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)
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.
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
Canon EOS R6 Mark III (7K, overall best internal RAW camera)
Sony a1 II (best 8K image)
Panasonic S1R II (best value for money full frame 8K camera)
Panasonic S1 II (best low light camera)
Nikon Zr (REDcode and same sensor as Z6 III)
Nikon Z6 Mark III
Panasonic S1 IIe (best value open gate camera)
Sony a7v (capable, but slower sensor and worse rolling shutter)
Sony FX2 (excellent image, but no better than cheaper a7 IV or a7c II)
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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…
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Canon EOS R6 III for example doesn’t need to crop in 4K/120p.
The Nikon Zr has a larger than 3.2″ display, at 4 inches, and it makes a significant difference.
Taking a leaf out of Panasonic’s book with the GH7, the Nikon Zf has 32bit float audio support.
Both the R6 III and Zr have open gate modes.
The Panasonic S1R II and S1 II have anamorphic de-squeeze and multiple recording aspect ratios like 3:2 and 4:3.
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.
Cine EI is available on the Nikon Zr in REDcode raw.
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.
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.
Having hoovered up the entire internet including even EOSHD (which it cites as a source for many camera related queries), ChatGPT has built a business based on the theft of copyrighted information, especially for Sora which is the company’s very capable video generation tool. As a world-generator it has to get the understanding of that world from our footage and immense libraries of copyright material. Today marks a landmark deal however and a huge precedent because instead of being sued by Disney the two Goliaths have got together and made friends with a payment FROM Disney to invest $1bn in OpenAI for an equity share, including the use of AI tools by Disney staff and creatives at Disney’s studios, in return for Sora users being able (within tight guardrails) to generate content based on Disney’s IP.
So this sounds like an unbelievably good deal for OpenAI (press release here). Not least the financial aspects but the fact it sets an amazing precedent for the licensing of major works and big-brand content. Instead of paying out of their own pocket to license Mickey Mouse so that Sora users can make “fan content” of it, Disney is paying OpenAI.
Now OpenAI can go to other major studios and content providers, like Netflix, Warner, Paramount and HBO, point to the Disney deal and say how great it is and by the way would you like to do the same?
I can only assume that the legal situation around generative AI was pointing to the annulment of any claim Disney might have had over the company in terms of copyright infringement.
I suppose it’s going to be that way for the rest of us too, except we won’t have an equity stake!
Say for example that if an OpenAI tool cites from an EOSHD article and puts a link to it, that’s only what Google has being doing for years, and much to my benefit as a business. Say on the other hand ChatGPT only understands certain topics because of the information on this site or on the forum, then you could arguably say I should have some equity in the company or other form of compensation. A very very small amount (in percentage terms) but this is what the Disney precedent suggests is legally the case for the rest of us whose knowledge has gone into the training models.
Say on the other hand ChatGPT synthesising and remixing copyrighted works like books, camera guides, LUTs or blog posts and passing it off as original content, I think that’s where it gets even murkier – and that in effect is what their whole business model is based on, be it chat bots or Sora the video generator.
Yet for the rest of us there might be a chance to gain from the biggest theft of content in history.
As a tool Sora is going to be able to bring to the screen in perfect cinematographic realism pretty much whatever we can write down and imagine, which places a premium on a good script, and a good imagination, and the human touch.
And the big money long term is not actually in the generative AI algorithms themselves.
It is in the human-AI interface design.
I have long believed that generative AI should move away from the simple text prompt interface we’ve come to know from OpenAI and all these early days applications of AI.
If someone would offer Sora in a hardware box resembling an editing console with lots of dials and levers, and out the back of the HDMI comes a finished film, with a polished on-screen editing interface to manage the virtual stage of characters, scenes, lights, cameras, sets and virtual storylines you could generate first rate episodic TV this way in the future and even cinema.
What would be missing however would be the real chemistry of real people on set, as all this would have to be simulated by the AI and this by definition could only really be computational, whereas the human experience and consciousness is not and is something deeper.
Anyway, interesting times and if you’re reading Sam I am waiting for my first cheque in the post for all those blog posts you’ve nicked.
From a British perspective I can only look at America right now in total despair. It’s like watching the Soviet Union in the mid 1990s. The film industry is under a huge amount of pressure at the moment from all angles – now the last remaining great Hollywood studio is being offered for sale – Warner Bros. It’s the closest thing yet to putting the entirely of Hollywood up for sale. Cinema is not safe with Larry Ellison, if he gets his way.
The streaming tech giant Netflix is in the blue corner with a massive 82 billion dollar offer that was expected to be accepted by shareholders but Larry Ellison of Oracle is now circling Warner with a hostile takeover bid promising to “finish what we started” – make no mistake, this is the end for cinema as we know it.
Ellison has already hoovered up Paramount in August of this year, handing control to his son David in an act of pure nepotism.
Before we directly address the facts I want to get my opinion out there about the shocking state of affairs film finds itself in with the Warner Bros buyout. You can also read the official Netflix statement of intent here.
What follows is an opinion piece, nevertheless containing factual evidence…
It is one thing for Hollywood to be sold down the river to a tech giant like Netflix, the biggest single factor in movie theatre decline ever, but to have the US President interfere in favour of an oligarch friend Larry Ellison is plainly un-American, it isn’t capitalism, it’s straight out of the Russian playbook for a mafia state and totalitarian dictatorship. Some would even go so far as to call it straight up fascism, that Ellison may be in the position to create a monopolistic media so he can control the average American and dictate the public discourse. Where exactly Harry Potter and Barbie come into it is anyone’s guess but I recommend seeking out the 1980s book by Neil Postman: Amused to death, available at all good bookshops until it’s taken away and burnt.
According to reports in the reputable British media including the BBC, Trump is threatening to veto the proposed Netflix takeover of Warner Bros by bending the arm of the competitions and mergers authorities so they will only approve a sale to Ellison, and nobody else.
Warner Bros studio brands
Of all the corruption hiding in plain sight that my friends in the US have witnessed this year I think this is the most audacious, there is no attempt to hide it at all.
And we’re all sitting around with the popcorn out as if it’s some sort of reality TV show. The public discourse on this has been as usual – pathetic. As if it’s a sport.
Ellison is in my opinion nothing but a wannabe oligarch. He must have buttered up Trump something wild with all that AI claptrap because the two geriatrics seem to be closer than Stalin and Mussolini, presumably there’s more to this in terms of just a bromance, what sort of payback there is for Trump… one can only speculate.
Larry Ellison is also now the owner of Paramount studios. The competitions authority under Trump doesn’t seem to be bothered by that. Funny! Paramount are pretty much second only to Warner as far as massive US media giants go. It’s laughable that any sane competition regulator would allow Paramount/Skydance/Oracle to buy Warner.
It’s a “family business” in so much as like all good oligarchs there’s his son in charge of Paramount as if it’s a fucking Soviet Union oil conglomerate or something from the Murdoch / FOX NEWS empire.
And this matters for filmmaking more than you think, for Ellison is a key proponent of AI and will want as much AI slop as possible to be made if he gets his way.
As the most important of all the remaining Hollywood studios, what an unedifying spectacle to have this tug of war between big tech and big mafia. But that’s what happens when you have shareholders with no principals.
With all these nice people fighting over cinema and Hollywood like vultures, there’s one loser in all of this and that’s film, for this is the death knell of traditional theatre. The human way – movie theatres, cinema in general, nights out of the house, literature for their ordinary man… they are are going to become niche legacy activities consigned to history because one suitor Netflix wants you all to stay in, eat shit and get cancer, and the other one wants you all to be in a daze of fascist propaganda because that’s the only way a billionaire gets to become a trillionaire. To these soulless human calculators, that’s the only thing life is about… that and human sex trafficking because they can’t find any satisfaction in their private lives either.
The bidding war – if you can even call it that – is not even a battle for Hollywood’s film industry future, because it doesn’t have one – this is for the IP, franchises and brands that underpin much of modern Western culture. There’s incredible amounts of money at stake.
In ‘normal’ capitalism shareholders get to decide which bidder will fatten their pockets the most and offer the biggest opportunity for future growth so they can get fat now and even fatter in the future. But with fat bastard Trump acting shadow puppet to the government regulators because of the collapse of American democracy, he is the singular entity who has the final say on who wins this bid… And they can’t let a “woke” company like Netflix get the crown jewels can they? Harry Potter, Marvel Universe, the lot…
I hope these shareholders go and do the right…… Nah. It’s not even worth suggesting is it? Culture before profit? Cinema first, making a cheap buck second? Fucking come off it… They’re Americans.
Talent exodus incoming
But there is one thing that artists can do about it, and that is for all of Warner’s top talent to finally put their long ostrich like necks on the chopping board of virtue.
James Gunn, all those woke producers, director Joseph Kosinski of F1 movie fame, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Henry Cavill comic book hero slop extraordinaire, they should all put career second for the first time in their lives and put cinema first.
The answer is for them to do what Christopher Nolan did 3 years ago. Leave.
Nolan, saw the writing on the wall. Warner and the stream giants like Netflix were getting closer and closer, their shit values more and more aligned over bringing cinema to the smartphone screen first, movie screen second. So he said to them – I’m leaving, and he took the Oppenheimer script with him.
Oppenheimer was a 950 million dollar hit, and it could have been a Warner Bros picture.
Nothing hurts an executive shiteater more.
Nothing gets to a shareholder like a good old exodus of employees at a high level – after all, they matter.
So it is time for you all to do the right thing and state clearly your objection sir, to the Ellison buyout, and air your objections sir and madam to the sweeping destruction that AI filmmaking will bring to film crews and jobs. I am not saying there should be another damaging Hollywood strike, all that’s needed is for a few top names to take a stand – and hurry up about it.
If the Netflix deal is approved, and it’s looking very unlikely now – it has to also be on the terms of the top talent at Warner. Protect jobs, especially in CGI, restrict the use of AI, and preserve the movie theatre experience for the next generation.
Perhaps then democracy still has a fighting chance, and the film industry a future.
The release of the Sony a7v has been met with a wave of negativity, especially now that the supposed ‘standard model’ mid-range camera price has been bumped to nearly $3000 + tax and a lot more in some regions, like in the UK where the USD-converted price works out at an insane $3600 inc. VAT, despite the Japanese yen being at historically low levels versus the British Pound.
The Sony a7v specs are equivalent to the Nikon Z6 Mark III which is over $1000 less expensive and a mint condition used Z8 a little cheaper also, with far better specs in every area – especially in the cinematic-video department.
The Sony-badge premium appears to be a real thing – and it is putting Sony at a disadvantage vs Canon and Nikon. The Canon EOS R6 Mark III is a better spec and also less expensive, for video it is almost a different league of spec altogether with 7K RAW and Open Gate. The price of the a7v also gets close to a used Sony a1 flagship professional body, the full fat stacked sensor of which there is nothing ‘partial’ about, and the Canon Cinema EOS C50 full frame Nikon Zr competitor, which is just £400 more than the a7v!
But as usual online, people tend to want to believe that only one opinion can be true at once.
Quantum camera
In fact the Sony a7v is a prime example of quantum physics.
A superposition of two different opinions, where both can be true at once applies to this camera.
All the negativity has it’s basis in the truth.
And all the positivity and people putting down pre-orders for it are right as well.
And it all depends on the observer.
It is true that the Sony name now demands a premium, more so than ever before – because E-mount is the best mount. Pure and simple. It has been around the longest out of all the full frame mirrorless cameras, benefits from Sigma’s range and the best cheapest full spectrum of Chinese lenses, and it has the best selection of glass all-round, native or otherwise. For those who are ‘locked-in’ to a mount, it doesn’t matter how much Nikon Z undercut Sony on price with a Z8 or Zr if you have to spend $6000 on lenses and go through the pain of using shitty eBay to sell your Sony glass.
At the same time, it is true the spec is closer to the Nikon Z6 Mark III end of the market than $3000, and somewhat a safe release with nothing that special to jump up and down about – but at the same time, it is closer to the flagship a1 series than a standard a7 has ever been, and corporate price gouging is only part of the picture – the Trump tariffs have pumped up prices even in the UK, where the USD price seems to dictate to other countries what they can charge for cameras. Thanks very much America.
And yes, Sony are now the new Canon. They have a captive, locked-in loyal user-base in the millions, who are happy with what’s being offered and don’t see the appeal of switching systems just to get some niche video feature or whatever.
This is what Panasonic is finding out with the S1R II and S1 II which are fantastic cameras with the broadest range of features ever but nobody but a small number of Lumix loyalists cares.
This is the hard truth of the camera industry in 2025, sadly.
The negative chatter about Sony recently, is not just regarding the a7v though. The firmware bootloop problem is a topic that really deserves a negative discourse and yet as usual, the mainstream camera advertorial media is not talking about it.
This is a situation worthy of a class-action lawsuit, where it appears Sony, knowing there was a software issue with recent firmware updates across all their top models – rather than come clean and do a recall programme, chose to charge people out of warranty to swap out perfectly fine hardware like sensors and mainboards at the cost of thousands of dollars claiming it was the fix.
But as my adventure with the bootloopy a7 IV shows, the mere act of updating the firmware again (for example from 5.0 to 5.1) completely cured the issue, and that it was likely due to some corrupt software settings, because of bad programming by Sony’s firmware engineers in Japan.
For this, Sony definitely deserves the negativity.
For the Sony a7v, not so much. It’s a perfectly fine camera, even if it doesn’t set the Earth on fire.
The Canon EOS R6 Mark III is the first mid-range Canon EOS R camera that’s a true contender for top-specs in the $2800 price region. What’s even more impressive is that Canon are achieving full frame 4K/120p with no crop and 12bit 7K 60P RAW video without a stacked sensor – not even a partially stacked sensor. Funnily enough, neither is it even a backside illuminated (BSI) sensor.
So what magic sauce is Canon using to out-spec the partially stacked sensor cameras from Sony, Panasonic and Nikon?
Sensor tech
Canon are still with their proprietary CMOS sensor technology, introduced as far back as 2002 with the Canon 1D Mark II. Humorously, the first Canon 1D used a Panasonic CCD. Their CMOS technology wasn’t quite ready for it. Since then, Canon have pioneered the way in CMOS sensors, the technology that swept aside CCD for speed and resolution, as well as introducing the world to DSLR video.
By the late 2010s however, it looked like Sony had overtaken them. Backside illuminated sensors, stacked sensors with the RX100 VI and Sony a9, the first to 60 megapixel and if you count the Fujifilm GFX 100 the first to 100.
But then something unexpected happened. In 2020 Canon struck back with the Canon EOS R5, shackles were well and truly taken off with much faster sensors and image processing, yet still no stacked sensor or even BSI design in sight, which Sony introduced as a way to improve the low light performance of very small chips in phones.
The truth is that BSI isn’t really needed for large full frame sensors, and there are other ways to improve the readout speed of a CMOS sensor, other than solder-bumping a buffer memory chip onto the back of the mainboard.
Although Canon does have stacked sensor designs, like in the EOS R3 – I can confidently say the EOS R6 Mark III has a cutting 33MP edge sensor in every way – despite not using Sony’s technology.
They have built on the latest Canon architecture of the EOS R5. Canon are back to their best in a mid-range body for the first time in MANY years… No more cropping, no more rolling shutter issues and plenty of frame rates in the region of 60p and 120p.
The only Sony sensor technology Canon still lacks is a global shutter design for full frame mirrorless cameras, although they are now working on one.
Lenses – RF vs Sony E-mount
I’ll start by prefacing this comparison, with a little bias. I am a big fan of Sony’s E-mount ecosystem, with the full range of Sigma ART lenses, the full gamut of Tamron, and the fact that miraculous adapters from Techart exist to autofocus all my vintage glass on a full frame camera. This is a BIG DEAL.
Sony a7 IV with Techart PRO Leica M Autofocus Adapter II LM-EA9
It is something Canon RF mount simply doesn’t offer, and the longer flange distance prevents the adaptation of other mirrorless lenses to the system as well. For example on Nikon Z mount you can use E-mount lenses with native-level autofocus performance.
I also not a big fan of Canon’s native RF lenses. The best ones are too big, extremely expensive and can of course only be used on one system, whereas the good old EF range goes on anything (Even the Fujifilm GFX 100).
That said if you’re fully invested in RF lenses and don’t use vintage glass, the point is moot.
Used vs new
Not only will we be looking at the R6 Mark III and how it compares to the Sony a7 V, but I think it’s worth also comparing to the best value for money USED Canon bodies in 2025, in particular the original EOS R5 which is now just $2000 / £1800 used, and the EOS R3 which has come down to around $3200 used, or £2800, the same as a brand new R6 Mark III.
Buying used is a no-brainer for me as most outlets now offer a long warranty with used gear – as long as 5 years in the case of CEX in the UK, although WEX and MPB only offer 6 months.
Above, on the used market a Fuji GFX 100 or an EOS R5 for £1775 is hard to argue with – plus a FIVE year warranty at CEX in the UK
Filmmaking specs – image quality, frame rate and codecs
7K DCI 60p RAW is the stand out feature of the Canon EOS R6 Mark III compared to the Sony a7 V.
For all the talk of stacked sensors or partially stacked sensors, the EOS R5C back in 2021 proves that to achieve the readout speeds necessary for 8K at 60fps, or full width 4K 120fps – a plain old FSI CMOS can do the job just fine. The “stacked sensor” architecture is a bit misleading anyway – the buffer memory is not stacked onto the sensor but onto the back of the image processor, on the mainboard. I know this because I have disassembled stacked sensor Sony cameras, such as the RX100 V.
Compared to that 7K RAW, the a7 V tops out at Ultra HD – not even DCI 4K – and there is absolutely no raw or uncompressed video not even via HDMI. It used to be that Canon got the cripple hammer out to protect the Cinema EOS line – now it seems the hammer has a Sony badge! The FX series is what Sony want you to buy for their top video feature set. That said, the a7 V builds on the already very capable image quality of the Sony FX2 and Sony a7 IV – a 7K readout downsampled to UHD – and cures one of the biggest weaknesses – the high rolling shutter, and lack of full width 4K 60p.
The a7 V is like the Nikon Z6 III in 4K/120p mode though – it crops to 1.5x S35mm (APS-C). Whereas the R6 III is like the original EOS R5… full width 4K 120p, albeit pixel binned and not a full pixel readout.
There will be some moire therefore, but nowhere near as much as in the days of plain old line-skipped 1080p.
It’s worth mentioning at this point the Nikon partially stacked sensors – the Zr and Z6 Mark III both do 6K/60p RAW recording – so the Sony is behind these too. The Panasonic S1 II offers 6K open gate raw, 5.7K 60p and 4K/120p is just a 1.17x crop of the full width of the sensor, rather than 1.5x.
The EOS R6 III has open gate recording too – only at up to 30p but that’s new for Canon. For the first time you can put an anamorphic lens on a Canon stills camera without regrets.
So…
It’s clear win for the Canon, Nikon and Panasonic competition over the Sony a7 V if you want higher resolution video than 4K or internal RAW recording.
Video autofocus reputation
In the earlier days Dual Pixel AF had a clear lead over the competition in video autofocus, but switching to video mode now sees Sony take a clear lead on their latest cameras. Canon’s autofocus is by no means back of the pack – but it’s behind Sony and Nikon in terms of reliability, subject tracking and the occurrence of hunting with tricky subjects in video mode.
Canon reserves the best AF for stills on the EOS R3 and R1.
Rolling shutter
The characteristic distortion of fast horizontal movement takes the form of rolling shutter, as the sensor is read from top to bottom. Above 30ms is considered slow, and unsuitable for whip pans, fast action, sports, boxing, or trains arriving – you get the idea. 20ms is considered the middle-of-the-road value today, whereas sub 15ms is in the safe region, under 10ms even better, 5ms the current state of the art (although often you’ll have to shoot at 120fps to take advantage of it). Take a look at the figures below:
Canon EOS R6 Mark III – 18ms to 7ms
18ms is the R6 III in 7K open gate, the slowest 30p mode with the highest resolution. This is actually quite reasonable. In 7K DCI for Canon RAW, and in the oversampled 4K/60/24p modes, this comes down to a very respectable 14ms. Disabling the full pixel readout but maintaining the full width of the sensor, the R6 Mark III picks up the pace in all the pixel-binned modes such as “standard” 4K as opposed to the oversampled-from-7K “fine” mode, and in 120fps. The value in these modes is an impressive 7ms.
Sony a7 V – 15ms to 7ms
The Sony has the same readout speed, with the absence of an open gate mode. In 4K/24p and 60p we have 15ms, in the 4K/120p Super 35mm crop mode it is 7ms. So, exactly as the EOS R6 III in this department and with very little to worry about. This new Sony sensor has half the rolling shutter of its predecessor.
Video assists and LUTs
The R6 Mark III has wave form, false colour and custom LUTs. The Sony a7 V only has custom LUTs. Neither camera allows you to bake-in the colour science of a LUT into recorded footage – the output is always 10bit LOG and the LUT has to be applied in post. This is one area where the Panasonic S1R II and S1 II have the advantage. Don’t like Sony’s colour science for Rec.709 video or for JPEGs? Well, you’re stuck with it. On the Canon side, the default colour is quite good – but it has none of the film simulations or more characterful filters that we enjoy from other brands.
The latest Panasonic cameras are leading the pack when it comes to video assists and monitoring. Vectorscope, anamorphic desqueeze, shutter angle and Real-time LUTs put Canon and Sony in the shade.
Body-design and ergonomics
Sony have a winning formula for the rear-screen. It has the best tilt and swivel mechanism (same as the a1 II and a7r V), but at same time remains as slim and as lightweight as possible. When this kind of mechanism was first pioneered by the Panasonic S1H, it was rather clunky. The Sony system is a big improvement. The Canon EOS R6 Mark III makes do with a consumer-friendly standard swivel screen hinge, the likes have graced consumer cameras since the days of CCD compacts. The Canon R6 Mark III screen design wouldn’t be out of place on a Powershot G1 from 2002.
The Sony screen is also larger – at 3.2″ vs 3.0″ and believe me you do get to tell the difference even if small.
Versus used bargain Canon EOS R3 and EOS R5 OG
So the original R5 is basically very similar in spec to the R6 Mark III, and although it lacks the newer autofocus and some of the newer video features like custom LUTs, you still get that very high resolution RAW, at 8K on the R5, and full width 4K/120p without a crop. The sensor readout speed is very similar, with the same low rolling shutter figures. The price is a full $1000 lower, depending on where you shop for your used cameras. Having said all that, I think the R6 Mark III finally surpasses it though. It has taken 5 years but it’s there – maybe not in terms of outright resolution (7K vs 8K) but in terms of frame rates and features. There’s no 60p in 8K RAW on the EOS R5 OG… You’ll have to stump up for the R5C for that and lose IBIS. A used EOS R5 Mark II meanwhile, is of course much more expensive.
Compared to the EOS R3 is where things get interesting, but the R3 is a bit of a chonk – in the now old fashioned vertical grip style of a typical pro DSLR. However, the R3 is better in low light, thanks to a lower megapixel count. It has 6K RAW up to 60fps… Or 6K DCI 24p at some quite low-bitrates in Canon RAW Lite, approximately 600Mbit/s – which comes in handy for saving space. The minimum RAW bitrate in 7K on the R6 III is 960Mbit, and it can get as high as 2600Mbit which for many people is simply impractical.
That said the R6 III has both C-LOG 2 and 3, the R3 only C-LOG 3 – so you might find a smidgeon more dynamic range on the cheaper camera in video mode – whether those shadows will be less noisy however, is another matter.
The R3 also has the advantage of higher build quality, a better EVF and better rear screen resolution. Casting around the internet it was easy to find one for R6 Mark III prices… Around £2800, or as low as £2300 if you import a mint one from Japan.
14bit vs 12bit stills in e-shutter mode
The Sony a7 V uses a 14bit sensor readout for high-speed continuous burst shooting and in e-shutter mode for stills, the EOS R6 III drops to 12bit. The numbers might seem dramatic but the real-world difference is very small, less than half a stop of useable dynamic range in the RAW files.
Sony regularly advertises 15 or 16-stops dynamic range for their stills cameras and with the a7 V they did so again, unfortunately the 16 stops was not in the room when they said it, and the paranormal investigator couldn’t find it either. The truth is that if you try to push 10bit video or even 14bit RAW stills in post to show 16 stops it WILL look like garbage, you’ll lose the contrast in the scene, the tonality and quality of colour, and your HDR display will have to be set so bright it will add a digital sheen to everything and break your eyeballs. The only digital format with this kind of latitude that looks any good at all is the Alexa 35, and even that is nowhere near 16 stops after grading, and you need to use an IMAX projector to show it to people.
As in burst mode for stills, the R6 III offers 12bit in video mode – where most people shoot 10bit anyway – and it’s a dual gain sensor, with the second circuit coming in relatively early at just ISO 800. Worth a side note that the classic cinema frame rate of 24p is only available in DCI format mode (1.90:1 ratio, 4096 x 2160). This is because strictly speaking, 24p is not a video-centric frame rate for 16:9 HD or Ultra HD (3840 x 2160). Thus these are only 25p / 30p / 50p / 60p depending on whether you set the camera to PAL or NTSC… The NTSC video standard is 30p, not 24p. If you need 24p in 16:9 you’ll have to crop the 4096 x 2160 recordings in post.
Adding up the scores
For me the Canon EOS R6 III outscores the Sony a7 V in some significant video and cinema related areas, but out of the two I personally would pick the Sony – oddly enough!
So the reasoning goes as follows…
Although the Canon EOS R6 III beats the a7 V is in outright image quality in video mode – here they’re both very good. I will hand it to Canon for colour science and their insanely high data rate RAW codec in 7K. This is another level versus your standard Ultra HD 4K from Sony. That said, H.265 is actually VERY good and S-LOG 3 offers enough grading headroom for everyone. On the Canon side there’s an element of overkill to it. The image from the a7 V, like the a7 IV before it is good enough for almost every purpose, even Hollywood cinema and professional projections in a theatre. If it’s good enough for that and close to an FX3 which was used to shoot The Creator, it’s good enough for us, right?
The data rates and file sizes are very difficult to manage on the Canon – these RAW masters have to be deleted – you can’t really keep the precious material for long without incurring huge expenses on archival storage mediums. If you’re simply handing material over to a client and it’s gone – easy enough – but if you’re an individual artist or filmmaker who wants to keep years and years original 7K RAW 60p recordings… good luck with that.
The R6 III beats the a7 V for slow-motion. The 4K/120p = full frame, not an APS-C 1.5x crop only.
The R6 III has the edge on colour – with a foundation in colour film, and early pro DSLRs, Canon has built on the best colour science in the business. It’s just a shame that all the Photo Styles are essentially the same thing with subtle differences in contrast. The Sony has a more filmic range of filters, which attempt to ape what Fuji does so well with their film simulations. Out of the box it comes up short, but you can tailor it to perfection. Also, S-Cinetone, S-LOG 2 and S-LOG 3 all have extensive tuning parameters.
So although the a7 V lacks the eye-catching headline video specs of the R6 Mark III, it wins in a much more important area…
Sony E-mount is simply head and shoulders above RF. The native glass is better, there’s more of it, the third party situation is fantastic, as opposed to AWFUL on the Canon side, the adapters are better, it’s been around longer, and the IBIS works properly with adapted glass too. On the Canon RF cameras, IBIS performance is cripple hammered with adapters and reduces to such an extent you’ll question whether it’s even switched on. So for Leica M lenses, Minolta MD, and so forth you’re MUCH better off using them on the Sony, and use them I do, as there’s no way that modern glass gets close to the cinematic analogue look of the best vintage lenses.
The a7 V – and I’d never thought I’d say it – is arguably now the more sexy high-tech shooting experience too. The R6 Mark III, indeed all the Canon EOS R cameras have all the charm of a photocopier. Canon’s deft ergonomic touch has also deserted them. The materials and finish are awful, although Canon’s menus remain top notch and overall it’s a ‘smooth’ experience – the whole thing is just lacking in any sort of charm – a bit like Sony used to be. It is a work tool and the expensive RF lenses collect so much dirt in the fine pattern grain finish of the barrel, it’s horrible.
The Sony a7 V not only looks more enticing, more exciting, more futuristic – it is more advanced and better built too. Sony has banished all the ergonomic disasters of their past. The best feeling buttons, dials and screen mechanism, all in a very compact body with a very chunky grip, huge EVF and mega battery life. The Sony a7 V is not a mid-range body – it has more in common with the a7r V or even a1 II than ever before. Whereas between the EOS R6 Mark III and their flagship, the R1, there’s a big difference in quality and materials.
So even though Canon has after 5 years finally offered us an EOS R5 spec camera for mid-range prices (if you consider $3k mid-range that is!), there are things that temper my excitement somewhat
7K RAW has a degree of “overkill” about it – will you need it? Or does it just sound great on paper?
Good old 10bit 4K/H.265 looks great!
6K/7K/8K internal RAW recording is no longer exotic – it’s been around a while now. It’s common and affordable. The R5 offers it for under $2k used
Great specs on the video side are wonderful to see from Canon, but it doesn’t mean as much in an RF mount camera – the native lenses are charmless and expensive lunacy. For me, ergonomics and vintage lenses are WAY more important than simply the difference between 4K and 7K
Better autofocus for video and indeed stills on the Sony side now
Sony also has the better IBIS for manual focus lenses & vintage lenses via an adapter
Quite a lot of the a7 V and EOS R6 Mark III are similar… With equal performances in terms of rolling shutter, full frame, 4K 60fps without a crop, the same price and overall market position – but for me at least, the significant advantages of Sony’s mount win the contest for me versus the better overall Canon video specification.
On the other hand if you’re truly happy with EOS RF mount, the R6 Mark III will be an exceptional tool (for you).
With really filmic results, the filmmaker Lav Diaz decided to use the most compact Super 16mm rig out-there – the Panasonic GH7. It has a hypnotic hybrid documentary-cinematic look and the look of Super 16mm film, showing that the format of Micro Four Thirds is still every bit as brilliant in the right hands as full frame or Super 35mm – despite the large-sensor-craze of the 2020s!
According to Reddit, it was shot with native glass as well. The Panasonic 12mm F1.4 and 25mm primes. [Reddit Source]
The dynamic range is really up there with film isn’t it?
The final cut also shows off a perfect fine monochromatic grain and texture, just like real thing (Super 16mm film). Although it isn’t certain whether this is added in post, or straight out of camera in V-LOG, the look is absolutely fantastic.
The movie premiered at Cannes this year and will have a theatrical release just after Christmas.
ARRI which still builds cameras in Germany is to close two factories as the ongoing retraction in filmmaking continues to bite.
The closure of the two facilities which produce ARRI lighting equipment (which by the way, is the best in the industry) will result in 150 job losses in Germany.
This is a real chance for Canon or Sony to save ARRI and in return be the dominant player in cinema.
If the company continues without a buyer, the future doesn’t look particularly bright – despite having the best sensor technology of any cinema camera company, and THE industry standard cinema camera with the Alexa 35.
What an amazing foothold in the market they have.
And yet, says ARRI this week:
“Like many companies in the film industry, Arri is undergoing a significant transformation to address lasting shifts in market demand while reinforcing its core strengths”
The problem is that high-end cinema is almost dead thanks to endless sequels, shitty multiplexes and a shift to streaming, the quality of filmmaking just hasn’t been there and the urge to leave the house has never been less.
The other problem is that the massive boom in streaming has also faltered and there’s now a glut of content, a total over supply of crap and the work has dried up at such an extent that it has rippled throughout the entire ecosystem – even going so far as to tanking the value of vintage glass on eBay!
Where once you couldn’t let a day pass without seeing 30 silly commercials on Sky TV shot with old anamorphic lenses, the bubbles and cinematic fashions have all seem to have gone away leaving just a general uninteresting slop in its place.
With the threat of Ai, it’s obvious that a further dramatic transformation of the commercial videography world will happen.
But as Nikon has shown with their purchase of RED, a company like ARRI would be an ideal target for Sony and can be an ongoing success story if only the 90 year old folk that run our favourite Japanese companies grew an imagination.
The Panasonic GH7 I believe to be the final model, but the second hand value of some Micro Four Thirds cameras has been on the increase. Could the system still find it’s way to co-exist with a legion of cheap and small full frame cameras, or is it game over?
One of the most underrated cameras of today is the final Olympus MFT model, the OM-1. This was in development by Olympus before they withdrew from the business and sold out to the Japanese investment company behind the new OM System branding. So it’s an Olympus flagship through-and-through, and what a tragedy we never got to see a full frame Olympus camera!
But the OM-1 is competitive with the Sony a1 in many ways, and actually in some ways better and more feature-rich. The in-body stabilisation on this camera has never been bettered by anything else (although the Nikon Z f comes close).
The OM-1 can be picked up cheap these days, but actually some of the Micro Four Thirds cameras have been steadily on the rise. The Panasonic GX9, GX8 and GX80 to name but a few – the rangefinder style small-as-possible mirrorless cameras are in fashion. Interestingly the more video-orientated models like the GH5 and GH6 have seen the opposite trend – a complete collapse in value, as so much of the pro video market has since moved on to full frame.
OM-System has been recycling the guts of the OM-1 and E-M5 Mark III for a few years now, but they haven’t done new silicon or significant performance upgrades. Panasonic on the other-hand has brought new sensors and processors to the table, and the GH7 feels like a great swan-song.
But the future of Micro Four Thirds isn’t in video.
If it rises again, it’ll be because of the demand for smaller and smaller cameras and fast lenses. Something the Canon RF system for example really fails to deliver on.
I really enjoy my Panasonic GX80 with Kern Switar 26mm F1.1 c-mount lens, the look and form factor is unique and it feels like such a well put together piece of kit. The OM-1 feels like such a nice ergonomic all-rounder, with incredible performance – even though the video quality isn’t up to the same standard as the Panasonic GH7 or G9 Mark II.
The latter has seen some pretty dramatic price cuts, as Panasonic struggles to shift them. Putting a Micro Four Thirds sensor in the body of an S5 Mark II was always going to be a strange choice, as what gives Micro Four Thirds its unique selling point is that it isn’t just trying to be a cheaper full frame system camera, it’s a different kind of tool. They particularly excel at telephoto photography and video, wildlife, sports, and lightweight small zoom lenses compared to their massive full frame equivalents.
Typically for Panasonic the G9 II which has now been cut to 1399 euros, is a really nice spec – especially for filmmakers as it’s basically a GH7 in many ways, with 4K 120fps and a great codec. But if Panasonic had put the guts of this camera in a GX9 style rangefinder-esq. body it would have FLOWN off the shelves. It really puzzles me why they didn’t. Equally, had the GH7 dropped the SLR-style form factor for a slimmer Sony FX3 style more modular square design, it would have helped it capture some of the zeitgeist in video land.
There’s only really one deciding factor now in the future of the format, and that’s Panasonic.
Do they continue it, find a new direction, capitalise on the demand that older models show is still there, or call it quits and throw ALL their weight behind L-mount?
If Panasonic updated the little GM5, with a better EVF and latest sensor, perhaps refreshed the GX9 to make it higher-end and more current, with the latest G9 II tech and video features, then also get innovative with a third model that we’ve never seen before – perhaps a miniature Leica M-clone with rangefinder window, or a tiny Nikon S rangefinder style body full of metal with retro appeal, or even a little Hasselblad medium format camera replica with the G9 II sensor, Micro Four Thirds would capture the imagination again.
Photographers would be all over it, and documentary filmmakers would love a Super 16mm format camera with a pistol grip, Digital Bolex style and RAW codec.
Come on Pana…
Show some imagination and keep the Micro Four Thirds show on the road!
I will always remember what a Leica manager in Germany said to me, which went like this: “I have read your publication today, and I have to admit that the tone is from my point of view unreasonable. However, we respect that journalists can make up their mind independently. But I think even for your reputation within the worldwide video community this article might not be helpful.”
What surprised me most was not that he disagreed with my Leica SL2 review. It was that he felt I had a “reputation” within the worldwide video community.
How had this product manager at Leica come to such a revelation about me, a humble blogger and advocate of affordable filmmaking tools?
At first I thought some of the spies in Berlin had tipped him off. Perhaps they had put a neatly written memo out about the British and what we were like. Could it have been my nemesis, the Cinema5D crew in Austria?
In the end, I suspected none of that. Because to be disliked these days, it is apparently enough simply to tell the truth and be straight to the point about it.
That’s because, like the former Soviet Union we are living in a post-truth society with most Western nations following Putin’s media playbook where fake news is big money, and facts merely an inconvenience that get in the way money changing hands.
At the time of the Leica controversy, I was a Leica customer with the SL2, Leica Q and very firmly in the Leica M Typ 240 club when I feel like slowing down my photography and missing a lot of shots.
(Note for the Germans: The last line is a sarcastic joke – I do really like my Leica M Typ 240).
But the money the public gives to corporations and banks doesn’t seem to buy us much influence. When we bail out the banks, we don’t seem to get much of a say in how they are run or much of a share of the future profits. In turn, modern businesses never seem to invest any of their profits into their acquisitions, instead there always seems to be a hedge fund in there or a venture capitalist round, or a massive bank loan.
And if you follow the money, they don’t just want control of our corporations, they want control of the media and government too, which is textbook fascism.
Take the AI industry for example, which will crash the world’s economy next January, around the 15th if my calculations are correct and we’ll have to bail them out. If the truth mattered at all to people in the AI industry (especially investors) how would Microsoft justify giving so many billions of dollars to ChatGPT so that ChatGPT could give it back to NVidia and NVidia pass it back to Microsoft and they all live happily ever after ignoring the fact they have even less profit than Leica.
I only have to look at the supposedly “Liberal” government in the United Kingdom to realise that when it comes to money and powerful networks of crooks, they are willing to throw facts and factual journalism under the bus at every opportunity.
Take the BBC.
This is a British institution which was the pioneer of all broadcasting, the mother of all TV networks, at the peak of Western civilisation, and the BBC is still to this day a world leader in journalism, news and TV and it was even further ahead of the pack at a time when the internet and shouty dickheads on social media didn’t even exist, let alone Canadian YouTubers.
The BBC is a great dane in a room full of nasty little chihuahuas. I along with most of the country and 100% of the educated voted for a centre-left government last year in order to protect our institutions like the BBC and to stand up to the rising tide of fascism.
I voted so that my country would be better placed to stand up to Neo Nazism.
Instead, I may as well have voted for a customer service chat agent given what’s been achieved since.
Much to the detriment of the BBC, right-wing media companies are stronger than ever and Murdoch is more influential than ever before despite looking like something that crawled out of a pyramid. Even for him Trump is “a bit too right wing” (his own words) and at one point even Fox News were reluctant to go there. But go there, they did.
In fact go there, the whole fucking world did. Just like the shills in the camera industry do whenever then inconvenient truth gets in the way of affiliate link sales.
In our own tiny microcosm of life, I’ll give you an example.
Nearly all of them ignored Magic Lantern’s truthful journalism about the Canon EOS R5 overheating debacle, and my reporting of it and journalism involving fridge freezers…
Granted, this wasn’t as important as Emily Maitlis on the BBC exposing Prince Andrew lying about being a pedophile, but it was interesting in a camera sense.
Yet it has taken just one legal document from President Trump to the BBC over one edit in one episode of Panorama for the whole country to capitulate and sack the BBC’s bosses.
To be fair, they were useless and deserved to go.
But the injustice of it is clear.
The BBC has a social contract with the British public to stand up for the truth, and in return we pay for the BBC. When a proven liar and convicted criminal sues the BBC, he is in effect suing the people of the United Kingdom, and this isn’t a very nice thing to do after we were gracious enough to give him a full state visit where he met the King.
Whilst our own alleged island vacationer Mr Andrew Mountbatten persona-non-grata takes the brunt of the anger, the person Mr Epstein hired his prostitute from gets a full state visit. One assumes the Royals were thrilled to meet him. And he got a multi-billion dollar trade deal as well.
I as a non-fascist believer in free press, and British values, I think that all of this is deplorable and crosses the biggest red line on so many levels.
But that’s the inherent hypocrisy in our governments of today and one of the big reasons they keep losing to fascists and popularist idiots.
As a politician of the left-of-centre and decently informed (thanks in no small way to the BBC), do you stand up for your voters and their values, and stand up for the truth, or do you rub shoulders with pedophiles and rapists? It’s a tough choice, isn’t it?
What I learnt in the camera community was that when it comes to certain career focused individuals – personal growth, cash and social standing means you’re guaranteed to capitulate on your principals all the time, and that is as much a part of everyday life as filling the dishwasher. When it comes to the Big $D, these important values are a distinct afterthought… The sort of afterthought you have when closing a drawer, not the ones that keep you awake at night.
This is how the camera community, along with it the indie filmmaking community on Vimeo was sold out to the career-politicians of YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Content creator workaholics who live and breathe money rather than artistic philosophies and principals… All in a big circle jerk with the camera PR marketing departments, and in return they get to grow their own online ego in order to showcase an ever expanding body of nothingness.
They have 100% of things in common with today’s politicians.
There’s no impartial, objective BBC of camera reviews, let alone another EOSHD. DPReview is now like advertorial. I could be savage and bitter, I could be rude, but that’s how critical thinking works, you fucking dumbasses.
Once you abandon your ability to be critical and start to sugar coat everything you do, you may as well surrender to the markets, and by extension – to neo fascism.
And this is exactly what the left have done in politics.
Rather than standing up for what’s right or for those who voted them into office, they have chosen to usher in a new era of career-liberalism and inequality, and they are the enablers of so many bad things, and bad people.
As a result the Germans are voting right wing for the first time since the 1930s and the Americans have turned into a full-on dystopian monarchy with a big fat ex-landlord TV celebrity as King.
Yet still the career-minded-liberals refuses to admit they got it wrong. It’s a sort of mass collective delusion, the kind that makes Kamala Harris believe she can run again and win. I have news for her – thanks to you, there won’t be another US election.
The career psychos with shiny faces and their nice intentions don’t seem to realise it. They’re too short sighted and too far gone up their own bottoms. They like to say it’s pragmatism. It’s actually cowardice, and the self defeating nature of it has been proof-tested.
Nobody wants to vote for this sick form of career growth and perverted pragmatism.
And as for the camera world…
It’s a fascinating microcosm of the wider problem, isn’t it? A case-study of what happens when shills rise to positions of power and into the positions of community gatekeepers.
When the camera community was being curated by outspoken artists or individuals speaking sense and giving their own professional and enthusiast insights, the filmmaking community by extension was so much more enjoyable and productive too.
Pro photographers have been notified by Panasonic that their support service is being terminated.
Those paying a membership fee to cover repairs will soon have to seek alternatives. There’s also been a memorandum put out online by the company, which you can see for the UK market at https://www.lumixpro.panasonic.com/uk/
This is quite an unusual move – can you imagine Nikon ending NPS or Canon Professional Services withdrawing support to all the sports photographers and journalists that use Canon or Nikon gear?
It looks like Panasonic has seen the domination of Canon, Nikon and Sony in the pro market and decided to withdraw and to no longer try and compete.
Could Panasonic exit the camera market in 2026?
If this is the beginning of the end for Lumix cameras, the reason might be little to do with photography or filmmaking.
In 2026 many are predicting a global recession caused by the collapse of the tech industry and over-investment in AI. Like the credit crunch in 2008 and the dot-com bubble in 2000, the banks have been pouring cash into some very questionable investments, and there’s absolutely vast sums involved and enormous geo-political risk. China for example could end the whole Western dominance of the AI market in one move – by invading Taiwan, where TSMC manufactures NVidia’s AI hardware.
In both of the last major economic shocks, excluding COVID, corporations cut back heavily on their workforce, and ordinary tax payers had to bail out the financial institutions to avoid a collapse.
Japanese companies are known to be very risk averse – for example in the banking collapse of 2008, Honda pulled out of all major marketing activities even Formula One.
If Panasonic were to cut 30% of their global workforce, the axe would most likely fall on the sectors of the company that are smallest or least profitable, and ones that have the least potential for future growth.
Now that cameras have retreated into a professional niche again, there’s probably not room for so many Japanese manufacturers all competing against each other in a market dominated by Canon and Sony.
I predict that Panasonic’s LUMIX division, OM System and Pentax will be the victims of the 2026 financial crash.
I hope this won’t be the case but I do think the chances are very high.
A retreat from pro cameras
Panasonic Pro Services offer repair and service for all the major S-series cameras, like the Panasonic S1H, S5 Mark II and 2025’s new S1R Mark II / S1 Mark II.
Who will repair, recondition or service Panasonic’s top of the line models going forward?
In my opinion, Panasonic is soft-quitting the market for professional photographers and videographers. The S1H Mark II is missing completely, and it’s been 6 years. The S1R Mark II and S1 Mark II as we’ve already seen, are priced like flagship cameras but use a similar body to the consumer-grade S5 series and use older sensor designs which are considered lower-end technology, instead of the latest cutting edge stacked sensors used by competitors Sony, Nikon, Canon and Fujifilm.
Hopefully Panasonic will be clarifying their service and repair plans for Lumix users in the coming days.
Fuji in many ways have taken over from Panasonic as the most highly rated niche creative force in the camera industry. Since they started taking video seriously with the X-T2, the green camp has got a lot of things right. The popularity of the X100 series. The purist photography experience of the X-Pro3, a camera I strangely really enjoy for video too. The GFX cameras have done extraordinarily well considering it’s carved out a whole new format, at very high prices. In fact, my all time favourite mirrorless camera of the last 15 years is the OG Fuji GFX 100.
But now it’s time for Fuji to get real about a full frame line-up.
There’s a big price gap between the X100 VI and GFX100RF for example, a camera which makes the Leica Q3 and Sony RX1 Mark III pricing look sane. Yet the market is begging, calling out for, insert cliched phrase here, for a full frame X100 VI with a sane price tag. Let’s face it, if you have silly money for a compact Leica is the only proper choice.
Full frame would solve other problems for Fuji too.
The X-Pro3 was a nice bold step into rangefinder land, but it’s in an odd place. It is neither a Leica M rangefinder, nor is it priced like one. It is not a Sony a7c Mark II competitor, but it IS priced like one. Nor is it really doing much to expand the popularity of XF-mount, and APS-C – because the X-H2 is a higher spec’ed, more modern do-it-all camera for the same price.
The way to differentiate the X-Pro series is to make it full frame and launch it alongside a new range of primes and a zoom. The initial lenses don’t even need to be that adventurous. Small primes, Leica M sized, and one small zoom – preferably a 28-70mm F2.8.
This would be joined by a 28mm F2, an 35mm F2 and a 50mm F1.4 which rather than aiming for technical perfection, go for character and small size instead.
Now you might say such a full frame adventure might kill the APS-C cameras, but you’d be wrong. You might say it would necessitate a price reduction on the high-end XF-mount cameras, and that the X-H2 would need to get even cheaper.
This has already been priced in. What dictates the price and sales numbers of the Fuji APS-C cameras are the mid-range full frame cameras from Sony, Nikon and Canon.
So the price of those nice XF mount cameras would stay the same.
What Fuji could definitely get away with is a higher price and higher margin on a full frame Fuji.
And a full frame Fuji is a what we need. Just ask me, who uses his GFX 100 not as a medium format camera but as a full frame mirrorless system.
I don’t have a single medium format lens for it, no native GFX mount lenses from Fuji. They’re big, clunky, expensive and slow.
What I like to do is adapt fast primes designed for full frame onto my GFX 100, and find what works the best. The rules are, no hard vignette, small, and with a very good quality mechanical focus ring.
These look glorious on the larger “Super full frame” sensor, unique in fact. So very different to sticking vintage glass on a full frame Sony.
So the GFX line will always have that same appeal – it’s an upgrade from full frame, but it’s never going to be mid-range, is it?
With so many mid-range full frame cameras eating Fuji’s carefully prepared APS-C breakfast, like the Nikon Z6 III, Sony a7 series and Canon EOS R8, it’s time Fuji told us that for just $500 more you could get something much more creative, with Fuji Film Simulations and X-Pro style Leica-ish ergonomics.
This would be the full frame camera that stands apart from a sea of black DSLR style mirrorless cameras, the sort of which are frankly all now a bit boring.
Fuji could even let Sigma swap the mount on their L-mount range to beef out the available optics at launch. It’s a no-brainer.
APS-C users will continue to buy APS-C cameras. GFX users will continue to flock to the high-end medium format bodies, but full frame users would have more reasons than ever to choose a Fujifilm.
Nikon are a strange company, and you could say that Japan is a strange country. Having made cameras for 100 years, you’d think Nikon would know a thing or two about marketing cameras. Nikon bought RED for the cinema brand prestige. The original pioneer in digital cinema, is now apparently too unimportant to deserve a proper RED badge on the front of the Nikon Zr, the first Cinema Z camera which is less Hollywood, more vlogger.
Strange as it may seem, I am currently a RED user.
Yes there’s been dark things in the past, abusive lawsuits, unkind words and even unkinder YouTube videos but EOSHD has a RED EPIC sitting on the shelf. I want to sell it… 2000 euros for those interested. But that’s besides the point…
RED was one of cinema’s most valuable brands. Nikon’s deal to buy the pioneers of digital Hollywood cinematography was a decision Panasonic should have taken. A masterstroke, which gives them the best RAW codec license-free and the best brand. What’s more RED sold at the right time – just as the cinema industry headed into a death spiral.
But Nikon’s first hybrid stills/video camera with RED tech, the soon to be announced Nikon Zr is a cheapening of the once great cinema brand.
With this first Nikon x RED camera (x as in kisses?), the Japanese corporation had the chance to make a big cinematic statement. Canon have already done so… long, long ago, when in late 2011 Martin Scorsese appeared on stage introducing the Cinema EOS C300. This was a proper cinema camera, aimed at indies and docus and even TV crews.
Nikon’s debut with Cinema Z is a strange one, they have entered not cinema but content creation.
The Sony ZV1E-look-alike is a significantly less Hollywood, more consumer-point&shoot camera than the latest Canon hybrid… which actually bothers to uses the word “Cinema” properly in its name, the Cinema EOS C50. The Zr seems to strip back on what made the Sony FX3 and soon the Canon C50 so popular with video people…
High spec, high build quality, serious looks, and Cinema branding (and cinema usage in terms of the FX3 in feature-film production).
This makes me think Nikon does not have a good plan for RED, and indeed does not know how to market the brand.
Will we be getting a higher-end ZR8 soon?
Unless they quickly follow-up with something more exciting, with the RED badge actually on it more prominently, with headline specs that are at least Z8-level, with 8K REDCODE RAW at 60fps and 4K 120fps without a crop, the RED brand risks becoming like Hasselblad in 2025… a patent holder for an Asian corporation, and a badge for some colour profiles.
It’s not that the Nikon Zr is a terrible camera, it’s a similar concept to what I wanted RED to make way back in 2012 in the DSLR video days.
It’s just that the reborn, revitalised Japanese version of RED deserved to hit the headlines with a big splash and a big dollop of CINEMA.
“Content creator” camera does not have quite the same value.
What do you get when you take the viewfinder hump of a mirrorless camera?
A cinema camera, apparently.
The Sony FX3 really seems to have set a trend, but there looks to be important differences between the C50 and Zr.
The Zr (below) looks to be a more YouTuber style of camera, and appears to sport a very large 16:9 aspect ratio screen. It’s rumoured to have 6K RAW video along with IBIS. A bit more like a Sony ZV1E than an FX3, perhaps. We’ve yet to see what RED technology it implements, whether it’ll shoot N-RAW or REDCODE.
Whereas the Cinema EOS C50 looks to be aimed at the higher-end of the market, around the $4K mark, it is rumoured to lack IBIS and the RF mount isn’t as flexible or adaptable as Nikon Z, but it is one of the first Canon mirrorless cameras to shoot open gate, with an anamorphic mode.
Rumoured C50 specs:
32MP FF sensor
7k internal Raw at 50fps
4k 120p
Two base ISO of 800 and 6400
Open Gate
no IBIS
no built-in ND’s
1 CF express Type B and 1 SD slot
Price around 4.000 Euros
Rumoured Zr specs:
24MP partially stacked sensor (Z6 III)
6K RAW
IBIS
One SD card slot + one micro SD slot (Weird choice)
Price expected to be around $2500
The C50 is set to be officially announced later today, with the Zr to follow tomorrow (10th September).
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