Sony a7s III Slow Motion is Hiding a Secret!

Sony a7s III Slow Motion

It’s here, yes it is finally here you are not seeing things. In what may be the most anticipated camera release in years, Sony has finally unveiled the a7s III video-centric mirrorless camera.  It has all the new performance benefits of processing and AF seen on other Sony bodies but now applied to a 12 Megapixel back-illuminated full-frame sensor geared to shoot pristine 4k and be able to shoot stills as a secondary function.  The original 5D from Canon shot 12.8 MP in 2005 when it was introduced and it is still being used out there by many professionals as it was and still is a wedding workhorse. However 15 years later which in the camera world seems like a century, we get a brand new Sony camera with 12MP and that is actually a great thing!

The slow motion on this camera has a lot of good but also some hidden secrets that you should know about before plunking your hard-earned cash. We get what may be the best 120fps 4k footage we have seen in any camera under 10k USD at full 4:2:2 10 bit quality which after looking at the samples left us with nothing but praise to see such a well-executed mode with the added benefit of being able to shoot nearly 1hr worth of it before the camera temperature spoils the party. Excellent performance! → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K is Frame Rate Beast!

Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K

The Black Magic Design URSA camera line has been one of our favorite high frame rate options for many years now as it is a blend of excellent quality at a relatively low price with the added bonus of RAW recording and ProRes options.  Now the company has announced the latest iteration of the camera with a monstrous pixel size of 12k or 80 Megapixels per frame. All of this in an APS-C super 35mm crop from Full Frame sensor that is built to satisfy the requirements of their Black Magic RAW codec or BRAW for short which is in this camera the only recording format available.

What interests us as always are the high frame rates and this camera does not disappoint when it comes to this spec. The only real problem we see is that recording is made only from 4k resolution and up, completely avoiding 3k, 2k and HD resolutions which could yield even higher frame rates with probably a huge crop in the 80MP frame which will probably yield a noisy and artifact prone image hence why they probably avoided recording down on those modes. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Canon EOS R5 Makes it Expensive to record 120fps 4k Video!

Canon EOS R5

Canon has now released the final specs and estimated release dates for the EOS R5 and R6 cameras. There is a lot of good advancement in features especially in video mode as what many believe is an afront to Sony and Panasonic who dominate video recording on ILCs.  The R5 can record 24fps and 30fps 8k video or 8192 x 4320 pixels in RAW quality which is a staggering 1TB of storage or 2600 Mbits/s for only 51 minutes of recording time. That means that every hour you will eat up through a full TB of your RAID backup storage. We see this mode being transcoded to an intermediate format like Blackmagic RAW or BRAW or Apple ProRes as soon as possible.

There is more bad news, on the 120fps 4k front there is no other option of recording but All-I which saves every frame independently in 10-bit 4:2:2 which is good for excellent quality but at the cost of 1,880 Mbits/s  which is 224MB/sec or 13,447MB / minute of recording time. Better get a ton of memory cards and hard drives ready! → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Slow Motion Phones and the Youtube Fakes!

Slow Motion Phones

Believable slow motion video samples on Youtube for phones and cameras are so confusing nowadays that you simply cannot rely on them unless it comes from a reputable source.  The avalanche of fakes is so big that it makes it next to impossible to find the real ones out there.  It also makes it extremely hard to choose a slow motion capable phone when the supposed videos you are looking at are faked from other devices or even professional slow motion cameras.

There is also the big problem of stealing real quality slow motion footage from other channels and using it in compilations that claim to be from a phone or camera in order to get clicks and views for quick revenue.  The problem goes even deeper when these fakes overtake most other real videos due to the viral nature of their compilations as they usually look much better than anything these cheap devices they claim to represent can do.   We examine a few cases that can educate you on how to spot these fakes! → Continue Reading Full Post ←