Good morning!

[Chris Ross Leong]

Chris here, pro Brit photog and film maker living in the Los Angeles area, California, USA.
Started in the 70's, still going string!

Up until now I've mostly been Sinar and Speed Graphic LF, Fuji, Bronica and Hasselblad MF, and Leicas and Nikons. Had dabblings with Sony Alpha, Fuji X, Micro 4/3, but retreated back to the larger formats, but continue to dabble in the more portable cameras, the latest being the Foveon Merrill offerings. About the only small sensor cameras that I do still have are on my drones, a Sony RX10 that my son now owns, and a Leica 114 that was snapped up on arrival by my better half, who opened the box for me, said "mine", and that was the end of that...

However, my serious work will probably still be all Leica, Nikon, Fuji (I use Blackmagic cinema cameras for work mainly these days, along with D800Es, Leica M and Sinar P2 with Fuji glass for stills).

Having said that, the L mount offerings sure look great!

I'll probably have a dive in when one system or another presents itself as being particularly suitable for an assignment that warrants buying into it. Mostly my clients are wanting me to scale down on (downres) the shots I already give them, so that might be awhile!

In the meantime, I'll content my self with watching here to see what transpires and really poke into the sensors and color science behind these new systems. For me, for instance, the earlier Blackmagic cameras were really magical - most of my fellows bought the original cinema camera, made wonderful movies from that camera, got rich and then of course had to follow the "me too" latest and greatest equipment trend and move from 2.5k to 4k to 4.6k sensors...

My point is that most of them didn't mind the move to the latest sensors - they are pros and so their fees demand they have the latest gear - but they were all, without a doubt, connected to their first 2.5k Cinema cameras. Come to find out that, unlike all the other Japanese sensors of the modern cameras, the original Cinema camera was built around a BAE/Fairchild sCMOS sensor coming out of... SIlicon Valley. Yes, an honest-to-goodness US sensor, powering an Australian camera. The color science was and is gorgeous, and the imagery, especially with older Leica R glass, is gorgeous out of the camera.

What I'm getting to is that even though we have a great new mount system, and great new lenses, I really do hope that the camera manufacturers get the back end of their cameras away from that flat, capture-all let's-change-everything-in-post RAW approach and give us great color science (stackable sensors?), exposure latitude, bit depth, and a fantastic post production system to go with this time around.

Probably won't happen, but hey, a guy can dream!

Cheers and glad to be here!

Chris

 

[dirk]

Hi Chris,

What I'm getting to is that even though we have a great new mount system, and great new lenses, I really do hope that the camera manufacturers get the back end of their cameras away from that flat, capture-all let's-change-everything-in-post RAW approach and give us great color science (stackable sensors?), exposure latitude, bit depth, and a fantastic post production system to go with this time around.

That would be nice. Even 16 bit colour depth in all new cameras would be a big move forward.

And please better jpegs ooc! The Lumix G9 and GX9 (MFT system) is alreday way better with this than older models in the past, but everything can be improved even more

There are so many times I need quick and dirty jpegs ooc and do not have a PC with me.

 

[Chris Ross Leong]

Dirk! Good morning from LA and what an honour!

This is a great site, and it will be even greater when the L mount gets its Foveon and Fairchild sensors behind it

Yeah, I'm a bit skeptical, given the current Z and R mount offerings, that anything great will come from the L mount contributors right off the bat.

Given that Leicas are tremendously overpriced for the life of their cameras (I grew up on M's and R's, by the way, so I love them - but I still have M2s and M4s and SLs, and SL2s that I operate to this day - and that can still produce pro level images, to this day. More than I can say for the PanaLeicas or my Digiluxes or any of that ilk - including the current 114, all of which I still own, but whose productive professional life span is measured in months, not decades. Yet the manufacturers insist on behaving like digital cameras will outlast analog cameras. Patently not true, which is why I've refused to buy anything new by Leica since the M9).

Arri had the very same problem when it finally digitized in the cinema world. However, they have the great sense to offer their horrendously expensive cameras for rent... which is, I suppose, how the first L series cameras will be until enough people buy out the bleeding edge and we move on to something more reasonable, in terms of price and performance.

I still think it will take awhile, though!

In the meantime, yes, we can dream on. But think about it. The costs of re-design for a larger lens mount and a given set of controllable and monitor-able lens parameters can be, and presumably have been, dispersed among at least three manufacturers, and presumably, if Leica wants to sell more than a hundred or so copies of its L series lenses (look at Leica's Cinema series lenses to get a sense of where their heads are at, price-wise, vis-a-vis the movie production business). then I guess it will be Panasonic or similar folk who will actually be making their new lenses. Forgive if I'm off the mark, but I've stopped following camera industry news since all their BS started kicking in when the kids lost their education and good sense of history.

But we can remain hopeful. Actually I don't mind that JPGs might go away - I'd just need the cameras to be able to display RAW and output ooc JPG compressions, both on the fly.
Not too hard to do, but then that would mean a common RAW file format, which they won't do since then that would mean standardising their processing apps. And as we know, that would make things waaay too easy! (just kidding).

The processing power to get a RAW file to display on a camera screen just isn't as hard to engineer as it used to be. It's just that JPG works as a cheaper alternative, and so nobody wants to take away from their profit margins to give the user access to something that 99/9% of the users around have no idea about (because the camera folk haven't updated them about, not until their current tech is sold out and too old to be of use - or someone else gets there first.

I could go on!

Best
Chris