I wonder how many MK2s Roland sent out?

1st batch is REAL limited. One shop says their 1st batch consists of only 10 MK2s while 2nd batch preorders have stopped and slated for Jan. 2022 release. 3rd batch by March.

If a not so small shop has only 10 SPs, bigger stores like Sweetwater might only have 50 to 60 to fulfill 1st batch preorders.

A rep from Roland says the MK2s will come in "drips" and not "floods" as he says.

Whats your take on them releasing it in drips?

The last drips I knew of were from Korg's Volca Sample 2 and it was kind of same experience. Retailers had limited 1st batches and the wait was 2 to 3 months for 2nd and 3rd batches. The first batch went up like nothing happened, probably Korg didn't expect overwhelming sales, but in a manner of a day or two, Volca Sample 2s could not be found anywhere. Very rarely you'll see one "In Stock" and if you did, you pulled the trigger and it was like the last one because immediately it go "Sold Out".

But since Roland is more larger than Korg, their drips are probably 20 MK2s a month for each retailer. Bigger stores like GC and Sweetwater probably will get 40 MK2s a month.

Right now, its best to ask your seller how many they getting and what placement number are you in, just to know your timeline, I ordered straight away at 3am on the 13th and I was told I was number 4. Which is good news for me but they say by 21st of Nov. I should get confirmation. The other store I ordered says I'm number 20, same waiting time.

I'm thinking our homie Ill Green would enjoy the hobby of 'Urban Explorer' very much

When I lived in New York, thats all I did, roam the undergrounds and hidden alleys just tagging up, get into fights and find pretty girls in the most obscure places.

You say urban explorer, back then, you was a vandal.

Can't wait to get this full blown, top notch unit in my hands. Hahaha, i hope this motherfuckin' sp-bomb wont destroy the art of sp-beatmaking, which was/is still characterized by the lack of features and the creative use of individual workarounds and tricks.

Next year:

I've been attracted to the hobby a few times now but never get around to it due to not having a nice camera. I literally just ordered a synth though, and the price I paid means I have plenty of cash left over for the camera I want (even after putting money aside for the 404MKII).

I'm more interested in indie film-making than urban exploration though.

Was looking at the Lumix FZ330 (marketed as the FZ300 in your area), incredible piece of kit for the price (and insanely popular on flickr because you get a lens that goes from super-wide to super telephoto and all with a constant fast aperture! Records video in 4K at the proper frame rate for cinematic use (as in the actual sensor output not just the frame-rate), and most of all it is even weather-sealed. You can pick them up for less than £400 (brand new) in the UK, so I just might do that now that have a synth sorted.

Anyway, we better get back on topic, but I just wanted to point out a huge website for Urban Exploration photography, so large that each section has page after page after page of threads on specific places and properties (ideal for the sort of stuff you like compositing over). Important to realise on this site that when you reach the bottom of a page, there are more pages even on the indexes (easy to miss or forget), really is a huge website and nicely designed.

In the "Asylums and Hospitals" section alone, there are 387 pages of indexes, each of which contains ten threads, each thread of which can contain many pages, and that's just the "Asylums and Hospitals" section.

Huge Urban Exploration Website:
https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/

is that good? i mean the price is strangely low also in europe...it's a digital reflex, right? how is different from now smarphones quality for that price?


nice one
always interested in Guy Debord's society of spectacle, les non-lieux (sorry i don't know a correct translation of this in english) and the (urban) derivatives/drifts

@SP-User: yeah, I been looking into a decent camera and maybe a drone. Living in an island, the only places to get a good urban exploring fix is in the old town but it highly guarded by police and drug lords. Best days to go is when there is a festival where everybody attends, leaving the places vacant. Kinda like driving around the city at 5am, day after New Year's eve, nobody is around!

I do have a 5 year old Samsung camera, forgot the model but it does have that old school lens to zoom in and out instead of a digital zoom. I think its a DLSR type or something like that. Paid $300USD. I notice UK got some low prices on stuff we pay extra for. Gonna have to look into that FZ330, that looks another level. Could do some freaky visuals with that.

Those pics are superb dope! Inspiring for album covers and making beat vids. I googled my background images, but most likely came from that site. Interesting.

In response to both of your comments, I could bang-on for hours about why it's such an awesome camera but we should really have a new thread for it. What I will do though is try to condense it small as I can.

I originally got interested in this camera about 4-5 years ago, and at the time I was looking into weather-sealed DSLR and lenses (sadly all out of my price range). Then I stumbled upon the FZ330 and I was pretty much converted into wanting one. In the end I never ended-up purchasing one because I had other priorities, but at the time I even went to the trouble of taking an SD card to the camera shop where they let me run a whole bunch of tests on it. I'd record at various frame-rates, various focal lengths, and at various shutter speeds while making sure to always under-expose. The reason I did that is because if you want to achieve the look of film, you need to avoid blowouts.

I was blown away by how nice it was to use, and blown even further when I got the SD card back home and was able to play around processing the footage i'd taken with it. I swear, the lens is a cinematographers wet dream other than I wish it was a bit wider at the wide end. I remember now this was actually the camera that went from Wide to Super-Telephoto, not Super-Wide to Super-Telephoto, but I suppose I could get that extra width with an attachment.

The problem with this camera is never the camera itself, it's always the users. If you were to look on YouTube you'll find barey anything any good, and that's because it's an extremely deep tool and the people uploading stuff from it are more than likely just casual camera users, not professionals. One thing that especially floored me about this camera (considering it only has a small sensor) is it's low light performance, but unfortunately the people who upload footage from it don't seem to realise that the amount of light performance they are getting would be more than doubled if they shot at the correct frame rate and shutter speed.

Here's a clip showing how clean it can look in low and artificial lighting conditions, and this by no means was shot by a professional, there is a whole bunch of settings and technique you could use to make it look even better, even sharper:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg85P2tzFO8

Here's a clip that demonstrates what I really love about this lens. If you look at the shots of the old lady, it will feel very 'big' and 'cinematic', and that's because the lens and sensor spec on this camera work in a very pleasing way, allowing you to mimic the cinematic properties of pretty much any cinema lens out there. Stick an anamorpic filter on the end of the lens and it would look totally jaw-dropping, I'm tellin ya. With this lens/sensor combination, it's like having an infinite number of lenses by your side, and in order to mimic any specific lens, all you do is place yourself the right distance from the subject and zoom accordingly. I've even seen this camera used for shooting professional studio portraits and nudes.

But yeah, check-out the old lady shots for 'proper-looking' cinematic perspective and bokeh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS4W1QUh8Uo

Finally, you also have to repsect that this camera and lens is fully weather-sealed, has an epic electronic viewfinder, has a fully (not semi) articulated screen, is very deep, gives you full manual control and even goes as far as giving you cinematic profiles and a sensor that actually works in tandem with the frame rate you choose. This is very important if you plan (as I do) to process the footage in order to fool people into thinking it was shot on real film. Bit nerdy, sure, but fact is on most cameras, the sensor read-out is fixed, or in other words it will run at 60fps regardless of whether you're shooting at 24fps, 25, 30, 50 or 60. This makes your footage look like video even when you want it to look like film, and that means there is nothing you can do about it.

Not on the FZ300/FZ330, though, cause on this camera, the sensor output is matched to the actual frame rate. Shoot at the cinematic rate of 24p on this thing, and the sensor will actually slow down it's heartbeat and run at 24p to match the frame-rate, and will therefore give the same frame-rate related aesthetic of shooting on real film.

There has only ever been one video I saw uploaded by someone I would call professional, someone who actually knows how to use this camera properly, and it is this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AzrltvaeJY

But even that doesn't tell you everything you need to know. Fact is you can shoot in any style you want, be it smooth, razor sharp, video-look, film-look, whatever look you want this camera will do it and it will do it weather-sealed, and at a fraction of the cost and weight of a weather-sealed DSLR and a bunch of weather-sealed lenses that would cost an absolute fucking fortune.

And bloody hell, I meant to keep this response short, sorry homies, and we better get back on-topic before we get our arses kicked. But yeah, by far the most versatile and impressive camera on the market at anywhere near its price point in my opinion. There was nothing to touch it back then, and after having a quick look again last night and this morning, there still isn't anything to touch it even six years after its release date.

That says a lot

By the way, it also has an incredibly good stabiliser built-in, so no gimbal needed!

That footage IS movie-like! A little tint of a consumer camera, but throw it in Vegas and you can really improve the visuals.

@ellaguru: this can be done in Gallery on android. Not what I sent Roland a couple years back but similar.

None of the stuff I linked to looks like real film, but trust me bro, it's one of the few cameras out there actually capable of pulling it off correctly. I'm majorly obsessive about the look of real film, and I even fooled myself!

It's all about using the right sensor/frame-rate mode, the right frame rate, the correct amount of under-exposure, the right shutter speed and as you said, postwork. I had far too much fun grading, softening, adding grain, adding CA etc even to the totally boring footage I shot quickly outside the camera store. Unfortunately, everywhere is sold out of them right now so I can't even buy thanks to this stupid plan-demic!

BTW, that comp you just did is probably the new SP-505MKII

Still looks totally badass. The motion of the camera and the objects looks like they float along the panoramas. You could make a dramatic rap video, is great quality. I'd like to get back into film soon but music more my calling. I build electric guitars too btw.

Got a package today, not the MK2 but at least the custom faceplate. Finally came in. Got a good idea of its size and its exactly the same as the 404A.

Now I'm doodling art for the screen savers and start up.

Man, you don't waste any time do ya

What's it printed on though?
Kinda looks as if it's printed on brushed aluminium foil or something

Life short.

Yeah, it looks that way because of the plastic clear cover but its on thick 3M vinyl sticker. I was gonna go for the cremecaffe covers but they are already printed with their own stuff and don't cover the sides like Styleflip does.

I got no word about the MK2s. Anybody in the US get info? My guy at GC is dead.