“I AM Advancing” Lets petition Nikon!!!!!!!!

[Danyyyel]

http://petapixel.com/2015/01/08/leaked-nikon-press-release-reveals-new-program-advanced-dslr-firmware-updates/

Nikon is puting in place an advance firmware update program called I Am Advancing. For those who did not follow Nikon has been producing very good video dslr since the D5200. The latest model like the D810 and D750 produce some of the best all round image with very good 1080p resolution, low light, DR, rolling shutter no apparent moire/aliasing and for me the best colours out of camera. But unfortunately they did lack some things like peaking, 4k (for some important) and quirks like not being able to change aperture while filming (while they have address the latter in the D750, D810 and rumoured D7200).

Now with the new firmware program I would not mind even paying for some advance filmakers firware package that would get things like 10 bit, higher internal bitrate, waveform monitor and why not Raw like Magic lantern. I think things like peaking is a big omission and should be free at least until they have some super AF in liveview and should be provided free. Taking the example of Magic lantern I am sure that the hardware is capable of additional functionality like peaking additional exposure monitoring. A 60 mbit is already possible with hack on cameras like the D800, so a 10 bit 60/100 mbit, 10 bit and log mode should be more than feasible at 1080p. Raw output using hdmi output might be a bit of a dream but the the one I listed before should be easily implemented.

[Andrew Reid]

10bit requires hardware support and won't be possible. Best to focus on petitioning them for software features like focus magnification whilst recording, good high res peaking in live-view and whilst recording, and the higher bitrates of course.

[Danyyyel]

Form what I  have learned since the Expeed 4 processing engine Nikon use programmable ARM processor, which mean that they can program much more functionality or features. That is why I think they are implementing this program as the features are much less set in stone at hardware level. For example I think the video pipeline is the same as the Jpeg/Tiff one where the raw data coming from the sensor is debayer and then compressed at different setting in term of bitrate colour profile and depth etc. With those programmable processor I think it would be just a question of putting 10 or 12 in place of 8 in a line of code. Now perhaps I am completely wrong but I think it is a possibility.

[Andrew Reid]

Some intensive tasks need to be done at the hardware level for speed reasons though. You can do anything in software that's true... but it's always slower.

That's why the NX1 for example has a hardware H.265 decoder and dedicated hardware for stuff like AF object tracking.

10bit encoding is very intensive for a general purpose CPU in software. Especially a mobile ARM chip.

Great approach from Nikon though, let's see how far they are willing to push it!

[Nikkor]

I was really surprised when I saw the d800 and the d600 in that list as they use the old expeed which is not arm. I hope that the flat picture profile is more than just a curve and that it fixes the poor highlights. I'm also pretty excited because of the rawhistograms as they will give nikonhacker more clues on how the expeed works (maybe raw).

[dahlfors]

I didn't expect to see D800 in the list either. My guess though is that only some limited features will be available for those cameras with Expeed 3 chips.