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Maybe you're right, I guess it depends on the Return-On-Investment for the different options. If they release two FF MILC cameras (as they have announced) and we assume they're solid but not spectacular, then for their next camera they can either release a MILC or DSLR. If Nikon decide to release a MILC then it would make sense to make the best one they possibly can, this would be to compete with the A9 and equivalent cameras, and would prove that Nikon are still a competitor, and that the pros who use Nikon are in safe hands, etc etc. But it would also be a statement that Nikon has moved away from DSLRs and the Nikon users who are late adopters may get their feathers ruffled worrying that Nikon has abandoned the only tech that these users are familiar with. As much as photography is a very technical industry, photography is an art form and there are many photographers who are emotional/creative and operate almost exclusively on intangibles. These people may be very sensitive to feeling abandoned, especially when having to learn a whole new system starts to look like also changing manufacturer. If Nikon decide to release a DSLR then it would be a big gesture to the loyal but middle and late adopters that are already Nikon customers. By then they will have designed and released two new MILC cameras, a new lens mount, and a number of lenses, and may have developed some technology that can be applied to a DSLR. For those customers still using DSLRs who need a new camera but aren't ready to change to MILC and a new mount, it might be the stop-gap they needed, and for some it could be good enough to stop them even thinking about changing brands. It would be a disappointment for those who switched to Nikon MILC who were wanting an A9 competitor, but how many of them would want to immediately upgrade is debatable. The correct decision would be whichever one above generates the most profit over the long-term - they have to balance poaching customers from other brands with poaching customers from their own DSLR lines with losing existing customers to other brands. It's about long-term product and customer strategy, not just features or sales.

Being a professional youtuber is about business, not IQ. Shooting in 4K costs more to backup, costs more time to edit, costs you out-of-focus shots (the cost in time to re-shoot, the creative cost of the frustration, and sometimes the cost of missing a shot you can't replicate), but most people don't have a 4K display device and those that do probably sit too far away from it to see it, so apart from getting the 'hype' bump of having a 4K logo it is all negatives. All those costs directly translate to entire videos you could have made instead - if 4K is a 10% cost then potentially you could have made 10% more videos, the percentage is probably more than that. For people like Casey / Peter / Matti that's quite a lot of views, as well as potentially viral videos. IQ is important to films where the aesthetic is important, the vlog type of YT videos are basically disposable and are only valuable for their time-sensitive content. As they say, being second is first-last place, so workflow speed is everything, especially in the tech space. I think it's both - he cares about content and storytelling. In terms of the A7III it would be a good technical choice, but I remember Casey saying that he's basically a luddite who only uses tech when he's forced to. Even his 'Tech Review Tuesday" videos are almost completely devoid of technical content - they're all about user experience. As above, learning something new has an opportunity cost of a number of videos.

Thanks Zak - that's a great link. Not as good as the OFX plugin, but as you say, a good alternative.

Not FF mirrorless! I think it comes down to timeframes and lenses. In terms of timeframes, it took what, 10-15 years for digital to "take over" from film? It's hard to estimate because people still shoot film today, and the first digital cameras were completely rubbish, but I think 10-15 years is a reasonable estimation. I'm not sure what the complications of lenses and compatibility was between DSLRs and SLRs during that time, but I'm assuming they had some overlap of compatibility. In the sense then that MILCs might take 10-15 years to "take over" from DSLRs doesn't seem to be too far fetched. I think we tend to get a bit carried away in these conversations - it's not like Nikon will release two FF MILCs and then never release a DSLR again! In a sense, the lens mount change is a separate issue, as it just happens to be occurring at the same time as a change to mirrorless, and I think all the logic applies. Even if they started a second line of DSLRs with a different lens mount, all the conversations about adapters and compatibility and flange distance would still be relevant. Needless to say, the quality of adapter for this camera will play a huge part in how well it does commercially.

We have great internet (just tested it then and got 29Mbps / 1.45Mbps), but those companies don't have great upload servers here in Australia. I just uploaded a file to test it and got this transfer graph (red is upload): It clearly uploaded it in three bursts. It was amazing how fast it was actually - when I'm uploading something large the bursts are often 20 or 30s apart, and this is SugarSync, which I am a paying customer of. The rest are no different - tiny little spikes a very long time apart.

One of the main issues with the cloud storage is that it takes forever to upload anything. It says 'unlimited' but if you can't upload very fast then it's a very real limit. My wife has been backing up her photo collection overnight to OneDrive for maybe a year now and I don't think she's done yet. She doesn't upload every night though because whenever she starts uploading it kills the internet and everyone complains and so she turns it off again, and the app doesn't have a schedule option, so it's just a bad experience overall. I have dropbox and sugar sync and both take a long time to upload things too. Cloud storage seems like a good idea, but in reality is has many other issues. Also, whenever you hear "cloud storage" you should substitute the words "someone else's computer" so that you're interpreting things correctly - it has very different connotations.

Not yet released, but here's some test footage vs iPhone X. Verdict - it's a great time to be alive and into video!!

TLDR: MILCs will gradually replace DSLRs, like DSLRs replaced SLRs and smartphones will replace cameras for the enthusiasts that had compact cameras Mirrorless advantages over DSLRs MILC lenses vs DSLR lenses and focus modes Enthusiast vs Pro Stills vs Pro Video customer segments vs mirrorless manufacturers - current and predictions Industry sales are decreasing, more competition Predictions of what each brand will do and what will happen commercially Sony are leading, CaNikon only have to have good enough mirrorless to keep their current customers, then they can go after Sony in the future Consumers are the winners...

I'd view those things more like hygiene factors (absolute minimum requirements) rather than weaknesses, but you're right about some people might view the trade-off as acceptable.

This is an excellent example of how people speak about the Sony cameras, a list of features, presented rationally and factually. I'm not criticising at all, this is how I view the camera - an input to the work I do in Resolve. By contrast, people talk about the colour of Canon and more recently Nikon, they talk about the rendering of out-of-focus areas of vintage lenses, they talk about things like the Black Pro Mist filter, and they talk subjectively about 'the look', how things are 'cinematic' or 'analog' or 'filmic', about the quality of the highlight rolloff, etc etc. They tend to say things like "I know camera X only shoots in soft 1080, weighs 25kg, battery life is 12 minutes, sound is unusable, and you need an engineering degree to operate the menus, BUT <insert subjective comments about the feel of the footage here> and that's why I choose it". Different tools for different folks. Film-Making is Art after all I guess my point is that although Sony isn't a stand-out in aesthetic terms, it is a stand-out in wringing all the technical capability out of the components of a camera, which is a stand-out for those who take a more objective preference to the camera, which is why people can suffer the poor menus and other weaknesses.

I use Resolve Colour Management but not in the way you describe above. The way I use it is to just have the colour management for the clips set to the defaults, but I convert the colour using the OpenFX Colour Space Transform plugin, which (I believe) does the same thing as the Resolve Colour Management options you are using, but it does it in the node graph, so you can have greater control over how you use it. For example, if I shot a clip in C-Log I would have a node graph like this: Exposure and WB corrections using the Lift Gamma Gain controls OpenFX Colour Space Transform from C-Log to Rec709 Nodes to grade the footage how I like I find that having that first node before the colour space transform allows exposure and WB corrections to be performed similarly to how they would have happened if I'd done them in camera. I've shot Canon cameras in normal profiles with bad WB settings before and you just can't get nice colours out of them, but I did some experiments shooting in C-Log with really really bad WB and exposure and using the above setup you can easily correct them without much damage to the resulting image at all. This is a crazy interesting video by Juan Melara showing how you can use multiple Colour Space Transform plugins in the node graph in order to have nodes that are 'working' in different colour spaces. I had to watch these a number of times before I got my head around what he was doing, but you can learn a ton from them, so they're worth watching. Also, this video shows what you can do when you understand colour spaces and the Colour Space Transform node: Good luck!! Resolve is like having the keys to the universe - and is almost as difficult to operate

I've noticed that a camera rig looks funny when the microphone sticks out further than the camera lens, but doing this to correct it is going a bit far!!

I'm reminded of hearing that some cinematographers want equipment that gives a great look SOOC camera, and some want a neutral capture that they can then manipulate in post. The former tend to view cameras and lenses and lighting as artistic tools, and the latter talk about the highest resolution and lowest distortion components and view the camera as a technical tool. It seems to me that Canon, Nikon, and others have followings because of certain artistic elements - people buy Canon despite the weaknesses because of "those Canon colours" etc. No-one seems to talk like that about Sony. People seem to buy Sony because they have designed their products to extract the most technical performance out of them, not because they have some sort of killer feature - no-one is saying "oh, but that 6K downsampling resolution!". In a sense it's a philosophical choice for the user, do they want a camera that is a flawed but wonderful artistic instrument, or do they want a precise but neutral capture device? I prefer the latter but I understand why people would choose the former, it's personal.

There are systems with vertical slots and shelves that clip into those slots - I think that was what you were looking at in the video? The shelf brackets look like this (for some reason the image is upside-down): They would allow some flexibility in placement, would be sturdy when assembled, and would be relatively easy to dismantle for transportation. These are probably what you were considering anyway

Ken says that ~6MP is enough, even for billboards! https://kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm But seriously, he has a point that there's a level that is good enough for most things, and 24MP is probably beyond it. In a sense this applies to video too, but 4K video is only 12MP and in consumer products is highly compressed in comparison to even JPG images, let alone RAW, so a few extra MP isn't ridiculous.

Yep. Lots of discussion here: I did some experiments with my Sigma 18-35 1.8 (which is basically a ~2.5 in FF equivalence) and came to the same conclusion - that F4 on FF would be sufficient. For me it's just about having a bit more depth and separation to the image. I shot a test video at 2.5 of my wife and I going for a walk along the beach and DoF was too shallow in almost every shot. I also had trouble with MF on the not-so-great Canon 700D screen in full sunlight - which having focus peaking will rectify nicely.

Cool idea. A few thoughts... cable ties might be useful - they're stronger than elastic straps but also less permanent than glue/screws, and Id imagine that something like this would be tweaked and changed over time. Also, having the equipment like mixers etc anchored to the shelves somehow, or having shelves with a lip around the outside might be useful if you're wheeling the trolley across uneven ground as they'd prevent things from bouncing out. I'm not sure how many times you're on a set without mains power (maybe never) but that bottom container would be a perfect place for a battery and inverter. I've seen buskers with that kind of setup powering a small amp / mixer.

Woohoo! <starts downloading>

Does anyone know if the API supports a live view function? Even if it's not that fast it would still be useful for framing, especially for people who are operating the camera but are also in front of it, like vloggers, or people who are acting in their own productions.

Thanks @IronFilm Those B-roll shots look gorgeous don't they!!

Just like everything I guess - the flexibility of the fully articulating screens makes them less attractive for people that only need a tilting screen not a front-facing one. My XC10 has a tilting but not front-facing screen (like the Sonys) and if you're always behind the camera it's brilliant. My 700D has a fully articulated screen and it's a PITA if you want to tilt it because you have to flip it out to the side and then rotate it 180 degrees, making it much slower to tilt and almost impossible during a shot, much more vulnerable to knocks or hand positions, and making the setup far less compact.

Ah! Thanks - I think I missed that review. It sure looks good, even compared to other downsampling cameras!

Cool - if you are designing a new product (and indeed a product in a new category) then it makes sense to start with a blank sheet of paper and question all the 'normal' decisions. Good stuff. I think this bodes well for it not being a 'same same' performer.

I agree.. YT 'shows' is a pretty good name, although I'd still stress that there are people doing both 'shows' and 'vlogs' and also people who use a mixture of techniques, or even a technique somewhere in the middle. Only earlier today did I watch a video by a lady who shows how she does construction projects (this particular video was about her making a large wood and metal gate) and as we'd been having this conversation I was paying attention to the shots in it. It seemed that she was sitting and talking to camera with the narration of the video and was cutting b-roll of the build over the top, however what was interesting was that her shot was a tripod / lav mic shot but it was outside in uncontrolled conditions, so that's somewhere in-between your two scenarios described above. Also, included in the standard tripod b-roll shots was a fancy dolly shot where the camera follows her from one room of her shed to another (the front face of the shed was open, so it was one of those "looking into the building from outside" style shots). It was an interesting shot because I think it shows she's got an appetite for upping the production value, and the fact she's already got a lav and sound is nice means she's not new to the game. She also sells plans for projects online, so her channel is a business. Would she benefit from having a cinema camera? Maybe. I didn't see any evidence of auto-focus requirements, or IBIS requirements, so a cinema camera wouldn't be ruled out. If she shot 1080 in prores then maybe her edits would go faster, so there's perhaps some benefit. I don't think she'd benefit from having more DR via a flatter profile, but others like her might. I think the lines between (hand-held + selfie + outside) and (tripod + not selfie + studio) scenarios that the industry thinks in are so blurry that they ceased to exist quite some time ago. And yes, I did notice Jon Olsson getting excited about the RED and then it not featuring much again. I heard a mention that their camera guy had a routine of taking it out to get b-roll early in the morning when they were in Monaco before Jon had woken up, but yes, in terms of lugging it around during the day or through airports etc it's not the right camera for the job!!

LOL, crying face is right!! But actually for a single operator it looks quite functional, it's quite elegant really. Then again, I've used the HDMI input on my 32" UHD computer monitor as a monitor when doing some camera tests in my office!!