Back from vacation break “thanks for hanging in there” and not much has happened, we expect big news from Apple tomorrow but in the camera world everything has been subdued when it comes to news. The Panasonic GH4 did get some news as the camera will now get the chance to be upgraded with V-Log high dynamic range flat profile mode but it comes at a $99 USD cost. As to why this cost was added it’s anybody’s guess but we think it may have to do with protecting their higher end camera line by making the barrier of entry a little harder for GH4 owners. We find it to be not too expensive but kind of a disappointment as a very small minority of the user base will actually upgrade. Most people will not grade their footage with LUTs to get the color and contrast back to a usable level and would rather opt for the already pretty good profiles like Cinelike D and Cinelike V that come standard with the GH4.
As to the impact for the VLog update on the Panasonic GH4 you can expect a very flat profile and an increase in Dynamic Range from 10 stops standard to 12 stops in this mode. Those blown out skies and cut off shadows will get more chance to shine now.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The Odyssey7Q+ by convergent design has always been able to record faster than normal frame rates but now it is able to do so directly into Pro Res bypassing RAW capture all-together which yielded massive file sizes. With the new ProRes recording workflow you can use more high frame rate capture in your productions without needing new hard drive arrays.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
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 ←
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 ←
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 ←
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 ←
