Andrew Reid

Digital Bolex has great colour with the CCD in there.   One word to describe the colour of a CCD... it's analogue.

You do like to play devil's advocate sometimes Ebrahim don't you :)

It's 2.3x, definitely not 2.6x.

  The 120fps is really good, looks better than the GH4 at first glance. Need to shoot some more with it.   The 1080/60p isn't that great though. Shoot 4K.

  -10. It does improve dynamic range but I think it's at the expense of the image generally, so I'd not go past -5.

  You can lower contrast sure, but you can also just upload it at 1080p instead of 4K. Then Vimeo / YouTube don't need to scale it so harshly.

  Yeah, you're right.   Impressive colours.

The Panasonic FZ1000 is a bridge camera, but is it a bridge that actually leads anywhere? Read my FZ1000 review to find out... http://www.eoshd.com/2014/11/panasonic-fz1000-review-bargain-4k-super-zoom

  Yes definitely the end codec is 4:2:0 internal, though the imaging pipeline before that is probably all 4:2:2.   Pleasing colour... close to Canon-style I'd say.

  It's not really rocket science... if you need the high ISO performance and 4K HDMI output get the A7S and don't wait on the II because it could be years yet! If you really prefer to have steady shots without a rig or anything to stabilise the camera on your body whilst shooting with non-stablised lenses (maybe you don't have any Canon OIS lenses to use on it via the Metabones adapter) then get the A7 II but wait for the reviews because until it has been put through its paces we won't know what the image quality is like... original A7 was rubbish for video quality, big difference between that and the A7S internal 1080p let alone the 4K output!!!

Thanks to Norbert Bielan in New York for this test footage. You can read his thoughts on shooting with the URSA below. Blackmagic's latest unified firmware release is mainly about the URSA and what an update it is. The new firmware bumps the maximum frame rate up to 80fps in 4K and adds a new 3:1 compression setting for raw recording, fitting more material onto CFast cards. The URSA also makes an interesting back-end for your existing 4K HDMI camera such as the Sony A7S. Has anybody actually tried this combination yet? Read the full article here

  No.

You can minimise it by downscaling to 1080p in the edit before uploading to YouTube or Vimeo. Really helps.   These websites aren't designed to downscale as gracefully.

Crude downscaling from such a high resolution 4K image to a postage stamp sized frame is going to do that. Inescapable. Not the fault of the camera. Get a 4K monitor. They're cheap now.

Keep the A7S and stabilise with a Gorilla pod against your shoulders for handheld stuff. Works really well and still tiny small!

Excellent good to have another option for converting, but can you go higher than 50Mbit/s? It's too low for H.264 4K.

Ah yes sorry, it's 30p & 0.25x for 120fps. Or indeed 60p at 0.5x.   I've only tested 24p at 0.25x so far, so yes 96fps.   Needs an article of it's own. Coming soon.

  Select 1080/24p and 0.25x slow-mo in the menus.

Check out some of my original H.265 files here   http://we.tl/2c1MoV6tGM

  Yeah, the slow-mo at 120fps 1080p is pretty good actually, I'll need to try it more to see exactly how good.

As always, be sure to download the 4K version from Vimeo here if you are pixel peeping! Not a Vimeo Plus member? Download one of my original NX1 4K clips here. This is H.265 converted to ProRes LT. The NX1 is a 4K camera out of the box but make no mistake, it is really a 6K camera. When the NX1 was being developed in Samsung's lab, the sensor output ran at 6.5K raw at 240fps. Although the feature was only for debugging and not destined for consumers, this should give you an idea of the kind of hardware advances they have made with this camera and the new manufacturing techniques they are employing to get there. The camera has a CPU with 5 cores (general purpose), 240fps object tracking. 4K video, H.265 and 1080/120fps. Further dedicated hardware cores handle various computational tasks rather than them being done in software. With this camera Samsung are starting to put their boot into the camera industry in a big way. And it shows in the images. Read the full article here

  He's correct that now... works with every lens... you just input the focal length. Not practical for a manual zoom though.

The Sigma ART lenses in Nikon mount are a good match and you can control the aperture on the adapter.   18-35mm F1.8 35mm F1.4 50mm F1.4   Then add a Zeiss OTUS 85mm F1.4 and you are sorted ;)   All of those are better than Canon's anyway.

Long ago were rumours that Sony had licences 5 axis IBIS from Olympus. Well either way, they now have it. The Sony A7 II is the first to get it. If Sony can put an internal 4K codec and 5 axis stabilisation on the A7 S II then they will keep me as a customer for a VERY long time. How can anyone else really have an answer to that? So kick away your tripod and let's see what else the A7 II has for video shooters... Read the full article here

The cheap kit lens is a power zoom pancake, F3.5-5.6 with OIS.   The premium zoom looks very nice indeed :)   Here is one of my NX1 4K files converted to 4K ProRes LT. Take a look...   http://we.tl/m9fsASnpoF   Blog part 2 coming very soon