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It’s like Canon 5D Mark II vs Panasonic GH1 all over again!

Canon got aggressive with the R8, and finally put the cripple hammer away. This is the bargain value for money full frame camera of our era, they had no choice but to do it – the Sony a7 IV exists. Indeed, the a7 V exists, but it lives in a higher realm of pricing – feature packed for sure, but does it actually offer a better image overall than the R8? I’d say… Debatable.

Then in the Lumix corner, we have the G9 II which on the face of it is not supposed to be a GH7, but it is.

And best of all, this Not A GH7 can be had for around 1200 euros, or less, if you shop around.

The G9 II is an underrated tool. The spec is more aligned with a flagship camera, like the Sony a1 II, than an enthusiast filmmaking tool, and it has far fewer compromises than the EOS R8. If you don’t mind the 2x crop sensor it’s the one to get – but it requires considerate thought in terms of glass. If you’re not careful it can end up looking a bit clinical, but that sensor – the same as the GH7 – is just such a bomb. It’s the closest Micro Four Thirds has ever been to full frame in dynamic range and low light performance, and surpasses all but the very best flagship full frame sensors in terms of speed. The quality of the 4K/120fps is outstanding.

The EOS R8 is a slower camera, and the most glaring omission is the lack of in body stabilisation. If you’re an avid collector of vintage glass or manual focus stuff, you might not miss it – the flagship R1 and R3 behave as if IBIS doesn’t exist when you’re not using native Canon RF mount lenses.

What I do like about the EOS R8 is the straight-forwardness of the body design, how small and thin it is, how good the ergonomics are – a big improvement on the RP – how decent the EVF is, how the cripple hammer was resisted in terms of autofocus and video – two areas where you can barely tell it apart from the much more expensive EOS R6 Mark II.

The lack of IBIS is in some ways a blessing – forcing you to get the sticks out and do stuff properly.

Whereas the G9 II is the closest you can get to the speed and specs of a flagship Sony A1 II, or Nikon Z8 for nowhere near as much money, and you’ll save on the lenses too – and the weight, and the size.

If I were to choose just one…

The EOS R8 does have the full frame image and all the advantages that brings, but to be honest it’s not all just about an ever more shallow DOF – it’s going out of fashion. The full frame advantage is in terms of lenses – a 35mm is a 35mm, a 50 is a 50. With Micro Four Thirds there’s always that nagging crop to factor in.

The G9 isn’t quite as good at very high ISOs, isn’t quite as creamy looking – but it’s a better documentary camera, faster, better battery times, far more feature packed.

And that’s why if I did pick one it would be the Lumix.

The post Battle of the $1000 filmmaking kit: Canon EOS R8 vs Panasonic G9 II appeared first on EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews.

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EOSHD is a filmmaking camera blog but there are rare moments the earth seems to shift and something comes along which has nothing to do with what I usually cover, that nevertheless has profound implications for all of us. Early days though it may be, Moltbot is one of these moments.

This is a concept… with many implications.

Moltbot is a locally installed AI agent and is given full admin rights to your Mac or PC.

With that in mind it’s best to set it up on a second rig especially for the purpose, preferably an M4 Mac Mini and then allow Moltbot to go full goblin mode commandeering the machine. It will exploit the full capabilities of that machine and everything it can do, via an existing AI large language model – preferably one that can also be run locally, without any calls to OpenAI, Gemini or Claude.

According to the FAQ: “You can run Moltbot with API keys (Anthropic/OpenAI/others) or with local‑only models so your data stays on your device.”

This concept –  of giving a local AI model full control of your computer, all the apps on it, all of the internet, all your accounts and all your data, is very interesting and I think it’s the future.

But what could possibly go wrong?!

Moltbot will open apps, write code, code it’s own apps, use the terminal to configure the machine itself, install capabilities, edit images with Photoshop, grade images, make LUTs, edit videos, upload content, create websites, post content to the internet, delete your emails, answer your emails, do your tax, run your entire business if you want it to.

Everything a human does with a computer, Moltbot does and unlike us, it will sit there 24/7 multitasking with no sleep.

Moltbot is at your beck and call, commandeered by WhatsApp, or another encrypted message service. You make the requests and it does the work.

It DOES stuff, it takes ACTION, it doesn’t just chat and generate content, it’ll even switch your light bulbs on and off.

But all of these clever aspects of it are secondary to the enormity of the concept itself in computing terms.

What Moltbot means for the AI industry seems very significant – not just for how you use a Mac Mini to code apps or edit video, but what it means for OpenAI and the centralised corporate server farm bubble the Americans have built up in recent years much to their folly, because the future of AI is decentralised, and it is open source.

The USA has got into some sort of arms race and built infrastructure to such a ridiculously heated degree – seemingly not to realise that it’ll all be obsolete in a few years, quite possibly even over night.

Tools like Moltbot means that the bubble as it exists right now with OpenAI and Microsoft at the centre of the world, huge Meta-owned data centres and so on… is about to be consigned to history and the bubble is about to go pop in a way that makes the big bang look goofy.

For running LLMs locally on a powerful GPU or M4 Mac Mini is surely the future, decentralised, peer to peer, open source, a MacOS centred AI that actually DOES THINGS rather than corporate chatbots.

You see, large language models are a commodity now. There’s no longer anything special about one over the other, not really anyway. There’s lots of them, they all do the same thing, cost a similar amount, run on the same hardware, they’re incredibly wasteful, environmentally damaging, inflationary for fuel prices, GPUs and RAM, they waste water, pollute water, and nobody has worked out how to make a profit from any of them! They’re handy tools for the public but the money these corporate idiots are spending on data centres dwarfs the money coming in from subscriptions.

What’s more they are all disembodied. OK, they make a lot of AI slop and eye candy – nice trick, but a brain is nothing without a good toolbox. The Macbook for example is one of the finest tools humanity has come up with. Without our Macbooks, coders couldn’t code, bloggers couldn’t blog, YouTubers couldn’t YouTube, camera enthusiasts couldn’t connect to each-other across the world, we need our tools.

Where would we be if we never picked up a rock and sharpened it into a knife to kill prey, we would never have made it very far as an intelligent species, would we? If we didn’t have cars we’d all still be hauling stuff around in the mud, if we didn’t have computers we’d all still be hunting and gathering, we wouldn’t have achieved much just sitting around talking to ourselves like a brain in a jar.

Sure, chatbots can talk a good talk, they can absorb a lot of existing knowledge and data, they can generate imagery, spit out all those videos, photos, scripts and funny little poems but this is just brain-in-a-jar stuff.

With a concept like Moltbot however, you are handing a neural network one of the world’s most powerful tools, the desktop computer, connected to the internet. Commanding it to take control, and asking it to do stuff via that tool is much more useful than simply chatting and generating stuff. No longer is the AI agent simply conversing over and over with itself, dreaming inside its own head, synthesising new images from old or conjuring up hallucinations, instead it’s piloting, driving, steering, doing, making.

It is using a computer!

Which is what most of us do anyway for a career!

This is a big step that AI needed to make because to commandeer stuff in the physical world like directing films or even getting the groceries in, that’s tough – it requires absolutely enormous advances in robotics technology, political consent, and the cheap proliferation of it, which isn’t about to happen, so practical and physical labour is currently not heading to mass market. A step too far for the brain in the jar that is AI in 2026.

Humanoid AI will remain not just incredibly expensive but to be honest quite frightening, and not a decision most people would be comfortable making lightly or something they’d be comfortable living alongside of. Not yet anyway.

In terms of filmmaking however, armed with your laptop, Moltbot could act as a publicist, an agent, a blogger, a web designer, editor, colourist, and it wouldn’t just be generative. Not just coming up with content but actually actioning stuff as well, without us micro managing that side of it. It has the potential to multitask and work for you while you sleep.

It’s a kind of “ah, I get it now” moment for AI when it actually does something useful for once. A more practical phase, the doing phase and the taking control phase.

Now just bear in mind that it’s still very early days. It probably has a lot of limitations, but maybe it’s time to find out for yourself. Moltbot is available now (https://www.molt.bot)

Moltbot docs & FAQ (https://docs.molt.bot/help/faq#do-i-need-a-claude-or-openai-subscription-to-run-this)

Use at your own risk!

The post Oops. Has ChatGPT just been made obsolete over night? #Moltbot appeared first on EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews.

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I’ve known about MPB since they started following EOSHD on Twitter, all the way back in 2011. Soon after that MPB reached out with an offer to sponsor the blog. Describing themselves as “The UK’s Only Specialist Canon and Nikon Used Equipment Dealer”, MPB have come a long way since the early days. When MPB set-up a warehouse in Berlin, as you can imagine I was very excited and as a serious gear-addict, have spent many thousands with MPB online over the years

My last order was placed this week in Berlin. When I say last order, it could literally be.

It is mainly on the EU side of MPB in Berlin where I have been let down time and time again. Over 7 serious problems this past 12 months alone and now a big slap down from their customer experience team leader accusing me of being an abusive customer. This review is something I’ve been holding back for many months, to give MPB every chance to make amends, but I think it would be a disservice to the camera-world for the facts to go unpublished.

These problems are systematic and experienced by many others. It started for me in January 2025 when some of my own gear was due to be returned with what I’d bought as part of a trade-in. Instead of arriving back with me, the gear went into one of Stephen Hawking’s Black Holes around the back of DHL’s warehouse in Ludwigsfelde. Rather than reappearing as Canon radiation, nobody to this day can offer any explanation as to what happened to my Canon and Sony gear…not least MPB, certainly not DHL, not even Steven Hawking.

That’s ok, deliveries go missing occasionally. It’s the way MPB’s customer service team in Berlin dealt with it that’s from another planet, and not a good one. Rather than offer a prompt refund, MPB made me wait nearly 2 months for (their own) DHL compensation claim to proceed. This is against EU trading laws. Eventually MPB refunded the Sony camera I had ordered only, but not my own lost equipment. This needed separate, further effort on my part to chase again – by April, almost as much time had gone into the black hole as camera equipment.

The eventual compensation did not even reflect the value of the goods had sent them and never received back. Had I received it back as planned and sold the camera privately it would have gone for 50% more . Something to be aware of, if you decide not to accept their revised lower quoted value (which happens very often for the most spurious of reasons) and it goes missing.

Undeterred I accepted one-off disasters happen, this wasn’t going to ruin my 13 year relationship with MPB.

I decided to place my faith in the MPB gods once again and ordered a bargain, spares & repairs Leica Q which I intended to fix.

Stupid, I know.

This is when I really suspected something unusual, because it immediately went into the same black hole again, gone forever. Bear in mind this is not a complex logistical challenge – a delivery from Berlin, to Berlin. In order to get any sort of prompt action out of MPB I had to email their CEO, Matt Baker as their EU customer service team were now in the habit of simply ignoring emails.

What was going on? Were MPB’s boxes splitting open, due to the environmentally friendly paper box tape? Was somebody at DHL helping themselves to free cameras?

It still has not been explained.

At this point, as you can imagine I was quite annoyed. Three items lost, months without the money, would it be the case again with the Leica Q? CEO Matt Baker was initially on the case, but it all felt rather performative. After 1 or two emails, Mr Baker simply vanished just like my deliveries… ghosted by the boss.

I can accept he had better things to do, but a simple email saying – sorry Andrew, I’m rather busy, I’ll let my team look after you, wouldn’t have gone amiss. After all he had employed a team of people in Berlin whose actual job it was to look after customers.

Undeterred I ordered a Sony a7s III in the UK which was reserved as part of a trade-in, before I had chance to send the trade-in items, suddenly the Sony was taken off reservation for no reason and sold to someone else – with no audit trail. The staff could offer no explanation. I even did a freedom of information request to get to the bottom of it. There was nothing. This was so strange that not even MPB could explain it so at this point I was fighting for the whereabouts of my Leica Q in Berlin, and my Sony a7s III in the UK, several thousands of euros worth of kit – a battle on two fronts at once!

And the problems for me were not over yet. Equipment I was selling or trading-in with MPB would have spurious deductions applied to the quotes which didn’t make any sense. To give you an example: a boxed and fully complete camera as originally bought brand new had a deduction applied for a “missing AC adapter” – which was never even included in the first place by the manufacturer in the box. If they are doing this to me, how many others are out of pocket?

After all these problems, you might think it would be reasonable for the customer to vent their frustration with some negative feedback. I did exactly that, but rather than take it onboard, let alone apologise, MPB’s customer experience operations manager in Berlin doubled down on the blame game and issued me with a severe telling off, threats of action via “serious channels”, continuing “You do not have the right to belittle our team’s concerns, nor to direct discriminatory, insulting, or threatening language toward any of our staff.” none of which I did, and I can prove it – yet at the same time I’m not going to sit there and tell them how wonderful everything is when it isn’t.

Every time rather than helping me with the latest problem of their own making, this person began to point the finger at me instead.

The exact reversal of what a customer experience role entails.

Imagine, after 13 years of spending money with a store, time and time again to be told that YOU are in fact a problem, that the messed-up orders and non-deliveries don’t deserve or warrant any negative feedback at all.

Before this review was published, MPB claimed I was making an “unnecessary threat involving public defamation”. Apparently, in their eyes it is “defamation” to speak factually about your experience as a customer?

MPB in Berlin owe me an apology for the way they have behaved. The performance issues are bad enough, but the customer service team which would rather have an argument and shout “defamation” before listening to what the customer is actually saying, and solving the problems, is the cherry on top.

The problems didn’t stop here either. The last MPB non-delivery was only a month ago, in the lead up to Christmas. I have still not received a refund, for a delivery which was due on the 23rd December.

MPB’s sales practices also raise eyebrows – Sometimes descriptions on the website completely misrepresent what is being supplied. You’d think for example that a paid camera tester who sees thousands of units a year would know the difference between dust or debris on the sensor, and laser damage. In my experience, this hasn’t been the case. I also received a Leica M camera with a broken jog-dial.

In the case of the lost shipments, staff didn’t even file the claim form with DHL until many weeks later, despite assuring me it was a done job, but at the end of the day why should they ask a customer to wait months for MPB to get compensation from the postal service?

It’s frustrating for the customer to have to keep on at people, spending countless hours with emails and online chats, only to have staff sit on their hands and then a few days later forget to do anything at all.

Mistakes can happen, it’s the attitude in dealing with them that needs to improve at MPB if they are to keep hold of one of the longest standing customers.

The post MPB camera store review 2026 – The mysterious case of 7 lost packages appeared first on EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews.

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As another year draws to a close here are EOSHD’s official observations on the camera market for 2025, new vs used.

And which cameras for both stills and cinema stood out for value for money in 2025?

It’s making more and more sense to buy a used camera, and leave the new stuff on the shop shelf.

That said, 2025 has seen some exciting new releases. Canon have got their specs-act together with the EOS R6 Mark III, and Nikon has finally brought RED tech into the mirrorless camera world. How did Sony, Panasonic, Fuji and the rest fare? Read on to find out…

New vs used 2025 (overall winners)

New camera best buys for video

• Canon EOS R6 Mark III (new $2900) – 7K RAW and a feature set which builds and improves on the old EOS R5 flagship, little not to like but RF mount lens range is more limited than others
• Sony a7 V (new $2900) – 7K sensor readout, good quality oversampled 4K at up to 60fps, 4K/120p mode is 1.5x crop, much less rolling shutter than the predecessor cameras. Price is a little on high-side – sadly don’t expect used prices to come down for a while
• Nikon Zr (new $2200) – REDCode / N-RAW for cheap with a wide ranging video spec sheet, it’s the little camera that can
• Panasonic S1 II or S1R II (new $3200) – the S1 II is best in low light, the S1R II offers 8K open gate with a resolution advantage – excellent image quality but L-mount might put some off

New camera market image quality chart 2025

1. Canon EOS R6 Mark III (7K, overall best internal RAW camera)
2. Sony a1 II (best 8K image)
3. Panasonic S1R II (best value for money full frame 8K camera)
4. Panasonic S1 II (best low light camera)
5. Nikon Zr (REDcode and same sensor as Z6 III)
6. Nikon Z6 Mark III
7. Panasonic S1 IIe (best value open gate camera)
8. Sony a7v (capable, but slower sensor and worse rolling shutter)
9. Sony FX2 (excellent image, but no better than cheaper a7 IV or a7c II)
10. Leica SL3-S (value for money isn’t quite there)

Second hand used best-buys

• Fujifilm GFX 100 (used $2000+) – People really don’t understand this camera. There’s no need to splash out on Fuji medium format glass – put Minolta MD lenses on there and shoot the IMAX look in 4K 10bit. It’s also one of the best built and best designed cameras of all time – head and shoulders above the smaller GFX 100S ergonomically
• Sony a1 (used $3200) – The more the price of the 2021 flagship drops on the used market the more incredible it is. Here we are 5 years later and the image, performance and overall spec lacks for virtually nothing.
• Canon EOS R5 (used $1900) – Best spec mirrorless camera on paper, under $2k – 8K RAW for how much?! Also consider – EOS R5C for 8K/60p, active cooling and longer recording times, minus IBIS
• Panasonic S1H (used $1200) – Highly capable if you shoot Cinema 24fps – one of the only cameras with an anti-aliasing filter, one of the best 6K images you can get – the current used rate is a steal, and the ergonomics brilliant although heavy
• Nikon Z8 (used $2800) – The best overall paper-spec for the money, there’s really very little it can’t do, if you’re a Z-mount user this is the one to get
• Fuji X-H2 (used $1300) – The only camera remotely close to $1000 with 8K ProRes, and file-size shrinking variant ProRes LT is very welcome too, spectacular image quality
• Sony a7 IV (used $1300) – Sony’s 2021 “basic model” offers FX2 level image quality for cheap, with great AF and wide ranging feature set for hybrid users

Bargains:

• Panasonic S9 (used $900) – it’s practically an S1H, in a tiny small form factor, mega cheap – although some will miss the EVF and mechanical shutter of the S5 II, the image is excellent and real-time LUTs allow for some incredible colour science / colour processing in-camera
• Sony a9 (used $1200) – the cheapest stacked sensor full frame camera with excellent rec.709 4K (NO S-LOG!)
• Sony a7 III (used $900) – the best all-round full frame camera under $1k for most people
• Nikon Z6 (used $700) – the best value for money 4K full frame camera for 24/30p without a crop

Used camera tiers (pre-2025)

S tier

• Fujifilm GFX 100 ($2300) – 44x33mm sensor with no crop in 4K, excellent codec, colour science and image processing, stills quality beats all others
• Panasonic S1H ($1100) – best value for money Netflix approved open gate full frame camera and excellent in low light
• Fujifilm X-H2 ($1200) – best value for money 8K ProRes camera (APS-C)
• Sigma Fp-L ($1300) – an excellent left-field choice for cinematic visuals, thanks to full frame 60mp sensor, pixel binned 4K at full frame but oversampling at 1.3x crop, uncompressed Cinema DNG 4K, superior sensor to original Fp
• Canon EOS R5 ($2000) – excellent value for money, the video quality has not been significantly bettered by any of the 2025 cameras or EOS R5 II
• Nikon Z8 ($2500) – wants for nothing
• Sony FX3 ($3500) – used prices still high, a7s III with same sensor is a cheaper alternative
• Sony a7 IV ($1200) – if speed isn’t a priority (i.e 4K/60/120) and you don’t mind higher rolling shutter than the newer cameras, the overall video quality and image quality is excellent and the price is a bargain

A tier

• Fujifilm X-T5 ($1100) – excellent codec and 6K, but more limited vs X-H2
• Olympus OM-1 ($900) – superb stabilisation, good 4K/60p and lovely handling
• Nikon Z6 ($700) – still one of the best all-round 8bit 4K/24p full frame cameras after 7 years
• Sony a7 III ($800) – image still holds up
• Fujifilm X-T4 ($800) – excellent value, with very good low light 26mp sensor and superior video feature-set vs more expensive X-Pro3
• Panasonic GH5S ($600) – the best Micro Four Thirds camera for low light shooting

B tier

• Fujifilm X-T3 ($600) – still great 4K/60p 10bit but aging, X-T4 has IBIS
• Panasonic GH5 ($500) – still a great image and feature-set, however lacks open gate / phase-detect AF and RealTime LUTs
• Olympus E-M1X ($600) – a real dark horse, similar sensor to GH5, however has phase-detect AF, great 4K OM-LOG and outstandling stabilisation. A real bargain
• Fuji X-H1 ($500) – outstanding value for money 4K camera with LOG and Fuji’s highly rated film simulations

C tier

• Samsung NX1 ($500) – image still stands up but only 8bit and lacking modern features like LOG, LUTs and IBIS
• 5D Mark III with Magic Lantern 3.5K RAW Video ($400) – with the hack, the Cinema DNG raw image is incredibly good, but it’s a very old DSLR
• Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera OG ($400) – one of the best 1080p cameras and cheap

The post The 2025 Hybrid Mirrorless Camera Rankings appeared first on EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews.

If you’re wondering why the camera industry churns out so many homogeneous black cameras with the same specs and price, look no further than the reception the different ones get in the camera dweeb community.

We should all be encouraging the Japanese manufacturers to try different things and think outside the box.

Invariably these more ‘experimental’ cameras are more fun to shoot with.

Take for example the Fujifilm GFX 100, the original one. Yes the smaller and cheaper GFX 100S was more popular but the original broke the mould of what a medium format camera could do especially for cinema.

Take the Fujifilm X-Pro3 as well, another example of a special design that encourages a more creative approach to getting the shot.

Those weirdos who only own one camera probably wouldn’t brave it out with an GFX 100 and Leica M lens adapter. Manual focus isn’t for everyone, and the native GFX mount medium format lenses are slow, sterile and expensive. But the results I get with a cheap Minolta 50mm lens on the GFX 100 are 10x more artistic than the ‘default option’ of a high-end full frame mirrorless camera and brand new 24-70mm F2.8 that the average rich brat has just spent $6000+ on.

Granted the 3 cameras Chris and Jordan mention are not without issues. The Sigma Bf has an absolutely baffling UI when you first pick it up and some unsettlingly sharp edges. The Fuji X-Half has a rather soft JPEG-only output that you don’t want to pixel peep and a cheap lens that isn’t as fast (or even as sharp) as what you’d find on a smartphone costing the same price. But this camera is simply not about pixel peeping or specs.

The Sony FX2 meanwhile – I get it. It would have been nice if Sony had waited a year and put the newer sensor of the a7v in it. I know it’s neither an FX3 or an a7v and therefore appeals to nobody that are interested in the latter two, which is most people.

But the FX2 is criticised as if no camera has ever been followed-up by a faster one later. It’s completely normal, and the price of the FX2 reflects it as well.

You can quantify the specs all day long but with these cameras it’s the intangibles that matter. The X-Half is a pure creative tool to bring out the pleasure of shooting.

And that experience of walking the streets with it is made even more enjoyable by the fact it’s a trendy fashion item which brings out the pleasure of using it even more. I know it seems shallow to say, but you do look less like a dork with a camera that looks like a camera, rather than something that looks like a cross between a leaf blower and an office photocopier.

It’s the same with the Sigma Bf except that’s a full frame image quality powerhouse, one of the smallest full frame cameras, that in many ways is better than the $4800 Sony RX1R III but half the price and with the benefits of a choice of small primes rather than only one Zeiss 35mm F2 with dodgy AF that hasn’t been updated for 11 years.

And as for the Sony FX2, it doesn’t in fact have the same sensor as the a7 IV, but the newer a7c II and all the latest class leading AI and image processing that Sony is currently leading the market with, plus a pimped out video monitoring feature-set that the Sony Alpha cameras don’t have.

It’s cheaper than the FX3 yet has a proper EVF (it’s even articulating) which is rare for a cinema camera and unlike the Nikon Zr it has a proper mechanical shutter as well. That makes the FX2 completely unique and different to all the other hybrid cameras in that it’s a cinema-first design but doesn’t throw the baby out of the bathwater when it comes to key stills features like a lot of the other hybrid cinema cameras.

Yet the signals the average customer, and by extension the ultimate Canadian camera store salesmen are sending to Japan has me a bit worried.

The concept of a true stills-cinema hybrid camera has been rejected. The conclusion from the Sony FX2’s low sales is that nobody gives a damn about having a lovely EVF and mechanical shutter in a filmmaker focused camera. What a shame! For me, I really value that.

The idea of a film-compact shooting experience fairs far better with the general audience of camera buyers. The Fuji X-Half is not designed to replace your EOS R6 Mark III for sports and fucking bird photography. Worst camera of the year it is, then?

And the Sigma Bf is the affordable full frame alternative to a Contax T2, made in small quantities by a family owned business in Aizu, Japan.

I just don’t accept that you can throw so much shade so publicly at such creatively brave concepts as these.

Save the shade for the broadest shoulders, the boring mainstream cameras that you can’t tell one from another.

The post Chris and Jordan select Sigma Bf, Fuji X-Half and Sony FX2 as worst cameras of the year, just goes to show that some people don’t have a single creative brain cell appeared first on EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews.

Olympus never gave us a digital full frame camera. It’s one of the biggest regrets of the camera industry. However they did leave us with this… the final Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera.

I have just fitted a Metabones Speed Booster with Olympus OM SLR lenses to my OM-1, be it video or stills, this camera is not just underrated but a powerhouse of good design and good images.

Here is my tribute to the final camera to bear the Olympus badge.

I have two Metabones Speed Boosters with Canon EF mount.

Turns out EF is a good choice. All of Olympus OM SLR lenses, M42, Nikon F and Contax Yashica adapt to EOS although I do miss my Minolta MD and Canon FD lenses on this adapter, the look of the OM lenses on this is fantastic. Caldwell Optics + some of the best vintage Japanese glass ever made.

The Metabones adapters are a tight fit on the OM-1. Be sure to apply protective tape below the EVF on the lens mount side as the thick barrel of the adapter scrapes flush with the camera housing when attaching. Once it’s on though, you get to keep it there – and have your pick of a range of vintage lenses that knock the sterile modern stuff for six.

The OM-1 appears to automatically detect the focal length of adapted manual focus vintage lenses. It doesn’t have the usual entry in the menus to add a focal length for a non-CPU lens like on Panasonic, Sony or Nikon cameras. At least I haven’t found it.

Either way, it works extremely well.

Let me make this clear… the OM-1 still in 2025 has the best IBIS on the market.

It has a much better EVF than the previous Olympus flagship, the E-M1X – although the latter handles like a mini pro DSLR or Canon 1D, which in itself is rather nice. You’ll also notice a design nod to the first Pentax full frame prototype DSLR of 2000, which was never released – just like the Olympus digital full frame camera.

The ergonomics of the OM-1 are truly exceptional. Although it’s an incredibly small camera it doesn’t handle like one somehow.

Do you know that feeling when using a camera, of a workspace? The camera is your office. You sit at the work desk of the Canon EOS R5 for example and it is smooth, slick and professional, it feels optimised and refined, but lacks that extra bit of interest or charm. The workspace of the OM-1 is tactile, smooth, deeply immersive, responsive and actually rather charming too.

This compares better than any other Micro Four Thirds camera ever made. The Olympus PEN-F digital for example although it looks pretty, has a workspace which is stiffer, slower, cheaper and more consumer. The E-M1 II and E-M1X feel more dated, especially the menus. The Panasonic GH6 has a workspace that is direct, utilitarian, but too computer-like and not really quite ‘camera’ enough whereas the OM-1 nails every aspect of what it’s like to shoot with.

The OM lenses are a perfect match for it too.

In the analogue OM days, the Zuiko OM System glass was all very well regarded for small size and superb optics. Maybe not the last word in sharpness but all had character and a nice look wide open, with very good colour and contrast. The mounting system is excellent and the OM to EOS adapters feel better made than, say, Contax Yashica mount to EOS. The locking pins are on the side of the OM lens barrel so the thin adapter doesn’t need to do much. No fiddly latch or locking lever required.

There is however a rather nice little lever on the back of the OM-1 can be configured to switch instantly between stills and video mode.

The 10bit footage in OM-LOG is a bit sharper than the 8bit material, but you can only use the Olympus colour styles in 8bit H.264. For 10bit H.265 the options are only OM-LOG and Hybrid LOG Gamma. DCI 4K up to 60fps with no crop from a stacked sensor rounds out a very capable filmmaking spec.

For stills the Olympus colour is superb and really satisfying to shoot with, it nails white balance every time as well.

So to the 0.71x Speed Booster, and my OM 28mm F2.0 becomes a 20mm F1.4, and the sensor is a 2x crop – so you end up with a 40mm field of view 35mm equivalent. This is pretty versatile and you have less distortion and sharper corners than with this same lens on full frame. My OM 24mm F2.0 becomes a 35mm equivalent wide angle (math is 24*0.71 = 17mm * 2 = 34 mm).

You can also get an 0.64x Speed Booster from Metabones but I don’t recommend using it with the OM-1. It fits my Panasonic GH5S but the optics go very far into the lens mount, the risk of hitting the shutter casing is pretty much 100% with the OM-1, so the 0.71x adapter is the sweet spot.

Speaking of the GH5S…

This has a larger than Micro Four Thirds sensor, it’s wider. The crop factor is 1.86x. So combined with the even wider 0.64x Speed Booster XL adapter, you’re getting very close to full frame on this, and the low light performance is just incredible with it.

24mm * 0.64 = 15.36 mm

Multiply that by the 1.86x crop factor and you get a 28mm equivalent. Therefore the GH5S can be made to perform like an APS-H 1.3x crop sensor camera!

The gain in aperture is significant too, an F1.2 lens turns into an F0.76.

If this doesn’t give you a sign that there’s still a future for the Micro Four Thirds format, I don’t know what will. There are times when I do find myself shooting more creatively with a camera like the OM-1 or GH5S than something like the usual Sony a7 series, or Canon EOS R mount camera.

And there is definitely a size and weight difference, with Micro Four Thirds telephoto lenses that difference is even more.

So hats off to Olympus. It’s a beautiful camera. Your engineers didn’t deserve the P45 you so cruelly handed out to cut a few 0.1% costs off your annual expenses.

This is what happens when an accountant turns gatekeeper of the arts and of engineering.

Sad isn’t it?

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Aren’t you sick and tired of nerds? They have done so much damage to life on earth. Men and women used to make love, they used to raise families and build amazing industries, now all people can do is bicker about how many stops dynamic range a Canon and Sony has.

Sony say it is 15 stops. Is the 15 stops in the room with us right now? Is the shadow realm noisy?

If you’re also a nerd, you may have seen the Sony a7v vs EOS R6 III dynamic range charts at PhotonstoPhotos.

These charts are excellent at photons, but we never seem to see the photos.

I want to issue a challenge to the camera community and that bloke who posts AI slop…

I want YOU to SHOW me, with IMAGES, moving or still, what 15 stops dynamic range looks like on the Sony a7 V, and then compare the same maximum HDR grading on the Canon EOS R6 Mark III, because apparently this 15 stops is very important.

Film (if you remember that) was measured at 13 stops.

I want to see a comparison at 13 stops too, digital to film.

With film, despite quite an impressive number of stops in-between the black and white parts in the same frame, colours come out rather well. The result also has something known as contrast, and a strange x-factor called tonality which means you can see the difference between colours of the same hue.

So come on camera reviewers and the equally as stupid audience… Let’s get the shadows slider and put it all the way to 11, and get the highlight slider and bring it all the way down the other way. Don’t forget to under-expose 6 stops to protect a pointless little light bulb, and have some dodgy looking human subject lurking in the shadows with noise all over his face.

Let’s see what these MAXIMUM dynamic range shots look like and then we can judge whether we actually like it or not… Then we can finally but the debate to bed – is Sony’s 15 stops of dynamic range A) real and B) a beautiful photographic tool?

For until now, all the shots I’ve seen that uses the maximum dynamic range of a sensor have been those weird over-processed HDR-sick photos you used to get all over Flickr.

I await however to be impressed. Get those images, count the stops and send them in for me to see on the EOSHD Forum.

Because the debate and clamour out there on the dweebweb is reaching a fever pitch and I can’t stand it any more. All those headlines must mean that the ultimate last couple of stops must be REALLY important, right?

12? loser territory, 13 is all the difference. Boom you have an ARRI ALEXA 35.

Alas, like Gerald Undone’s shots, the evidence is still missing after all these years!

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When Sora 2 was released (invite only), results were impressive. Investors were happy, users excited. Then, a strange thing happened.

Sora began to buckle under load despite being invite only. In order to roll out Sora to all users, the technology looks to have been massively scaled back. Not only are users alleging OpenAI did this, the criticism is that they did so silently behind closed doors without elaborating. The results were clear. Overnight the quality of material generated by Sora 2 fell into the gutter like slop from a sausage machine.

EOSHD takes a look at what has been going on…

Sora 1 and the new model 2 are some of the most hyped AI tools of all time, driving enormous investor interest and at their best are capable of amazing visuals with very few imperfections.

Prompts could be incredibly complex in Sora 2 at launch, involving several sections to inform the look. In OpenAI’s own example of the otherworldly dragon, you had a “First Read” Primary Target & Visuals to lay out the general scene, followed by a Format & Look using cinematography terms like 180 degrees shutter, large format sensor, crisp micro contrast and no gate weave.

You could then go as far as to specify lenses, filters, grading and lighting. Sound is generated too. To round out the shot, the prompt can provide camera notes, location details and framing, as well as an optimised shot list to sequence it all.

The result was a few seconds, admittedly spectacular, of a dragon flying above a coastline with thunder and lighting in the background. Big whoop.

Now the thunder is very much in the foreground, for OpenAI is getting a roasting. Sora 2 at this kind of level needs a vast amounts of NVidia compute to work.

On Reddit discussions in the OpenAI sub, you can hear directly from disgruntled OpenAI paying customers about the dramatic shifts in quality they’ve been experiencing.

The launch version has effectively been shelved and now isn’t even available in most countries.

In one topic “It’s insane how badly they’ve ruined Sora 2 already“, the consensus is that OpenAI does not even have a sustainable business model to support it long term and that the “real Sora 2” can’t be rolled out for mainstream demand.

Sora 2 simply doesn’t scale.

Users even allege the technology was launched in loss-making form to show its full potential to investors and at the crucial moment when everyone was watching. As the losses came rolling in during subsequent weeks, the system was dialled back to use a fraction of the compute power it did at first.

Given the option to sign up to OpenAI Plus today for 23 euros per month where I am (Europe), the option for Sora 2 isn’t even available – only a limited use of Sora 1 is allowed.

So what has happened to Sora 2 and does it have a future?

Is this kind of technology simply too expensive to roll out at scale to paid users, at least for the ChatGPT Plus tier of $20 per month?

Could it be that in future, only professional creative studios will be able to use the best generative AI video tools – likely paying upwards of tens of thousands of dollars per month?

Could it be a bit like the DSLR revolution one day? Imagine the first affordable high-end Sora models reach the mainstream for a one off purchase with hardware controller enabling a virtual film studio on your desktop? That would be nice.

Might the compute to run it all fit on a single, professional GPU card on your desk?

The truth is, we have no clue.

Right now that future looks incredibly uncertain.

And yet the investors are piling on like OpenAI have discovered an alien technology.

We don’t know how the business model of generative AI will play out at all, especially not for the most advanced models. Video generation, world simulation, and video game development are all potential targets for AI – but they’re hard, and if it all DOES work as promised, the factors outside the industry’s control might topple them anyway, more on that in a moment…

Nvidia’s stock price today reflects the massive demand for AI data-centre GPUs.

But there’s a problem.

There’s simply not enough NVidia chips to scale demand according to AI investor expectations.

Production capacity at TSMC is not enough.

And what’s more, consumer expectations have to keep increasing with the wow factor going up with every release too – which means more and more demand for hardware (not just NVidia chips but everything else too like DDR5 memory and PSUs, rare earths, auxiliary components, and so on) a demand that simply isn’t realistic.

For not only can this level of compute be manufactured fast enough, it is not available at an economical enough price and has a shelf life of only a couple of years before it all needs to be replaced again.

Even the latest Blackwell NVidia chips are using too much energy, too much water for cooling and generate too much heat. Add to that, the needs of gamers and cryptocurrency on top – with just ONE company able to supply the required hardware, monopolising 90% of the market. And the chips are fabricated by just ONE supplier, in Taiwan.

Sounds bad? It gets worse…

1. Geopolitically, just one man – Ji Xingping, can end the whole industry over night with an invasion of Taiwan and disruption of TSMC’s chipmaking facilities. One Chinese squadron outside just one factory door and it’s all over. Nvidia would prefer not to even think about it.
2. Socio-politically, no first world country can afford a universal basic income in the event that AI succeeds. Success for AI means unemployment figures in the region of 70 to 80% and the breakdown of law and order. This alone is enough to make the AI industry unsustainable and the investors have simply buried their heads in the sand about it because as usual with bankers and CEOs they don’t care about society at all. It isn’t even a blip on the radar. If AI succeeds in replacing most workers, the tech employees who still have jobs will most likely work for AI companies but none of them will be safe to go to work due to rioting, with they and their leaders with the biggest target on their back. These crucial employees won’t even be able to access basic public services or supermarket food because society would have broken down. Investors simply refuse to contemplate this as a possible outcome!
3. No profit… The AI companies are unprofitable and always have been. Billions of dollars is simply being circulated between a few key players for an ever greater share of equity and the resulting deals are hyping up the share prices of those involved. The most recent example of this was Disney’s investment of $1bn in OpenAI in return for some equity and some tools, under the guise of an IP licensing deal for 3 years. As soon as the first share price wobble or bad news happens, this kind of equity will be worthless and the entire investment scheme come toppling down, and that’s the only thing which is enabling such massive loss making at the moment.
4. Because AI companies themselves lack any of their own profit to reinvest in their businesses for the purpose of scaling for demand, it is all being propped up by creditors. The creditors could all take fright at any moment.
5. The energy cost of the compute is immense and pushing up the cost of fuel for normal businesses and ordinary residential households on top of a cost of living crisis, with climate change spiralling out of control. This isn’t an ethical business.
6. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is purely hypothetical. Anywhere an employee requires the use of their hands or their physical presence, an AGI is caught lacking and a robot is too problematic. Too easily damaged, it can too easily become a target for violence or theft, it isn’t reliable enough long term and not even dextrous enough to learn how to use a photocopier, let alone do more advanced office work, it’s also incredibly expensive to “hire” compared to a human being and it does not even have a consciousness or true awareness, therefore lacks the kind of true understanding and human emotion necessary to inform opinion and action. Would you want to hire a brain in a jar?
7. The “intelligence” aspect of AI as we know it today is only computational but human intelligence is not. What ChatGPT does is a parallel computing task on a large database of pre-existing data. It can only synthesise text and images, and not always correctly. To call this intelligence is misleading as it’s really just a clever data processor and a python script. If the name was accurate it would be TG – Text Generator. For images and videos it is again just an advanced synthesiser with fancy outputs, or at best a simulator-on-chip capable of visually representing aspects of our world for a few seconds, but it does not have a true understanding of it or true creativity or a true memory.
8. In the creative industries and social media, people want to engage with content that’s made by real people. Be it normal folk, or a famous name film director, the person behind the art is as important as the work itself. When it is a faceless simulation machine behind the work, the work automatically devalues. This may work for a Cola advert, I’m not sure it will for the next Oppenheimer.
9. What is being created at the moment are short 5s-10s vignettes of imaginary worlds and subjects, eye-candy in other words, and in most cases outright slop that has no practical use in the real world and therefore very little real world value. The technology has been out for a while and there are still no mainstream recognised and respected AI artists, which has to tell you something.
10. The AI bubble is absolutely real and is on course to create the kind of economic problems that would make the 1920s blush. Although the fundamental neural network concept and world-simulation technology that is being created may have future potential and is akin to a kind of magic when it works, the hype and misconstrued optimism from investors is a foolish use of funds and soon they will find out what that means.

I am certainly not a total pessimist when it comes to AI though – I really do think it can be a big future industry, I think it can benefit science and even creative work. The problem is, it has not been shown to benefit any of these things as much as it has benefited the pockets of tech industry oligarchs.

When is it going to show its real value to this world, a Magnum opus or an improvement in life and work quality for normal people? So far, ChatGPT is a useful data processor and a way to cheat at homework. The image and video generators, they feel like fancy toys at the moment.

But if I were an investor I’d be selling all my shares in January 2026 and getting out of the bubble.

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With the Sony a7s IV nowhere to be seen, and a Sony FX2 with disappointing specs and an old sensor, Sony’s failure to go fully-in on video features have left users in the lurch. Now, with rival cameras like the Nikon Zr and Canon EOS R6 III offering so much more than an a7 V, for less money, Sony is building the perception that hybrid users and video shooters shouldn’t choose a Sony mirrorless camera.

From my personal point of view the Sony a7v is a very capable camera, but it in recent days the new model has become somewhat infamous and the target for a lot of disappointment from video users.

The competition has not just overtaken, it’s undercut on price.

Sony will hate this, the hybrid video/stills market is very important and Sony pioneered it, overtaking the previous leaders Canon (in the DSLR era) and Panasonic. Now the others (especially Nikon) are fighting back.

Now I’m not suggesting Sony is afraid of Panasonic grabbing all their video users, but they should be worried about what Canon and Nikon are doing.

Canon lost the crown back in the DSLR days and then decided to get those users back, starting with the EOS R5 which blew other cameras away for video specs only to prove itself to be completely defective in the field. Canon decided to un-cripple it with subsequent firmware updates for longer operation times. Ever since then Canon have been full-on chasing hybrid shooters, at all price ranges starting with the cheap EOS R50V, all the way to the Cinema EOS C50. Inbetween there is the R6 Mark III which shoots 7K Canon RAW internally with an Open Gate mode, for $2799. An aggressive move, that Sony didn’t seem to see coming.

Then there’s the Nikon Z6 Mark III for $2096 and the Nikon Zr, just $2196. These are the current best-bang-for-buck cameras, taking the limelight away from Panasonic. Sony is trying to get $2899 for something which is comprehensively worse for video than these cameras. The a7v counts on people being photography-first, and locked into the mount. Both of Nikon’s cameras shoot 6K RAW, and the Zr benefits from the purchase of RED being the first mirrorless camera to shoot REDcode raw.

And it is not just the headline resolution and raw capabilities lacking at Sony, the other missing video features are really starting to add up.

1. The Canon EOS R6 III for example doesn’t need to crop in 4K/120p.
2. The Nikon Zr has a larger than 3.2″ display, at 4 inches, and it makes a significant difference.
3. Taking a leaf out of Panasonic’s book with the GH7, the Nikon Zf has 32bit float audio support.
4. Both the R6 III and Zr have open gate modes.
5. The Panasonic S1R II and S1 II have anamorphic de-squeeze and multiple recording aspect ratios like 3:2 and 4:3.
6. The Panasonic cameras also have the best LUT support, and Realtime LUTs allow custom 10bit colour science to be baked into both video recordings and photos.
7. Cine EI is available on the Nikon Zr in REDcode raw.
8. 60fps is available without a crop in 6K and in 7K on the Nikon and Canon cameras, whereas most of the Sony cameras even the flagship a1 are only able to max out at 4K in 60fps and on many models this is less detailed pixel-binning mode rather than a full pixel readout.
9. There’s more shooting aids on the Canon, Nikon and Panasonic side too, like waveform monitoring.

So Sony find themselves in a bit of an odd place and that’s before I mention the Sony FX2 sales disaster.

This is a camera that has already put back some of the missing features from the list above. It has the extra shooting aids, the best LUT support of the Sony cameras, many of the features found in the FX3, including anamorphic de-squeeze, Cine EI, and a form factor closer to the Nikon Zr.

The Sony FX2 however has not sold very well, to say the least and that’s because Sony put the old sensor from the a7 IV in it. It can’t even do full frame 4K/60p without a crop and yet is marketed as a modern hybrid camera. It has no anamorphic aspect ratio mode like 3:2 or 4:3, despite having a 2x anamorphic de-squeeze mode for monitoring! It has no Open Gate mode and the maximum resolution is 4K. It has the same middle-of-the-road rolling shutter performance as the 3 year old a7 IV and there is still no internal RAW codec, not even on the Sony a9 III with the global shutter sensor, or the $7000 Sony a1 II – only uncompressed raw via HDMI. To top it off the FX2 has no 120fps in 4K at all, not even a crop – only 1080p (what year is it, 2018?)

The FX2 then, is one of those rare failures from Sony in terms of sales despite the fact I personally actually really like it for my own needs. It’s laudable for being the only mirrorless camera with a cine body that features both a mechanical shutter and articulated EVF (does it think it’s a Panasonic GX9?) whereas the Zr has neither.

So there’s trouble brewing for Sony.

Their direct Nikon Zr competitor the FX2 is in many ways already outdated, more expensive and basically dead on arrival. The lack of sales back that up.

Their Cinema EOS C50 competitor the FX3 has a 6 year old 12 megapixel sensor, no raw codec, no open gate, no 6K, no 7K, no 8K and owes most of its popularity to a feature film.

Their high resolution a7r V is a stills camera with a video mode that has so many asterisk points not even Richard Butler can remember what crop goes where and the rolling shutter in 8K causes even cat videos to wobble.

The eyewateringly expensive a9 III and a1 II have two of the best sensors in the world but neither can be bothered with anything more than 4K, let alone open gate!

And the a7v has disappointed all of Sony’s loyal userbase who wanted better video specs, many of whom will be tempted to get a Nikon Zr or Canon EOS R6 Mark III instead.

There is still no a7s III successor. Much like the Panasonic S1H line, it seems to have vanished off the planet.

Meanwhile they have allowed Nikon to get their hands on the RED raw recording patents, which might explain why there is STILL no Sony internal raw codec to call their own. Sony face paying hefty royalties or doing something like BRAW which is partially debayered in-camera… that is, if they don’t also end up falling foul of Blackmagic’s patent on that!

Then there is Fuji who is making inroads into cinema with the medium format GFX 100 II (my dream camera) and the Eterna cinema camera. With their much less expensive APS-C X-mount bodies, video specs have been a priority for a long time – they have ticked nearly all the boxes including 6K, open gate and currently have the best LOG editing codec – with all flavours of ProRes in the X-H2 and X-H2s even LT for smaller file sizes. Indeed the X-H2 is the best value for money 8K mirrorless camera currently on the market.

So if I were Sony now I’d be a bit worried, despite the fact the a7v still appeals to me, for a few reasons. I set them out here but the summary is that I think Sony E-mount has the best range of third party lenses and adapters, the Leica M autofocus adapter by Techart fulfils my wildest dreams when it comes to vintage lenses, although it’s available for Nikon Z mount as well. I also think that aside from 6K, 7K or 8K, some of the extended video features Sony are missing do appeal to only a niche audience. Does everyone need open gate, more than 4K, internal RAW codecs and a vectorscope? For shooting social media content? Really?

And yet at the same time the perception won’t go away…

That for the first time in many years, Sony are now BEHIND on video.

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