so. If we assume this is true then it means that it will take 3 years to go from 4K to 8K processing. Even if thermal solutions and marketing and investment don't keep pace, it will still be within 5-10. Think about how long it took to go from SD to HD to FullHD and to 4K. SD to HD was 2.25x pixels, HD to FullHD was 2.25x pixels, FullHD to 4K was 4x pixels. Plus we already have a 6K to 4K downsample in a "base model camera". History says that progress is slower than we'd like, but steady and faster than we predict. Holy wow! That video spiked my blood pressure!! I'm probably a little bit too careful with cameras (although I did take my iPhone8 swimming at the beach deliberately, so there's that). Yeah, the A7III is just about perfect for non-commercial uses, even if you're a real connoisseur. I am hoping Canon hits a home run with their FF too, but I'm not holding my breath. The issue with their codecs is the processing, and unless they put a video DIGIC processor in there its unlikely we'll get a sensible codec. Personally, I'm secretly hoping they put a stills DIGIC and a video DIGIC in there. They have dual processors in their high end cameras so it's possible, and they've put a thermal solution in the XC10 which has a very small body so fans don't mean huge size, however fans kill weather sealing and the first FF ML offering may be aimed at their core customers instead of their evaporating share of the (tiny) DSLR video market. If they do go EF-M then lets hope they get the naming right so it's clear which EF-M lenses are FF and which are APSC - unlike Sony which is a fricking maze to try and understand with two lens mounts and two sensor sizes but lenses in all 4 combinations!

Something that might be changed in a firmware update perhaps? Is this a function available with other lenses? It would be strange if Sony didn't enable all the available features for use with their own lenses. I've heard people say that. I'm less concerned with it because I've heard the GH5 is spectacular, and I think the combination of A7III and 24-105 F4 has double IS which should be better than the IS I'm used to from my XC10 and Canon 18-55 and 55-250 lenses. I also use the Gorillapod 5K (the biggest bendy tripod available) as a stabiliser, sometimes it just hangs down under the camera as a counterweight, sometimes I prop the camera up on it like a monopod, and other times I swing the legs horizontally and put them against my chest like a rifle / shoulder mount. I don't know what your shooting rig and style is like but maybe adding something like this might help? I don't know what software you're using, but I think of it like if you're willing to grade the footage then it's not much more work to put a converter on the footage to go from log to something else before working on the footage. This means you can shoot in log and be a bit safer from exposure errors. My current approach with my XC10 is to shoot in C-Log, and then in Resolve: Have the first node correcting any exposure or WB issues Then the next to convert from C-Log to Rec709 Then grade as you would normally I've found that when shooting in log there is much more latitude to change exposure and WB in post (with that first node) than if you're shooting a more REC709 style profile and trying to correct that in post. If I end up with the A7III I would experiment with the above workflow and trial either Slog2 or Slog3. I've heard that Slog2 is harder to grade, but if you have a decent converter then that difference doesn't really apply. IIRC Slog3 has greater dynamic range than Slog2 so I would trial that and see how it goes. The thing to watch for in Slog3 would be if there is enough contrast in skin tones so that when you stretch things back out again with the converter they don't look blotchy or strange. I can't recall if the A7III allows you to put a LUT on the screen / viewfinder while shooting log? If not, then another downside of shooting log is that it's harder to see the monitor as it's such a flat profile.

@DBounce @Drew Allegre @Lenscamera @keessie65 - let's all settle back and let the manufacturers bid for our money!! A7III vs Pocket 2 vs A7SIII vs Nikon FF ML vs Canon FF ML!! Personally I am also 80% of the way to just buying the A7III right now, so they will have to make something really special to beat it for me. I think the Pocket 2 is ruled out for me because of the crop factor and lack of stabilisation. On the A7III the 24-105 F4 is double stabilised and when combined with the crop mode and clear image zoom there would need to be a m43 lens that was 12-120mm F2 zoom to keep the zoom range and DoF. I think the Canon and Nikon aren't likely to be able to match the zoom range either, although I'd be happily proven wrong! The A7SIII will likely be better but will be much more expensive, which combined with the premium prices for Sony lenses rules it out. The A7III doesn't have proper weather sealing? The website says: "Major buttons and dials are sealed. Sealing is provided throughout the body to minimise entry of dust and moisture" and "Not guaranteed to be 100% dust and moisture proof." I'm new to weather sealing, so what does this really mean? Don't shoot in the rain? Don't shoot in heavy rain? Be careful of sprinklers? I know we all tend to get our hopes up and then have manufacturers disappoint us, but one thing that would be incredible from a medium format sensor is full-sensor readout with no binning for 4K video. The Sonys already downsample from 6K to 4K, but debayered 6K isn't full-res 4K video so if anyone steps up with 8K downsampling that would be spectacular! Or, probably more likely, it should give the ability to do a more significant digital punch-in, which would be awesome as well.

I'm not on RAID yet - once I outgrow my current HDD then I'll need to go there. Just a single drive at the moment. RAID 5 means that if you have one drive fail then you're ok, but if two drives fail you lose your data. RAID 6 means that you need to have three drives fail to lose your data. In server environments I can understand that, but for video? Considering that if you have a drive failure then you just order a replacement drive and a few hours / days later then you're back to safety again, I don't see that as being too risky for data that you've already got a backup of somewhere else. You could even back up the array when the first drive fails as an extra layer of protection. Drives are quite reliable these days - every computer without RAID is only a single failure away from disaster but the people aren't running around screaming in panic!

Thanks @Charlie it's always interesting to see how other people approach a project! I also thought your tutorial was good - well paced with the right level of information provided.. I'm definitely interested in more. I'm especially interested in how you record things when you're out shooting