MattH

It seems a lot of people are confusing the question of what the footage shows us about the camera and the question of whether the footage is a polished professional piece.  Possibly motivated by jealousy that they havent got the camera.   Its just a model stood there being shot by the camera hand held,  Its not claiming to be an art piece or a documentary or a music video or anything, so it has no obligation to look polished and professional.

So getting back to the real question at hand which is what the footage shows us about the camera, I think it looks outstanding!   The lack of image artefacts, very good low light performance, good looking highlight latitude, and the cinematic look overall, if you thought that came from a still camera you'd be singing its praise from the rooftops.  Or if you saw this 5 years ago from any camera with a price south of $10,000 you'd be singing its praise from the rooftops.

What else does it show us.  Well it shows that you wont be handholding it for long focal length shots unless the lens is stabilised.  So that is useful information.  But it showed that even with shakiness the rolling shutter wasn't unbearable.  That's useful.    And the fact that the guy bothered to mount a bmmcc to it so we will be able to directly compare, we should be grateful for that information also.

12 minutes ago, Django said:

Just peeped the Cinema5D report.. looks like you couldn't even record any footage at the Manchester event..making it kinda pointless to begin with imo?! we already know the specs, and what it looks like. Kinda strange/suspect they'd do that considering the camera is suposedly about to drop and therefore in final production stage. or is it?

It's probably because they wanted to host a publicity event for camera youtubers in Europe (Andrew has a blog and forum of course but doesn't do on camera reviews or interviews. Maybe that is the differentiating factor of why he was overlooked.) and do it in a stylish looking environment, but they didn't want torture test footage out there of a dimly lit bar. Probably one of the worst lighting conditions you can have for a video camera.  Imagine some noob just waving the camera round with an unstabilised lens, not focused and stopped down at high ISO with a lot of noise and blown highlights.   It would be counter productive publicity.

The one interesting thing I got from their coverage of that event was the ISO chart which I already mentioned about a page back.  The distribution of stops above and below middle grey changes with the ISO fairly significantly and because of the dual native ISO there is a huge switch (almost a reverse in polarity if you will) going from 1000 to 1250.  A small change in brightness but potentially a big change in how the image looks.

The ISO chart that they showed at that event that's on the Cinema 5D blog is interesting.   Seems as if the middle grey point shifts within the dynamic-range range.  I assume that's just for prores (and maybe raw metadata).

That would mean that besides simply giving more brightness it would be more of an image manipulation tool.  You choose the ISO depending on whether you want more range in the shadows or in the highlights.  Look at the difference between 1000 and 1250:      Goes from 7.8 stops latitude below and 5.3 stops above to 10 stops below and 2.3 stops above.   A small change in brightness but probably a big change in the look of the image.       Then with gradual changes going down or up from those points.

2 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Any total mad man out there tried hacking a mic input to the GX85?

As I was thinking to myself that the GX85 might be my perfect 4K camera for 2018 vlogging, as it small in both size and price (from ebay) with a flip up selfie screen, if only.... it had a mic input!! Sigh. 

You'd just have to use a seperate audio recorder.  And use some visual cue with a sound to sync the audio.  Thats what clapperboards are for.

But one thing to realise is that the GX85 doesnt have a selfie screen, it only tilts upwards at 90 degrees not 180.   It's the GX850 that has a full selfie screen, but I think the 4k for that is limited in time to 5 minutes, or even less due to heat.  

So you'd maybe have to mount a mirror to the hotshoe angled at 45 degrees above the screen of the GX85 or something.  It would still be Cheap 4k though.

I must admit that this despite its obvious flaws the R does have some appeal.   The colours look great straight out of camera, autofocus should work great.  All intra internal which I don't think the Sonys have.  And yes the filters adapter does look good.   (I did put ibis in this list but then I realised its only digital stabilisation).

But here's what troubles me.   Its the fact that the features of this camera don't even work with each other:  If you want the filter adapter you cant use it with the new lenses.  So either you have to buy separate filters for the new lenses anyway or not use the new lenses.     And if you aren't using the new lenses it already starts to fall apart as a coherent system.  Its basically a EF mount camera with the mirror removed and a filter slot put in.

Then comes the 4k crop.   You could think, well does it matter because you could use a speed booster in order to give you close-to full frame coverage in video and full frame stills with the same lenses.  Firstly that would be a pain in the ass to have add an adapter every time you wanted to take a full resolution still with the very same lens, because if you don't bother to do that you may as well have a crop sensor camera to start off with.   But secondly, and more importantly, if you use a speed booster you can no longer use the filter adapter.   So now you are stuck with the crop and probably will have to resort to aps-c lenses to get wide shots.

So although you could argue that you have options, it kind of seems like an endless merry go round of compromises and second guessing yourself.

Imagine if they had made the flange a little deeper to put a filter slot into the body itself and had full frame 4k.  Then all those problems would be gone. THEN it would make perfect sense as an integrated hybrid system.

The thing that gets me is that towards the end of that video they make a big deal of being able to take a 4k jpeg screen grab from recorded 4k video.  So even a big stills feature uses that massive crop.  If that is such a big deal for stills then why did they make the sensor resolution so high?  I guess because a high mp stat sells cameras.

10 minutes ago, mercer said:

It’s funny the last time me and the girlfriend watched a movie... she mentioned that she couldn’t really follow the story because they were shooting with a 45mm lens instead of a 28mm.

I think you mean the other way around.   Your premiss being they are using a 28mm to get a 45mm fov on a smaller sensor so its no big deal.   Theres nothing wrong with that size of sensor. M4/3rds is pleanty.  The issue is paying for a full frame camera and lenses.  But I guess if you are a hybrid shooter it gives you full frame stills, and ibis log all-i 4k internally in one camera.  That is a first I suppose.

4k Crop revealed here at 2 minutes 30.  What a surprise!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uXLMG4Dyzo

2 hours ago, UncleBobsPhotography said:

The list may be similar, but Sony are able to make simple lists complex. Here are some examples:

3) I turn on my camera and click record to capture the moment. Nothing happens. I had forgot to acknowledge the fact that my camera is in PAL mode, which has to be done each and every time I turn on my camera.

 

Wow, let me see if I've got that right.  Every time you turn the camera  (RX1Rii) on  It reminds you that you are in PAL mode and you have to click yes to acknowledge that before it will allow you to record a video?   And there is no menu setting to disable that reminder?    I can understand that as a useful feature if you are a person who only uses PAL mode at certain times, but if you cant choose to turn it off that would be enraging.

5 hours ago, mercer said:

I don’t think there’s a crop. They specifically mention EF-S Crop Shooting in the specs which they wouldn’t need to crop to if there was a 1.74x crop. I know that’s because they’re talking about FHD, but if they’re going to go to the trouble of mentioning a specific crop in these “final” specs, then why wouldn’t they mention a 4K crop as well.

Because FHD aps-c crop is a feature.  The expected 4k crop is an encuberance.

1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

That's the thing. We're paying for FULL FRAME lenses. A very nice one, in the case of that groundbreaking 28-70mm F2.0 (Although I am 99% sure Sigma is working on one as well, for EF, Nikon and Sony E mount).

What's the point if we can't use them? May as well put a Speed Booster on it and use something else.

Do Canon want to sell their mirrorless lenses, or not?

I really thought the high-end full frame mirrorless would be when they woke up to what modern video users need. Apparently not. They are still more interested in segmenting the stills and video market with a big wall.

Who is going to want to shoot 1.75x crop (worse if you calculate diagonal as well), with no IBIS, on a $2k+ zoom that has no wide angle end? Especially when you can choose a Nikon Z7, Z6, A7 III, A7R III or wait for the upcoming Panasonic monster cam.

Its a 1.75 crop of a full frame 16:9 crop.  I figure when talking about video 'full frame' means what you get in video mode on a full frame camera.   But its kind of spliting hairs anyway.   A slight 1.2 or 1.25 crop would be bearable but anything more than 1.4 and it ceases to make sense unless you've got money to burn.

And putting a speed booster to boost a full frame lens on a full frame camera would just feel weird.   Almost a shameful waste of money for the speedboster.  And embarrassing like you have to look round first before attaching it.  Thinking about it reminds me of this sketch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGSxgGXOh-A

1 hour ago, Django said:

the crop factor on 5D4 hasn't decreased since it came out.. and certainly not with a firmware update or heat sink being put inside it?!

Ah! Ok I jumped the gun.  To be honest I'm a little behind on the video gearhead specs info so I did a search to find out what the 5D mk4 4k crop was and found this-

https://petapixel.com/2017/03/29/canon-5d-mark-iv-firmware-update-reduce-4k-crop-1-74x-1-27x/

-and automatically assumed it was legit without reading the whole thing.  So included it to cover my ass.  But at the bottom of course it says "For now, none of this has been confirmed or officially released by Canon, so take it with the appropriate amount of repressed hopes."

Hopefully I'm wrong but my bet is that it will have a 4k crop.

With the stated still horizontal resolution of 6720, a 1:1 quad-hd 3840 wide crop will be a 1.75x crop.   Other people have already mentioned that this was the crop for the 5d mk4 when it came out.  They decreased the crop with a firmware update but it required a better head sink being installed.  Will this have a big heat sink from the start? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

But if it is a 1.75 crop it doesn't represent a good value proposition.  The GH5s and bmpcc4k have a 1.85 crop so not much difference, and no chance the canon will come close to matching their other specs.   Can you imagine spending all that money on a full frame camera and expensive ridiculously heavy full frame f2 zoom lens and then you can only utilise 33% of it?  When you can practically achieve the same thing with a £500 worth of crop sensor camera and lens.      I actually think that 28 - 70 with an f2 max aperture is really useful range for an apsc sensor, but if it didn't need to cover full frame it could be a damn sight lighter than 1.5kg

1 hour ago, mercer said:

Are you sure about that? I thought the M 35mm is supposed to be a 1.4?

Yeah according to CR, the 35mm 1.8 is an RF lens.

1 hour ago, Inazuma said:

The rumored EF-M lens is supposed to be a 32mm f1.4

35 minutes ago, MdB said:

You’re thinking of the EF-M 32mm f/1.4. This lens as leaked is an IS Macro lens for the RF mount. 

I know. But I think sizes have been greatly exaggerated. 

Oh yeah my mistake. I remember seing the EF-M lens before and then looking at those pictures the 35mm looked like an EF-M lens.

1 hour ago, mercer said:

I was all set with a plan and then this rumor pops up. I can’t wait to hear the video specs, to know for sure about which way to proceed. I wanted an EF Mount but damn these lenses look amazing. That 28-70mm f/2 is a dream lens. And since the 35mm is the only one without the red ring, Canon is going big with L lenses right out the gate. 

Btw, I’m hoping the R stands for Raw (as in video) Even 1080p RawLite would be an amazing video move for Canon. I think I might sell my 5D3 for that.... I know it won’t happen but until the specs come out... I can dream. Lol. 

The 35mm f1.8 is an EF-M lens for the existing aps-c mirrorless, so in fact all the RF lenses are L lenses.  The lenses are appealing in their specs as well.  They are actually the most appealing aspect.

12 minutes ago, Django said:

I agree. I think Canon are going to protect their pro DSLR line (as Nikon) and are going to continue to protect their C-line.

This probably means single card slot, 4K crop, 8-bit etc.

It's Canon.  Something has to be wrong about the video.   It would be a miracle if its full sensor width non croped 4k.  Forget 10 bit thats a joke. C-log if you're lucky.  My guess is exactly what you said.

I think the 'control ring' at the end of the lens next to the red ring is just Knurling for added grip lf the lens itself.   Not actually an extra control ring.

The only dumb thing about having ND filters in the adapter is that you won't actually be able to use them with the new lenses.  So whatever advantages the new lenses have you also have to throw away the advantage of having an ND slot.  Unless the new lenses themselves have such a slot, even if its just on the front.

Taking a look at the code names for the 3 rumored adapters:  M.ADAP R, M.ADAP R ND, M.ADAP R PL  it actually seems quite simple what they will be.

M.ADAP R:  A standard RF to EF-mount smart adapter.

M.ADAP R ND: An RF to EF smart adapter with built in ND filers (or a slot for filters)

M.ADAP R PL:  RF to PL mount adapter.

58 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

They probably wouldn't, my post wasn't about the RF, I was going of topic a bit with my own thoughts.

I was just thinking out loud along with you.

4 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

I did a little poll with my possibly impossible but still, imo, interesting suggestion.
+1100 votes with 70% thinking it sounds cool.

What if Canon just added a built in optional EVF and called it a day?

First let me say that Im pro mirrorless. I use both extensively as anyone that follows me know.
And we are taking about Fullframe here, leave Fuji and MFT out of it.

In general lenses doesnt get smaller with mirrorless, they get bigger. Its just laws of physics, they just ad extra length to make up for the shorter flange. Unless they have a smaller sensor and/or slower aperture. (They can somewhat get around it with software correction.) So there really isn't any size difference in fullframe worth mentioning once you put on exotic glass. And often it just gets unbalanced in my personal opinion.

Ibis, instant focus in liveview with burst and no blackout, peaking, etc, all that exists in similar sized DSLRs today. The only thing really missing is an EVF. Which at the end of the day is just a "pretend" viewfinder, a tiny screen in a hole.

I'm thinking something pop-up, like in the X-Pro2/x100f. Then you have a true hybrid with the benefits of both systems like the DSLRs extremely fast AF and OVF, even in dim light. Also, then they can simply keep the EF mount which have exotic f1.2 lenses already.

Just a thought, not even sure if its possible  

I think a hybrid viewfinder would be interesting.  Which would need probably two pelicle mirrors.   But why would they name the lenses as RF if they aren't making at least some change to the mount.  If there is no change there is no reason they wouldn't be called EF.  They could potentially have protruding rear elements like some apsc lenses but that could cause confusion and also you would expect them to be called EF-X or something similar.

46 minutes ago, Cinegain said:

Yeah, even seemed glitchy at one point... bunch of noise and smudginess as well as a purple sploosh in the shadows of that overhang...

^click YouTube compression? Who knows. -- hum, it's also on the Vimeo one ... still, impressive enough up to that point. But I was starting to wonder if it really trumps the GH5S... that has more practicality. But then I get back to its price, codec and fact it's bundled with DaVinci Resolve Studio and that's still sick value over the GH5S.

The smudyness is because its not the point of focus.  Its essentially like looking at background bokeh.   And you will always get compression artifacts and banding with streaming, people just dont notice it when they sit down and get into the story.  It's very little to do with the quality ofthe camera. 

I think what browser you use must make a big difference for different people. Using firefox I cant fault the footage at all in 1080 or 4k. Though my monitor is 'only' HD.  If anything the vimeo version was worse for me.

Actually. Scratch that. Now that you mention it I can see that purple splodge on my screen also.  Its like there is a line doing down the left of it which continues into the edge of a green splodge. Its right down the center of the frame.  Now that sort of thing CAN be the camera.   Remember the ikonoskop.

Maybe its just a case of pushing the stadows to much in that particular shot and not aplying chroma noise reduction.  I cant see it in any of the other shots.  In the caves the blacks look black.

25 minutes ago, Bioskop.Inc said:

That all looked fine for a first view of some footage, but the beach shots were a bit of a mess - either focus on something we can clearly see or deep depth of field.

 

I didn't see any focus issues with the beach shots.  In the first shot with the overhanging cliff on the left the focus is on the backround.  In the shot of water hitting pebbles the focus is in the forground.   In the shot with the seaweed on the left the focus is on the seaweed (and the water at that distance from the camera).

1 hour ago, jonpais said:

After seeing the negative or lukewarm reception accorded here and over at BMCUser, I half-expected the footage to look ghastly. But having watched it myself on a 55" OLED, the short clip looks very nice indeed - and if I didn't know better, I'd have sworn it was in 4K: richly detailed, with gorgeous shadows and little to no noise. I have no reason to doubt that this camera will capture lovely skin tones too. I don't get all the dismissive comments about the video being all trees - the filmmaker put this camera through its paces in a very demanding environment with harsh lighting and it came out aces. I was particularly impressed by the view of the waterfall  - from the moss and leaf covered stones buried in darkness to the glistening water - very impressive dynamic range indeed. Bravo! 

33 minutes ago, MattH said:

Wow. If this footage was captured in HD then that is impressive.  Just shows you what real HD should look like.   I suppose in a way (depending on how the process the image) a HD file could have more accurate colour per pixel.  You don't even need to debayer, the sensor effectively becomes a discrete colour sample HD sensor like the C300.  Maybe they don't do it that way, but in any case there is certainly no lack of detail.

29 minutes ago, jonpais said:

It was shot in 4K, not HD.

11 minutes ago, MattH said:

Ah ok. That makes sense.  Its just some people were saying it almost looked like 4k.  Maybe it hadn't rendered in 4k at the time.

Wait a minute, it was you.  "and if I didn't know better, I'd have sworn it was in 4K" 

Whats the deal?

14 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

In the BMPC4K the internally downsampled HD looked just as good if not better than 4K downsampled in post. I suspect the same will apply to the BMPCC4K (or BMCCmkii as I view it )

Wow. If this footage was captured in HD then that is impressive.  Just shows you what real HD should look like.   I suppose in a way (depending on how the process the image) a HD file could have more accurate colour per pixel.  You don't even need to debayer, the sensor effectively becomes a discrete colour sample HD sensor like the C300.  Maybe they don't do it that way, but in any case there is certainly no lack of detail.