Tag Archives: h.264

Sony a7s III Slow Motion is Hiding a Secret!

Sony a7s III Slow Motion

It’s here, yes it is finally here you are not seeing things. In what may be the most anticipated camera release in years, Sony has finally unveiled the a7s III video-centric mirrorless camera.  It has all the new performance benefits of processing and AF seen on other Sony bodies but now applied to a 12 Megapixel back-illuminated full-frame sensor geared to shoot pristine 4k and be able to shoot stills as a secondary function.  The original 5D from Canon shot 12.8 MP in 2005 when it was introduced and it is still being used out there by many professionals as it was and still is a wedding workhorse. However 15 years later which in the camera world seems like a century, we get a brand new Sony camera with 12MP and that is actually a great thing!

The slow motion on this camera has a lot of good but also some hidden secrets that you should know about before plunking your hard-earned cash. We get what may be the best 120fps 4k footage we have seen in any camera under 10k USD at full 4:2:2 10 bit quality which after looking at the samples left us with nothing but praise to see such a well-executed mode with the added benefit of being able to shoot nearly 1hr worth of it before the camera temperature spoils the party. Excellent performance! → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K is Frame Rate Beast!

Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K

The Black Magic Design URSA camera line has been one of our favorite high frame rate options for many years now as it is a blend of excellent quality at a relatively low price with the added bonus of RAW recording and ProRes options.  Now the company has announced the latest iteration of the camera with a monstrous pixel size of 12k or 80 Megapixels per frame. All of this in an APS-C super 35mm crop from Full Frame sensor that is built to satisfy the requirements of their Black Magic RAW codec or BRAW for short which is in this camera the only recording format available.

What interests us as always are the high frame rates and this camera does not disappoint when it comes to this spec. The only real problem we see is that recording is made only from 4k resolution and up, completely avoiding 3k, 2k and HD resolutions which could yield even higher frame rates with probably a huge crop in the 80MP frame which will probably yield a noisy and artifact prone image hence why they probably avoided recording down on those modes. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

DJI Mavic Air 2 has a 240fps 1080p mode that you won’t use!

DJI Mavic Air 2

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 ←

CES 2020 New 120fps Cameras from Nikon, Canon and Panasonic!

CES 2020 New 120fps Cameras from Nikon, Canon and Panasonic

CES brought a lot of weird tech like smarter toilets, personal companion robots and the occasional wearable smart tech that you really can’t wash in your home.  As it is always the case at HSC we were looking for slow motion capable cameras and sadly we saw very little at the show. We are now showcasing three manufacturers who had 120fps Full HD cameras announced at the show and no frame rates above that.

These are primarily 4k 30 and 60p cameras that have a 1080p 120fps mode as a feature that no new camera can really ship without. Sony has already standardized this format in the last few years on most Alpha cameras and Panasonic has even gone above at 180fps and 240fps in some cases like the GH5 and S series.  The cameras presented here are mainly either stills full-frame beasts or more standard video camera like.  By 2020 we would have hoped to see better than 120fps 1080p on cameras of this caliber but it seems we will have to keep waiting… → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Chronos 1.4 RAW to DNG Tool Now Available!

Chronos 1.4 RAW

The Chronos 1.4 Team has now posted the first incarnation of the RAW Camera data to DNG File tool to convert the sensor information files to usable Adobe DNG sequences. They also have posted a sample image comparing the before and after characteristics of the image quality if saved on H.264 in camera and then the same scene shot and saved in RAW format which converted to DNG yields a substantial improvement in image quality as we explored in our previous post about this issue here.

The camera is expected to allow direct to DNG format file saving in the future but now you can shoot in the camera RAW format and later convert as an interim solution without sacrificing quality on the H.264 files.  Maybe in the future, the camera will be able to simultaneously save RAW and H.264 files as a proxy feature to be able to easily sample clips in editing before conversion.  We believe the DNG format should be your one-stop solution for this camera if image quality is important for your use case. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Chronos 1.4 RAW Video Frame Samples!

Chronos 1.4 RAW

We received a set of Adobe DNG image samples from Krontech to check the resolution, dynamic range and grading potential of the camera when using the  RAW recording mode. As of now the utility to convert the raw data is still being tested but we were impressed by the results the camera was able to achieve by offloading the de-bayering process to a more capable converter like the Adobe Camera RAW module.

The Chronos files were already good when properly exposed but did suffer from some aliasing and moire in fine detail while resolution also took a hit by saving in a compressed H.264 format.  Now with the DNG RAW capability, we are glad to see that the camera image quality made an enormous improvement in the resolution, color fidelity, and dynamic range. It really brings out the real potential of the camera for a variety of applications, also creating a cleaner result in the noise department when processed correctly. → Continue Reading Full Post ←