Andrew Reid

  As far as I believe, the AF was canned because it was unpopular. To be honest I can see why.   GH line is the way forward.

More Nikon financial news just out -   "A dramatic fall in demand among photography hobbyists that began last year accelerated faster than expected."   http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/07/nikon-earnings-idUSL3N0IR39F20131107   Could it be that the video market hasn't gone for the D800? Lost opportunity. Could it be that the photography enthusiasts are temped by mirrorless due to a more flexible lens mount? Could it be that the Fuji X100 has already lapped up the demand for retro ergonomics and styling, and the Df (which took 4 years to develop) is too late? Could it be that the DSLRs from Nikon and Canon are just flat out boring?   I'd say all of the above is beginning to have an affect.   The economy at the moment is better than last year, Nikon have cut costs and become more efficient since last year, and yet their operating profit is down 41%.   When Nikon's core enthusiast photography business halves in size, they will wish they took the opportunity to be more innovative and embrace new demand in the imaging business - such as demand for video.

Obviously in low light an exposure to the right is going to be cleaner.   In good light I fail to see the advantage really. You risk getting a very hard clip to highlights.

  Yes played around with it but for me, the loss of resolution and introduction of moire is not worth the extra dynamic range in most situations.   Cool feature though.

I'm being sarcastic with the stills thing. I still think convergence should happen with certain cameras.   GH4 will be a perfect example of how it should be done.   The 1D C is an example of how NOT to combine cinema and stills. A lazy example, as are most of the consumer DSLRs.

Isn't it time to remove stills from our HDSLRs?!  :P   Stills have plagued our video cameras now for years!   The sacrifices videographers have made for the small niche of photographers is enormous.   The mirror box in our video cameras is completely redundant and the viewfinder doesn't work.   The flash is completely useless as a video light.   Instead of a conveniently placed video record button, we have to put up with a spongy shutter button. Why!?   The LCD is photo-shaped and not 16:9 like the video standard.   And don't tell me to use a proper video camera, I can't afford $20,000!   An undesirable flash sync port replaced our headphone socket :(   All the manual focussing aids are for stills  :wacko:   The tripod thread lacks a pin to keep the camera from shifting on the quick release plate.   Bloody photographers!

Sony gave Nikon their best sensor for video on DSLRs, the 36MP CMOS in the D800.   Hardly a sign that Sony are making Nikon pay for video features.   Meanwhile, Nikon have their own codec and Expeed engine which does a pretty good job of compression, etc. They also had clean HDMI output on the D800.   If Sony are trying to cripple competing cameras via sensor supply when it comes to video, they clearly failed, because the D800 was better than Sony's own A99 for video in terms of image quality!

The €3199 KineRAW MINI is the latest affordable raw cinema camera to be released. Featuring a 4K Super 35mm sensor it is a rival to the Blackmagic Production Camera and an alternative to shooting raw on the 5D Mark III with Magic Lantern. It shoots 2K / 1080p Cinema DNG uncompressed raw internally. Having now spent more time with the camera for the full review (coming soon), I was curious to see how 5D Mark III raw video stacks up against a dedicated cinema camera with a sensor purpose built for video - not stills. With the help of a new EOSHD test scene, we're about to find out - [url=http://www.eoshd.com/content/11462/5d-mark-iii-raw-video-magic-lantern-versus-kineraw-mini-image-quality]Read the full article here[/url]

  If Canon had listened to consumer feedback like that on the 5D Mark II's video mode, there wouldn't have been a 24p update, or a manual controls update, or a Cinema EOS pro business to speak of!

  Hmm not sure about that. Sony just went to a LOT of effort to read out and process all pixels in video mode with the RX10's sensor.   I'm expecting same to be true with their DSLR sensors in future.   What they need to sort out is the codec, get rid of AVCHD.   Actually Panasonic have a big broadcast range of pro video cameras, like Sony.

I too thought C100 and C300 (and C500?) have same sensor.   So if they have enabled it in firmware on the C100, why not C300?

  A more pertinent question is where's Nikon, Canon or Sony's answer to Blackmagic?

  DSLR video isn't shrinking. If it was shrinking, my Google Analytics would tell a very different story. At the height of the DSLR revolution in 2010 - 900,000 visits. So far in 2013 before the year is even out - 6 million.   2 million of them unique!   Yeah tiny market yada yada!

  This is why deep down I really want the Df and I think as a stills camera it will do well.   It's a shame that the mount isn't more flexible for non-Nikon lenses though, a shame about the pricing, shame about the small battery and locking dials, and I think it's going to be hard to justify me buying one on looks and ergonomics alone when the A7R is around.   It's also very bulky compared to something like the X100S which is just as sexy to use.

  Let's examine the logic of your post.   You say the DSLR video market is a tiny tiny niche, but then you say judging from Vimeo that 14 million users represent the maximum size of the market.   Hardly small exactly. I'd love to sell a camera to 14 million people for $3000 and turnover 42 billion!   Nikon's total annual DSLR sales amounted to about $2.6 billion recently.   To make that increase by a massive 20% would only require cornering 3 or 4% of registered Vimeo users.   I assume most Vimeo users need a video camera, right? Unless they're posting stills :)   In the 5 years after Nikon introduced their consumer DSLR line, their sales doubled.   Consumer market - NOT PRO - is the big one.   The consumer market for video is much larger than the professional video market and yet we have NOTHING catering to us in a quality way. If consumer stills quality was as bad as video quality on Nikon cameras they wouldn't sell a single DSLR.   Nikon sold a total of 3.5 million interchangeable lens cameras in 2012, all of them with video modes.   That's just one company. In effect, though not all of these customers will use video, all of them COULD use it given enough education, desire and inspiration... so the maximum potential size of the market is very large. If only Nikon could be arsed with it.

So now we have the truth of the way manufacturers think about DSLR video. It's a distraction! Clearly the purist section of the photography industry wants to take us back to the stone age. Video quality has been very low down the list of priorities at Canon and Nikon over the years. And Olympus, and Fuji. Now, even fashion accessories are prioritised above video capture as the Nikon Df dispenses with it altogether! Read the full article here

If 1080p is 'enough' then 4K makes very good 1080p because of oversampling, so everyone wins regardless of whether they think they need 4K or not. Also a full sensor output will do wonders for dynamic range and colour gamut. My only concerns relate to how they go from 4.5k to 4K on the image processor.   GX7 full output in 16:9 - 4592 x 2584   4K video standard - 3840 x 2160

Great to see the Aaton Penelope get some use rather than the usual boring choices.

The USB port is under the battery door on the bottom of the camera. Usual mini-USB to full sized USB cable required.

I import each clip, save a grade as a preset and apply it in the Adobe Camera Raw window.   In After Effects I drag the clips to the render queue. That's your batch process.   Then I have a preset for ProRes 4444 which is applied by default in the project to all the clips in the render queue.   Then I go and have a cup of tea :)

  Correct, compared to 8 million consumers we are small.   But Canon could do a Blackmagic and grab a big profitable market under the $6k C100 if they wanted to with DSLRs. Too risky? No incentive to do it? Weird.

Unlikely to be that smooth on your system. Minimum I've been able to get to work well has been GTX 560 Ti and 3x striped RAID 0 HDD array.   You cannot edit raw off just one drive unless it is an SSD.

Adobe have been pretty good at updates since CC actually, and Cinema DNG is a bonus. It doesn't seem like it has been a huge priority but I am surprised it is there at all. If they continue to improve support and functionality like they should do, it will end up very well.   Until then, check out Resolve 10 beta 3. The debayer for DNG in there is supposed to have been greatly improved since version 9.   http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/detail?sid=3948&pid=4446&leg=false&os=mac

A great line from 1001NoisyCameras today:   ...as Engadget points out above, Nikon was not as bad as the Canon operating profit outlook, revised downwards, saying that sales of high end cameras (in this context they mean DSLRs and iLCs) will be down year-over-year in unit volume for the first time since 2003. A drop from 8.2 million to 8 million, but it's the trend that is more bothersome than a mere 200,000 DSLRs/iLCs.   Grumpy Photographer Opines: you know, Mr. Canon, if your last three Digital Rebel DSLRs were not nearly identical, and if your first mirrorless camera was a bit less half-assed than a 85-lb supermodel on a celery and distilled water diet, maybe more people would have bought more of your cameras.   Source: http://www.1001noisycameras.com/2013/10/halloween-financial-horrors-canon-nikon-sony-taiwan.html   When will Canon and Nikon stop blaming the economy for their sales decline?   Do they realise that it's the PRODUCTS that are to blame?   Incredibly arrogent to say the least, not to mention dangerous too.

  No. They need to put the ACR controls in there to make it truly useful.   We need to change that raw metadata within Premiere.   Until now it will rely on third party plugins or grading tools designed for non-raw codecs.   It seems like a really half-hearted first effort to me, but great they have made a start.