eatstoomuchjam

It's a comedy channel where the host does wildlife photography which almost entirely consists of the squirrels in his neighborhood and where he renamed "bokeh" to "toneh" to make fun of Mr. Northrup going too far with shallow DOF. If you're upset that he goes light on the technical details and doesn't produce Roger Deakins-level cinematography, I think you've missed the point. (And I definitely enjoyed Kasey's video as a standout in a sea of people reading spec sheets and basically shooting the exact same video as every other channel who got invited to Japan)

Keep in mind that those same YouTubers will keep saying over and over again how they aren't being paid for the review... but also that they all know that if they don't say mostly nice things about the camera, they won't get free flights/hotels in Japan, a loaner camera + $20k in loaner lenses, or have a camera to make a video before launch day the next time. The reviews are biased and are part of the Panasonic sales strategy. Wait until real users and smaller channels start receiving the camera. Right now, it's all part of a hype machine to drive preorders. Panasonic have a long history of delivering excellent hybrid cameras and there's no reason to think that this one will be any different, but NEVER trust launch day YouTube reviews for any camera.

Watching the microwave over his shoulder after he put on the 24/1.4L, it sure looked a bit like it was pulsing to me, similar to what I'd expect from their previous cameras with DFD. It's not a surprise since (as far as I know), the MC-21 doesn't advertise supporting PDAF with Canon lenses and I'd be shocked if it did. I'd be less shocked if it supported it with Sigma EF lenses. I seem to recall that the MC-11 supported PDAF with Sigma lenses on Sony E, but I ditched all of my Sony stuff a while ago. It's not to say it's really bad - DFD has worked pretty well on their last generation or two of camera, but "slightly better DFD" is far from a compelling reason to go S5II if you use EF lenses. At that point, I'd just find a used S5 for $1k or so. With that said, some folks like Steelsring and Fringer have lenses that support PDAF with Canon lenses on Fuji bodies - presumably whatever profiling they had to do there would be fairly easily translated to L mount, assuming that they can produce electronic L mount adapters without getting sued. Once that's done, I'll be very strongly considering selling one or two of my existing cameras and switching over to the S5 IIx (maybe the timing will work out since I think the x doesn't ship until May or so). 🙂

Back to the original topic, I'm a huge fan of the Dark Power Labs stuff. I've been using the Sabrents that PC recommends in mine. One thing that he doesn't mention (should you go that route) is that you need to peel off the heatsink sticker on it - the enclosure uses a thermal pad to attach to the SSD so it isn't needed anyway. With the sticker attached, the enclosure is too tight. Do they get hot? YES. When recording, it hasn't been too bad for me. When dumping a full disk? The enclosure gets uncomfortably hot. That's going to happen with just about any extremely small/fast SSD during heavy I/O. Anyway, I use the smaller enclosure attached to the EVF on my FP-L (no cage) and I use the DPL cage with the longer SSD enclosure attached on the bottom with my FP. Either way, it's a pretty slick setup. One of the things I like is that when I'm just shooting photos or don't need 12-bit, I can just unscrew the holder and throw it in my pocket.

I saw it - for me, it'll come down to how big it is and how it interfaces to the battery slot. For some stuff, DPL does internal wiring and for other stuff, it's done with a super thin ribbon cable. I don't trust myself not to break the latter. It's rare that I need to do a single long shot so I just have like 7 or 8 BLC12 type batteries - it's easy enough to put a couple in my pockets and swap as they're dying. The NP-F 550's I have are around 2500 mAh and the BLC12 is around 1200 mAh. So if the handle makes things a lot bulkier than the Smallrig wooden handgrips that I use now, I'd be inclined to just keep putting a couple of BLC 12's in my pocket. Anyway, it'll probably be a decent option for anybody who needs to hit record and let the camera go for more than 40 minutes or so. 🙂

Yup - that's mostly true. The FOV is narrower by default with EIS enabled. It doesn't bug me at all with action cameras because the lenses are usually wider than I want anyway. One thing that is a bit iffy, though, is that you're saying that the GoPro applies a digital zoom in order to get to 3840x2160. I have no insight to how GoPro actually do their EIS, but the resolution of the Hero 9 is 20 megapixels and the Hero 10 is 23. Both cameras can shoot 5K video. So in 4K mode with stabilization applied, it could be done by moving to a 1:1 pixel readout in a window and moving that window around the sensor. That wouldn't be a digital zoom - it'd be more like "clear image zoom" on a Sony. No need to upscale the footage. The bigger objection that I tend to have with EIS is that it sometimes interacts really weirdly with rolling shutter/jello. When on a sustained bumpy road (like something that's really washboarded) with my car-mounted stuff, sometimes the footage just looks like puke - it gets even worse once the sun starts to go down since the action camera starts to move closer to a 360 shutter to cope with the lack of light. Anyway, for city streets/sidewalks which aren't so bumpy, as long as the tires aren't made of hard plastic, I'd expect that they'd absorb enough of the vibration from sidewalk/asphalt texture that the footage will be in hyperlapse/uncanny valley too smooth mode (this is where I wish that more options were provided for less aggressive stabilization).

I have both an fp and an fp-l. With the fp, I use the DPL mini-cage with an SSD holder on the bottom and their little L bracket on the side of the camera instead of a cable. Works great, looks cool, and keeps things small/unobtrusive. I use a little kind of cruddy Portkeys screen, chosen because it's about the size of a smartphone and works generally acceptably. For some upcoming guerrilla short film stuff, I plan to just use it with a small Platypod (or similar) in a coffee shop while sitting at a table near the talent. With the fp-l, I didn't have the EVF until just recently so I used their side cage. That works great because I can just keep it in a pocket. With just the Smallrig wooden grip on the side and Leica M lenses, I have great photo quality in a tiny camera. When I wanna shoot video, I can just screw on an ND filter and the DPL cage. Though I finally broke down and bought the EVF since it's so annoying to shoot with just the rear LCD (I'm not doing the flippy screen mod) - so I have the EVF SSD holder from DPL on its way. Hopefully it isn't too obtrusive or it's as easy to attach/detach as the other one. I'm planning to do a YT video on it soon, maybe this weekend if it shows up in time. I feel like the DPL stuff finally fulfills the promise of the FP being a tiny little modular camera that record excellent 12-bit footage. When I was using the Smallrig cage and a T5, the camera seemed bigger (and definitely more awkward) than my R5. And yeah, the little Sabrent drive won't fit in most brackets - I was planning to 3d print one that would make it a bit less awkward to use before I bought the DPL stuff. 🙂

This is basically just begging for a fairly modern GoPro or Insta360. Lately, I've been using a GoPro mounted to my bumper and an Insta360 One R (Leica lens mod) on a rigid mount on my roof rack. I drive a Wrangler which is definitely not known for a smooth ride - when I take it on really gnarly backroad trails, it's smooth to the point where it can be a bit disappointing (the footage no longer reflects just how bumpy the trail was). I'd try a Hero 9 (or 10) and/or an Insta360 One R with a simple pole mount before spending too much time rigging up a crazy Z Axis or gimbal for your bigger camera.

If the goal is to have an inexpensive, small, and light SSD that can work with a bunch of cameras, I'd try the Sabrent Rocket Nano (I just mentioned it in another thread and I promise I'm not affiliated with them!): https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Rocket-External-Aluminum-SB-1TB-NANO-BLK/dp/B07XL6BMFP/ Before I switched to using the Dark Power Labs accessories with my FP, I bought one of these intending to 3d print a tiny cage to match it. In terms of size, I'd say it's just over half of a Samsung T5 (give or take). With my FP, I stress tested it by filling it up twice and formatting while recording 12-bit raw video of a wall or something like that. It worked fine. My sample size is 1 so it's not out of the question that I won the silicon lottery - or that it would fail on the third or fourth time if I kept going.

To go a different way with this, if you have some budget, why even do anything with the Ninja V? A used Sigma FP will let you record uncompress 8-bit raw internally or 12-bit raw to a very small USB-C SSD (the Sabrent Nano works well - or get the Dark Power Lab one that fits on the side). A barebones FP setup is likely to be smaller and lighter than your Nikon even before you add the Ninja to it.

For monitoring, Z Cam have what is (by far) the best mobile app that I've used and if I remember right, it can record some sort of proxy in the phone. It can connect wirelessly or hardwired to the camera's usb-c port. As far as licensing codecs, Apple wouldn't need to "pay" anything to license ProRes or ProRes RAW for their phones, if they decided that recording from an external device was a thing they wanted to do... but it's a fairly niche feature so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to do it.

I haven't weighed it, but I suspect that my 3d printed SSD holder with half of a Sandisk Ultra 3D 500GB in it weighs a little bit less than the Andycine thing, given that the Andycine one is metal and has multiple screws to hold everything in place. But the Andycine is already only 55g - so the weight savings would be extremely minimal (if they even exist)... and given that mine relies on holes for ventilation, I suspect that the Andycine will be more robust in light rain, etc. Anyway, if every single milligram counts, you could use mine as a start and modify it to be even smaller and lighter - I think the end away from the SATA interface could be about 3mm closer to the SSD and the ventilation holes could be made a bit bigger, at the cost of structural stability. In addition, instead of using the tiny screws to hold the SSD in place, you could use a few dabs of superglue. Overall, you might be able to drop the weight of my thing by around 20% with all those changes (but it already weighs almost nothing). To make it even lighter YET, you could probably just take the bare circuit board and use some sort of small shim to hold it the right distance from the inner shell and use a piece of tape to keep it from falling out. I feel like there used to be NP-F330's, but I can't remember if they were smaller (and if so, by how much) than an NP-F550. One thought is that there are different capacities of NP-F550 when I look on Amazon. Some of the lower-capacity ones might weight less (less lithium inside them) - as long as the manufacturers don't put some lead or similar in them to make them feel more "professional." Can you relocate some of the weight elsewhere? You could use a dummy NP-F with the Ninja and connect it to a V mount in a backpack or on your belt. Are you willing to modify the Ninja V itself and probably void your warranty and/or increase overheating risk? A simple first thing might be to remove as many screws as possible (if there are 4, usually two diagonal screws are enough to hold things in place, for example). In this YouTube video, the guy disassembles his to fix it. There are multiple sets of screws inside where you could almost certainly remove a few. Maybe there's a lighter version of the fan in a similar form factor. If you were going to mount it on a drone or similar, you could experiment with removing the cooling fan. If you're flying it around on a drone, there might be enough natural airflow to keep it from overheating. If you're handy enough, you could probably even run it completely without the backplate and just wire in some other battery to the contact points for the rear battery shield. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18hMNzn34R8

You mentioned that you think that the Fringer is the only viable EF-FX adapter - I'm curious if you (or anybody here) have tried the Steelsring for FX. It claims to enable PDAF similar to the one for the GFX. I use their adapter for EF lenses on my GFX 100 and while autofocus isn't as good as on a Canon, I find it to be about as usable as any of my native GF glass on that camera.

I don't notice a major color shift after the swap, though I no longer have any unmodified hero 5's to compare it with. I'm pretty sure I got the lens from Amazon. If you search for "M12," they have lots and they're mostly pretty cheap. I don't have a modified RX0 (or an unmodified RX0). As far as the modified GoPros... the Hero 5, I still use as a car camera. I have a couple of unmodified Hero 7's that I can use as car cameras if I want to go back to a wider angle or if it's extremely rainy or dusty. I haven't used the Ribcage Hero 7 for a lot of useful stuff, but I'll be starting to use it more in the near future, now that I got a holder that makes the annoying GoPro microphone connector a little less annoying. One of the reasons I'm always hunting for wide angle D mount lenses with sufficient coverage is that I'd love to use it as a vlogging camera, especially when in areas where I'm iffier about carrying around fancy-looking cameras (I've used the RX100 V for that, but even it draws some unwanted attention that something looking like a Frankencamera might not). It's mostly a fun/tiny camera where I can use my C/D mount lenses. I also want to use it in some upcoming short film projects in places where a GoPro might otherwise be used, but where the fisheye is not desirable. I may also try using it as a car camera with a fast lens sometime when it's getting dark enough that a standard Hero struggles.

inde - Yup, I also have a Yi 4k+ where I used a pliers to pull the original lens and a Hero 5 where I did the same. The Yi now has a 7mm lens semi-permanently installed and the Hero 5 has a 5.4mm lens semi-permanently installed and set to infinity. Not much need for glue on the Hero 5 - the M12 mount is tight enough that I had to use a pliers to screw the lens in. I like the look of the 5.4mm lens! It's still wide-ish, but not even nearly as crazy as the fisheye that came with the camera. The 7mm on the Yi might be a bit long for most things, but it's sort of nice for a motion timelapse with the camera on a gimbal. ? At some point, I got a crazy good deal on a handful of Yi 4K+'s... since I switched to GoPro, I have barely touched any of them - maybe I should just mod all of them with some sort of M12 lens. At least then, there would be some reason to keep them around. Having a better / more detailed lens might also make the bitrate hack more worthwhile. And you're right - the majority of action cameras (that I've seen), cheap to expensive, use some form of M12 mount with a 1/2.3" sensor... makes sense since there are cheap, but decent lenses available for that mount!

Unlike the others here, I've had pretty good luck with Ribcage products... to as much of an extent as can be reasonably expected. I first bought their kit to convert a Yi 4K+ to C mount and I somehow botched the installation, but they were willing to help me un-botch it in the end. Ultimately, I found that C mount lenses were extremely difficult to use with the Yi because... The internal screen is tiny and not very high-resolution. This made critical focus nearly impossible, even when using a loupe. There is no HDMI output option to use an external screen to check critical focus. It is possible to use an adapter to get composite output, but none of my external screens are composite... More recently, I bought a pre-assembled kit with a Hero 7 Black. This is a vastly better experience. The internal screen on the Hero 7 is much better-quality than the Yi and there is an option to digitally zoom in which is very useful for focusing. This is a little bit awkward, but works OK The camera has HDMI output which can be useful for focusing if I already have another screen, but this has limits - in video mode, the HDMI output is very laggy. In photo mode and timelapse mode it's very fast... but it is pretty awkward to have to change modes constantly in order to focus. Image stabilization is not very well-optimized for longer lenses so they end up still feeling sort of shaky I have found that a number of D mount lenses have sufficient coverage for the 1/2.3" sensor in the Hero 7. I'm still looking for a wide angle option without a hard vignette, but lenses in the 10mm and longer range seem to cover sufficiently... which is at least enough for a very minor telephoto with around a 10mm lens. I'm hoping, though, to find a 5mm or so D mount lens with enough coverage. Unfortunately, D mount lenses aren't super common on the used market. In this regard, the 1" sensor (2.7x crop) in the RX0 would be very strongly preferable. Whatever the Ribcage looks like internally or how much electronics purists turn up their nose at it, the camera feels plenty solid from the outside and mine has been banged around quite a bit. It still seems to be doing alright. The Hero 7 has HEVC at around 78 megabits/second. I would be curious to compare its output vs the RX0 with semi-cruddy HEVC-S at 100 megabits/second. In addition, the Hero 7 can handle 60 fps in 4k where the RX0 is only capable of 30 fps. On the other hand, the RX0 can output 4K at 422 for external recording if you don't mind bulking it up a little bit. The Hero 7 also has 2.7kp120 and 1080p240 options and I think both can be used continuously. The RX0 has 1080p240. Assuming that it's like my RX100 V, this mode will be limited to only a few seconds. I'm not sure how much any of this matters since the quality of all of the above is fairly mediocre. The RX0 has Slog. The Hero 7 has ProTune. I think both are usable enough with moderate dynamic range scenes. The RX0 almost definitely will work better in low light than the Hero 7 - and in addition, it's possible to use a speed booster with the Micro 4/3 mount where I am not aware of any decent-quality C mount speed boosters. In the end, I thought about buying the Ribcage RX0... but ended up deciding it didn't have enough advantages over the Ribcage Hero 7 to make it worth the swap. This is reminding me that I want to use the Hero 7 variant more... I suppose I'll make an effort to bring it with me the next time I go shooting.

I was just coming to say the same thing. The E2G has been shipping for a few months already, but since it is not very high-demand, it's generally a special order-only item. It's only a 1" sensor, though, and as far as I know, only up to 4kp30.

Big things are happening! I just received my E2C which is the smaller budget version of the E2. It can shoot 4k at up to 30fps in ProRes and it costs only $800 (I got it for a little less due to early bird preorder)! I'll be doing some comparisons of it vs my bigger E2 tomorrow, hopefully. Also, for the full-size E2, Z Cam just released firmware 0.86 which, among many other nice improvements, adds 4kp160 (2.4:1 instead of 16:9). I hope to find something that is moving tomorrow to play with that as well.

I won't use the term "color science" because it's really dumb in the context of a fairly simple matrix operation to map values read from the sensor to values to be output to a file. However, the colors coming right out of the camera look really nice to me - and the footage is really flexible. The camera's biggest weakness right now is audio. It really needs a powered mic to get decent performance. The engineers have promised an improvement with the next firmware release. The camera's second biggest weakness is CAF performance. It's really decent for contrast AF and is generally passable, but not a thing I would rely on for anything I cared about (though the human tracking mode is surprisingly good). For this, they are experimenting with add-on modules (ultrasonic and lidar have both been mentioned). We'll see what comes of that. Other than those two things, just about everything is really great. It's really shocking how much things improved between the E1 and the E2. If they didn't have the same logo, I wouldn't believe the cameras were made by the same company. I'm really happy with my purchase and I'm likely to jump on the preorder to get the APS-C camera with a m43 mount.

The P4K doesn't really have "better codec options" at this point unless you mean braw - and that will probably be less of a competitive advantage when ZCam release the first version of their raw implementation sometime this month. Otherwise, the ZCam has ProRes HQ at up to 4kp30 and ProRes 422 at up to 4kp60 as well as h.265 with decent bitrate. If you tested months ago, the quality of 4kp120 has improved since then - they upped the bitrate on it a bit. In the next release, they are upping it more (I think to 500 megabits/second). And you're very likely right about the A73 sensor - or something similar to it. In general, if you check the features of a Z-Cam vs a list of modern Sony sensors, you'll find that they align really nicely. It's why people keep asking about 4kp120 in the bigger sensor cameras and getting turned down. None of the bigger Sony sensors support it. The BMPCC4K is a great camera and a fantastic value, no doubt about it, but the E2 is also excellent and I'm glad I bought it over the BM. I love that I can rig it on a big heavy shoulder rig with huge EF lenses and F-970/V-mount batteries for long life... or I can throw on a tiny Micro 4/3 prime like the Panasonic 14/2.5 or 20/1.7 and put in an F550-type battery and have a super tiny light camera. The lack of a built-in screen is mitigated very nicely by being able to wire in my phone as a screen which I very much prefer to using wifi - it gives me an excellent 5" or so low-latency screen with a built-in battery. Not bad.

I had the E1 (was in on the original kickstarter at full price) and really didn't like it. I ended up selling it for almost nothing. I gave them another chance with the E2 and I really love it. It's a really huge leap ahead in usability and quality. There's firmware coming in April that should be addressing some/all of the complaints with the camera - including improving the audio and increasing the bitrate in 120p (they already increased it once, but they are increasing it again after users requested it enough). And FWIW, even though the firmware number is 0.xx, I wouldn't consider it a "beta." Z-Cam considers it to be release firmware and after November, I haven't had any stability problems with the camera at all. It's been absolutely rock solid for hours of shooting, including some stuff that I shot at -30F in Alaska in January.