Damphousse

I didn't say it wasn't good enough for pro work. I've sold pictures for front page publication from a 4 megapixel camera. I just said it is not on the same level as pro equipment. I wouldn't call a Canon 5D mark II "low end." A Canon t3i is low end. And I was referring to camera bodies not lenses. I don't think anyone is going to come out with a 50mm lens five years from now that is going to be markedly different from a good 50mm lens from the 80s. In the United States used Canon 5D MK IIs don't sell for $700 unless something is wrong or some other unusual circumstance. They are usually going for $1,000. I got my refurbised Canon T3i with one year warrenty for $300 from Adorama... That's what I mean by low end. I used to think 4k was pointless... till I saw it. Even on a monitor with less than 1080p I could see a dramatic difference in a STREAMED 4k video on YOUTUBE. If someone can't tell the difference between 1080p compressed Canon 5D MK II output and decent 4K output they need their eyes checked. Like I said I have published front page images in major national newspapers with a 4 megapixel camera. But I don't go around saying you can't tell the difference between 18 megapixels and 4 megapixels. Neither do I say people shouldn't ungrade to 18 megapixel DSLRs. Just because someone somewhere has pulled something difficult off doesn't mean we should forgo the equipment that makes things far easier.

That may be true but that's not the part of the curve we are playing on at the moment. Low end video equipment still sucks. I can go out right now with a $300 DSLR and a $100 lens and take pictures that will rival pro photography quality. You can't say that about the video aspects of that same camera. Photography cameras have gotten so good that really the camera body has in many ways ceased to be the limiting factor. So for photography what you say is definitely true. If someone says I can't shoot nice pictures because all I have is a Canon t3i then I know they suck at photography. A 5D MK III isn't going to make their work noticeable better. People always tell this lie that the chase for specs is never ending. Well with digital photography it's ended for most of us. Another 2, 3, 4, or 5 megapixels is not going to change our work dramatically. Video will get to that point as well. The number of people worrying about specs will get less and less as the technology improves. People only rarely print pictures bigger than 11x14. And likewise TVs will only get so big. If you can fill a 70 inch screen with a sharp picture there really isn't going to be a lot of demand for even more resolution.

The Sony FDR-AX100 and the Panasonic GH-4 aren't even out yet. If someone were to tell you how to spend your $3,000 what would they base that directive on? A pamphlet? You have to wait for those cameras to come out and be used and reviewed in a variety of situations before any decision can be made. Unless you are really rich and don't care.

People do not buy BMPCC because they are more reliable than Canons. And what happened to a random used Canon that your mother bought doesn't reflect on Canon in any way. That's part of buying used. You get a killer deal on most items but you take a risk that eventually you will get something that is being sold because it has been abused. And your non savvy mom is exactly the person who should buy a Canon. No one is saying everyone should rush out an buy a Canon. Or that stock Canon Rebel video is better than BMPCC raw. No camera is perfect. They all have their pros and cons. Let's just take it easy on just blindly making stuff up about different form factors and brands.

Raw is a niche thing. I'm sure when he said "better" he meant in the average common situation. You can pick all sorts of weird niche situations where one camera is "better" than another. That's not useful when you are talking about everyday pedestrian shooting situations.

Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. There is no "resolution war." Anyone on this forum would take an Alexa over ANY widely available 4K camera. For there to be a "war" there needs to be two sides. The only side as far as I can tell is a small but vocal group of people that are allergic to 4K. Everyone else just uses what looks good... which at certain price points and in certain situations happens to be certain 4K cameras.

Ah yes, but you snipped out all the important stuff from the post such as the 5D MK III is a hacked stills camera and all the ergonomics and workflow issues the BMPCC has. You also run into diminishing returns once you get up to the image quality of Alexa at 2K. There is a point where resolution is so high upping it further is not a good use of your resources... The Canon 5D MK III is not at that point. An Alexa is not to an Epic what a stock 5D MK III is to a Sony HandyCam FDR-AX100. There are still a lot of questions about the Sony HandyCam FDR-AX100 that need to be answered but it is possible that when you step back and look at this camera holistically it trounces the 5D MK III and the BMPCC and does it for less. Now it isn't going to necessarily have the low light performance or the shallow depth of field but in a lot of general shooting it has the potential to stun. Personally after looking at the Sony HandyCam FDR-AX100 I felt it has one of the most significant improvements of image quality I've seen in that price range. The thing is no nonsense sharp. It doesn't take an expert or pixel peeping to see what that thing does. And it does it all in an ergonomic nonhacked package. Pay your two grand. Buy some memory cards and start shooting. No hacking, no additional lenses, no ND filter, no adapters. Just no nonsense out of the box for less than the other two solutions. I mentioned the Sony HandyCam FDR-AX100. I didn't say get a Samsung Note 3. Yes a Samsung Note 3 shoots 4K but no one is saying ALL 4K is better than all 1080p or 2K. I definitely have an issue with what I saw with some of the highlights in the Sony HandyCam FDR-AX100 video, but assuming those issues were due to contrast set too high, overexposure, etc the camera could be really awesome.

The problem with the two cameras you mentioned are ergonomics and reliability. A lot of people won't use a hacked camera on a pro job and the issues with the BMPCC have been discussed ad naseum. Honestly I would like to see more footage from the Sony FDR-AX100. I had an issue with the highlights in the one video I saw but the image was frighteningly sharp. If I was shooting in well lit scenarios that seems like the camera I would go for. It's 4K and cheaper than a fully kitted out 5D MKIII and BMPCC. Why wouldn't you save money and get higher resolution? When you say "hacked" are you talking about raw? Because raw is a pain in the butt to work with. The acutal color correcting is fun but injesting all that footage and getting it on your time line is a pain in the but compaired to stuff that is usable straight from the camera. I wouldn't call iphone 5s video "flawless."

So the art should just settle for the lowest common denominator? That's why the photography world in general has had such a downward spiral. Lay people just don't know what good art is and there are plenty of people who are willing to take their money and dump substandard work on them. There is a difference between a pro reaching into their tool kit and coming up with a look and a look being achieve just due to pure incompetence. This is like people paying tens of thousands of dollars for pictures painted by monkeys. Everyone is free to do with their money what they wish but let's not go around saying it makes sense or it is something that should be encourgaged. For the millionth time, who are these people?! As far as I can tell most of the prolific posters on this forum shoot plenty of material. The gentleman that runs this site shoots and puts out tons of nice manuals. I just recently started making sales of clips I shot with my Canon T3i. Frankly for a lot of us can't justify purchasing a 4K beast camera if we can't produce and sell with what we have in our hands right now. If my little clip portfolio doesn't grow and sell there will be no 4K future for quite some time. Really unless you are a spoiled yuppie with a day job that throws off tons of free cashflow who on earth is dropping $2K on a camera just to shoot test videos and collect dust? I'm not saying those people don't exist but that straw man is trotted out way more than the actual real life occurance of such a fellow. I am not a fanboi. I go out and shoot my Canon gear but deep down I know something is wrong. Actually not even that deep down. I'm not wealthy so I thank all those people doing test videos, reviews, and debating gear on forums. Listening and interacting with them has saved me tons of money and turned me on to some fun stuff like Magic Lantern and 50D RAW... and it's disabused me of my old notions that 4K is irrelevant hype.

That was my understanding as well. If people actually go out and look at the downsampled 1080p results from good 4K cameras they would see they look better. I don't know if I necessarily agree with ALL of the purported benefits Andy writes about but I do agree with the overall concept. The absolutely sharpest 1080p video I've seen has come out of some of the 4K cameras. I have some questions about some other aspects of the videos but what I've seen so far has convinced me 4K is not a gimmick or something we need to wait for 4K sets to enjoy. My advice to people is to go out and look at actual good 4K videos on a 1080p or smaller monitor and then come back and tell us it looks like Canon 1080p mush. Even the Canon 4K looks sharp. I've worked with RAW and it is not a solution for day to day stuff. I like RAW but I would be far more inclined to work with 4K. Yes I can do more with color grading with RAW but realistically I like to get it right in camera and just concentrate on slapping together the latest home movie with which to torture unsuspecing audiences.

I believe an French exspymaster said he would do the exact same thing the NSA is doing and told whining Americans to basically grow up and Putin came right out and said he was "jealous" of the NSA. Other spy chiefs pretty much echoed the same sentiments. Our problem is outsourcing screening of our intelligence personnel to incompetent private companies. From Paris with love... http://www.france24.com/en/20131024-nsa-france-spying-squarcini-dcri-hollande-ayrault-merkel-usa-obama/ Panasonic imports plenty of stuff into the US profitably and without issue. I don't think you can blame the govenment for every private company that can't get it's act together in one product line.

I agree that there is basically zero retail visibility. Even when I have gone to actively look for Panasonic options I initially thought products were discontinued or something. There was either limited stock available or more often no stock. Not really sure why that is. I don't know about that. One of my frustrations for years has been wanting bigger rolls of medium format slide film. The big rolls are only avilable in Japan. Japan has all kinds of weird and wonderful photography stuff that just isn't available in the US. Across the board the pattern of acquisition and use is dramatically different. I really view Japan as it's own seperate photographic world. The interesting thing is in the photography world technology from the dawn of the art is still used today and will in all likelihood still be used 100 years from now. No one has figured out a replacement for ground glass. You check out all the high end 4x5 and 8x10 cameras and they are all analog and use ground glass. The exact same way they did over 100 years ago. Photography has been a story about multiple technologies spanning decades happily coexisting. My camera bag contains everything from a cell phone camera, to a medium format film camera (with penta prism and ground glass), to a film 35 mm, to a couple of DSLRs. They all serve different purposes with tons of overlap. Now a lot of the cameras are not manufactured any more but if someone asked me which one was obsolete I would say, none. Even if mirrorless does eventually wipe out all SLRs (debatable) that doesn't mean it's going to happen any time in the next decade. Remeber the Apple Newton? How long did it take for Apple to produce a tablet that help transform it into the most profitable company in the world?

DSLR sales are down 12.4% in the Americas... but the real headline number is mirrorless sales have tanked by almost 47%! http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/decline_of_the_DSLR.html I got that quote and those figures from Bob Atkins' site. I have been going to his site for years for insightful reviews of photographic equipment. It was pretty much one of the first sites I went to when I first started getting into digital photography. I think he sums up the situation best with this quote... Another interesting thing to note about his article is what is missing when talking about what ails the camera market. The word "video" is almost entirely missing from the article. It is mentioned once in relation to auto focus and PRAISING the Canon 70D and then at the end of the article when he is stating it is not a feature he cares about. I actually found that article while lurking on another forum where people were discussing Canon's future plans. It was interesting because none of the thread participants mentioned video. Actually one person mentioned the 5D MK II being "hyped" because it had video capabilities. That was it. Canon won't be launching any revolutionary mirrorless products in the US because that market is infinitely more unappealing than the DSLR market. I won't hold my breath for much innovation in the Rebel line of cameras regarding video. Canon's target market doesn't really seem to notice nor care whether the video is great or not. If great video was the solution to what ails Canon then why are mirrorless sales (ie Panasonic GH3, G6, etc) plummetting? http://www.businessinsider.com/mirrorless-camera-sales-disappoint-2013-12 I can't see anyone at Canon suggesting Canon go down the Panasonic rabbit hole.

I guess you chose to ignore the part of the thread where multiple people including myself said the issue may simply be operator error resulting in over exposure. I mean there are multiple possible explanations and I don't think saying I need more information at this juncture to make an informed decision is unreasonable. Not sure why it turn so controversial.

So? There is a cell phone that shoots 4K. What's your point? If the highlights in the only video we have suck... they suck. This isn't an opinion thing. If I turn in a clip with massively clipped highlights like that to my stock agency it will be rejected. So what good is the camera going to do me? Just because something has 4K painted on the side doesn't mean we shouldn't properly critique it and see whether it can even do the most basic functions. I'm reserving judgement until we can get a well exposed vimeo download at the very least. It just boggles my mind that someone would enthusiastically sign off on something like that with such a glaring basic error smacking them in the face. Are you just ignoring the video and assuming the high lights will just work themselves out on the unit you buy? I mean if we are just assuming then why bother even looking at the video?

Well that was the WTF scene. I mean it was an easy to expose scene that showed a glaring flaw. That's why I mentioned it. The problem with this digital world and digital video more specifically is people don't often seen good analog stills nor do they see how good analog stills are made. I just wanted to make it clear to people who were not as familiar with stills and analog stills in particular that we've had technology that handles highlights beautifully for decades and the highlights in that scene were a huge step back. When people were talking about highlights why would you assume they were not talking about the most eggrigious example? I didn't pixel peep the video. I watched it with an honest open mind and the terrible large field of clipped highlights in a straight forward scene smacked me in the face. A specular highlight here and there in a trickyly lit scene is nothing to write home about. Seriously man this is how I finished my post... Not sure what is "pedantic" about that. No one can deny the highlights in large swathes of that video were terrible and they do not resemble anything in the competent stills world. I just don't want misinformation spread on the internet. I don't usually bring up stills and definitely not analog stills but if we are going to talk about stills lets let the digital generation know the truth. A lot of what was in that video would be considered incompetent in a B&W and even C-41 still. Of course we could just leave stills out of the conversation. Anyway the video is sharp. It blows Canon mush out of the water. Obviously the highlights look terrible compared to my Canon consumer DSLR but this is one youtube video so I will reserve final judgement. I would like to see a video with contrast dialed down and maybe better exposure metering.

Speak for yourself. In stills you should never have clouds that blow out like they do in the sheep meadow scene. When the whole scene is bathed in direct daylight with the sun behind you you can take an incident light meter reading and shoot away. In a high contrast scene like that I would shoot Kodak Tmax 100 at ISO 50 and then reduce my agitations and development time in XTOL. Those clouds look atrocious. There is no excuse for that. You run into problems when your subject is in the shade and the clouds are far away being illuminated by direct sunlight but even then depending on your film and sensor the "blown" highlight is handled very differently. Black and white film developed and printed on the right paper seems to be the best. And good DSLRs shot in RAW are next. This cameras handling of the blown highlight was pretty harsh. And that's a problem. Because that would be what I woudl use this camera for. Indoor low light shots are okay with a t3i and 50mm 1.4. But sweeping landscapes with tons of detail are just not treated nicely by Canon mush codec. But it is an inital youtube video so the jury is still out. Maybe the overexposed that scene. The image does seem sharp.

I've personally never seen this happen. What I have seen happen is people on the internet accuse other people of this when they start losing to them in a discussion. Are you going to be shooting people telling stories in Mexico? I would shoot what I am going to be shooting in Mexico. If you are going to shoot beaches go to a beach and shoot that. If you are going to be shooting people in the street shoot that. Architecture? You get the idea. And don't forget about editing. As an amateur I've learned that you can have all the great shots in the world but if you don't edit it well you will end up with a pile of garbage. Conversely you can have some mediocre shots and edit them together well with some music and voice overs and end up with something very good. You have three main ingredients the way I see it. The pretrip stuff. The stuff you need to do on the trip. And the post trip stuff. All of them combine to make a great movie. Don't obsess about trying to get a finished film in camera. Get some great shots and then tell a story in your NLE. And give the "there are so many bad movies" thing a rest. It's cliche. Even people who will never even shoot a cell phone video say that at cocktail parties. Just worry about your own film. There are tons of people who obsess about equipment and make great movies and there are tons of people who don't give a flip about equipment who make terrible movies. I've never seen a published study that has shown any correlation one way or the other. I mean tons of people said Scarface was awful when it first came out.

Physics and size of market. A 50mm lens is easy to make and every decent lens manufacturer has been making them for decades. And Nikon and Canon sell tons of them. The problem with m4/3 is to get a normal or mild telephoto you have to make a wide angle lens which is more difficult to make and there are fewer buyers. The panasonic cameras are nice for video but the lens situation is something you have to consider before making the leap.

This is highly dependent on what you are shooting and under what lighting conditions. For example if you want to do some nice videos of your girlfriend on a crowded beach and blur the background you are going to be in a real pickle with a m4/3 camera. Really any camera is going to be an issue. You are going to need a fierce ND filter just to knock the light down enough to open you apeture and maintain 1/48 sec shutter speed. Now the more you have to open the apeture to get that look under those conditions the stronger the ND filter you are going to need. And as with everything in photography the more extreme you go the the more expensive things get and the more issues you have. Variable neutral density filters are okay over a short range of ND values. But they start to fall apart real bad at the extreme end. I actually find even when I am not trying to go for shallow depth of field I have to use a ND filter for every day outside shots just to knock the light intenesity down so I can shoot at f/8. Without a ND filter and Magic Lanter ISO 80 I would be shooting at f/16 and above! So outdoors with decent light DoF is not a problem on APS-C cameras. A Speed Booster is a $400 purchase. I definitely think they have their place but when you look at the performance of an efs 17-55mm 2.8 IS I just don't see a m4/3 alternative in the $800 price range.

I am not familiar with the Nikon offerings but I can tell you with no hesitation M4/3 lenses are way more expensive than the Canon lenses. The Olympus Zuiko you mentioned does NOT have in lense image stabilization. This is a very handy feature for video. I use a tripod and I have a steadicam but for easy shots without a lot of intimidating equipment carrying these cameras hand held is the way to go. I never owned an image stabilized lens for photography but after a couple of video outings I immediately spend $800 for the Canon EFS 17-55mm 2.8 IS. Best money I spent on video so far. I can't recommend the Canon Rebels for video over the Panasonic G6 in general but the lens situation is a lot more reasonable on the APS-C bodies. Also if you want shallow depth of field and low light performance the Canon Rebels do well for the money. I picked up a refurbised Canon t3i for $300. But the thing has terrible issues with moire/aliasing. When I am working in low light with a Canon 50mm 1.4 the camera performs well. But if you want to film sweeping citiscapes on a tripod get ready for moire/aliasing.

You are missing the point that the "crap" Rebel's target market for the most part NEVER uses the video function. And even if they do their reference point is an iphone video. You are comparing an excellent $300 stills camera that happens to shoot video on the side to a buggy $1,000 dedicated video camera and calling the stills camera "crap." If you want excellent video pay more than $300. It's that simple. In a competitive marketplace why would Canon drive up the cost of it's best selling camera improving a function the majority of consumers aren't even going to notice? Making a guy on a forum happy isn't a good enough reason to spend millions. I mean I see fridges with TVs built into them. I don't compare them to my gigantic plasma TV in my living room and say it's a "crap" fridge. I don't have time to do this again but in multiple place on this forum I posted links to photography forums full of people complaing long and loud about Canon and Nikon expending resources putting video functions into their cameras instead of fulfilling their photography wish lists. The problem is you guys live in your little world and assume that's all there is. Trust me I want video improved a heck of a lot more than more megapixels or whatever other photographic nonsense (wifi, flaky battery draining GPS, etc). But I realize I am in the minority. You are correct. In my previous statement I was wrong when I said Blackmagic had nothing to lose when it came to value of their brand. Amoungst professionals they did have some cache. Obviously they weren't as big a name as Canon but their brand value wasn't zero. But you correction of me here illustrates my point. Most of us consumers were introduced to Black Magic through their cameras. And we know the brand as ridiculously delayed product launches, ridiculously delayed delivery, bugs, constant firmware updates, quirky cameras, etc. For the broader public their brand is unfinished cameras. I took several upper level marketing classes in university and no one in their right mind would call what Black Magic is doing with their brand a success. It's not even up for debate. And a multibillion dollar multinational corporation that has spent decades and untold billions building it's brand deciding not to get in bed with these people is not at all surprising. I never said that. I said that to build a BMPCC to Canon's specification would probably cost double if not more. I never said $15,000. By Canon specifications I was refering to a finished tight product that may get one minor fimware update over the course of it's working life, delivered on time and in quantity. And no there is no way that would cost $15,000 but it ain't gonna happen for less than $1,000. And once you start selling it for $2,000 that's going to eliminate a big chunk of the market right there. The majority of the cameras Canon sells are sold for less than $2,000. Being thankful for Blackmagic doesn't mean I have to pretend they don't have some major problems. Being thankful for Black Magic doesn't mean I should lambast Canon for not copying their dysfunctional business model. I've said it before. I buy film from Kodak and I buy film from Ilford. Both are profitable film businesses. Kodak can profitably supply film for the entire movie industry no problem while also supplying color and b&w film to consumers. Ilford cannot supply film to the movie industry or indeed color film of any kind to anyone but they are right sized to profitably supply consumers with all manner of b&w film in a wide variety of market conditions. I don't hate one or the other. I don't say one should adopt the business model of the other. I just take what I need from both entities. They both serve a purpose. Praise for one does not have to mean automatic denigration of the other. I absolutely would like to see certain improvements with Canon DSLR video, but things aren't exactly roses at Black Magic either. Maybe Canon could take a sprinkle of Black Magic's envelope pushing and Black Magic could take a spoonful of Canon's ergonomics and quality control. Maybe Canon is full of it and they can produce a tight BMPCC equivalent for $500. Maybe. Unfortunately no one including Black Magic has presented any credible evidence that is the case. Black Magic is doing their thing and I'm glad they are around. As with a lot of people I gave very serious thought to purchasing a BMPCC but the quirkiness, ergonomics, and bugs stopped me in my tracks. What we have in the sub $3,000 space is a bunch of compromised cameras. You have to pick your poison. No one is doing a perfect job and all these companies have different but overlapping target markets. Everyone has to service their niches. Honestly if Black Magic was making money hand over fist with their cameras they would be telling us. No body that is wildly profitable keeps it a secret. Nobody. When someone says profits aren't important that tells me they have none. That's fine but approaching a profit making entity with hundreds of thousands of stake holders and suggesting they should deploy their precious capital into an unprofitable business will garner a predictable response. Canon after all has certain fiduciary responsibilities.

Rebels are stills cameras that happen to shoot video as well. Their main purpose is to shoot stills. 100% stills photographers are their main market. I have used one of those "crap" Rebels for many years and as an amateur sold pictures that were published on the front pages of national periodicals, used in national ad campaigns, and used full page in global textbooks. If you can't pick up a "crap" Rebel made in the last four years and sell a picture for a large ad campaign or make the cover of multiple national newspapers then maybe it's not the camera that is "crap." One thing I do know about Rebels is they work as advertised on day one. No glitches. No constant firware updates. No weird work arounds nor batteries, etc. As far as video you can spend $300 on a rebel. $100 for a new 50mm 1.8 and do things out the gate that would cost almost $2000 to do with a BMPCC... if at all. That doesn't mean Rebels are great. They are just different. I can't tell you how many times on this very forum I have moaned about the moire and aliasing on the Canon Rebels. But to totally disregard the excellent stills the camera takes for $300 is a bit disingenious.

You should watch the 30 seconds before that where the guy says the live view tracking and touch screen rack focusing on the 70D is "revolutionary" and a potential "game changer." Isn't that what I just said in the post you are responding to? The 70D is disappointing because of the moire and aliasing but as your own video demonstrated it's not like there were no improvements on the camera or just small tweaks. That's all I was saying.

I'll say it again. I was talking about APS-C and larger sensors. That was the whole point. Panasonic is doing a lot of wonderful things... just not in full frame or even APS-C. And Nikon doesn't have Magic Lantern so it is a no for video. I can't go back to working without Magic Lantern. Again I am not as familiar with the Nikon models. I've looked at a few reviews of various bodies over the years and there are multiple deficiences. Things may have improved but not so much so I would sell everything and move over to Nikon. I've given things like the Sony RX10 and some Panasonic bodies a real hard look. The Sony is interesting by not quite there yet and the Panasonics get way expensive once you start looking at getting lenses equivalent to the Canon field of view fast IS lenses.