Andrew Reid

The recent rumours surfacing of Panasonic releasing an AG-GH4 around the $3000 mark have been given a boost. Panasonic have now officially announced the existence of a 16MP Micro Four Thirds sensor which is capable of 4K video at up to 30fps, matching the rumoured specs of the GH4. Tantalisingly this sensor is even available as a customer part on the open market, making it available to Blackmagic Design. Read the full article here

Download firmware v1.5 from Blackmagic Just a heads up (full post to follow when I've had some shooting time with it) - the eagerly awaited firmware update from Blackmagic Design which gives the Pocket Cinema Camera raw video has arrived. This will allow you to shoot 12bit Cinema DNG in full 1080p. Blackmagic recommend the Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB card for raw. I am going to be using the LOMO anamorphic rig shown above, which is mounted via an OCT-18 adapter to the Pocket Camera. I can highly recommend upgrading from Resolve 9 to Resolve 10. There's no reason to keep the old version. The new one is much better for editing Cinema DNG raw. You may also want to give the EOSHD Film LUT a go with Pocket Cinema Camera raw. It should give you an instantly appealing film-like look in Resolve 10 with no grading effort required. Full article later in the week!Read the full article here

Take the screen off altogether. That would lower the production cost ;)   Actually there's a market for a film camera with digital sensor, for sure.   It just isn't the Df.   Make it $1000, full frame sensor, absolutely the same ergonomics, build, and size as a Nikon FM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_FM   And it will take over the world. I'd buy it. No screen, no video, no nothing, I wouldn't care with something like that.   If you're gonna do a DSLR with silver top plate for $3000 I want video!!

Download the LUT now For the full guide to the world of raw video on the 5D Mark III - order the EOSHD Shooter's Guide book by Andrew Reid With the new version of Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve (10.0) you can grade and edit 5D Mark III raw footage. EOSHD Film LUT is an instant cinema style which quickly and easily improves the look of 5D Mark III raw video in Resolve 10. No grading skills required. This LUT gives you a more film-like image, a less harsh electronic look compared to the standard Rec.709 colour space and default settings. It gives you more detail in the highlights and a smoother more natural feel to colour. Read the full article here

Any Vimeo samples? I can't take YouTube seriously as an image quality test.

  Wrong I'm afraid.   It's just disabled in the firmware. The video code is already there in the Expeed 3 chip and the D4 sensor was designed to do it. There's no component Nikon have removed from the camera in not having video, aside from a record button.

Actually NIkon's implementation of Sony's 36MP sensor in the D800 is better than Sony's own, in the A7R. No AVCHD for a start. I don't believe that Sony have a no-compete clause on their sensors. You don't become the world's number 1 sensor supplier by bossing around your customers.   You do realise… the GH3 has a Sony sensor, right?

  Good post.

This is why I don't believe in the crippling theory at Canon and Sony, etc. Nikon have no pro video line to protect yet still can't be bothered to put the relevant range of jacks and decent codecs on their high end DSLRs.   Qué?!

You do have some valid points there.   But overall too negative, like Nikon.   You're absolutely right that a small component cost is the difference between having an iPhone camera and having a phone with no camera.   But I find it strange you pick up on the affect that feature has on the retail price and not the affect that feature has on sales and revenue.   Apple are not a camera company. They've worked hard and invested in camera technology. They have made a massive return on their investment by having a camera on the iPhone. It wouldn't sell as well without one. It would't compete as well without one.   The pessimist would go ahead and save $18 per iPhone on manufacturing costs by removing the camera. They wouldn't see the return.   I see the return on Nikon improving their video capabilities, starting with stills cameras. It's a solid business decision. There's clear demand for Blackmagic cameras. Huge demand for enthusiast DSLR video. Huge demand from pros for DSLR video. Add all that up and it is myopic in the extreme for Nikon not to capitalise on that simply for the sake of stripping back the camera to it's core stills tech and saving $xx per unit in manufacturing costs.   You have to speculate to acculate.   You have to add value.   You have to invest in features, even non-core features (like Apple with custom Sony camera sensors).   Look at the GH2 hack. Do you realise how simple this was? A few settings in the firmware between having 24Mbit IPB and 100Mbit ALL-I. If you can do that, why not do it? Because it confuses the average consumer who doesn't need it? So put it in a separate model and sell tons of them to filmmakers! Problem solved!

  It wasn't a weakness, it was playing on a strength. Canon had developed a JPEG engine fast enough to do 12MP stills at 24fps. They simply turned that into a half arsed video mode and called it "1D C" instead of "1D X".   Nikon haven't even done that!   I don't get the feeling either of them are applying their incredible technology in an intelligent way to the market, aside from Cinema EOS and that's only for the high end.

I just want to see some progress!   DSLR video is 4 years old this November. D90 was a long time ago. 5D Mark II was also a long time ago. Just about the only significant progress since the 5D Mark II Canon or Nikon has given us has been 24p and a fix for moire (D5200, 5D3).   Only Panasonic have given us constant progress. GH2 was a clear advance in image quality over GH1. GH3 was a clear advance in features, build quality and ergonomics over GH2.   I find it strangely discomforting that this market has been best served by hackers and an Australian post production company over the last 4 years, rather than the enormously profitable manufacturers.

Where is the stalling apparent? Are you kidding me? 7D has not had a replacement for nearly 4 years now and the 5D Mark III was a lukewarm reheat. Those aren't low end.   You can ask anyone, even people completely disinterested in video about difference in image quality between a 7D, 600D, 650D, 700D over a period of over 3 years and they will be hard pushed to find any!   In that time Sony made so much progress on sensor technology, they came from behind Canon, to being in pole position. In terms of image quality AND CMOS sales.   Canon pioneered CMOS image sensors in DSLRs. Where are the Canon CMOS sensors in the lucrative smartphone market?   As for video enthusiasts...   It's been torture, and I know it because I lived it. The low end may be a mess but the high end 5D Mark III made no exciting improvements to the video mode in its factory form. The sensor scaling to avoid moire only became useful when Magic Lantern liberated the raw feed. The new ALL-I and IPB codec Canon put in was rubbish. Noise and banding everywhere. Soft as hell resolution. Very poor internal digital sharpening. If it wasn't for Magic Lantern and raw I'd have sold mine the moment the Sony A7R was announced, because now it is outgunned for stills as much as it would be outgunned for video by the D800 and A7R if it wasn't for Magic Lantern. I can use my Canon lenses on the Sony so nothing is stopping me switching to full frame E-mount for stills.   New enthusiast / semi-pro DSLRs 70D and 6D have pretty much the same poor image quality as a 550D from 2009 before any DSLR shot a single frame of professional video so don't tell me that isn't stalling FFS!   On the sensors side, 36MP and 24MP Sony full frame sensors are ahead of the equivalent Canon full frame sensors on dynamic range. Canon don't even yet have an answer to the 36MP one!

Actually Nikon have a huge support network worldwide and recently moved a major service centre to downtown Hollywood http://nikonrumors.com/2012/07/02/nikon-moving-el-segundo-service-center-to-hollywood.aspx/   http://www.yelp.com/biz/nikon-corp-los-angeles   I'm not suggesting Nikon step in at the pro end only, I'm suggesting they do the simple stuff better -   - D5200 already has a Super 35mm sized sensor from Toshiba which does very clean 1080p raw output with no moire problems   - Add professional codec   - Add video optimised form factor (i.e. remove mirror, optical viewfinder, etc.)   - Sell it

The gap between Nikon beginning the Df concept and putting it on sale was 4 years. Are camera manufacturers moving too slowly? [url=http://www.eoshd.com/content/11479/eoshd-weekend-report-4-long-years]Read the full article here[/url]

  The DSLR video community seem to believe that because freelance pros like Philip and Nino are now moving on to much pricier gear, that DSLRs are no longer used by pros. In fact lots of pros are still using DSLRs. Lots of production studios and broadcasters still have a fleet of 5Ds and GH2s, including BBC contracted companies.   DSLRs coexist alongside the ENG broadcast cameras and cinema stuff (C300).   So the market is not restricted to low budget DPs, owner-shot stuff with no crew, film students, etc.   Problem is, improvement seems to have stalled especially on Canon and Nikon side. It's getting harder and harder to intercut between compressed DSLR and the latest & greatest raw from the F5 or Blackmagic.   For enthusiasts and consumers it is becoming harder to justify the loss of image quality, and a lot of them will move to Blackmagic.

Of course Nikon have a business to run.   Here's a thing... Good video does not decrease the sales of stills cameras. Fact.   D800 sold thousands more units because of the video mode, indeed even a lot of pros bought it for video, as well as stills.   Convergence is happening.   Now Nikon need to grow some balls. They have been incredibly poor at diversifying their business. Passing up on chance to own Adobe before they were big. Passing up on chance to apply their existing optical and imaging tech to a video or cinema camera.   Where's the business logic here?   Cinema EOS is doing very well for Canon's bottom line. High value, lots of mark-up.   Putting a decent codec in a DSLR is not expensive or hard for a company like Nikon... Just get on and do it.   Blackmagic have done 10bit 4:2:2 ProRes for $999.   Nikon say they took 4 years to develop the Df, beginning in 2009!   The Df is a normal DSLR with a retro style top plate and dials.   So are Nikon saying they took 4 years to add a few dials and a silver top plate to a DSLR? Or are they really saying the D4 took 4 years to develop and the Df took 4 minutes?

Why are so many of you missing the entire point of the topic?   I don't have a problem with the Df being a pure stills camera. Although really, it's a D600 with two extra dials on top. Not exactly warranting of the fuss... Which shows what a looks obsessed world we're becoming.   The point of the topic, and the article, was that the Japanese camera companies regard video as a distracting sideshow to the main event and that is not how it should be.   Be thankful there is a site for DSLR video and people pushing the industry in a favourable direction. When GH4 comes out, you guys will be raving about it. Stuff doesn't happen by sitting on your hands and accepting the status quo.

  Do you even have a sensor of humour?

TheCameraStoreTV on Nikon Df "video"   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lM0M-l6eu0&t=9m30s   Start watching from around 9m 30s (click here) to get the joke :)

Crowd funding partly from you guys   http://www.holymanta.com/products/eos-nex-vd   Check it out :)

Stephen, what makes the most difference in your experience - bit depth of colour sampling? Is 8bit unfairly maligned? Because the accepted wisdom in the DSLR community is currently that 8bit is the poster child for poor image quality.   I've seen uncompressed 8bit 4:2:2 from the 5D Mark III's HDMI port and wasn't impressed. It looks like a similar result as you get with the internal compressed codec. But could we be pinning the blame on the wrong thing? The problem is, there's tons of data thrown away BEFORE the compression stage. Removing the compression makes no difference as by then the camera has already thrown away most of the sensor data. With raw it doesn't throw anything away after the feed leaves the sensor. The only loss is from the binning of resolution down from 22MP to 2MP on the sensor itself.   My impression was that the uncompressed 5D Mark III HDMI output in the latest firmware was still debayered very poorly and heavily processed in-camera before it reached the HDMI port. They claim 4:2:2 colour sampling. I don't think it is debayered to 4:2:2 in camera. I think the signal is 4:2:2 but the data is the same old shit.   The difference to the 8bit BBC broadcast stuff is that from sensor to media, the whole imaging pipeline is optimal. A bit more like the JPEG engine on a DSLR rather than video. Much less is thrown away.   So what matters is more the entire pipeline - sensor sampling, A/D conversion, signal processing, debayering, encoding, compression quality and media performance.   The problem with 8bit is with a heavy grade - no matter what the quality of the source - you are going to run out of gradation and tonal precision at some point, which risks introducing banding.   Laptop on set..   I recommend Macbook Air from 2012 onwards. Fast USB 3.0 to transfer the card data quickly. CPU is quick enough to handle the debayer and playback smoothly. The software side is improving on a month to month basis.

In the Amazon US sales charts -   A7R is 6th in compact system cameras. That's not including the other 50% of sales for the kit lens packs and 24MP A7, but it isn't a great position overall. The top selling mirrorless camera in the US on Amazon is the G5 and on the overall camera charts that works out at number 55.   By contrast the DF has debuted at 74. Silver outselling black.   Amazon don't show the DF in the DSLR sub group for some strange reason so we shall work that position out magically...   On the main sales chart at 74 it sits between the Canon 70D and the Canon SL1. Bear in mind the Canons have been on the market some months now, so sales will have dropped off from the initial pre-orders so we're not really comparing apples to apples on that one. Still what this tells us is that the Canon 70D is 15th in the DSLR category and SL1 is 16th, so the DF comes in at 16th displacing the SL1 in terms of current DSLR sales.   The A7R, I am not sure where it debuted when pre-orders started but it currently sits outside the top 100 overall.   The DF did not have as good debut as the D800 according to this - http://nikonrumors.com/2013/11/07/nikon-df-demand-not-as-strong-as-the-d800.aspx/   The Panasonic GH3 is under the DSLR category on Amazon. It currently ranks at 30. Selling about the same as the D800 at 29. Flagship vs flagship. The 5D Mark III is fairing slightly better at 23. Seen as those these cameras have been on the market for ages, that's not a bad performance... steady sales.   So there you have it... Looks like the more future facing video orientated D800 and GH3 will be more successful than the DF.

Blackmagic have come along out of the blue and manufactured a camera with 10bit signal processing using off the shelf components at a Singapore factory for $999 and a company the size of Canon and Nikon would have to turn their priorities upside down to do that?   Hmm.   It's just political... The elderly photographers who run Nikon do not want to add the requisite hardware to their stills camera to do justice to video, because it would eat into their margin and they don't see a return on the investment.   Don't forget DSLRs are still stuck at USB 2.0...   There's far more processing power in phones than in cameras these days and that is just WRONG!   Plus cameras cost a lot more than phones.

10 bit signal processing is in a $999 consumer camera already! Blackmagic Pocket!