Rumors surrounding the 2020 release of the OnePlus 8 phone are already heating up with a tentative May release date and a new camera module that can capture 960fps super slow motion at 720p, a clear step up from their previous phones at 480p. The OnePlus 7T can shoot 960fps but it is an interpolated mode from doubling the frames of 480p by 2x and doing the in-betweens in software.
What is interesting is that OnePlus since the OnePlus 6 has allowed for a full minute of playback in super slow motion from their 480p mode and has been one of the go-to phones for dependable slow motion capture that offers the longest recording time still to this day in higher than 240p modes.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The Huawei Mate 30 Pro has been out for a few weeks outside the US, mainly in China and India and we have gathered 15 video samples from its slow motion mode which as of today is the best performing high-speed phone ever developed. We had some shortcomings about the way the phone reaches the highly hyped 7,680fps mode which is 1920fps multiplied by 4x in software from a small snapshot of the video memory.
We also had some suspicions that the 1080p 960fps mode was also interpolated but looking at the samples we gathered it seems that was a premature call. The phone is actually capturing the full frame rate at 1080p or close to that. The real max mode is 1920fps at 720p which is then interpolated to 7,680fps with good success by the new Kirin 990 chipset. Your mileage may vary and the results depend on the subject matter more than anything as organic slower motion looks much better than fast unpredictable bursts that break the interpolation algorithm.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Huawei has just launched the Mate 30 Pro and Mate 30 Pro 5G Smartphones which sport an impressive camera module with a large sensor array that shoots at 40 Megapixels. We had rumors sent a couple of weeks back but had our reservations due to the less than optimal slow motion in the P20 and other Huawei Smartphones. The phone is now untouched by the competition as it can shoot a half-second at 1920fps 720p or 960fps total which translates to 32 seconds on a 30p timeline.
The headline slow motion feature of 7680fps is not real as it is derived from the 1920fps 720p half-second which the phone then uses AI selection to isolate a 0.12 seconds segment of the capture then finally interpolated by the Kirin 990 Chipset to the full 7680fps. So it does a 4x slow motion on top of it to get the great-looking result.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The folks at Blackmagic design are at it again when it comes to destroying spec sheets compared to price. The BMPCC 4k was already one of the best-reviewed and popular choice among budget filmmakers that needed excellent quality and dynamic range. At only $1,295 that camera was a smash hit but had only a four thirds (4/3) sensor which was not ideal in size and required speed booster adapters to get the needed depth of field to simulate an S35 image.
Now the BMPCC 6k ($2,495.00) with EF Canon mount comes in with a full APS-C sensor with dual ISO characteristics like before but with the added imager size and full electronic lens support for EF glass. It would have been in our view ideal to use an electronic mount with shorter flange like the Sony Alpha or the new Canon RF mount so you could adapt even more lens combinations but they are catering to a large installed base of glass owners.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Let us start by saying that we are huge fans of the Lumix line by Panasonic and their cameras in general. The GH5 is still a powerhouse of a camera for serious video work and the 180fps FUll HD slow motion is better than many others before or since at that frame rate while at 120fps is as good as the best Sonys out there. However, the recently announced Lumix G95 drops the ball in several fronts when it comes to really good video performance which has become a trademark for Panasonic.
The G95 has all the looks and character of a great hybrid camera but has a crippled video mode that may put off many buyers looking for the perfect intermediate camera. The 4k, for example, has a 1.25x crop on top of the nearly 2x crop of the micro 4/3 sensor. Making it a little larger than the area of a 1″ sensor. This will sacrifice video quality in the lack of supersampling and low light will suffer from the added megapixels.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Apple has released a preview video showing the video capabilities of the iPhone Xs in 4k 30, 4k 60 and slow motion 1080p 240fps. You can see in the liquid and sound part of the demo the quality delivered by the full HD slow motion but it is hard to judge per pixel sharpness and or artifacts from such a short high shutter video. We will need more real-world samples in order to see if there has been an improvement from the iPhone X of 2017.
We have isolated a part of the footage to see the slow-motion compression and we could detect aliasing in the edges, softness and compression artifacts which are typical of mobile phone high frame rates. The iPhone Xs seems to still have them to some degree. Color and motion on the codec seem to be excellent especially in 4k which looks extremely detailed and with more than acceptable dynamic range.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
