Panasonic pioneered mirrorless cameras 15 years ago and Sony made the first affordable full frame mirrorless camera.

It wasn’t until 2018 with the Canon EOS R that the market leader had an answer. Fast forward to 2023, and why is it that Panasonic and Sony have squandered their lead in mirrorless cameras to Canon?

Both companies had a massive head start. Panasonic got to the market 10 years ahead of the EOS R launch, and Sony came up with the first a7 E-mount camera in 2013, a full 5 years earlier than EOS R mount came into existence.

During this time Canon only had the entry level EOS M series, and DSLRs. Now DSLRs are dead, EOS M is gone, yet there’s a familiar name at the top of the sales chart.

Let’s take a look at what has gone on here.

The first clue is that the camera market isn’t really about cameras.

It’s about the lenses.

In the DSLR days the dominant lens mount was Canon EF. Even for video shooters, with their Metabones adapters on Sony and Panasonic cameras, EF lenses had widespread use.

It has taken a LONG time for Sony, Sigma and Tamron to establish a wide range of full frame E-mount mirrorless lenses.

And in the grand scale of things, L-mount has only just got started. Between 2008 and 2018, for 10 years Panasonic only had Micro Four Thirds which was never a widely accepted alternative to full frame for photography. This meant that Panasonic spent 10 years establishing a range of lenses that were never a like-for-like competitor to Canon EF. This was a strategy that wasn’t without upsides, but it seems also like a big missed opportunity. What would have happened if Panasonic and Leica had established L-mount at the same time as Sony E-mount?

Meanwhile the Panasonic G1 came out 15 years ago in 2008, and the GH1 in 2009. Seems like yesterday, but that is a very long time ago indeed by the standards of modern technology.

Together with Olympus, the mirrorless camera was invented, and it is now a format that makes up close to 100% of new camera sales unless you’re Pentax. Unfortunately for fans of Panasonic’s innovation and Sony’s cutting edge technology, Canon are now back to around 45% market share for camera shipments – most of them mirrorless – vs Panasonic on less than 5%.

The conclusion is that Panasonic have failed to convert enough Canon and Nikon DSLR users to Micro Four Thirds and now L-mount.

The main road block for me could be summed up by the following:

• Lenses are expensive. If you’ve invested in Canon, it doesn’t make much sense to switch
• For a long time, people were satisfied with DSLRs and the image quality on offer
• It has taken too long for Sony E-mount and L-mount to build up a full range of glass to compete with the depth of what EF offered

You can also point to other factors, like L-mount being without phase-detect AF until very recently.

It’s very hard to compete with Canon and their 150 million EF lenses sold. Some manufacturers avoid full frame entirely, like Fujifilm, preferring to offer high-end medium format.

Such were the dominance of EF lenses, Canon were able to hold out with their DSLRS for 7 years between 2013-2020 before the big switch to EOS R mount. They knew that because of EF, they didn’t need a like-for-like mirrorless answer to the Sony a7, and especially not the Panasonic GH series, as Canon had Cinema EOS for video users.

The 5D Mark IV and 6D Mark II now seem incredibly dated, but because the EOS R5 and R6 II exist, users now have a clear upgrade path.

The upgrade path from DSLRs to mirrorless was always more complicated. Will the adapter be reliable? Which native mount lenses should I get? Do I get a Sigma lens, or Sony? Do I go full frame, or Micro Four Thirds, or APS-C? Too many dilemmas.

For a Canon DSLR user, the EOS R series solved all those questions in a little over 2 years. Yes the EF adapter will work and it isn’t by a third party from China. Yes, go full frame with the R5 or R6 if you’re an existing 5D or 6D user, or stick to APS-C depending on your budget – and as for native lenses, there were very quickly a large range to choose from which were like-for-like successors to equivalent EF lenses from the same manufacturer, and barely any third party glass to muddy the decision-making process.

Without the dominance of EF lenses there’s no way Canon could have got away with holding out with DSLRs vs mirrorless for so long, and without this simple upgrade path, Sony, Panasonic and I dare say Fujifilm, would have grabbed far more Canon DSLR users since 2018.

What could Panasonic and Sony have done differently?

The answer in hindsight is actually not much.

For 8 years Panasonic could have created a viable full frame alternative to EF mount, with a range of attractive full frame mirrorless lenses. The focus on a 2x crop format created a good niche for Panasonic and Olympus, but nothing to trouble a 40%+ market share.

Sony could also have gone full frame earlier, instead the first E-mount cameras were designed to be quite affordable like the NEX series. There was also some branding confusion over NEX / E-mount / Alpha, which didn’t help.

The main thing that Sony and Panasonic could have done, would have been to make the lenses a lot cheaper. They didn’t have enough good affordable lenses, early enough.

Video played a big part in Sony’s gain in market share, and for Panasonic too with the GH series but video has also been a distraction for Panasonic, with traditional photographers seeing it as the ‘wrong emphasis’ and detrimental to stills, even though it isn’t – and many of them instead went for Olympus cameras, which had the branding and photographic DNA they were looking for. In this way, Panasonic Micro Four Thirds had competition from within! Imagine Canon sharing their lens mount with Nikon? Crazy.

Also when EOS R was being established, it was established as a full frame system right from the start. Micro Four Thirds was never this, and E-mount was originally designed to be only APS-C. This further confuses the customer and muddies the branding.

It was important at this time (2018-2020) with the EOS R, RP, R5 and R6 to do without the distraction of crop sensors or APS-C. That’s why cameras like the Canon EOS R7 have only just been released a few years later.

The other aspect of all this is that for Canon going from market leader to market leader, is much easier than Panasonic going from Micro Four Thirds to full frame and taking market share off the leader that way. Lumix has never had the brand appeal that Canon have enjoyed, and Panasonic are known as a general consumer electronics company rather than primarily for photography.

The worrying thing for Panasonic is that have not really learnt from past errors.

They still share a mount in a consortium inviting competition from within, from Sigma and Leica. Cannibalisation is a big risk in the L-mount system. In the most recent few months Panasonic seem to be convincing Lumix shooters to replace their GH6 with a G9 II, S5 II or S1H – the biggest cannibal move ever, which risks killing their most well known line of cameras. Instead of tempting GH6 users with an upgrade path, why not tempt Canon and Nikon users to switch systems instead!

As for Sony, although they’ve managed to overtake Nikon in some areas of the market which is a good step for them, it does somewhat tell you more about Nikon than Sony! And there’s still a big gap to Canon at the front. It was a big surprise to me how rapidly professional snappers at football matches and F1 races switched out their 1D X Mark II DSLRs not to a Mark III but instead to mirrorless models, especially with the advent of the EOS R3 in 2021. Sony has never managed to capture the pro sports market in quite the same way, with the A9 or A1, although they have done better with journalists in news organisations.

So will Canon ever be caught?

It seems a tall order, but that doesn’t mean to say Sony, Panasonic and Fuji can’t survive. It goes without saying there’s room for more than just Canon in the camera world.

Fuji with the GFX 100 II are leading the bleeding edge of photography and video, in terms of specs and sensor size.

Sony have carved out a decent chunk of the market behind Canon, and I really think they’ve matured with the a1 and their cinema cameras.

Panasonic meanwhile have a chance with a more established L-mount lens line-up (and help of Sigma) with phase-detect AF to make a success of future S series cameras, like an S1R II or S1H II.

The future for Micro Four Thirds on the other hand doesn’t seem as great.

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The designer’s intent for Micro Four Thirds has been so badly distorted by marketing, the system no longer makes any sense.

In the days of the Panasonic GH1, there would be never any question of simply sneaking a small sensor into the body of a full frame camera and calling it a day. This was never the ethos of Micro Four Thirds. Yet that is exactly what Panasonic have done with the G9 II.

In fact you can trace back the system’s decline all the way to the GH3.

The GH3 was the moment Panasonic started to abandon the original ethos of Micro Four Thirds. They had mishandled the GF line turning into a Micky Mouse entry level camera but with the GH2 they had a huge hit on their hands. It had opened up a whole new market, in filmmaking.

However with the GH3, the homogenous black DSLR style design took over and the camera grew to be almost as large as a Canon 70D. I am sure many saw this as a good thing, a sign of a ‘toy’ coming of age and turning ‘pro’. Yet for me, this is where the fun factor and unique appeal of Micro Four Thirds started to go into reverse.

The Panasonic G9 II is a further piece of really odd thinking by Panasonic. It cannibalises the Panasonic GH6, being practically the same camera for video despite being aimed at photographers, with the killer blow of adding phase-detect AF. Not content with depleting GH6 sales even further, Panasonic have gone one better and made sure the G9 II won’t sell either, by putting it in the chonky body of the full frame S5 II and making it almost the same price, with some equally expensive (and large) lenses.

Back in the days of the Panasonic GH1 and GH2, the system had a clear purpose.

It was to provide a small and light alternative to full frame DSLRs, for less money. Panasonic were also unique in having the best, seamless live view with no mirror, and the best video mode with the GH1, at a time when it was pretty much alone in doing so among mirrorless cameras. Sony wasn’t even offering 24p.

Of course today it is very different, and much harder to stand out on the market, especially when you show a complete lack of creativity as Panasonic have done with the G9 II body.

As full frame cameras have got smaller and less expensive, that has eroded the Micro Four Thirds unique selling point.

Yet Panasonic, could have maintained the allure of Micro Four Thirds and still gone up-market.

Micro Four Thirds could have been like a mini Leica M range for under $2000. Small fast primes, with autofocus (something not offered on the Leica M rangefinders), equally small bodies with high-end design and all lovely metal casing, to compete with the build quality of Leica. Small, unique designs, and artistic images. It would have sold copiously.

A Leica M system for the masses.

Instead we have ended up with basically Sony/Canon-knock offs – large bodies, high prices, big bulky zooms and this never-ending failed ethos of trying to compete for the same customers as full frame rather than being different.

The G9 II is a wannabe full frame camera and $1900, whereas the S5 II is an actual full frame camera for just $100 more.

If the G9 II fails to sell and signals to Panasonic that Micro Four Thirds doesn’t have a future, this will be a disaster.

We will lose a really fantastic format, which isn’t all about shallow depth of field, but about handling, creativity, convenience and unique features. All of that, much more important.

I absolutely love Japanese culture, their way of designing, the ethos of having huge power contained in ingeniously small casing. Why is the American marketing team allowed to dictate to Japan how they design their cameras?

As the Fuji X100 success shows, and the demand for the Leica Q series, small cameras sell in remarkable quantities.

Everything in fact is getting smaller, except Micro Four Thirds!

Smaller cinema cameras, smaller full frame cameras, smaller medium format cameras, not forgetting the smallest cameras of all – smartphones.

For me to compromise on outright image quality, and use a smaller sensor, there has to be a reason to go the other way.

If the reason if a Kern Switar 26mm F1.1 and the Super 16mm aesthetic, this justifies not quite having a clean ISO 6400 and the DOF of medium format!

If the reason is, it fits in my pocket and makes calls, this also justifies not lugging around a full frame camera everywhere I go.

If the reason is, it’s cheaper, it’s nicer to use, it’s cute, it’s the finest Japanese design and culture, I’ll take ten.

If the reason is simply, it has a different lens mount and a 2x crop, I will consider that a low-effort.

I can do a 2x crop on my full frame camera and use my Super 16mm lenses on that instead.

I can also do it on the Fuji X-H2 and maintain more than 4K resolution.

In my opinion, the Panasonic G9 II will not sell – and it could well be the end of the entire Micro Four Thirds ethos of something which was different to the norm, and all the better for it.

I doubt we will see a GH7 now, let alone a tiny Leica-M or Leica CL style rangefinder from Panasonic designed principally for photographers as a thinking man’s alternative to full frame, which just so happens to also shoot fantastic video.

This would be a very sad day for filmmakers, photographers, and not least of all Panasonic themselves.

The post Hannibal Lumix. Why Panasonic have lost the plot over Micro Four Thirds appeared first on EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews.

Destroyer of worlds. A fearsome new technology. Cillian Murphy finds himself in an intimate relationship with it in Oppenheimer.

This is one of Nolan’s finest films. It’s incredibly thought provoking and really gets inside the head of those involved with giving the world nuclear weapons.

It is almost shakespearean in the triumph and tragedy of Oppenheimer’s invention. Sometimes Oppenheimer takes only a few seconds to go from the highest sense of relief and achievement, to a place of sheer terror. It allows you to feel both the insensitivity and detachment that those in the US military and Manhattan Project felt about the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, at the same time as allowing you to feel the horror of it. Oppenheimer was undoubtably a haunted man.

In Nolan’s version of events, the vulnerable personal side of the man is pitched deep into the fever pitch hysteria of war. The drum-beat of war is never far away from Oppenheimer, and never far away from the soundtrack which is ear-blasting.

The quality and power of your cinema’s audio system is of equal importance to the 70mm print in terms of the best way to see Oppenheimer, so IMAX is definitely recommended.

The ‘thinking-man’s Blockbuster director’ (as I see Nolan) pioneered the modern gritty realism style of escapism, for better or worse. He handles big concepts with an auteur’s hand on the tiller. The perfect man to take on Oppenheimer. This is a film which demands a second viewing, perhaps a third. Nolan has a style that I do sometimes find challenging to watch. A lot of going back and forth in time rather than a linear approach, and a lot of very intense diagloue. Oppenheimer is a very dialogue intense film. It is not a Tarkovsky movie or one with a lot of lingering shots, and meaningful silences.

Not that it lacks for pure spectacle.

Nolan’s laudable reluctance to embrace too much CGI and his choice to do as much in-camera as possible proves worth it. He’s an auteur and the idea of conceding so much control to an FX house pains him.

The film has at least 3 absolutely amazing signature moments and a fantastic ending. Even though it’s a three hour film the pacing is very quick. He’s packed a lot in. There’s an very high level of energy and intensity all the time, and you really feel that pressure he’s under to deliver a weapon of such importance.

It’s thought provoking that if Oppenheimer’s team had delivered the bomb a bit earlier (before the defeat of Hitler) the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would probably have been spared. Instead the bombs would probably have fallen on Berlin and Hamburg.

Kodak invented a new black and white IMAX film for Nolan, and with him being such a staunch advocate of film over digital he uses this to great effect. It’s a beautiful film stock and he gives a more objective, detached perspective in the black and white scenes, whereas the colour parts are more in the first person from Oppenheimer’s perspective.

Sometimes there are a few noticeable issues with focus where you might have a forehead in focus rather than the face, such is the challenge of 70mm!

Could it have been shot on an Alexa 65 of course, but the logic behind Nolan’s love affair with film extends beyond just shooting style, photo-chemical film is a community and keeps a lot of very talented people in rare jobs which otherwise might be lost forever.

There’s a lot of ‘courtroom drama’ shot on the Kodak black and white IMAX film in Oppenheimer which delay the build up and gratification of the central story, that of delivering the Manhattan project. I get the sense that Nolan wanted to avoid putting all of the witch hunt in the second half of the movie so he scatters it throughout the whole.

There’s quite a lot of cliche in the classroom chalk-board science scenes, in terms of the ensemble cast, with characters that seem too melodramatic and emotional in my view given the academic nature of their work. In fact Oppenheimer is overall a very melodramatic movie, but it works because of the talent of the cast in particular Matt Damon and Cillian Murphy.

When Matt Damon’s character shows up the movie kicks up a gear and he adds a much needed ‘twinkle’ of charisma and sarcasm in every scene he’s in. This is a really helpful addition to balance the movie after the very earnest earlier scenes, and there’s even some witty humour. This sits about as comfortably in Oppenheimer as the sex scenes!! Every time there’s a moment of brevity in Oppenheimer, it’s instantly lost and the smile drops off your face very quickly.

A lot of the film is about the fallout from Oppenheimer’s suspected communist political links. However the most uncomfortable parts of the film for me are the celebratory scenes, from the US perspective, as I don’t think it will make easy viewing at all for anybody with any empathy for those lives lost in Japan.

It is very jarring to juxtapose the murder of 226,000 people with any kind of blockbuster moments.

Nolan doesn’t shy away from the ethics of it, but some scenes feel like they excuse the science from risking the ignition of the world’s atmosphere to develop a tool of mass murder.

In the 1940s however it was seen as an all-or-nothing situation for the security of the US and indeed the world. Nolan has portrayed this in Oppenheimer in a very intimate, human, personal, first person way. Because of that, it humanises the atrocity and poses the question that it was inevitable, and if it hadn’t had been the US then the Nazis or Communists would have done it first, which would be terrible.

Perhaps Nolan owes us a second Oppenheimer, from the perspective of a Japanese citizen.

A less US-centric vision of the world perhaps would make for a very refreshing Nolan movie.

He is after all a British director!

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Filmmaking is an art form. In the realm of creativity, people often crave the authenticity that only real humans can provide. This is why blockbusters often enlist well-known actors to generate interest and why, despite our daily reliance on them, our personal computers don’t make headlines in gossip columns.

In just one year, MidJourney has gone from making quite interesting, abstract art in the earlier versions, to making very stylish eye candy. The quirky original early AI style has been lost.

That says a lot about the future of AI, in that it may be too good. Too perfect.

The great thing about human art is the unpredictable weirdness and imperfect nature of it. What the modern film industry lacks too, is that same spontaneity, unprofessionalism and risk-taking, creative accidents. This is what sets apart some of the earlier more buccaneering cinema to now. The movie world has become too professional, too safe.

AI is destined to end up the same way with strict safety standards built into the models. It might be difficult to make AI generate original ideas and controversial content.

It might be difficult to avoid cliches, as by definition it only produces derivative works.

This means that AI is a creative tool to assist the human in their film writing, cinematography or virtual set design. It cannot fully take over, it has to be edited, prompted and bent to your intent as a director of the AI tool.

AI art generated purely by AI that springs out of nowhere is going to be a best a niche. With no human behind it, it will be hard to get people to care – it has an authenticity problem. It is trying to look, feel and sound like human art and that is something it isn’t.

Sure, there’s a lot of uncreative and derivative content out there on the internet that can now be done with a simple prompt. In this way AI is a threat to the “filler” produced at a high rate by content creators who aren’t trying to be artistic. Their stuff doesn’t need to be a work of art and doesn’t need to be particularly original. Nobody even cares who makes it.

Just as you’d be ok with fast food being made by machines though – you’re probably not willing to pay in a fancy restaurant for a machine manufactured dish. It’s the same with movies, and writing. A blogger on Nofilmschool could easily be replaced by AI. EOSHD, not so much

Would the AI have a 10 year grudge against Canon over a “cripple hammer”? I doubt it.

Human beings are irrational and emotional, but that’s what makes us so interesting. Likewise, humans connect with other humans. AI for now remains a faceless robot. A shapeshifting nothingness with no set identity. If ChatGPT one day wrote a movie all by itself and starred in it, it’s questionable whether anybody would give a toss.

When the crowds look at a movie poster outside a cinema, do they go for the one starring Brad Pitt or the one starring a made up actor powered by Microsoft Azure?

How would such a synthetic piece of content be promoted? Would the AI actor sit-down with Conan with a load of made-up life stories and fake anecdotes? Where is the appeal in that beyond a one off novelty appearance? It doesn’t sound very appealing to me. People care about human beings.

The other oversight when people say that AI will take actors jobs is that AI currently takes no physical form. I’d much rather gaze at Emma Watson on TV than a PC rolling around on a stand or a hologram.

A big obstacle for AI to ‘go it alone’ in the creative industries, aside from a lack of physical form and no consciousness, is that AI models lack individual real, personal and subjective life experiences. The ones it can come up with are not authentic or actually personal. These have to be synthesised from a large language model database, so the AI creator of the arts remains a figment of machine imagination rather than a real celebrity human being.

Whenever a movie comes out, you’re interested in the humans behind it and the personal endeavour that went into it. What’s Kubrick’s story of making 2001, what was his life and career leading up to it, and what about his personal life? AI can only fake all of this, and just as we’re not interested in people who pretend to be Kubrick, we’re not going to be interested in machines pretending to be Kubrick, other than to marvel technically at it or to use it as a tool in our filmmaking process.

It is in that way I think AI is brilliant.

As a tool, with the right prompting it can come up with very good material, ideas and imagery that can in-turn prompt you as the human into doing something worthwhile with this material, and making your mark on it. Editing my own ideas into it like weaving a digital tapestry is very appealing. AI can also help writers overcome writer’s block, stay focused, stay in a flow and give them outlines of new stories, scenes and characters in a few seconds. It is a tool of inspiration, and the same goes for the generative visual AI like MidJourney. It can give you some really interesting styles and ideas to try out in real world photography or cinematography.

The prompts will eventually turn from text based ones, towards a fully fledged graphical user interface and physical controls. This then gives the human being MORE input to determine the outcome of the images or writings, and takes automation away from the AI. So the AI is going to evolve towards us and not away from us.

When this happens we will have AI augmented human art and that does not replace you, or eliminate jobs – it does the opposite. It creates demand and the need for new jobs.

Eventually as the tools evolve, of course they are going to be able to bring your imagination to life on a screen – be it films, characters, fully fledges scripts that might even be good enough to be pitched to a movie studio… But only on screen. The real physical world remains for now unbothered as all the AI action is taking place between your head and a screen in the corner of a room.

What emanates from this should be interesting to see, in the way it evolves human discourse and art, and influences other filmmakers.

This definitely lowers the barrier to filmmaking just as affordable DSLRs did.

But as with saw with DSLRs, what happened?

After the dust settled, the industry went back pretty much to how it was before. Affordable cinema cameras did not fundamentally change the hierarchy of the film industry or take jobs away from Hollywood. If anything, the DSLR revolution created jobs, especially in the more ‘everyday’ areas of filming online content for example.

With the routine world of content, perhaps AI could allow one writer to do the job of 5 or 10.

But when it comes to high level art and creative work, there’s still only you with your hand on the tiller.

And if anything, if fully human made movies & photography with no CGI or AI become rarer that only makes them more valuable.

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“Today we lost our jobs for you”

The Hollywood strike has taken a bitter twist, for those lower down the rungs of the industry ladder.

These people have effectively lost their jobs and all income.

Unlike wealthy actors and camera crew who can afford to strike, some of these support folk are those who live production to production.

Along with extras and thousands of less well known actors and camera crew supposed to survive a 6-12 month strike with no pay?

The statement going around at the moment is a very bitter and angry warning to the industry and very tough to hear. Below you can see concise extracts from it.

It has made a lot of people quite angry as it specifically seems targeted at “camera crews” “who take all the glory” and awards, but I am sure by that they mean cinematographers, writers and actors who are the majority of people leading the strike action.

Unhappy at the strike are a very large number of people. Location Managers, production staff, runners, drivers, security guards, caterers, cleaners, hair and make-up, costume and props department, riggers and stagehands, carpenters and craftspeople.

The joint statement standing up support crews is strongly worded.

“We look after you. We work through the night for you. We beckon to your every call. We make you coffee and clear up after you.”

“We freelancers lost our livelihoods in the pandemic.”

“Today we lost our jobs for you.”

It also acknowledges the recent sacrifices made to get the film industry back on track after COVID, the “18 hour days”, the missed weekends and holidays that could have been spent with family.

Despite this sacrifice the industry repays them with no pay for months due to strike action by the SAG.

Do they have a valid point? Absolutely.

It seems the strike does nothing but play into the hands of the very organisations they’re fighting for better terms with. Maybe they should go back to work, as the studios will surely be happy to drag this on for 6 months.

Many of those involved on both sides of the dispute can of course afford to drag it out for 6 months or even longer, and negotiate for ages. Those they depend on to make the film industry tick cannot.

A timely reminder that the strike should have an urgent resolution.

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As Oppenheimer opens around the world, director Christopher Nolan has been speaking to the media about his creative process. In the meantime, Hollywood is vehemently on strike to fight the twin technological threat of the streaming giants and the threat to livelihoods of AI.

Whilst not a “luddite”, Nolan admits he’s taken a very large step back from technology in his work life – no smartphone, no social media. The director doesn’t use email personally, and delivers scripts to lead actors by hand. In the process of screenwriting he uses a computer with no internet connection.

I have an opinion on that…

The fact is social media is extremely distracting.

And while the Screen Actors Guide sees technology like AI as a threat to livelihoods, I see AI as a very promising new creative tool to wrestle back attention from pointless social media and assist in the process of filmmaking.

Part of why Nolan is so effective is that he doesn’t partake in social media at all.

“I think technology and what it can provide is amazing. My personal choice is about how involved I get. It’s about the level of distraction. If I’m generating my material and writing my own scripts, being on a smartphone all day wouldn’t be very useful for me.” – Christopher Nolan

(Full interview from the Hollywood Reporter)

He also reveals that his computer used for scriptwriting has no internet connection, and of course no email – partly for security concerns.

But the very nature of modern technology is that it is highly distracting and chips away at your creative discipline.

There are many times I’ve considered going offline as well to work on something – but I find it impossible when it comes to EOSHD – the fact that by nature, it is an online community, and on social media – the temptation to go down an internet rabbit hole is always a single click away during a chore.

I mean, look at the state of this for example…

Or, can in fact AI be a useful creative tool, which focuses your attention on the creative process and keeps it going?

I’ve found it very useful for overcoming writer’s block for instance.

You can engage with it like a personal assistant and it keeps you focused on the job. Indeed it is in the scriptwriting process this is where I think generative AI can be most useful. It’s a natural language model. It is particularly good at writing and coming up with ideas for films, books, cinema.

I think it’s fantastic at writing the bare bones of a scene or key protagonist, which you can then embellish by hand, page by page, character by character.

When it comes to entirely AI generated photo-realistic films, I think this will remain a completely separate genre like CGI animation – people want to see real stars on screen. Can a computer be famous? Can an AI generated actor who doesn’t exist, become a celebrity?

Entirely CGI movies and animation still need big names on a cast list most of the time. Real actors doing the voices. A synthetic actor generated by computer surely won’t achieve the same level of fame as real people can. Or can it? Now I think about it, maybe the film industry should indeed be worried. Maybe it should be prepared for the fact that there might be some incredibly good photo realistic films made by one guy with AI and a PC sometime in the near future.

In today’s online world however, the human touch can be forgotten.

An analogue phone call, instead of an email. A face to face meet-up, rather than on a forum or Discord channel.

With Nolan, the face to face approach serves two ends – privacy and creativity. It goes without saying that creativity in-person is completely different to communicating remotely.

When the Oppenheimer script was ready, Nolan flew to Ireland to hand it to Cillian Murphy. This way also, it couldn’t be leaked or hacked.

“People will say, ‘Why do you work in secrecy?’ Well, it’s not secrecy, it’s privacy. It’s being able to try things, to make mistakes, to be as adventurous as possible. And to be able to sit with somebody who’s just read what you’ve written and get their take on it, see how they connect with it in a very human, face-to-face way.” – Christopher Nolan

Despite the effort required to be present in person – Nolan had his limits. Oppenheimer had an expansive cast. Many of the actors playing scientists in the movie created a WhatsApp group, dubbed “Oppenhomies” to keep in touch, and in many ways this is becoming the norm. So many film talents in 2023 actually seem to prefer to socialise only online rather than going to a bar after a day’s shoot.

I wonder how much of the creative process of the very best directors is helped by knowing when and where it’s appropriate to be online or using a smartphone, and when to shut off and make in-person effort.

I also wonder how much of the ill-feeling in the current film industry strikes is down to modern remote working practices – and the isolation that stems from it, especially for writers. The issue of money is of course seen as paramount in the strike – but the remote working and weird post-covid corporate mentality surely doesn’t help people lower down the ladder in the film industry feel very valued as human beings.

Maybe executives could take a leaf out of Nolan’s book and kick their full-on smartphone and remote working habits out of work culture?

I think that workplace banter and idle chat is all an essential cog in the machine, to combat loneliness and make even mundane work seem more enjoyable because you do it as a team.

After all, filmmaking is one of the biggest team efforts around.

The post Oppenheimer: Why Christopher Nolan uses a flip-phone appeared first on EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews.

When it comes to firmware updates Sony has had a lot of upset from users in recent months, and rightly so because they don’t give you anywhere near as many interesting updates as the competition. The Sony a1 was a rare exception in that it got a significant bump in image quality with a new 8K 500Mbit 4:2:2 10bit mode. Other cameras such as one of my personal favourites, the RX1R II full frame compact have never had a single firmware update. Not one!

Sony is likely going to have to change this, and I have some suggestions for what they should add.

Anamorphic mode

Super 35mm and full frame 4:3 open gate and 3:2 modes would put Sony up there with Panasonic for supporting anamorphic lenses. This would ideally have support for all the common squeeze factors between 1.33x and 2x anamorphic, and should have a de-squeeze function for normal monitoring & playback in-camera with the LCD & EVF. That’s the minimum to ask really.

Preset custom crop modes

Sony’s clear-image zoom works very well especially on the higher resolution cameras like the a1 or a7r line. You can even put C-mount Super 16mm lenses on there and shoot 4K at 2x crop like a GH6. Unfortunately the camera never remembers the crop when you cycle the power or change from video to stills mode. It would be great to store a crop factor in a list and be able to label them i.e. “Super 16mm” for quick access and for the camera to remember the last selected crop. It would also be handy to have the option of one button press to cycle between them rather than going into a menu to select them the slow way.

In-camera LUT support

Pretty self explanatory really, if Sony can match the Panasonic S5 II in this department and allow us even to bake LUTs into the final footage, it would allow proper custom image profiles to be selected in-camera (and shared online) rather than being limited to the settings provided in Creative Styles and Picture Profiles. Then, nobody would complain about Sony colour again!

In-camera RAW recording

With Canon, Nikon, RED, Blackmagic and Sigma having RAW recording without needing an external device, it is time Sony stepped up to join them. The Nik0n Z9 and Z8 with N-RAW demonstrates RED are open to making licensing deals and technology transfers over the long-successfully defended patent on internal compressed RAW recording.

Synchro scan

To fine tune the shutter speed would be ideal especially since Panasonic has had this feature since 2014!

More action on the firmware update front

It really is necessary to step up to the level of Panasonic, Fuji and Nikon when it comes to offering more new features for free.

Top panel LCD

Sony have been very conservative in the camera design department. Most of their full frame cameras look and feel almost identical. It would be good to start mixing it up a bit like Fuji and trying more different form factors. When it comes to E-mount, they only really have two kinds of bodies – The a7 type camera and the A7c / A6600 variety. On their pro model, the a1, it should really at the very least have a top-panel LCD instead of a consumer camera mode dial.

Better rear LCD

Sony have the worst rear screen quality of all the manufacturers. Smaller, less bright, it as if they have kept to the same type of LCD panel for a decade. Sony’s smartphones have amazing OLED panels. Why not their Alpha mirrorless cameras given these cost many, many times more?

A less rubbish playback poster frame for video recordings

Navigating through video files in-camera, it really is appallingly bad!

Film style bracketing for stills

Sony should take a leaf out of Fuji’s book and put in a picture style bracketing mode in Alpha cameras. To have 3 JPEGs, one in black and white and two colour ones graded differently is really useful for quickly seeing which style shoots a particular shot and gives you a direction to follow in post.

Internal ProRes recording

Fuji again leads the way here as they have ProRes LT for smaller file sizes, plus the other flavours, and it’s very smooth to edit. Obviously something for Sony to consider, to compete with the X-H2 and upcoming Panasonic S1H II.

Internal E-ND aka FS5

I can only dream?

Summing up

There’s nothing too radical in this list and nothing the competition doesn’t already have. In some cases, we’re on the 5th iteration of a single model of mirrorless camera and basic features are still missing.

The electronic variable ND on the FS5 came out nearly 10 years ago and still hasn’t found its way onto an Alpha camera.

Anamorphic has been all the range for even longer and Sony has ignored it.

I suppose Sony considers a lot of this stuff niche but when you add it all up from the list above it is quite a big chunk missing from their arsenal.

Hopefully this will change, both with future hardware and future firmware updates.

The post What’s still missing from Sony’s mirrorless camera range… appeared first on EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews.

The Nikon Z9 court battle is no more, and it was a quite predictable ending. The two companies, RED and Nikon, came to an out of court settlement recently. This week the case was dismissed on request of both parties.

This means there has was a behind the scenes agreement, most likely a technology transfer deal, or patent licensing which enables Nikon to continue to offer internal RAW recording on their cameras, to the satisfaction of RED. This could be done in a similar way to the agreement between RED and Canon that’s already in place. The details of which is also a secret. Canon have been offering internal C-RAW recording for a while, with RED in return also using certain Canon technologies – such as RF mount on the Komodo.

The out of court agreement means the pop corn spectacle of a jury trial previously scheduled for January 2024 won’t now go ahead.

Presumably Nikon did not simply settle in a way that withdraws N-RAW from future cameras. That would be a pathetic throwing-in of the towel, and perhaps Nikon should clarify that they will continue with N-RAW.

RED presumably did not settle on the basis that their patent no longer holds up, it has previously won vs Sony, Apple and others. Nobody seems to be able to knock it over. Not even using EOSHD Forum arguments and Nikon’s lawyers tried to do.

It might be that certain Nikon technologies could be turning up on RED cameras – perhaps patented technology related to sensor development and design, or optical design. The stacked sensor in the Z9 would make for a very nice 8K/60p full frame Komodo wouldn’t it?

Meanwhile as an N-RAW user myself I am not that bothered either way whether it stays or goes.

It isn’t really much different to a good H.265 LOG format as evidenced here on EOSHD:

Is N-RAW real RAW? Nikon Z9 under the spotlight at EOSHD

Check out the EOSHD YouTube Channel here

The post RED and Nikon settle N-RAW dispute court battle – But how? appeared first on EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews.

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