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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Generation Z is becoming less invested in university and more interested in skilled trades

This week, Lily Herd heads for outer space in the company of a prodigious imagination; and Andrew Motion joins us with a wonderful new poem.

'Collected Stories' by Cixin Liu, translated by John Chu, Andy Dudak et al

'All that We See or Seem', by Ken Liu

'Snow', by Andrew Motion 

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today it’s the first in our series of live episodes recorded at the Regent Street Cinema in London: David talks to the crime writers Nicci Gerrard and Sean French (aka Nicci French) about Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), based on Patrick Hamilton’s play of the same name, itself based on the real-life case of Leopold and Loeb. What is the true subject of this film: murder, sex, morality or something else? Why is James Stewart so hopelessly miscast? And how does all this connect to Nietzsche?

If you are still looking for Christmas presents we have 6- and 12-month gift subscriptions to PPF+ giving access to all our bonus episodes, ad-free listening and automatic sign-up to our fortnightly newsletter – which can be delivered to the recipient of your choice on Christmas Day! ⁠https://ppf.supportingcast.fm/gifts⁠

Next time: My Dinner with Andre w/Lee Hall

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Allies are planning for a lonelier, harsher world: a report from South Korea

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

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

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

I have two Metabones Speed Boosters with Canon EF mount.

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

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

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

Either way, it works extremely well.

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

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

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

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

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

The OM lenses are a perfect match for it too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaking of the GH5S…

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

24mm * 0.64 = 15.36 mm

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sad isn’t it?

The post The Olympus OM-1 goes full frame OM appeared first on EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comment on the EOSHD Forum

The post The Canon EOS R6 Mark III trails the Sony a7 V dynamic range by 2 stops but nobody can find the images appeared first on EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews.

Depois de uma geração 'morna' com as RX 7000, em 2025, a AMD lançou as novas RX 9000 com arquitetura RDNA4, diminuindo o gap tecnológico em relação a NVIDIA, na arquitetura e principalmente nos recursos de software como o upscaler. Tudo isso parece muito bom, mas e para os overclockers, será que tem alguma novidade? É o que vamos ver nesse artigo!

O post Como deixar a RX 9070 mais rápida que a RX 9070 XT – Passo a passo com testes e resultados! apareceu primeiro em The Overclock Page.

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

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

EOSHD takes a look at what has been going on…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sora 2 simply doesn’t scale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The truth is, we have no clue.

Right now that future looks incredibly uncertain.

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

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

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

But there’s a problem.

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

Production capacity at TSMC is not enough.

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

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

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

Sounds bad? It gets worse…

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

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

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

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

Comment on the EOSHD Forum

The post Users are complaining OpenAI wreaked Sora 2. EOSHD takes a look at what happened… appeared first on EOSHD.com - Filmmaking Gear and Camera Reviews.