The short but to the point footage shows what will be slow motion clips produced with the new OnePlus 6 handset. You can see that a lot of care has been taken to shoot professional looking footage that will showcase the high frame rate capabilities. We are not sure if the resolution aliasing we are seeing is from the phone quality or the video compression.
Considering Sony and Samsung have similar artifacts OnePlus will look good on smaller screens but not ideal blown up on a monitor or TV. Professional lighting is no substitute to real line resolution for footage. We should know more as May 16th launch date approaches and we will be gladly surprised if the phone is capable of higher resolution slow motion recording than the competition with better recording time which has been the Achilles heel for these slow-motion phone features. 0.2 and 0.1 seconds is just not long enough for having a usable span of time.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The folks at OnePlus have been busy and by the looks of the recently leaked images of the OnePlus 6, it seems the phone is almost an identical looking handset to the iPhone X design with notch included. The invitation to the event on May 16th, 2018 for the unveil mentions “Live Life in Super Slow Mo”which we believe will be a 960fps slow-motion mode akin to that in the Galaxy S9 & S9+ or the Sony Xperia ZX2.
OnePlus has been one of the best performing handsets for Android users due to their use of the best components out there along with a streamlined ROM that does away with most bloatware on the main install. Users of these phones also routinely claim huge battery life due to the optimized nature of the background tasks. For Slow Motion, they have only been competitive on the mid-range but that will probably change if Slow Motion is a big feature on this new phone.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
It seems that the cellphone has once again taken no prisoners when it comes to the portable consumer camera. Casio which was probably the most influential affordable high-speed camera developer 10 year ago with the EX-F1 has now decided to retrench and effectively end their portable consumer camera development due to mounting losses with no clear path to profitability for the division.
The Japanese hi-tech company generated a loss of 500 million Yen (or $4.6 million U$) in the 2017 fiscal year for the division. They will effectively pull out of the market to stop the bleeding. It is quite sad to see a company that created the EX-F1 and the excellent EX-FH20 eliminate their entire consumer camera division. Could things have been different and could they have avoided the phone camera erosion that has obliterated the sales of most manufacturers? Our only thought would be that they did not innovate fast enough to remain competitive for the consumer to be a real alternative.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Last week the site The Information posted a piece stating the possibility of GoPro being bought out by Chinese electronics company Xiaomi which are the makers of the main competitor to GoPro in the same form factor with the Yi camera line. We liked the Yi 4k+ last year as it delivered pretty acceptable quality in 4k 60p in a GoPro like the body+enclosure design. We were not thrilled by the bit rates or the slow-motion quality but it was in the running for the best alternative action camera with a lower price.
If the rumors are true Xiaomi will be consolidating the Action camera market and improving the Yi camera line overnight by rebranding it to GoPro as the name might be just as valuable as the technology being acquired. Most of the current Yi camera products share the components with pre Hero 6 Black cameras like the Hero 5 Black as they were based on the Ambarella chips that GoPro used for a decade.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Z Cam the relatively new Camera company from Shenzhen, China has announced the Z Cam E2 at NAB 2018 MSRP $1,999.00 USD. It is not a direct replacement for their ambitious but half-baked Z E1 m4/3 camera which costs $399. The new camera is a beast specs wise with up to 120fps 4k and full HD 1080p at 240fps. The codecs will be H.264 and H.265 at 10 bit but no RAW support so far which might be acceptable if the codec is clean enough and their promised Log Flat curve preserves the estimated 13.5 stops of dynamic range.
The camera is still being developed for a June 2018 estimated ship date. It lacks a back screen and relies on a Wifi or Gigabit Ethernet link to their dedicated control application. They intend to support iOS devices and or a PC client. No mention of Android support or Mac which should be included in order to maintain the widest compatibility. We feel lacking Android control is a big deal and should be promised in a future update. It is also unclear if the camera will be possible to use by using a touch screen field monitor which probably will not be the case. Using an iPhone or an iPad as the control interface is probably the best use case.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
There is an aura over the Panasonic GH5s that has not been seen in a m43 camera possibly ever. It is mainly due to the outstanding low light quality in 4k 24, 30p and 60p that beats full frame cameras like the Canon 5D Mark IV and competes head to head until ISO 25,600 with the king of low light the Sony a7s Mark II. But as always, our focus is on the high frame rates which the camera also does quite good on.
The 4k 60fps quality is very close to the 30p quality which means excellent and you can shoot at 60p at night without worrying about noise. The 240fps mode which is a first for a Lumix camera in full HD means that the camera aims to compete with Sony RX series cameras that have stacked sensors. We believe the quality to be acceptable but not good enough to be broadcast quality as stair stepping jaggies are all over the frame with the occasional moire pattern on fine detail that can break a shot.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
