Tag Archives: impressive

Fuji XP90 Has a 480fps Mode but How Good?

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Fuji got quite a few products out at CES 2016 for photographers but nearly all had no real slow motion capabilities except for the Fuji XP90 Rugged waterproof compact camera.  It is the same 16.4 Megapixel CMOS sensor with 5x optical zoom and a pretty standard 28mm lens at the wide end as last year’s Fuji XP80.

It is still shockproof from 6ft, waterproof to 50ft and freeze-proof down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit.  But aside from the harsh treatment capabilities the camera has  a larger 3 inch screen vs 2.7″ on it’s predecessor and the 1080p video spec has been upped to 60p for a little slowdown. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Ambarella H2 Promises 4k at 120fps!

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Regardless of what the GoPro and Ambarella marriage can provide in tandem hardware it is clear the company wants to branch out of the fledgling sales of GoPro which have tanked in recent quarters and the stock price from a high near a $100 USD is now trading at a mere $12 which is half the IPO price.   By branching out it seems they want their chips in many more imaging devices and be less affected by the GoPro product cycle.

The announced H2 and H12 chips are able to provide beefy 4k specs at high frame rates for mobile devices at a mere 2 Watts of power. As to 1080p frame rates it will remain to be seen how this powerful new chip can handle that in a camera design and how it is implemented to squeeze that performance.  120fps at 4k from the H2 in theory should be able to yield 480fps at 1080p just counting the Pixel processing.  This however can be limited by the rest of the components like imaging sensor. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Sony RX100 IV Philip Bloom Short Film!

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Renowned filmmaker / DP and all around nice guy Philip Bloom has been having fun with both the Sony RX10 II and RX100 IV this past few days.  He has tested the slow motion and 4k modes extensively and has done a fantastic rundown of the usability, performance and pitfalls on using the cameras.  There are a lot of interesting tidbits that He discovered such as the 240fps NTSC and 250fps PAL modes are nearly HD in quality and extremely usable very close to what the much more expensive Sony FS700 camera achieves.

When recording the 2 second quality priority mode it records back to the SD card in Real time that means a 2 second video at 240fps will take 20 seconds if saved as 24p for the frame count of 480 frames duration.  At 480fps  for 2 seconds  of 960 frames it will take 40 seconds of write time to the SD card.  This is in line with most slow motion cameras and it is a point to be considered while using the HFR modes.  You will have to plan ahead as the camera will be unavailable for use for quite a long time before the next shot is ready to be taken. This is a normal thing in most high speed cameras. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Sony RX10 II and RX100 IV New Footage Surfaces!

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Over the past week some footage from Sony and other real world uses has been surfacing.  Many shows off the super slow motion modes and others tout the performance in 4k.  The quality is for the most part good but not great and shows a clear aliasing and moire resolution loss at 480fps and 960fps.  The codec at 50 Mbit is quite good and is not the weak link, the cameras suffer from line skipping as the readout frame rate increases to below 720p resolution in real terms while being saved on a 1080p wrapper.

We have compiled a series of footage samples found on the net for you to look at. Some are outright high speed samples and others are interface walk through samples. It should give a good idea of what quality we are talking about. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Samsung NX500 & Sony RX100 IV Samples!

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The Samsung NX500 has just been updated with firmware 1.10 There are several improvements and like it’s larger sibling the NX1 now the slow motion mode of 120fps at 720p in this camera is more easily accessible.  The NX1 has a better slow motion mode than the NX500 as it is 1080p Full HD instead of 720p but this camera is also much less expensive and has also 4k video.  These enhancements add a lot of oomph to an already good pocket-able large sensor camera.

The biggest improvements are codec quality bit-rate up to 70Mbps and the large sensor readout for up to 60fps at full HD 1080p which reduces aliasing and moire in normal speed frame rates. It is rare for companies too add so much in firmware but it is encouraging to see Samsung not only try but constantly deliver useful firmware updates to their cameras. It shows they are serious for their camera imaging department. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Sony RX10 II and RX100 IV ready for Pre-order!

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The recently announced Sony RX10 II and RX100 IV have just been released for Pre-Order.

In some recently released information by early hands on previews of the cameras it was revealed that the fast memory buffers attached to the backs of the sensor block only allow for 2 seconds or 4 seconds recording at the highest frame rates aswell as the lowest frame rates of the HFR modes  i.e. 960fps to 240fps ; depending on the HFR mode chosen for quality or recording time you get 2 seconds or four seconds capped recording time. See this hands on link for more info. Thanks to our reader Slowmosage for pointing this out. → Continue Reading Full Post ←