the panny 4/3 cam and the 3D cam (model numbers are so passe)

[jasonjoseph]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KtcBNQwIe4

nice vid from NAB2010.

anyone interested in getting one ? i think the exterior design of both cameras looks a lil dorky.
sony also showed their 3DEX.

cover weddings in 3D? imagine the bride throwing the bouquet in 3D.

i think the panny 4/3 cam is a knee jerk reaction to Canon DSLR (and rumored full sensor vid camera) and RED's Scarlet (whenever it appears). looks damn silly

 

[raymondluo]

I certainly don't see how it can be a knee jerk reaction, more like a logical course of progression in the shift of industry. And to say that it was Canon's DSLR that started it is nonfactual as well, Nikon's D90 was the first that had video capability, and there are a ton of films made from that product before the 5D MkII did. Of course, later on professional photographers who already had the 5D Mark II and used them primarily for stills started trying out video as well. And being the professionals that they are, they naturally attracted industrial wide attention. So while Canon's product certainly carried the change with it's photographers who already had the camera, it was certainly Nikon's DSLR that made it popular to do so.

Besides that Canon has not announced anything, so who is to take some forumers idea of a 35mm Full Frame video camera who has no association to Canon as though it were a real product. Although yes, it is almost certainly an eventuality for Canon to produce a product of that sort to stay current, Panasonic and Sony dropped the ball and made the announce first.

 

[roofies]

actually...the 5D's success over the D90 is not because the 5D had like a bunch of professional photographers who already owned the 5D tried out video and being professionals already, they had industry wide attention.

True that the D90 was the first, but was not favoured, there were a bunch of indie stuff made on the D90, but as soon as the 5D came about, the attention shifted drastically. Not only indie stuff has been made on a 5D, but hollywood productions as well.

The 5D or any canon Video DSLR is being favoured over any of the nikon offerings because of the codec used. Though the h.264 compression in the Canon's are not industry favourites, they are however a more robust codec over the ancient Motion JPEG codecs being used in Nikon DSLR Video.

Canon will always be a step behind if you understand the market enough.

=)

 

[raymondluo]

Like I had said, the professional photographers (Ala Vincent Laforet w/ Reverie etc) attracted industrial wide attention to Hollywood productions and people (ASC cinematographers Shane Hulbert etc etc). And while this is merely a general opinion, people tend to prefer the look of Nikon's video rather than Canon's, if you've seen the Zacuto HDSLR shoot out, the Nikon D3s is just on a different league compared to the 1D Mk4. And sure, D90 had it's problems but Nikon was never a video oriented company to begin with.

I believe the general consensus is that if Nikon had a product that had the same features (manual control, decreased rolling shutter) then even with M-JPEG at the same price point of say the 7D than even with an ancient codec I'm sure just by the way Nikon handles noise is just a deal maker. I don't disagree that Canon is usually a step behind, and always highly priced, if they didn't play the mega pixel race and improved on dynamic range the way Nikon does it I would've stayed with Canon.

So I'm with the GH1 on this, in the many extensive testings there really very little this small boy can't bring out that the 5D Mkii can, except being a consumer camera, with cheap Super 16 lenses, quality on par with modern lenses, with bokeh unique to it's own.

 

[Bamboopictures]

This is an aside. I don't why people knock on M-JPEG. The only thing wrong with M-JPEG is it's size. There are no inter-frame, temporal compression. It's just 24/25/30 interlaced JPEGs in a row! Probably the easiest format to edit on low end processors! There're two reasons why M-JPEG was sidelined earlier in the game: -SD/CF cards capacity 2/4/8GB was too small for HD, and microchips in cameras then were too low in compression speeds. So those made M-JPEG impractical. But today, with SDXC promising terabyte possibilities, and bit-rate in the 30something Mbps, it'll be wonderful if camcorder makers launch an M-JPEG camera. I would even pay a premium for such a camcorder because it saves me money on expensive system, graphics card and RAM, most importantly - No time wasted in transcoding unlike AVCHD. My prediction is Motion-JPEG or even progressive photo-Jpeg will make a come-back one day. Why predict frames if technology can capture every frame?

 

[jaegersing]

This is an aside. I don't why people knock on M-JPEG. The only thing wrong with M-JPEG is it's size. There are no inter-frame, temporal compression. It's just 24/25/30 JPEGs in a row! Very little motion artifact compared to MPEG2, MPEG4. And most of all, easy to edit on very low end processors! The only reason why M-JPEG was sidelined was that earlier in the game, SD/CF cards had very small capacity 2/4/8GB. So it made M-JPEG impractical. But today, with SDXC promising terabyte possibilities, it'll be wonderful if camcorder makers launch an M-JPEG camera. I would even pay a premium for such a camcorder because it saves me money on expensive system, graphics card and RAM, most importantly - No time wasted in transcoding unlike AVCHD. My prediction is Motion-JPEG will make a come-back soon!

The problem with MJPEG comes when you try to use it at bit rates that are too low to provide quality video. Like on the D90. Any fine details that move get captured on the D90with very noticeable blocking artifacts. I was an early adopter of this cam but sold it after 6 days. A $200 lesson learned for me about being an early adopter!

I agree with you about the advantages of MJPEG, but I have doubts about it making much of a comeback, because processor speeds and software are now reaching the stage where AVCHD can be edited directly. For example, I can now edit my 550D files in realtime with Edius 5.5, and that's with filters applied. And this performance will only get better with time.

 

[Bamboopictures]

The strange thing about AVCHD is that it takes only a $500 camera to encode it but it takes $5000 of hardware and software to decode and edit it. Technological barrier or policy issue? I'm surprised you found MJPEG wanting vis-a-vis AVCHD but it will be hard to compare apples with apples. Perhaps GH-1 owners here can enlighten us with their AVCHD mode vs their MJPEG mode. My experience with TZ7 has been that recording in the MJPEG 720p is no worse than recording in AVCHD lite on the same camera.

 

[jasonjoseph]

Alamak i started a thread on new technologies but somehow turned into a discussion on old rivailries.

at the end of the day i have come to conclude the best camera is the one in your hand.

 

[Hobbes00]

Jasonjoseph seems to be always on top of technews n updates... =D

 

[jaegersing]

I'm surprised you found MJPEG wanting vis-a-vis AVCHD but it will be hard to compare apples with apples.

AVCHD is a much more efficient codec than MJPEG, in that it can deliver similar quality at much lower bit rates. MJPEG is fine if the bit rate is high enough, but the D90 implementation is really poor.

Here's a sample taken with the D90 I had, on my one and only outing with it.

http://www.vimeo.com/4558148

The blockiness on the water is in the original footage, and is not acceptable to me. That's one reason I sold the camera so fast.

Here's a sample taken with a 550D that I got last month. There are some aliasing artifacts with this cam, due to the resolution downsampling taking place, but that's not a codec issue and the water shots in the second half don't show the block noise that the D90 footage has.

Yes I know the 550D data rate is higher than the D90's, but my point is that for the particular codec being used, the data rate must be sufficient to give good results. In my opinion, the Canon DSLRs have a well chosen codec/data rate combination, the D90 does not.

 

[Bamboopictures]

thanks for uploading the clip! Appreciate it greatly cos I'm considering pairing a D5000 and a Tascam DR-100 while I wait for the AG-AF100. You certainly know how to challenge the camera bro! But I'm still quite impress with the pan above water. I don't see any rolling shutter effect. Anyway I'll try importing the source clip into FCP and see how the workflow will be.

 

[Bamboopictures]

Have to admit the D-movie looks rough after transcoding in FCP. Looks like D5000 may not cut it if the D90 doesn't. Thanks for the sample clip

 

[jaegersing]

And I didn't mention that D90 shuts down if you operate in liveview for more than 10 minutes in the hot sun. Very frustrating if you been waiting for the moment and then find you can't take the shot because the camera overheated! Actually it is worse than frustrating, would be a disaster on a serious job.

 

[raymondluo]

Unfortunately the 550D suffers from overheating just as well, and is two years newer than the D90.

 

[jasonjoseph]

http://vimeo.com/10314280

this vid by phillip bloom shot on the 550D was pretty awe inspiring.

but the zacuto test for low light sensitivity with the nikons was impressive.

 

[Hobbes00]

jasonjoseph, wanna shoot a music video?

 

[jaegersing]

Unfortunately the 550D suffers from overheating just as well, and is two years newer than the D90.

Yes you are right, but the 550D handles it a bit more gracefully. I ran the 550D in hot sun for one hour and though it showed an overheat warning symbol, I could still continue shooting. In a similar situation, the D90 just switched off after 10 minutes in live view and I had to wait 5 minutes before I could use it again.

 

[doom102938]

Lmao. Back to topic. Well, I think its really good that companies are finally responding to the HD-DSLRs and the RED One. The 4/3 camera appears to be aimed at those. However, its using a rather non-industry-standard size of sensor and therefore good video lenses might be slightly hard to find. However, remember that Noktor 50mm F/0.95? Muahaha.

3D cam is awesome, but unless the average consumer is able to retrofit their houses with 3d viewing devices at a reasonable prices, its not going to sell like hot cakes.

I just cant wait and see what cameras would be available in say 3 years time? I'm sure it'd be an awesome spectacle.

 

[Bamboopictures]

I think the AG-AF100 spells the end of exhorbitantly priced sub 2/3" CCD/CMOS camcorders. We may see an all round price reduction of Sony and Canon prosumer range next year if they cannot match the specs of the micro4/3 Panny. DSLR may continue to hold forte because of their price. My guess is the moment the big four (Panasonic, Sony, JVC, Canon) start making APS-C or Micro4/3 camcorders, the video function in DSLR may deliberately crippled or totally removed.

Right now, the $US6000 rumored price tag for the AG-AF100 sounds very reasonable. Keep in mind that the camcorder will have professional audio input, autofocusing, servo zoom, folding LCD and definitely not have issues with overheating. Most of these are missing in the current crop of DSLR.

It will be interesting to see if Panny continues with its GH line in light of the new announcement. A GH-2 must sport the touch screen autofocusing of the G2 and the full HD recording of the GH-1. Pricing wise, the G2 is only USD799 and already packs quite a punch albeit at only 720p. But a seven-fold price difference between itself and the AF100 is big psychological barrier to cross unless you absolutely need to look "professional"

 

[trucatus]

The Sony 35mm one looks more appealing...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu_68icPe28&feature=related