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This guy bought five broken ARRI Alexas to see if he could make one working camera

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Almost everybody who’s into video dreams of one day shooting on an ARRI Alexa. But actually owning one is pure fantasy for most of us. Not for Adam Harig, though, who spotted an eBay auction for five ARRI Alexa cameras on eBay one day and put in an offer. There was only one snag, these ARRI Alexa cameras weren’t working and were in various states of… deconstruction, with a part missing here and there.

After chatting with the seller and feeling reasonably confident that he might get a single working camera together between them, the seller accepted his offer of $1,250. It was a big gamble if he couldn’t get one to work. And even if he did, this wasn’t going to be his only expense, as he later found out. Owning an ARRI Alexa is not cheap!

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NIkon Z9 disassembly and teardown

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We’ve got some big news: The Nikon Z9 is here and ready to take on the Sony A1 and Canon R3 for the title of ‘Mirrorless Flagship.’ We can argue all day about which camera is the best, but there’s no question that this one is the biggest. Mirrorless cameras have all been lighter and more compact than their DSLR counterparts, but with Z9 and the R3, Nikon and Canon have changed that.

While there were a few notable updates with the Z7 II, it was overall a very similar camera to its predecessor. The Z9, however, is a whole new animal. Nikon has been making a lot of solid well-handling cameras across their various tiers, but this is the first one I’ve personally been excited about.

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LensRentals tears down the Panasonic S Pro 70-200mm f/4 OIS to fix autofocus issues

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Announced back in February 2019, the full-frame Panasonic Lumix S Pro 70-200mm f/4 OIS for L mount cameras is a popular lens. This isn’t much of a surprise, as it’s significantly less expensive than the company’s f/2.8 version. They’re popular rental lenses, too, and the folks at LensRentals have a few of them. In fact, they have a couple of them that seem to have developed an autofocus issue.

So, LensRentals did what LensRentals does and tore it to pieces in order to figure out what’s wrong, fixed it and put it back together. Panasonic doesn’t really offer a repair service for this lens, just an exchange service, which is fine but they don’t want to have the item out of stock for weeks. There’s only one little snag. They’ve never taken this lens apart before. The team documented the complete process on the LensRentals blog, but here are some of the highlights.

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iPhone 13 Pro teardown shows a fatter camera module, bigger battery and more

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The iPhone 13 lineup is the latest from the Apple camp and the iPhone 13 Pro has seen a few nice updates over its 12th generation predecessor. It’s got the new A15 Bionic processor, adaptive refresh up to 120Hz, up to a third longer battery life and a new camera module – sort of. It’s similar to the old one, but chunkier.

As per usual, the folks at iFixit have taken an iPhone 13 Pro apart and published their disassembly process along with some of their tests and findings. And despite the improvements, it’s not all good news. Right to repair is definitely not at the forefront with this device.

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DJI FPV Drone teardown shows it’s modular and repairable at home

One of the key aspects of FPV drones is their repairability. After all, most FPV drones (particularly racing ones) are self-built by the person flying them. They’re not off-the-shelf purchases, so the person who made it and is flying it knows exactly how to tear it back down, replace parts and rebuild it. But does DJI’s new FPV drone stand up to the same self-repair scrutiny?

This teardown video from Livyu FPV shows that, while it’s not exactly an FPV racing drone, it does seem to be designed in a modular fashion that makes it fairly easy for users to repair at home when needed. And, make no mistake, with an FPV drone, you’ll almost certainly have a crash and need to do so at some point.

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Tearing down the Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.7-7.1L IS USM reveals a very complex design

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This is probably one of the most in-depth lens teardowns I’ve seen from Lensrentals. Their efforts weren’t by choice, though. The lens lied to them. The team recently posted a teardown of the Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1L IS USM lens that had a broken element inside it. It appeared as though the element might reside inside the stabilization system, which is relatively easy to remove.

It turned out, though, that the IS system of the lens was simply masking the true location of the broken element. This resulted in the need to pretty much completely dismantle the entire lens, down to almost its core constituent parts, in order to track down exactly where in the optical makeup it was.

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iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro camera modules revealed in this iFixit teardown

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No matter what brand of phone you choose to use yourself, the biggest spectacle in the smartphone world each year is undoubtedly the new iPhone releases. This year, that meant the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro (well, and the iPhone 12 Pro Max, but that’s not available yet). And, following on from that announcement is the obligatory teardown from iFixit.

In an hour and a half live stream, Taylor Dixon, iFixit’s Teardown Engineer, took apart both the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 Pro to see how easy it is to dismantle and to take a look at the components inside – including the camera modules (the camera talk is around the 44-minute mark).

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Tearing down the Sigma fp – the world’s smallest and lightest full-frame mirrorless camera

Since making is debut in July of 2019, the Sigma fp has gained notoriety as a very capable camera among its mixed reviews. The decidedly lowercase ‘fp’ is Sigma’s first full-frame sensor. The fp was released the same year that all other major camera manufacturers that aren’t Sony were releasing their first or second full-frame mirrorless cameras, and in typical Sigma fashion, the fp stood out from the crowd.

It’s certainly doing its part now to popularize the sensor-in-box style form factor that makes so much sense for video shooters. This design also makes it a great candidate for conversion to Infrared!

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Thermal vision tests suggest Canon may not be able to “fix” the EOS R5’s heat issues

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LensRentals just recently posted their teardown of the Canon EOS R5 and noticed that it has some pretty hefty seals to help protect it from the elements when shooting outdoors in harsh conditions. But they theorised that those seals and the tightly packed components might hamper the EOS R5’s heat dissipation abilities.

Well, now, Roger and the team at LensRentals have pointed a FLIR thermal IR camera at it to see exactly how hot the Canon EOS R5 gets after it’s been on for a while at different parts of the camera body. And some of it… Well, it gets extremely hot!

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Canon EOS R5 teardown shows great weather sealing but few escape routes for heat

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Well, Kolari Vision might’ve been the first to tear apart the Canon EOS R6 and get a good look at the chip that seems to keep time for “overheating” issues, but it looks like Roger and the gang at Lensrentals has beaten them to the punch on cracking open the Canon EOS R5.

They’ve published a complete EOS R5 teardown which offers some good insights into its weather sealing, which looks very impressive. But those seals might be the EOS R5’s downfall when it comes to letting heat escape.

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