We have a few developments to share in the high speed camera world. Things have been somewhat quiet in the phone front as the high speed component feature was relegated to a footnote in 2019 after a great 2017 and 2018 main spec treatment. We may get much better phone slow motion as memory size and speed increases while maintaining the same price range thanks to the fast pace of electronics development.
Sony just announced their latest RX VII camera which means that an RX10 and maybe a new RX VA version will show up before the year is over. We were not happy with the feature being stagnant in resolution and speed on the RX series for 3 years in a row now. Sure AF and overall speed have increased when it comes to other parts of the camera but the high frame rates remain frozen in 2016 specs. In the meantime, we have a few new things to show you.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The Kinefinity Terra 4k camera which starts at $3,999 body only and a ready to shoot package at $5,499 has now released information of a new firmware upgrade that will be released in May of this year which increases the slow-motion capabilities of the camera markedly. The camera was no slouch before when it came to frame rates which had 240fps at 2k and 100fps at 4k. It actually records in RAW and has excellent quality with no moire and aliasing since it is effectively cropping the sensor area to get a 1:1 pixel read-out for the slow mo.
For this low a price you really have no viable options that shoot these frame rates in excellent quality except for the recently announced Chronos 2.1 HD which does 1000fps at 1080p in DNG RAW. The Kinefinity line of cameras has started to become a go-to place for cinema quality at reasonable prices. Many Video Pros are actually becoming owners of the camera and praise the rock-solid quality of the build, operation and beautiful image quality with ample dynamic range. The Chinese have really built the Cinema camera for the common man.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
It looks like DJI has not set in stone the frame rate spec of the recently released OSMO Pocket which we found to be excellent in handling and gives a beautiful low light stabilized image considering the small sensor size and price. It even beat out the GoPro Hero 7 in dynamic range and noise control but fell short of frame rates being on our good side. Thanks to our reader Frank for the tip!
In a new video by Drone NewsGuy from Youtube, the pro app and latest beta firmware for the OSMO Pocket are tested and you can enable a somewhat hidden setting to get 200fps in real terms out of the small device. The catch is that the setting requires the phone app to be activated every time you want to use it and will remain there until you change settings to something else. We would love for DJI to allow the 200fps setting right out of the box on the interface and not only that, allow for even greater fps in 720p mode and even a small VGA mode for users needing that extra frame rate.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The Chronos 1.4c team based in B.C. Canada has been hard at work unleashing the features of the camera hardware and adding software features that should make the camera more valuable to video professionals everywhere. The new firmware adds HDMI live mirroring support for monitoring which is clean and lets you record its output. Another feature is the inclusion of native CinemaDNG save format image sequences which retain 16bits of color data and allow you to really streamline the workflow without time-consuming conversions.
In our testing over the last 4 days, we have really put the firmware “available here” through its paces and found very minimal issues in the software related to usability but no freezes and rock solid operation over around 14hrs of operation. By saving to CinemaDNG we have no issues with cards getting write space errors due to saving the 1.8MB files individually. We feel this format is really unleashing the camera’s quality fully with a faithful sensor capture representation.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Blackmagic Design may have just solved the problem of RAW video capture for any camera and every type of user. In essence, it gives the benefits of RAW capture while allowing flexibility in file size depending on production needs. It is a compressed format but by using a clever demosaic algorithm that happens in-camera, it shrinks the file size much more than other formats while preserving quality and RAW features like White Balance, ISO, exposure, NR, clarity and color bit depth.
For Slow motion cameras, it may be the codec of the future as it will allow the best quality without the enormous file sizes associated with image sequences like DNG or other RAW formats. Being open source and free of licenses it aims to be adopted by the entire industry faster than other formats and will be free of the platform-specific nature of codecs like Apple’s ProRes which only works on Mac OS X. The Blackmagic RAW beta is already available here!→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The ASUS ZenFone 5Z (ZS620KL) Phone is a new addition to the company line but seems it was a little rushed in the camera department. IT has just started shipping to customers worldwide and there is already a firmware update. The phone is a flagship device with a starting price of $499 which is not bad at all considering it sports some of the best hardware features in Android land. With dual cameras, 6GB of RAM and the latest Snapdragon 845.
The 5Z Phone is a midrange slow motion performer with 120fps and 60fps 1080p recording and the super slow motion mode capping out at 720p 240fps. The improvements in the new firmware improve the recording quality overall and codec bit-rate of the 240fps 720p mode. Since ASUS does not give out the particulars in the bit-rate department it is hard to say how much better it will be.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
