The AI vision is feeding a lot of stuff (look at NVIDIA arm platform sales, to developers). So I think a number of companies, but rubber will meet road and after market satuates more, they will have to go bidding for contracts more, and have to have the ability to do so. In the lower end, they can just compete and keep selling. So, in the long term they might have to choose.

You can buy cameras below $30US and upwards OEM rebadged with brand. Distributors can buy a shipping container etc of them. They could simply offer one in each category this way to build up presence of distribution lines, to put higher end product out. Most cameras sold are rubbish or overly expensive. So there is room for a new Sanyo, Kodak Aiptek, Yi, Samsung that offers more for the price, including pro video standards and data rates, at least external SSD recording. People on the know will know what to buy, and what to recommend to their family and freinds to buy. It maybe a shrinking market, but that doesn't stop somebody from getting more of that.

I think they went up market. Up market is willing to pay a lot more. I know one guy doing an 8k camera with programmable features I hope won't be up market. If you can't get numbers, you can't reduce price enough.

Should be. But what happened to the C1R? That was a winner for that day, then gone. Even the E2 should definitely be able to do Raw compression. But maybe even the info on the processing engine out there is wrong.

Right now, I think most/all of their focus is on the E2.

Last I checked with mine, it was still pretty bad.

Gold box deal today

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BKLQVBY

Available at B&H

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1203955-REG/z_camera_e1cam3a701_e1_mini_4k_video.html

I'm in Minnesota (US). I'm not in a rush to sell it yet, but maybe after the next firmware update if there aren't some decent improvements.

I didn't get to shoot a lot of tests today because of a few screwups on my part, but with the latest firmware, things didn't seem too much different than before. I was at ISO 100 since I was outside, but sharpness 2 still is muddy and sharpness 3 still looks a little bit on the oversharpened side. Highlights were still pretty hard to recover.

Judging correct exposure is tough as well - the camera has no built-in histogram (or even anything as fancy as a matchstick meter on old manual cameras) when doing manual exposure. Next time, I'll either bring a meter or just match the settings I'm using on my Sony. Footage from the Sony looked a lot better than the E1.

I don't have a GoPro to compare it to so I'm not sure if it looks better or worse than their footage. If you decide you want this guy, though, I may know of one for sale in the pretty near future. :)

My kickstarter reward camera showed up on Friday and so far, Adam's assessment is about right. I played with it a little bit yesterday - somewhere between sharpness 2 and 3 it goes from mushy to over-sharpened. Highlight recovery was almost non-existent, even with contrast turned down and the picture profile set to z-log. By ISO 3200, the noise was getting a little bit obnoxious. Bitrate was only 60 megabits/second for 4K video with H.264 compression. That's a bit less than I'm used to (Sony and others seem to be at 100).

That was all with firmware 0.16, tough. I've since updated to 2.1 and I'll be taking it out for some tests this afternoon - I'll be bringing my RX100 IV as well as an example of a similarly-priced/sized camera (after a lens is acquired for the z camera).

Maybe fixable with future firmware updates?

• People on their forum have mentioned that the HDMI output is limited to 1080
• On the screen, even relatively minor light variations in the middle of the exposure range seem to band. It's not as bad on the video, at least.

Nuisances not likely to be fixed with a firmware update:

• Battery/microsd door is flimsy
• It's impossible to open the battery/microsd door while it's mounted on any tripod that I own
• The tripod mount is placed pretty close to the front of the camera - hopefully any large diameter lens that I want to mount has a tripod mount of its own. Otherwise, it's possible that the tripod will interfere.
• Viewing the LCD from any angle other than "straight on" doesn't work. It reminds me of a passive matrix laptop screen circa 1997.

The good/neat:

• Both 3840 and 4096 video modes available
• 4:3 video modes available for people who like anamorphic lenses
• It really is pretty charmingly small for an ILC

http://www.dslrfilmnoob.com/2015/11/17/z-cam-e1-m43-camera-firmware-21-working-af-lens-list/

You are closer to China than me... and people already know what you are capable of. It might work for you! It didn't for me! :-)

Updated: "@Samuel Cabral I'm hearing. We are going to have these options. We will even do 1:1 Aspect Ratio modes. Let me discuss with engineers and get back to you. 4:3 with 24fps will be provided, for sure."

Hell yeah! I'm surprised that i look like the only one here excited for this little camera.