Tilta Z-CAM E2 cage
Remember to save a little - https://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/22175/aliexpress-mid-year-sale#Item_23
Updated Product page with E2 Flagship series and E2 Series, E2, E2c, E2g
http://www.z-cam.com/zcame2/?fbclid=IwAR11PGQ20LEUj4JejwCHAgjnCNgcULjsieKvlFhkJrceH82CerpSFndWUIQ
Z CAM E2 Firmware Release 0.87
Features added:
- 1.8x de-squeeze
Feature removed:
- Secure Erase
Bugs fixed:
- HLG: image setting refined
- HLG: image file FCPX compatibility
- Human Body Detection based AF
- Press Magnify (User Button) while MF Assist is disabled
- User Profile menu crash
- Other minor bug fixes
E2 with VAZEN 40mm T2 1.8x Anamorphic MFT
Link to Test Footage with VAZEN 40mm T2 on GH5
A few interesting new features in the 0.86 release:
Full release notes: http://www.z-cam.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Z-CAM-E2-0.86-Firmware.pdf
Blackmagic does have an app for their cameras: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blackmagic-camera-control/id1239292847
It works with the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K, Ursa Mini Pro, and Ursa Broadcast.
it's very interesting to watch this holy war
It is not war, it is just some personal things of one member that took such form.
you said "Z-CAM management is afraid about proper path" - what path do you mean? Appealing to the manager's past experience makes sense, but does not prove anything, let's be honest.
It makes lot of sense. As allow to understand reasons behind people actions.
Almost every expirienced manager have priority list, and top priority for 90% of them is their position, at least maintaining this position (even they told you otherwise). Usually the higher the maneger is - the more important it is. Second in priorities list it is usually profits for owner. And all users reasons, engineering reasons are on much further places.
that there is no reason for Black Magic to make a mobile app. How do you want to use this app with BM cameras?
Reason is similar. BM can be used on drone, can be used remotely among many cameras, can be inside car during some stunt sequence and you literally can't reach controls.
@eatstoomuchjam and @Vitaliy_Kiselev, it's very interesting to watch this holy war, but it's better to understand each other. Sorry, I'm not very good at English (I'm Russian). Well, just want to clarify something.
First of all, I don't know any of you, so I can and will speak only in the abstract and apart from your personalities. I'm interested in the subject area of the discussion only.
@Vitaliy_Kiselev, you said "Z-CAM management is afraid about proper path" - what path do you mean? Appealing to the manager's past experience makes sense, but does not prove anything, let's be honest.
@eatstoomuchjam, I think, that there is no reason for Black Magic to make a mobile app. How do you want to use this app with BM cameras? Z-Cam E1 form-factor, for example, dictates the need for wireless control - imagine the situation, where E1 lays, for example, in a microwave oven. How can you start/stop recording without wireless control? :D
Here we go again. I am not asking you to respond to anything, it is exactly you who started from direct personal attacks.
I wrote things not about experience, but about why people do things they do. And first thing management system is doing is trying to keep stability and current course to save or improve their position.
Proper smartphone apps are somewhat important, but you missed my point about getting a Black Magic instead. As far as I remember, they don't even make smartphone apps for their extremely popular cameras (I see some third-party ones in the app store)... and the Z Cam iOS app is already excellent and easy to use.... though if by "consumer-friendly," you mean that a person who has never picked up a camera before can use it easily, I suppose not. That's not really their target market, though.
The rest of your statements are opinions presented as facts and not worth responding to. If you're going to keep harping on the fact that the CEO has a professional background in smartphones, I'll just point out that in terms of running a camera company, you have no experience or background whatsoever.
We talk about different multi camera markets.
Z-CAM design came from people who know a lot about multi camera work from VR cameras perspective mostly, and also from perspective of virtual camera solutions (multiple cameras and later using computation to make virtual camera footage), hence all the SDK they have and such. I can also count some industrial camera usage (Z-CAM had some talks about shipping to such areas, but I do not know if it had been any success yet).
Also please stop adding your thoughts and telling that it is mine. Proper smartphone apps are important, but much more important is understanding how consumer related camera must look like now, how it must behave. How important are software features, remote control, easy consumer level work with many cameras.
Z-CAM management is afraid about proper path, as they are afraid about changes in the company and possible changes in management that will follow. Change of direction could add managers who can manage large software teams and work with feedback outside closed facebook group. I think some of their actions are unconscious.
I know that is going inside some Japanese companies and it is similar thing. Old management is afraid, want to stick to things where they are good, where it is safe. yes, it is worse and worse, but at least managers keep their positions. This is thing they are fighting for. This tensions will release in fall of few Japanese giants soon and whole industry will turn. Will be lot of pain and change of 80% of management.
What are you talking about? The E2 specifically targets the multi-camera market, both with the ethernet port/e2 controller software and with the pixel-level master sync (which can apparently work with 36 cameras, judging by one of the setups they featured).
As far as the apps, yes, it is obvious that you think that a lack of an Android app is somehow going to prevent them from selling cinema cameras... and they have committed to a better Android app, but it isn't their top priority. I guess their potential customers will have to go buy a BMPCC 4K or an Ursa for its excellent Android app. Oh yeah, about that...
Yep, this is that this form factor is made for.
Most funny is that our most heated debates with Z-Cam had been exactly as they DID NOT want to aim multi camera market. And DO NOT want to spend neccessary resources on their apps.
CreoKinetics Ltd supplies camera systems for BBC's Top Gear and Amazon Prime's Grand Tour utilizing GH4's. GH5's, and now Zcam E2.
“It’s kind of ideal and what I want out of a camera. I’m hoping to use it for in-car shoots; so where you might have three cameras, one for piece to camera, one over the shoulder and one POV. You can have them all rigged in to the vehicle and all going back to a controller brain and then from the tracking vehicle if I need to I can interrogate the cameras remotely. You can find out what they’re doing, what their status is, like the battery voltage, how much is left on the memory cards... in fact do anything, just as if I’m standing next to the camera. They could be driving at 150mph and I could still be able to tweak or change any settings I need to. “So you then could extend that network to three cars and have all six camera set-ups on a screen in front of you. You can then change any camera in any presenter’s car at any time.”
https://www.definitionmagazine.com/journal/2019/2/18/z-cam-e2-camera
Oh yeah - those guys put some pictures in the group. Their underwater housing looks crazy impressive!
Saw the Z Cam E2 demonstrated tonight underwater:
https://www.facebook.com/DavidCMPeterson/posts/2493324284033506
Inside a Boxfish, developed right here in NZ just down the road from me! (literally the next train stop after mine)
@kurth Jason has already said that 95% of the code is shared between the E2 series cameras already. The camera runs Linux. A number of low-level things (wifi/ethernet/etc) are handled by the OS. The camera-specific stuff is handled by an executable. I haven't gone in and looked in a while, but from what I remember, the startup script for that executable already tells it that it's using an IMX299 processor - so presumably it was built from the start to be flexible about which sensor it is talking to. I am a software guy and I can say that if software is properly designed, there's no reason that it can't be modular.
Think about what the camera does - at a high level, it reads data from a sensor, debayers it, and applies a color correction matrix (I get that there's a bit more that's going on, but that's the general gist). That's sensor-specific. Which other part of a camera's software would need to be changed to work with a different sensor?
"Cameras aren't plug-n-play" is a silly statement. At some point, computers weren't plug and play. Now they are. Now cameras are also computers, but they can't also be made flexible?
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