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 ←
Schlieren Imaging has always been a very narrow and specialized field of imaging. It can visualize air perturbations in a fluid-like way that can show the reach in this case of someone’s breath and heat dissipation to see if a mask makes a large enough difference in transmission of infected airborne particles compared to no covering.
Canon has now released the final specs and estimated release dates for the EOS R5 and R6 cameras. There is a lot of good advancement in features especially in video mode as what many believe is an afront to Sony and Panasonic who dominate video recording on ILCs. The R5 can record 24fps and 30fps 8k video or 8192 x 4320 pixels in RAW quality which is a staggering 1TB of storage or 2600 Mbits/s for only 51 minutes of recording time. That means that every hour you will eat up through a full TB of your RAID backup storage. We see this mode being transcoded to an intermediate format like Blackmagic RAW or BRAW or Apple ProRes as soon as possible.
There is more bad news, on the 120fps 4k front there is no other option of recording but All-I which saves every frame independently in 10-bit 4:2:2 which is good for excellent quality but at the cost of 1,880 Mbits/s which is 224MB/sec or 13,447MB / minute of recording time. Better get a ton of memory cards and hard drives ready!→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Due to reader demand, we are posting new slow motion samples for the Galaxy S20 line. We see just slight improvements over the Galaxy S10 in terms of detail and color but since the phones are the new flagship for the defacto Android international brand, there is a lot of weight in what it can do when it comes to the video mode. There is no secret that Samsung has stagnated in slow motion since the Galaxy S8 and the S20 is an evolutionary step with better reproduction and more intelligent capture but not really groundbreaking.
There is no increase in frame rates above 960fps at 720p and the resolution is not even true 720p as it is jagged and stair-stepped in detailed shots. We kind of see it as a 480p mode upsized to 720p. We do gain a 1 full second record time instead of 0.4sec on the S10 which is a big improvement even when the resolution is still kind of identical. It would have been great if Samsung could have done a solid and created a true 960fps 1080p Full HD Mode. We will have to wait for another crack at it on a future phone.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
DJI has unveiled the Mavic Air 2 consumer drone with incredible specs and a fit and finish that rivals their more expensive lineup. We have been waiting for a successor to the original Mavic Air to see where the platform was taking high frame rates but while we now have a 240fps 1080p mode, it hardly what we would call usable for production. There is a softness and compression that while they look ok for amateur and some Youtube videos it fails for professionals that need that quality output.
There is a lot to like here like the 48MP sensor with 8k hyperlapse and stills mode with RAW along with a better than most other drones 4k UHD mode at 60fps with 120Mbps codec. It is really a steal if you were waiting for a drone that can do it all and not break your budget. You get many high-end features on a minute package that while a little big compared to mini drones, it is really small compared to the full-sized Mavic line.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
We were very skeptical earlier in the year when the R5 specs were just a rumor. Canon has not really been delivering powerful video features out of their Cinema line and we expected this new camera to be a crippled continuation of the trend. We were not only wrong but now know that Canon is banking the future of the EOS line on cameras like the R5 with features that really put it in a class all by itself.
The original video darling was the EOS 5D Mark II which made it possible to use the EOS line of lenses with a video mode that delivered good enough quality for the web and some careful productions. The camera had issues like severe rolling shutter and a tendency to moire and alias so bad that many shots were really ruined. However, the excellent Canon color quality and lens choices made it so popular that it really forced companies to change the video options forever. Now Canon intends to do as big a splash with the introduction of 8k video internally on the new camera.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
