Josh D

Thanks Andrew, I appreciate your thoughtful response, and agree there is a major gap in the Canon line where a FS100 competitor should sit (and no doubt will fairly soon). That said, because of the handling, the easy workflow, the fantastic image out of the box now (rather than waiting for add-ons down the track), the C300 is still the most compelling sub-20k camera to me. While on paper it may be a dubious proposition (and price wise you need to be shooting for a living to own it), the pictures it spits out defy mere spec sheet analysis and having used one for a day, I can say it really is a breeze to operate. Personally I'm done with cumbersome rigs, external recorders, screw on NDs etc... With the C300 you just choose a lens and shoot. 

Love your site Andrew and come here frequently for news updates, insights, and to enjoy your film making.  However, I can't agree with your Sony/Canon comparison which seems a little flippant, especially: "The FS700 beats the C300 and Sony’s new small-chip camcorder beats the XF305." In both cases the Sony's are cheaper, but better?  This depends on what you're looking for in a camera.  The C300 has better build quality and ergonomics, native EOS mount, LOG recording, robust internal 422 codec, better monitoring, and likely superior 1080p resolution and dynamic range.  These are highly appealing features to many.  The Sony is a different offering with some unique features of its own - it's an exciting camera - but to say it "beats" the C300 is meaningless.  The cameras have very different strengths and the C300 will continue to sell very well.  As will the F3.  In the case of the PMW-100, it's easily outclassed by the XF305 (10x lens vs 18x, 1 zoom ring vs 3, 1 chip vs 3).  They're not even competing products.  Perhaps you meant to write XF105. Then again, it's your blog so say whatever you like  ;)

[quote author=brice link=topic=218.msg1541#msg1541 date=1327643202] [quote]Andrew how do you explain the aliasing and moire free "WHY" video? I admit that the "Freddie King" video looks real nasty and something is clearly wrong but how is the "WHY" video looking so nice. It's got very nice resolution and I can't find any trace of aliasing / moire. Both videos look like they were shot on different cameras. Makes no sense to me.[/quote] Andrew, I second this statement. And would also like to hear your take on the unmitigated divergence of quality between the two videos. It's amazing how different those two films look. [/quote] Absolutely share this sentiment too.  I have a couple of 5DIIs and they are not nearly as clean/crisp as the Why video.  What's more you couldn't shoot that much footage with a 5DII without a hint of moire.  On the Vimeo page the shooters add plenty of input - they're using the internal codec (they weren't aware clean hdmi was even an option) and universally celebrate working with the camera vis-a-vis the Canons (which one of the film makers had shot with extensively). Agreed, the Freddie King clip is awful.  Certainly looks like something went amiss in post.  As for the "Low Light Test" video added here - the guy who put that up on Youtube lacks credibility (he also claims to have a 1DX).

Hi Andrew, Love your blog but as Samuel points out above, your conclusions about downsampling completely misconstrue what Dave Etchells from Nikon was saying.  You really ought to change your article as the central point - "Frankly this is bloody ridiculous" - is in err: Dave Etchells tells us nothing about whether line skipping takes place.  He only describes the basics of 4:2:2 chroma-sampling (exactly as it is in the Canon C300) - this is nothing specific to the D4: (Dave Etchells, IR) - 8-bit is correct, 4:2:2 is a standard digital video format. The numbers refer to the sub-sampling of the various channels (Luminance, and two chroma channels). 4:2:2 subsamples the chroma channels 2:1 along each line vs the luminance channel. The subsampling is only along each horizontal video line; there's no sub-sampling between video lines. I wish my GH2 could output 4:2:2!!  As it is we have half the chroma information.