aldolega

46 minutes ago, Oliver Daniel said:

I've seen some articles claim the 120fps quality is the same as 25fps. It isn't at all. Not a chance. Curious to see what an Atomos Shogun would do to improve this and all other available frame rates. 

Nothing, because the camera doesn't output 120p over HDMI, only 60p and lower.

Haha, a strip mall. Maybe the pizza place is branching out into cinema cameras?

I guess it could be a mailbox at the UPS store...

Am I wrong in thinking that the "ND Sled" has to be removed to have no ND? If so, that's ridiculous. The site says two filters, three settings, which would seem that there is no clear/off setting- just filter A, filter B, or A+B: so three settings. Maybe I'm overanalyzing...

The pricing is also just too good to be true, even without full specs being posted. I mean $200 for a rotating metal grip with ten buttons and a d-pad? $200 for (I'm assuming high-quality) preamps, output, headphone jack? It all seems about half of what it should be.

It also seems like this could very easily be some design student's bad joke. There's nothing of substance here, just some slick 3D renders and a nice website.

1 hour ago, Nikkor said:

Beating Blackmagic at their own game.

Kinda, not really. Blackmagic delivers, eventually, but their design isn't nearly this sexy. The Ursa "Mini" is still quite a large camera by my standards, big enough to need the next class of support gear above lightweight/compact DSLR-oriented stuff, which is all that I'm usually willing to schlep around when I'm shooting.

As far I'm concerned, until we see working cameras in people's hands, this is vaporware. Really sexy, perfect form factor, amazingly priced vaporware.

2 hours ago, roxics said:

I'm sure it's nice, but the price of cinema gear is out of hand. I realize it's a niche market, but these companies price this stuff like we're all working on multi-million dollar productions. This thing shouldn't cost more than a Playstation. It neither has the size or complexity of a smart TV yet you can buy a couple of those for the price of this.  

Sony sells, what, millions of Playstations? Hundreds of thousands at least? And Zacuto will sell, what, maybe ten thousand of these- at the most? It's not even close to fair to be comparing pricing on the two.

Production people that are moving to Sonys from BlackMagics are probably doing it for features/aspects that BM is likely never going to attempt to tackle, at least not for a long time- full-frame sensors, autofocus, small compressed codecs, photos, NDs, buttons for everything, ultra-compact 100% custom body designs (possible because of custom internals), 99.5% reliability/delivering on specs, etc.

So it's not really fair to hold that against Blackmagic, they're not really trying to compete with Sony on all fronts. The Venn diagram of each company's intended customers has some overlap but not completely.

I would also love a Micro or Pocket with a larger faster global 2.5K sensor, but I'm not sure they'd be able to fit the necessary faster media (CFast, SSD) in those compact form factors.

Not to mention the great form factor, ergonomics and the small size/weight that's able to still be used with DSLR-class accessories and support gear.

Brian Caldwell stated long ago that an NX booster isn't feasible, as the mount is too narrow and long, with too much stuff inside it (contact pins, shutter cover etc)- there just isn't enough room for the speedbooster optics. So a m4/3 mount would indeed have been much better in this case.

The dreamer in me hopes that Samsung is letting NX die so they can come back in a year or two with a new, much shorter and wider mount, that allows for a full-frame sensor, speedboosters, internal NDs and unlimited adaptability (and backwards compatibility with NX via an OEM adapter). Basically their equivalent of E-mount. Then their superior tech would be free to dominate.

44 minutes ago, Zach Goodwin said:

And now I feel stupid.

Only just now?

Great! It'll be nice to have your input on this cam. I was pretty interested at first, but the high-ish price (which has now come down) and the mediocre initial test footage I saw kinda put me off of it. And it being a JVC, of course, haha. I just have a hard time taking them seriously in the large-sensor space, for some reason.

It would be great if you could do a quick rolling-shutter test using Samuel H's methodology described in this post:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?303559-Measuring-rolling-shutter-put-a-number-on-this-issue!

I also wonder what the performance of m4/3 speedboosters will be like, past the m4/3 sensor area. Even if it covers the full s35 sensor, I feel like the outer quarters/thirds of the frame would still be compromised. Hopefully Brian Caldwell sees this and can clarify.

Lens ---> Collapsible rubber lens hood ---> ND filter.

Fold the hood back when you need to adjust the filter.

To get rid of the crop without having to nest, just right-click the clip and click "scale to frame size".

20 minutes ago, Jordan Drake said:

I was surprised to see my video at the top of your blog post. But hey, we all need content right?

Zzzzziiinnnggggggg

Rolling shutter test in all modes plz

As usual, the Sony has some flashy specs, but the Panasonic will be more usable.

Sounds great, but I bet it'll be a wibbly-wobbly rolling-shutter extravaganza- it's reading out, what 20% more pixels than the A7rII does in crop mode? Which is already incredibly jiggly. This cam is also even smaller and a third the price of the A7rII, so I would think cooling and cheaper processors will be big obstacles in getting the RS down. I really hope I'm wrong though! I'd love to grab two of these, with Speedboosters, for the same price as an A7rII.

I think we'll have a good idea of what FS5 raw will look like once people report on what it's like from the new FS7 3.0 firmware.

I really wish there was a smaller alternative to the O7Q, that was more appropriate to the FS5's size and ergonomics. I emailed Sound Devices about the Pix-E5 ever getting raw capabilities and I just got a generic "your feature request has been passed on to our development team" response.

Does the Pix-E even have any 8-bit recording formats?

I wouldn't bother with the Micro Studio, its DR is very limited.

Well, in that case I hope Sound Devices get in on the FS Raw party, as I can't see using anything bigger than the Pix-E5 with the FS5 without totally sacrificing the size/weight of the FS5. An O7Q is waaayyy too big for the FS5 for my purposes.

I hope there's an option for splitting the recording to both cards, to enable >30p in HD, or even 4K.

Yep. That's what's so frustrating about the FS5- it's SO close to being so perfect, and so easy, and so out of your way. If it just shot to a medium-weight codec (ProRes, XAVC with a high bitrate, etc) without any significant gotchas, it'd be perfect. At least for me.

I'd love to hear some input on the performance of the A7RII's 1080p60 modes, both FF and APS-C. Resolution, noise, moire, aliasing, and probably most importantly for me, rolling shutter performance. Comparisons to the GH4 would be really killer as that's my current cam.

From what I can gather from the DVXuser rolling-shutter post and Cinema5D's tests, the A7RII's FF 4K mode has roughly the same amount of RS as the GH4's 4K mode, which is a bit more than I can handle for some shots. What about the FF and APS-C 1080 modes? How much better are they?

Yea the G7 bundle at B&H/Adorama is a really great deal (especially with adding the Panny 25mm f1.7 for just $50 more) and definitely the best bang for the buck for video right now. Plus it's a great backup cam to have on reserve for borrowing for your shooting (or even as a A cam depending on what you shoot with)!