On this page

GoPro Sold to a Company That Doesn’t Make Cameras | Samsung’s Filmmaker SSD Launch Film is Entirely AI-Generated – Focus Check ep132

September 3^rd, 20261

by CineD StaffSeptember 3^rd, 2026

A YouTuber became GoPro’s largest single shareholder on Sunday. On Tuesday, GoPro announced it is being sold – to Starman Optical, an optical-photonics company that builds transceivers for AI data centres, for $285 million. Nino’s read: this is a move into defence, robotics and aerospace, and continued support for cameras is not the same as continued investment. Same week, Miller – the Australian company that invented the fluid head in 1946 – is closing its doors, and Sony, Tilta, Samsung, Apple and Sigma all raised prices. And Samsung’s launch campaign for SSDs aimed at filmmakers appears to contain not a single real frame.

Johnnie is in Japan, about to head home after two months between Japan and China, so this is a remote news roundup – and the last one before Johnnie is back in the studio. The big announcement he keeps hinting at lands on September 11, the first day of IBC – stay tuned; we can’t wait to share the news with you!

This week: the two-part GoPro story, Graham’s review of the LIT DUO 1 light meter, the Miller closure, the price squeeze from Sony, Tilta, Samsung and Apple, the Samsung campaign that nobody filmed, Johnnie’s “Lollywood” piece on production leaving Los Angeles for London, face-detect autofocus finally arriving on the Blackmagic PYXIS 12K, Phantom LUTs for the Nikon ZR, D-Log slow motion on the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P, the open-source Open Pocket Cine monitoring app, Avid Media Composer 2026.8, three new Sigma Cine Primes, bilibili going global, and two educational pieces on digital de-aging and Seedance 2.5.

Spotify

PlayerFM

Markiplier Becomes GoPro’s Largest Shareholder – And the Stock Jumped 46%

(04:51 in the episode)

Mark Fischbach, known to tens of millions of subscribers as Markiplier, quietly built an 8.5% stake in GoPro – 13.5 million Class A shares, held since July, according to the SEC filing, worth roughly $9 million at the time. When Bloomberg broke the story on Sunday, the stock closed Monday up 46%. Johnnie’s first reaction: why didn’t we buy shares? Nino’s answer: because we don’t have nine million dollars lying around.

Johnnie’s more considered take is that this is a wise move by someone who knows exactly what he is doing – Fischbach is a filmmaker, his horror feature Iron Lung shot its behind-the-scenes material on GoPros, and the camera that reportedly tipped him over was the Mission 1 Pro ILS, the interchangeable-lens action camera we gave a Best-of-Show award at NAB and which became our most-watched video from the show. He holds stock, not a board seat, and the filing is the passive kind. Nino adds that Fischbach is also an investor in Strada, Michael Cioni’s company, which he takes as a good sign for GoPro in general. We have the Mission 1 Pro ILS in the office, pre-orders have opened, and B&H lists a ship date of September 6 – a first look is coming in an upcoming episode.

GoPro Finds a Buyer – Starman Optical Pays $285 Million, and It’s About Patents, Not Cameras

(10:24 in the episode)

Two days after the Markiplier news, GoPro announced a definitive merger agreement with Starman Optical: $285 million in cash, $1.14 per share, GoPro’s roughly $92 million of debt repaid at closing, existing shareholders keeping about 10% of the combined company, and the whole thing expected to close by year-end pending a stockholder vote. Starman is the photonics arm of a private, family-controlled group run by Charles Tebele, who founded RCS Computer Experience in New York in the 1990s and now owns a portfolio spanning IT, phone-case brands like Incase, Incipio and Griffin, medical products, semiconductors and real estate. The photonics business itself is new – and it does not make cameras.

So why GoPro? Nino walks through Tebele’s stated logic: 2,500-plus US patents in optics and imaging, a globally recognised brand, a listed vehicle that saves the cost and complexity of an IPO, and onshoring – positioning for a US government that wants to stop buying foreign parts. Nick Woodman already hinted at defence and aerospace interest in his last quarterly report, and that is exactly the buyer that turned up. Starman says it will maintain the cameras, but Nino’s read is that continued support for cameras is not the same as continued investment; the best guarantee the camera business survives is a successful Mission 1 series. The stock rallied above the offer price on the news, which could suggest investors expect a higher bid.

Read more: GoPro to merge with Starman Optical | GoPro Mission 1 Pro ILS

LIT DUO 1 – Image credit: Graham E Sheldon/CineD

LIT DUO 1 Review – Graham Tests the $799 Light Meter, Spectrometer and Flicker Meter in One

(16:41 in the episode)

Johnnie interviewed LIT’s founder, Marko Pirc, on this podcast earlier this year, and recommends that conversation to anyone who wants to learn something about enthusiasm. The LIT DUO 1 measures colour, illuminance, exposure and spectrum, and – its unique feature – doubles as a flicker meter, so you can read where the flicker sits and tune shutter speed or angle before you shoot slow motion under bad lights, rather than hunting for it in camera. Sekonic, the incumbent for professional work, cannot do that.

Graham’s verdict, after testing it on set in California against Sekonic and other meters: very capable for exposure, spectrum, and flicker, but colour measurement in daylight is a bit off compared to the others, while artificial light shows no meaningful gap. Marko is in the comments under the review answering that directly, and the firmware keeps rolling – this is not a finished product in the performance sense. Johnnie likes the companion app, which no other meter has, though Graham hit Bluetooth range issues Marko says should not happen. Nino’s point: at $799, it is a bargain compared to what else is on the market; it looks like a Nintendo controller, fits in any bag, and is exactly the kind of niche only a small company would bother with.

Miller Camera Support Closes – The Inventor of the Fluid Head Shuts Down

(25:06 in the episode)

Nino calls this section “the squeeze”, because the current period feels unlike anything in the fifteen or twenty years we have been in this business – companies being acquired, companies not surviving, and the whole market shifting under them. Miller is the sad one. Robert “Bob” Miller, an engineer from Sydney, patented the fluid head in Australia in 1946; before that, camera operators worked with noisy gear-driven pan-and-tilt assemblies on which a diagonal move was practically impossible. The company followed in 1954, kept manufacturing in Australia for seven decades, and is now winding down. The owners want to retire, apparently tried to sell the business, and found no buyer.

Nino’s personal experience: he loved the Miller tripods Philip Bloom brought to their workshops a decade or more ago, but they were always hard to get hold of in Central Europe, where Sachtler and Manfrotto dominate – distribution outside Australia and the US never seemed strong. The wider context is a tripod market that has been embattled for years – see Videndum – and a good tripod lasts twenty years, so replacement cycles are long, heavy cameras are rare, and the growth is in lightweight support, which was never Miller’s market. There is a clearance sale on now, but we have not found any published arrangement for future spare parts or service, so judge for yourself before buying into a brand with no tomorrow.

Sony and Tilta Raise Prices – FX3 Up 19% in Japan, Nucleus Autofocus Adapter Up 33%

(31:45 in the episode)

Sony Japan raised Cinema Line prices from September 1, citing raw material, manufacturing, and logistics costs: the FX3 goes up 19%, the FX6 12%, the FX30 6–7% and the FR7 more than 20%, with 18 products affected in total – seven cameras and eleven memory cards. Japanese price hikes usually reach the rest of the world shortly afterwards. The brand-new FX5 is not affected, and Nino’s reminder for US readers: the FX6 launched at $6,000 and already sits at $7,000 before any increase outside Japan.

Tilta, a company that competes on price, has also raised prices on around 40 SKUs from September 1 – mostly the very large Boulder cart, which we will review when it arrives, plus Hydra Alien Mini kits, the Khronos focus PD handle, and the Nucleus Auto Focus Adapter kits. The AF adapter base kit goes from $300 to $400, and the dual Nano II motor kit from $500 to $600. Nino thinks the adapter increase is fair for what it does, but the whole pitch of the Nucleus AF adapter was undercutting LiDAR autofocus systems by using the camera’s own face detection, and that gap has just narrowed.

Samsung P9 and P7 Portable SSDs – USB4, 8TB, and a $1,120 Gap for the Same Capacity

(40:37 in the episode)

Samsung’s new P9 and P7 are the first external drives under the Samsung brand with USB4, claiming 4,000MB/s – roughly twice the T9 that a lot of people currently own, and, Samsung says, enough for direct 12K recording, which ties into the updated Blackmagic PYXIS 12K media list. The 8TB P9 is billed as the world’s first 8TB USB4 portable SSD. Pricing: $2,300 for the 8TB P7 and $2,700 for the 8TB P9. The 4TB P9 lists at $1,350.

The comparison Nino keeps coming back to: a 4TB Samsung T7 sold for $230 in a B&H deal in August, which we reported. Same manufacturer, same capacity, $1,120 apart. The P9 is faster and uses newer flash, but the use case is identical – it is just faster – and a gap of that size is the memory squeeze we have been tracking since late 2025, not a speed premium. The practical advice: wait for deals and stock clearances on memory.

Samsung’s Filmmaker SSD Campaign is Entirely AI-Generated

(40:37 in the episode)

Several people on social media pointed out that the marketing assets for the P9 and P7 are AI-generated, and Nino went further: Samsung produced a full reel and a YouTube video of a filmmaker travelling the world with the new SSD as his camera media, plugging it into what looks like a PYXIS – and nothing in it is real. Not the locations, not the filmmaker, not the camera. Nino is certain, having spent enough time with models like Seedance 2.5 to know what to look for, and he thinks that is exactly the point: even if you never want to use these tools, you need to understand them well enough to recognise their output, because it is getting harder every month.

The irony writes itself – a product marketed to filmmakers, launched with a film nobody filmed. A few readers criticised us for running the product article with Samsung’s AI-generated image; the honest answer is that we use what the manufacturer provides when we do not have the product in hand, and we could have flagged it sooner. A separate article on the pushback is coming. Samsung has not commented.

Mac Studio and Mac mini – Image credit: Apple

Apple Refreshes Mac Studio and Mac mini – M5 Ultra Goes Quad-Die, M6 Debuts at 2nm, and Prices Go Up

(43:09 in the episode)

Announced on August 25: the M5 Ultra fuses two dual-die M5 Max chips via next-generation UltraFusion into Apple’s first quad-die chip, with 4.4TB/s of inter-die bandwidth and macOS treating it as one processor. Up to a 36-core CPU, 80-core GPU and 512GB of unified memory; Apple claims +25% single-thread, +30% multi-thread and +40% graphics over the M3 Ultra, and 4.3–4.5x the AI compute. The M6, Apple’s first 2nm chip, debuts in the Mac mini rather than the Studio, with neural accelerators in the GPU, a dual 16-core Neural Engine and up to 32GB at 170GB/s. Across the line: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, PCIe Gen 6 SSDs that double internal storage speed – Nino’s favourite indicator of a machine that actually feels faster – genlock over USB-C, and Thunderbolt 5 RDMA clustering of multiple Studios.

Then the prices. The Mac mini now starts at $899; its M4 predecessor launched at $599 in 2024. The Mac Studio starts at $2,500 with the M5 Max and $5,500 with the M5 Ultra, $500 above the original M4 Max Studio.

Welcome to “Lollywood” – Why Film Production Is Leaving Los Angeles for London

(49:38 in the episode)

Johnnie’s piece takes its title from The London Standard, which coined “Lollywood” for the shift of big-budget production from LA to London – a term that will amuse anyone who knows it has meant Lahore’s film industry for decades. The numbers behind it: FilmLA counted 19,694 on-location shoot days in Greater Los Angeles in 2025, down 16.1% and the lowest annual figure outside 2020, and Q2 2026 came in another 12.7% down year over year, roughly 36% below the five-year average. Feature films fell nearly 20%; the studio tentpoles are simply shooting elsewhere, and London’s soundstages are booked solid with Marvel, Star Wars, and streaming productions.

Nino has read that around 60,000 people in the LA area have left the entertainment business permanently, with more leaving every day because it no longer pays. His take is that Hollywood is becoming an idea rather than a place – the studios are still there, the production long ago moved on – and content made with UK crews and cast travels well globally, to the point that Apple has just bought a finished BBC series for worldwide rollout, a first. Both hosts felt the optimism at BSC Expo in London compared to the year before. The upside: if you are anywhere production is actually happening, a big career is possible outside LA.

Blackmagic PYXIS 12K Gets Face-Detect Autofocus – The Firmware Blackmagic Said Would Take Considerable Engineering

(54:40 in the episode)

Blackmagic Design has released a beta of face-detect autofocus for the PYXIS 12K, following the 6K cameras that got it earlier this year. Nino’s honest assessment: unreliable autofocus was one of the biggest downsides of Blackmagic cameras for a very long time, and with more one-person crews than ever, Sony and Canon have trained everyone to expect it – so it is good that Blackmagic recognised that and acted.

The part that surprised him: at NAB, Nino asked Craig Heffernan directly whether we would see PDAF on the 12K RGBW sensor, and the answer was that it would need considerable engineering work because the sensor technology is entirely different from the Bayer 6K. Blackmagic never announced it was coming, never confirmed the sensor had the PDAF pixels, owners kept asking in the forum – and then it simply shipped. A testament to how much their software team keeps supporting cameras years after launch, with features that were never on the box.

Phantom LUTs for the Nikon ZR – ARRI Alexa Emulation for RED Log3G10

(57:43 in the episode)

Joel Famularo’s Phantom LUTs have arrived for the Nikon ZR: the Gen 1 release covers RED Log3G10 – the colour space of the ZR’s internally recorded R3D NE – with N-Log support promised as a free update. Eleven looks in total, an ARRI pack and a set of film-stock emulations, built by shooting exposure-matched charts with an Alexa Mini and a ZR side by side across some 80 scenes at three exposures each. Since ZR firmware 1.10 raised the importable LUT count to 50, the monitoring versions can be loaded into the camera for on-set preview while recording R3D NE.

And a reminder from episode 130: ZR owners are still waiting for the big firmware update. We will try to chase Nikon at IBC for a date.

DJI Osmo Pocket 4 and 4P Firmware – D-Log in 240fps Slow Motion, Cloud Push, and a Webcam-Mode Caveat

(01:00:08 in the episode)

The Osmo Pocket 4P finally records D-Log in slow motion, up to 240fps in 4K, on both the 20mm-equivalent wide and the 60mm-equivalent tele camera. Until now, high-speed was locked to the normal, very contrasty picture profile. It is D-Log rather than D-Log 2, so you do not get the full 17 stops we measured in our Lab Test – around 14 stops, which is still a remarkable result at these frame rates. Both the 4 and the 4P also gain camera-to-cloud: footage pushes straight to Google Drive, OneDrive or your own NAS when the camera is idle on Wi-Fi, a feature first seen on the Osmo Action 6 that closes a real workflow gap. The Pocket 4 picks up a set of 4P hand-me-downs: frame tracking, faster subject tracking, zoom while tracking, smart gimbal mode retention and Osmo Frame tab remote support.

One caveat Nino found while shooting car rigs with a suspension mount: connect a proper video transmitter over USB-C and the camera switches to webcam mode, at which point internal recording stops. So you set up the shot with the transmitter attached, do a test pass, unplug, and shoot blind – unless you use the phone connection, which still works.

Open Pocket Cine – A Free Open-Source Field Monitor App for the Osmo Pocket 4P

(01:04:12 in the episode)

Developer Erik Sutton has built an open-source monitoring app for the Pocket line under Apache 2.0, now in TestFlight beta. It pairs over Bluetooth, joins the camera’s Wi-Fi, decodes the live HEVC feed and overlays waveform, RGB parade, histogram, vectorscope, false colour, zebra, focus peaking, frame guides and user-loaded .cube LUTs, plus remote camera control, tap-to-track faces and Frame.io camera-to-cloud push using your own Adobe keys. It reads like the spec sheet of a professional monitor rather than a companion app.

It is not built on a DJI SDK – the protocol is reverse-engineered – and it has only been tested on the Osmo Pocket 4P; the Pocket 4 and Pocket 3 are untested. iOS only for now, an Android build is not yet available, and there are no subscriptions. Nino wants to try it, because a lot of this is missing from DJI’s own Mimo app.

Avid Media Composer 2026.8 – AI Multicam Autocut, and a NEXIS Licensing Change Hedge Calls a Walled Garden

(01:06:06 in the episode)

Unveiled ahead of IBC, Media Composer 2026.8 adds PhraseFind AI multicam autocut: speaker assignments from the AI transcript build an editable first-pass multicam sequence, switching angles on whoever is speaking with cuts on speech boundaries. It is aimed at interviews, panels, podcasts and unscripted work – it could cut a show like this one automatically – and Nino thinks every NLE should have it as a starting point.

The controversy: shared projects and bin locking on Avid NEXIS now require Standard or above licences on qualified third-party shared storage, which in practice means enterprise tiers. Tools like Hedge’s Mimic that emulate the NEXIS behaviour will stop working for teams on EditShare, Facilis, LucidLink and similar storage unless they upgrade. Hedge’s public response called it a walled garden disguised as a licensing update; Avid’s position is that nothing changes unless you upgrade. We know the Hedge team and will try to get their take at IBC.

Sigma Extends the Aizu Cine Prime Line – 21mm, 100mm and 125mm T1.3 at $9,800 Each

(01:08:05 in the episode)

Three new lenses arrive in November – 21mm, 100mm and 125mm, all T1.3 – taking the line to eleven. The 46.3mm image circle covers ALEXA LF open gate and VistaVision, and Sigma says a constant T1.3 across the line is a first for large format. The new three are $9,800 each, $1,500 above the $8,300 of the first eight. More price pressure – everything is getting more expensive.

Bilibili Goes Global – China’s YouTube Alternative Relaunches Its International App

(01:09:40 in the episode)

Johnnie’s article covers Bilibili’s international relaunch: the passport or government-ID verification that long stopped overseas creators from uploading is gone – an email or phone number is now enough – an English-language site is in the works, and the company is hiring community managers in Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, São Paulo, Istanbul and Tokyo. Monetisation for international creators – revenue sharing, virtual gifting, a brand marketplace – is promised but not yet detailed.

Nino’s angle is competition: if one platform other than YouTube finally paid creators properly, YouTube would have to pay better too. Meta has shown no willingness to spend real money on creators; whether Bilibili is the one to change that remains to be seen.

Digital De-Aging and the Uncanny Valley – Mascha on When It Works and When It Throws You Out of the Film

(01:12:30 in the episode)

Mascha’s article takes a look at how actors are digitally aged and de-aged, with examples going back to Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man and forward to the current AI-assisted tools, which preserve far more of an actor’s expression than the older pipelines. Nino’s example of where it did not work is The Irishman: a de-aged De Niro who looked younger but still moved like an old man, which no amount of face replacement could fix. The article also touches on the meme around Iñárritu’s new Tom Cruise film, where audiences have been mocking how exaggerated the ageing looks.

Ethical AI Filmmaking Course Update – A New Lesson on Seedance 2.5

(01:14:44 in the episode)

Our ethical AI filmmaking course on MZed Pro has a new short lesson diving into Seedance 2.5 as it runs on Higgsfield – and into the fact that it is not an ethically trained model, whatever the marketing says. Some readers ask why we cover these tools at all. Nino’s answer is the Samsung campaign from earlier in the episode: it was almost certainly made with Seedance, Kling or one of their peers, and the only reason he could say so with certainty is that he has spent time with them. You do not have to use these tools. You do have to be able to recognise what they make, and that is getting harder.

Let us know what you think in the comments below or on YouTube, and email us at [email protected] if there is something you want us to discuss on the show. Don’t forget to subscribe on your favourite podcasting platform – Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. Johnnie is back in the studio next week – in flesh and blood – and the big announcement lands on September 11.