dahlfors

There will be a review of the Lanparte stuff. I have got the carbon rods and matte box, follow focus with hard stops and the quick release baseplate. You are right about the quality vs price thing - it is just right. Quality is American standard but without the US price tag.

Above: my GH3 kitted out with Leica 14-50mm F2.8, Lanparte follow focus, carbon matte box and baseplate

Six months in the making here is my final and full review of the Panasonic GH3 jointly published with DPReview.com. I highly recommend checking out that review as well, to which I contributed the video mode insights.

The Panasonic GH3 is an affordable $1299 hybrid camera and has a special legacy to build on with indie filmmakers.

Does it succeed?

Read the full article here

Very tight budget. Sony Nex-5n is good for its price and can be had for far below $350. If it's possible to find a GH2 for that price I second Andy - get it.

I just found this: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/12/seiki-50-inch-4k-1300/
 
Seiki 50" Class 2160p 120Hz LED HDTV
3840 x 2160, 16:9, 120Hz, 5000:1 Native, 6.5ms, 3x HDMI, VGA (SE50UY04)
 
- A 4k / Ultra HD capable monitor for $1300 USD!
 
Reduser forum discussion: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?98027-1299-Seiki-UHDTV-50-quot-SE50UY04-Bought-it-today
 
- One reduser poster says this as well: "I bet that nobody noticed this: it is a 10 bit Color monitor too.. (correct me if I am wrong).."
 
Personal-view about it: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/6658/1299-uhdtv-seiki-50-se50uy04-/p1
 
It's going to be interesting to see if someone makes a proper review on this one! Guess affordable 4k is coming sooner than I had expected :)

On this NAB video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg0VZWRy1NI, the Blackmagic rep mentioned Class 10 cards but he didn't mention the speed, so maybe 30MB/s cards might work for ProRes?
 
Edit.
Just looking on the BlackMagic site and they picture 45MB/s card so I guess you were right about them being too slow. It might be more worth while getting an external recorder? But then you'd be losing the RAW option right? Unless there's a RAW external recorder?

5D isn't a "crop" format.  It uses a 36mm sensor and can't be compared to S35 in any way, which is 24.89mm and much smaller.  I don't know how you arrived at that statement.
 
I agree, polluting motion picture discussion with "crop factor" is bad, and wouldn't have happened except for the DSLR revolution and a bunch of stills guys used to such an imprecise, sloppy form of measurement.  But yes there has been a motion picture standard that's the equivalent to "full frame" 35mm and it's called VistaVision, or can be referred to as 8-perf 35mm.
 
It wasn't used for a full film (in the US) after the early 1960s I believe but ILM resurrected the format for shooting visual effects plates which kept the format alive clear up into the '00s as the standard for getting high resolution film for various visual effects processes.  So long as Technicolor and places like it are processing film they have the equipment and ability to handle the scanning and processing of VistaVision, eight-perf 35mm film.
 
Oh, here's a meaningful comparison graphic:
 

 
PS> and, please, nobody start polluting these discussions with those idiotic video engineer habits of describing rectangular shapes with diagonal measurements.  That's just retarded and always has been.

On the Pocket Camera you won't get any vignetting with DX/EF lenses. With the Speed Booster the crop factor will be 2.1x, still more than aps-c 1.5/1.6x. On the S35 camera you won't be able to use a Speed Booster at all, because it has a EF mount.

Update on the contradicting interview from NAB:
 
Black Magic representant tells that the pocket camera will have compressed DNG, so now it's confirmed both from homepage and NAB representants:
 
https://vimeo.com/63690222
 
(also confirmed that the 4k camera reads out the full s35 sensor for 1080p, not just a crop mode)

I can't help but smile when I see that tiiiny camera coupled with the big ARRI zoom + mattebox on that massive tripod... :)

I can't help but smile when I see that tiiiny camera coupled with the big ARRI zoom + mattebox on that massive tripod... :)

I can't help but smile when I see that tiiiny camera coupled with the big ARRI zoom + mattebox on that massive tripod... :)

This is the next big thing since the 5D2.
An incredible cool camera for enthusiasts like me. The Speed Booster made me drool and i'm still waiting to hit that order button for the MFT version.
 
This little BMPCC + Speed Booster is what I'm aiming for. Freaking amazing.

Right now, people should not be too excited about compressed CinemaDNG.
 
I asked a few months ago about DNG 1.4 lossy compression bit depth, and what I got is the it is 8bit. In fact, Lossy DNG is a 8bit jpeg.
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1078247

If you're interested in the new cameras (who isn't?), you might want to head to DSLR News Shooter in about 8 1/2 hours.
At 12:00 PM PST they're streaming a live Q&A with Blackmagic, here:
http://www.newsshooter.com/2013/04/08/watch-our-newsshooterteradek-live-coverage-of-nab-2013-from-1200pm-pacific-time-tomorrow-live-guests-include-blackmagic-design/

You mean: RED One has a S35 sensor, while the 5d3 has a full frame 35mm sensor :)
Comparison image here: http://www.eoshd.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/sensor-comparison3.jpg
 
And regarding original poster:
 
Yes, anamorphic lenses are made to squeeze the image as much over the whole lens. This means - even if you just use the center area of the anamorphic, it will squeeze in the image there as well - which you confirmed with your test.
 
That the RED One S35mm sensor is smaller than a full frame sensor results in, means that you can use a wider taking lens than on the full frame 5Dmk3 without getting vignetting. 

SSD's cost around 150 euros and upwards for 250 GB, over 300 euros for 500 GB sizes.
 
SSD's are the most rugged ones for sure. Hard disks are far more sensitive to rough handling and shocks than SSD's. However, they are the most sensitive when they are powered on. If you eject hard disks safely before powering off - hard disks park their mechanical parts (arms with read/write heads). When in parked state, hard disks can withstand quite a lot of shocks and rough handling.
 
So, if you want lots of storage for a cheap price, hard disks are the way to go. If you want the absolutely best ruggedness but can survive on a bit smaller storage, SSD's will be the best choice.
 
Depending on where you travel, you want to keep both SSD's and HDD's dry. In jungle-like humidity you really would want to have some kind of sealed box/bag with something that absorbs humidity, like silica gel.
 
I've seen how bags get treated at airports, and would it be me, I'd be sure to keep the portable disk as hand luggage, wrapped in a sweater or so. Normal carrying like that in a backpack or so shouldn't be a problem if you aren't unusually careless about the bag.
 
When it comes to the casings of the hard disks, I wouldn't care too much about if it is padded or not, that's mainly cosmetic. What I'd care more about would be the cooling properties of the hard disk case. According to largescale tests done by larger data centers, hard disks have the least amount of failure if they run at around 30-40 degrees celcius. Cooler or warmer running increases risks for failure.
 
My personal recommendation for traveling storage on the cheap would be to get two portable hard disks, one for backup, then using same transporting & dry keeping for both of the disks. If they'd get banged around enough to break - you got a good chance that one of the disks survive at least. Hard disks are the same all around the world as well, so you'd easily be able to get a replacement for backup if one would break down.
 
Also, any portable hard disk that has the right interface for your mac (USB/Firewire) will work, no real difference.
 
My own solution is to get any cheap metal (better for keeping drives running cool) casing I can find for the interface I need (usb/firewire/esata), and then I drop in just a normal 3.5" hard disk. No reason for you to do it if you need a new case, I just do so because I usually have a lot of extra hard disks lying around.

I find using a pistol grip with these cameras helps a lot, and pressing your face against the viewfinder
 
I got this one
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Authentic-P-C-Camera-DSLR-pistol-grip-handle-FREE-D-Ring-/130743812351

Tricking visual perception has been done a long time in art, and yes, how the human brain interprets visual information is a big subject.
 
I'd recommend that you experiment in Photoshop with upscaling on some stills (a lot faster and easier to work on a still). Pick some sample stills that you can find, one squeezed anamorphic still and one normal still with no squeeze.
 
Then use these techniques - I often use them myself in my design work if I for some reason have photos that aren't detailed enough:
 
1) Depending on the image, add one round of sharpening with smart sharpen at around 1.5-3.0 pixel radius, with amount around 5-15%,
 
2) Then add a second sharpening with 0.2-0.5 pixel radius at a bit higher amount, 15-45%. The values depends a lot on how it's going to be used, and the original resolution of the image.
 
3) If I want yet more perceived resolution I add one noise layer in overlay mode and tweak that to what I like. Since you do it for screen use, you use quite little opacity on the noise layer (how large of an opacity value you will use also depends on how much contrast your noise layer has). When working with print as output medium - you use far more noise (the print process hides most of the noise you add in fact).
 
 
Experiment with different settings and put the images side by side to compare. You will notice that you can get a lot more perceived resolution when you sharpen the right way, add grain - and do only horisontal scaling as in the case of anamorphic...
 
- Same methods can be applied for video as with the stills - the difference will be that your noise is animated and that you don't necessarily run two rounds of sharpening. These methods (except horisontal-only scaling as with anamorphic) have been used for print medium a long time. For print you can successfully scale upwards to 150-200% without much perceived loss of resolution, even more when it goes for billboards or something that will be viewed at a further distance.
 
- Basically, most kind of grit / noise / dirt / distortion layers layered on top with a bit of opacity will increase the perceived resolution. In the early days of web design when high res digital photos were harder to acquire, people used scanlines so much for this reason - that it became a popular design style (similarily to this image: http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/081/9/f/Labrador_Wallpaper_Scanlines_by_Red_Se7en.jpg). Scanned filmgrain or noise will be what you want for video.
 
Similar methods for upscaling were previously commonly used for 3D animations to save on render time previously when hardware was a lot slower. Genuine Fractals was the name of a tool specifically made for upsizing, yielding even better results than traditional upsampling algorithms. These days it has been renamed "perfect resize": http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/perfect-resize/, but it's unfortunately not a plugin for video softwares and if it is used on video, it needs to be run frame by frame.
 
With these upscaling methods you'll notice that upscaling can produce very good results. Thanks to anamorphic needing only horisontal scaling, end result is even better.

Well, just put a GH3 on his head and you've a cheaper and biological MoWLI:
 
 
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6M-h5g3PwI[/youtube]

Interesting article, thanks!

Hello Everybody,
 
I know Andrew is getting ready to publish his review on the GH3 so I thought I'd share with you small project I worked on with a group of friends. We basically were asked by Panasonic Middle East to create a short film to showcase the capabilities of the camera under various conditions. We even mounted the camera on my RC drone to show how a camera with this size and weight can be literally used anywhere!   I hope you like it :)
 
 
https://vimeo.com/62274504
 
 
Regards,
Ihab Ali
icon-ap.com

Tested out the v1 over the weekend:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEY9d9D9qCw&hd=1
 
Fantastic camera, especially for the money. Thank you Andrew for spreading the word about it!
So tempted to get a v2... I really want those 10 extra frames + access to non-cx lenses in burst mode + the faster write speeds to the sd card!

I visit my brother, niece and sister in law, and I met in Toulouse Olivier, a anamorphic lenses collector. He lent me for this week end one of his Iscorama. It was the first and hope not the last time that I have this lens in my hand. It's working very well, sharp, and usable for closed shots without a diopter.
 
<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/61965327" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/61965327"
 
 
GH3 AVCHD 1080 50P
natural mode
1080 50P
Iscorama
non MC
1.5X version, apparently more 1.4X, that what I've done on post
Yashica
55mm f2
Contax mount
light craft ND variable filter
Tokina 0.5 diopter
here is a face to face Iscorama / baby Hypergonar :
vimeo.com/61788864

richg101: Haha - unexpected to experience the combination of Mazzy Star, anamorphics and cats... 

Hey Andy..

This vid should explain what the circular masks do...

http://vimeo.com/61341672