We consider the Canon C70 as the real successor to the 5D Mark II which started the ILC DSLR revolution. It ticks almost all the boxes for a vast array of users and does so on a somewhat realistic price point. We get a Cinema caliber sensor in S35 format at 4k Cinema and UHD that is capable of producing 16 real stops of dynamic range. The camera actually is using simultaneous dual gain technology to merge the exposure from both settings into an amazingly beautiful progression between light and dark.
The Canon C70 Slow Motion Mode has real 120fps 4k with HDR and full Canon dual pixel AF technology and even can crop to Super 16mm to record 180fps at 1080p and 2k resolution to provide you with that extra oomph which was sorely needed in Canon land. The camera does have some drawbacks but it is so good out of the box that we may have an avalanche of switchers to the format from Sony, Nikon, and Panasonic.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
GoPro has released the Hero 9 Black and in many respects, it is the best camera they have ever made. It is a little larger to accommodate a slightly larger battery and screens and it offers a new 5k mode that is very filmic like with pretty good dynamic range. It has Hypersmooth 3 technology which does away with most gimbal situations and it can serve as a minute and reliable blog camera.
However, the GoPro Hero 9 Black is in some ways the end of an era for GoPro and the action camera market. It now heralds a new subscription model that aims to hook their market with a lower price for the camera if the subscription to GoPro.com is added at check out. Gone are the days of class-leading technology and in are the days of survival at all costs. Can we really blame GoPro for trying to make it?→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
We got over 20 messages with essentially the same video sample in our inbox this week. They all touted the new interpolation from the DAIN experimental App or (Depth Aware Video Interpolation App) which now analyses footage with a Neural network AI algorithm that crunches motion vectors and even what seemed impossible before “Object Occlusion” to generate higher frame rates from lower fps sources. The technology is pretty fascinating and should be further improved by more training and samples over the coming years.
For stop motion animators, this is a complete game-changer as now you could animate with as little as 8fps and then interpolate to 30fps or 60fps with very little in the way of tearing and artifacting as long as the footage is well lit and objects clearly defined. To make matters more interesting, it also analyses footage with shallow depth of field yielding impressive results.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Now that Panasonic has officially announced the Lumix S5 Full frame camera which we saw as a direct replacement for the GH5 line even when now it seems a GH6 may be in the cards for a future release, it is now time to examine the slow motion modes on the camera to see if they stand a chance at becoming a feature which will be a seller for the new device or just one more feature.
When the GH5 was announced about 3 years ago it came with a 180fps 1080p mode that was better than many camera’s 120fps modes and quickly became our favorite Lumix camera for slow motion as we noticed how the quality of the 240fps mode on the GH5s low light geared camera was heavily inferior in resolution. The GH5 really became the best value along with the G9 for 180fps slow-mo modes in Full HD.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Sony has been relatively quiet about phones since the Xperia 1 II roll out. However, rumors have been heating up on the Xperia 5 II, which is a lower-cost alternative to the flagship phone but very nearly as capable without the best screen or construction but not skimming on features. The latest rumor mentions a spec sheet that makes it a 4k 120fps recording phone which may show that handsets still are seen as innovators when it comes to cameras since very few consumer devices in the camera world can record at that frame rate.
We were not very happy that Sony basically killed the super slow motion mode on the Xperia 1 II phone which kind of showed that Sony was putting stills and regular video at the forefront without making compromises in sensors that needed to shoot at higher frame rates. Sony chose to do cleaner regular frame rate video and stills that were better than any Sony phone before at the cost of not having a do it all sensor. Slow motion from Sony was all but killed but the Xperia 5 II now makes us second guess that fate…→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Samsung will start shipping to stores the Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra on August 21, 2020. This new phone is the latest and greatest on their line of ultra-performance devices that offer little compromise at a premium price. It has a 108MP sensor on an f1.8 lens on the Note 20 Ultra 5G version that can do crazy zoom and pixel averaging in low light. The more pixels you record even if they are small let you do more computational photography processing to average noise and artifacts out to end with a crisper lower resolution image that is pleasing and punches above it’s weight.
However, not all is good news since the video mode in Samsung devices when it comes to slow motion has been stalling in the last iterations to a max 960fps mode in HD 720p which is now on this phone an interpolated 480fps mode that is slowed 2x to 960p. This makes the Note 20 line an inferior slow-mo device to even the Galaxy S10 which offers real 960fps. The good thing here is a full second of recording at 480fps on the Note 20 line which translates to 16 seconds playback at 30fps and 32seconds with interpolation.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
