There is no question the Sony a7 III just announced by Sony is making a splash in the midrange to professional camera markets. We have a $1,998.00 USD Full Frame camera that can shoot 10fps at the full 24MP sensor resolution with probably the best AF tracking system ever shipped on a camera aside from the slightly better Sony a9. The low light performance of the new a7 III is quite frankly impressive with nearly as clean video to the king of low light the a7s II up until ISO 12,800.
It also has the same high-quality 120fps Full HD mode in both full frame downsampling and APS-C crop modes with continuous reliable AF tracking that performs as good as the a9 system because when it comes to spec comparisons they seem identical. You will be better off with this camera if you are looking for 120fps full HD than any we have seen before as quality, low noise, focus tracking and dynamic range all come together to create a superb package.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The new Sony Xperia XZ2 from Sony is their flagship phone for early 2018. It has a lot going for it like 4k HDR movie mode which is a first for a phone and from what we can see it really makes a difference in dynamic range and color on the footage. It also has the latest Snapdragon 845 SoC for increased performance with the battery savings to boot.
What we are interested however is the slow motion high frame rate capabilities which after the Galaxy S9 with 960fps HD 720p announcement, Sony needed to respond accordingly. Well, Sony has done so and they now claim 1080p 960fps slow-motion video on their XZ2 phone which is a one up on the Galaxy with more resolution. However, it is not all that rosy as companies seem to equate a frame size with video quality which in many cases is not even close to spec.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Samsung has unveiled the heavily leaked and rumored Galaxy S9 at MWC Barcelona 2018. It is now a reality and the rumors got most of it right but the frame rate mostly expected which was 480fps at full HD has now morphed into 960fps at HD 720p. You would be heavily excited about the new frame rate options except for the fact that the resolution is not really 720p but a heavily soft and aliased version.
Camera companies are too loose to call video formats HD and Full HD when they are really just upscaling lower resolution video up to save in an overly compressed format. The inclusion of now 1080p 240fps has to be the better spec here as the 960fps mode tops out at 0.2 seconds for a 6-second playback at 30fps. Hardly ideal and much like what we saw in the Sony Xperia XZ phones of 2017.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Has Canon finally woken up from the deep slumber that has crippled the progress in their camera line when it comes to video performance? On paper, the Canon EOS M50 a mirrorless camera that seems to improve in almost every way to previous efforts by the company. We have 4k recording at 24/25 but where is 30P? 120fps slow Motion 720 HD Video in a lower cost body and their excellent Dual Pixel AF System which is one camera feature where the others are playing catch-up.
If the rumors are solid; which seem to be considering the images leaked and detailed information then Canon may finally be releasing cameras that will be worth your while and a clear path out of the EF mount into a mirrorless future. We remain detached until we have image samples and slow-motion footage but its clear Canon and possibly Nikon will not remain still for much longer and let Sony, Olympus, Panasonic, and smartphones eat their installed user base little by little.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The Chronos 1.4 Team has now posted the first incarnation of the RAW Camera data to DNG File tool to convert the sensor information files to usable Adobe DNG sequences. They also have posted a sample image comparing the before and after characteristics of the image quality if saved on H.264 in camera and then the same scene shot and saved in RAW format which converted to DNG yields a substantial improvement in image quality as we explored in our previous post about this issue here.
The camera is expected to allow direct to DNG format file saving in the future but now you can shoot in the camera RAW format and later convert as an interim solution without sacrificing quality on the H.264 files. Maybe in the future, the camera will be able to simultaneously save RAW and H.264 files as a proxy feature to be able to easily sample clips in editing before conversion. We believe the DNG format should be your one-stop solution for this camera if image quality is important for your use case.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The Fuji X-H1 just announced does a lot of things right; It has a 200mbps 4k codec in UHD / DCI, 120fps Full HD which from the initial looks of it looks gorgeous and it finally has the 5-Axis Stabilizer on the sensor 5.5 stops worth that had eluded Fuji cameras for two years now. It even has a new Eterna color profile which makes it easy to color correct without being too flat or too processed.
