Andrew Reid

In this Instagram post Levi Siver is working on a windsurfing feature with a crew, for an "unreleased Canon camera". In the picture you can indeed see a Canon camera on a rig, although not clearly enough to make out the model. In the comments he's asked if it is a 5D Mark IV, and in his reply he says "Yep it is", smilie face. Read the full article

It isn't just a question of it being better because it's more expensive, rather the point is that the Alexa uses a clever patented method of reading out the sensor applying a dual low gain and high gain A/D conversion to improve dynamic range. What you're implying doesn't make sense, as you're only looking at the cost factor. It's like saying you can't expect a $3000 12-core Intel PC in 2016 to be as fast as a $250,000 super computer from the 1970's. Nonsense. In 6 years the tech moves a long way. I don't think the costs would be unreasonable if other sensor manufacturers like Sony implemented dual-gain architecture on their consumer camera CMOS sensors. It's only a bunch of low gain and high gain analogue-to-digital converters working together, it isn't some gold plated unobtainable material backed onto alien technology that gives the Alexa its dynamic range advantage and film-like rendering - it is the know-how and patents of Arri.

No sadly even though the C500 doesn't have a mirror in the way, the PL Cookes simply won't go on any EF mount. The 44mm flange of the EF mount (distance to sensor) means there's usually only a tiny bit of space left for the PL adapter. The PL adapter must be much wider than the EF mount and have plenty of clearance inside it for the big rear of the PL lens to sit in. They will go on a PL adapter to a mirrorless mount like Micro Four Thirds or E-Mount, since the adapter can occupy much more of the gap between sensor and Cooke.

The F35 image is indeed special, but it'd be interesting to compare the uncompressed RGB 12bit of the C500 to it, since it's a very similar format to the RGB the F35 puts out, in fact on paper it appears to be superior. I wish Sony had gone for longer making CCDs. One of the first Sony cameras I bought was an Alpha A350 stills cam back in 2008. Still stands up today, easily. Guess why... It has a Super 35mm sized (well, APS-C) CCD sensor! You can get it on eBay for 150 quid now. It has in-body stabilisation and the ergonomics aren't bad either, but of course no video. It would be interesting to use that as a way to compare modern CMOS cameras to a 'classic' 14MP CCD Super 35mm chip, especially in terms of colour. The only issue I have with the F35 is that it is mega heavy, pretty big, rather power hungry and would exclude the use of my EF lenses. A PL mount is lovely, and would be amazing with the Cookes, but C500 + Odyssey is about as big as I'm willing to go at the moment for most stuff. It does have slow-mo, the 1080/120p is pretty good. ---- By the way, there's an interesting white paper on the C500's 12bit RGB 2K here - http://www.filmanddigitaltimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Canon-Larry_Thorpe_C500-vs-C300.pdf It sounds like a massive leap up from the internal 8bit 1080p. The sensor reads out 4 2048 x 1080 streams which don't need de-bayering. The 4th is a 'super green' which has zero aliasing and extended dynamic range. This is made possible by the pixel design of the 4K sensor. I never rated the C300's image. C500 should be a different matter. Well worth £3k. Well worth £5k even. Let's hope they come down even more.

Actually the Terra has ignored me. I'd love to try one out in Berlin at some point, I can't buy absolutely everything just to review it.

The Arri patent is key, if you look at the Alexa and its dynamic range advantage on the competition, it's still holding up today in 2016. The Alexa was introduced in 2010!! In 2012, Canon's flagship dynamic range with the 1D X / 1D C sensor pretty much peaked. We see very little dynamic range improvement with the 1D X Mark II, 4 years later. Sony / Nikon full frame sensors still can't match the Alexa after 6 years of trying, although the full res stills files (raw at least) are getting closer.

You may as well shoot 4K and do the Ex-Tele in post by cropping a 1920 x 1080 box out of your 4K frame. This way you can activate it at any time and in any part of the frame. Also your normal shots will be oversampled from 4K to 1080p, rather than pixel binned 1080p straight off the card, which looks far worse.

When you don't want to rig the monitor, you could just use the built in EVF and I am sure in future Convergent Design and others will look at doing smaller 4K recorders with SDI ports. I'd certainly buy one. The C500 and Odyssey are more balanced as they are closer in size and weight. Rigging the Odyssey to the C500 isn't like trying to put it with an A7S. With the tiny camera you have to build a whole rig around it, cage, rails, etc. then it still feels top heavy or imbalanced due to the size and weight difference between the tiny camera and the large monitor. What if you want 4K? Without a recorder I'd say you're better off with a Panasonic GX85. Small, cheap, super steady handheld shots, Super 35 with Speed Booster, 4K internal. I've still got all my Panasonic and Sony stuff.

Good find on the CFast 2 cards. Wow, they have crashed in price. The CFX600 128GB was $250 when it came out. Specs - Read: 515MB/s, Write: 160MB/s There's the CFX650 too, perhaps more future proof with write speeds of over 300MB/s No reason future cameras can't do raw internally now.

Isn't film and music so very middle-class these days? Read the full article

You are easily impressed sir

An EF-M version would be great. They might even sell more than 2 EF-M lenses if they did that. Vintage c-mount glass would look very nice on it, not cheap though. It would be tricky to find a 24-240mm equivalent 10x zoom with AF in compact proportions too I don't particularly like manual focus on zooms, it's a lot to think about when you just want to get the shot.

I can't understand why ISO 800 was chosen, it seems to have been plucked out of thin air as some kind of 'native' ISO. In fact if you look at nearly all the stills cameras, they do their best dynamic range at ISO 100-200. ISO 800 is not where the 1D C and 1D X Mark II give the most dynamic range. Also a LOG profile and a standard image profile need to be exposed differently. Furthermore they have set the test up in a way that doesn't test how the roll off is to the highlights or even how much latitude you can pull out of the LOG vs rec.709 image. Really? Don't think so - rolling shutter in 4K/24p looked unimproved on the 1D X II I tried out at the BVE show in London. CineStyle is not a true LOG profile. I know for a fact that Canon LOG gives me more dynamic range than the standard Canon profiles, let's not pretend otherwise! Quite odd how bad people are saying the HD image is. Bodes badly for the 5D Mk IV. They could have intentionally put a mediocre pixel binning 1080p mode on the sensor, which will probably end up in the 5D Mk IV with the 4K mode disabled.

Shows what a bullshit test it was then.

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Kubrick also said that the best restaurant was not always the one with the longest queue.

I can compare it to an onion if I want. It's my website blog By the way, it's a blog about VIDEO

Clearly you have lived in the US for too long - You can't tell the difference between an advert and a documentary

And no full frame 4K either, possibly no articulated screen, definitely no in-body stabilisation and if they keep MJPEG as the 4K codec, there would be zero reason to pay $3500 for the 5D Mk IV, because by that time a used 1D C would probably cost the same for a superior video spec, superior build quality and superior reliability.

In that case it all makes perfect sense

I am sure the codec will get a nice bump up with the GH5. Colour science from Panasonic can be quite good. CineLikeD wasn't very good, but the GX85 just on standard looks veeeeery nice Skintones similar to Canon and Olympus. VLOG is good, I don't think that needs improving much, but the sensor does - VLOG brought up a lot of noise didn't it? That's the sensor's fault. I'll be disappointed if Panasonic hike the megapixels on the GH4 to 20MP, what we really need is 12MP max and less noise. Some sort of Dual Pixel AF would be great. Bring back the 1.86x crop sensor of the GH2 with wider aspect ratio. Avoid YAGH-like mistakes and do a small compact mini-XLR breakout box powered from camera. Full size HDMI please. SDI is unlikely on a stills camera form factor body in this market. 5 axis in-body stabilisation, surely a given. I think GH5 is looking very exciting, they will have to try hard to mess it up

Why are you guessing when all the info is laid out right in front of you. It's obvious it isn't just a rebranded RED camera! It's a Panavision camera with a RED sensor and codec. Just a sensor and codec does not make a camera. The lenses, ergonomics, colour science and build quality all go on top. If you made a box with a sensor, some wires and a codec, it would be pretty shit I absolutely love the RED codec. Hope they do license it to more companies. Unlikely in my view, but the hope is there I could be wrong but I think RED own quite a lot of important patents to do with RAW compression... Which could explain why none of the others have come up with a decent compressed RAW codec yet. Cinema DNG 3:1 just doesn't cut it by comparison! I can see this being the main route of 8K into the consumer market actually! You don't need it when the viewing distances are longer, like with TVs. ... VR on the otherhand!!

What 4K raw codec will you be working with? I'd probably want a larger drive for 4K raw... a RAID array of HDDs is a viable alternative to some SSDs in my opinion. They can get pretty speedy and will be 8TB+

My camera count is too high due to providing EOSHD content for ungrateful sods like you

@jcs So this is your definition of Shakespeare is it? The boring pot woman is telling the story. Johnnie is just pointing his camera at her and editing out the 'ums and ahs'. She's not so much telling a story as reeling off a bunch of facts about her business. Just as a cafe owner would in an advert for his cafe. As far as the storytelling goes, it is 100% advert, 0% fiction. The great reality distortion field of the modern video industry is that the word "Filmmaker" and "Storyteller" are used with abandon, peppered around to garnish the not very appealing stake which never sizzles. Just a bunch of over-privilaged over-monied middle class egotists going about their self promotion ritual. It's not more worthy than one of us making a cinematography mood piece without any explicit story or characters. For me that is the superior art form and this pottery advert is just completely forgettable trash with a facade of high production values... Just because it's "Real-world" content, doesn't make it on-par with Kubrick's stuff you know?!