Mirrorless Camera Observations - First Week Impressions

Recently I bit the bullet and proceeded to get a new camera to supplement my ageing (and also apparently somewhat ailing though still trustworthy) 7D DSLR. After sticking with one camera for over a decade, switching to anything else was always going to come with a learning curve. What I didn't expect though was what some of those learnings would be!

 

Short Summary of Key Points

Pros:

* Between a nice new higher-quality standard lens, and new sensor tech (and being FF this time too), images are a lot sharper in general. Especially when shooting landscape stuff (e.g. treelines against sunsets in particular, but also tiny text on small labels on things in frame) are now often very sharp + clear with this setup, whereas it used to be somewhat hit and miss whether the same applied before with my old standard lens setup

* There are now 3 dials on the body that can be used to adjust various things, along with an additional mappable control-ring on the new-generation lenses. As you'd expect, in Full Manual Mode, these dials have been mapped so that the two that used to be present still control shutter speed + aperture as before, with the new one handling ISO - exactly as I'd been wishing for many years.

* New sensor == Higher ISO levels you can use (and with less obvious grain when that happens)

* Auto-focus available during video recording

* Can use EVF for "through the lens" live-view preview of what you're recording during video recording - which is better for situations where holding at arms length to see the LCD was problematic

* Can also choose to use the LCD screen in  "pop out" mode out the side, with some angling support available

* A whole bunch of new + more advanced autofocus modes + settings to choose from, along with a wider array of focus points that can be used

 

LOL... The "Genius" Developer Who Created Grease Pencil?! 😂

Was pretty chuffed to get sent a link to a YT video the other day with a pretty fun title LOL 😂😂😂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6XqricCPPY

30 Years of Blender

It seems that this year marks the 30th Birthday of Blender (which is observed on the 2nd January every year). What a milestone!

 

On a personal level, I am forever grateful for role that Blender has and continues to play in my life. In many ways, you can say that Blender and I grew up together - right time, right place, all that sort of thing:

From starting out as a kid in his early teens in NZ wanting to make his own animated short films; to starting to put my self-taught programming skills to use tweaking and modifying this software to scratch my own itches; to starting to help the nascent few professional studios starting to use Blender to scratch their itches; and finally, spending the better part of a decade or so fighting hard to propel our favourite open source 3D content creation suite from "just a little hobbyist toy" to "serious film-production ready software on-par with (if not outright superior to) the other much more lauded 'industry standard' software".

I think it's fair to say that we've definitely achieved that goal of becoming one of the new industry standard DCC suites, playing a major role in production pipelines throughout the industry. Everywhere you look, there are people out the using Blender - often in places and ways that you'd least expect!   

What a thrilling ride it's been, along with getting to meet some many good lifelong friends along the way! 

 

As you may have noticed, I've been largely absent from active involvement in the Blender world for the past few years. While a return to actively developing and contributing to Blender is not completely off the cards, it is currently highly unlikely. Never say never, but between a fairly heavy workload on a complex + important / critical system in my day-job, some ongoing consulting work on some other projects I've been involved in, and also trying to have a bit more of a life outside of work (I'm trying... old habits die hard), it's unlikely to happen anytime soon.

(Admittedly, it's also been somewhat bittersweet seeing the recent resurgence of interest in Blender's Animation System. Seeing all the active discussion + development of things I would've really loved some feedback on a decade ago when I was actually still actively working on some of these things is fun to see... I just wish it could've happened sooner! Oh well... such is life!)

Happy 30th Birthday Blender!