TheRenaissanceMan

I tried this camera once when we had it as a b-cam on a shoot. The body is quite small and feels a bit plasticky so I didn't like it at all in that aspect. 
Can't really say much about the image since I didn't have a chance to play with the footage myself but based on the shooting experience (ergonomics and usability) with the camera I was not that impressed with it.

This is the camera everyone was expecting Panasonic to make.

That's why a lot of us would like companies like Samsung or Panasonic to start offering an internal 10-bit option. Then we wouldn't have to choose!  As it is, all these micro HDMI options are just a stopgap solution.

The NX500, or the a5100. Btw, I will get to more of your nx500 requests by the end of the week. 

Here's a quick shot I did in 1080p with the updated "pro" setting. It's not really the best example, but I know some people were curious how it looked. 
 

I'll just use my 15+ years in the industry to feel comfortable with my point of view.

I was talking about the Sony!

8 bit can be implemented very well as Canon has shown. But, for more challenging shots, you have to get it spot on in camera.
Bandind aside, one of the biggest flaws of 8 bit is saturation. If you want to push it hard, in post, 8 bit is often not enough and starts to show the colour steps. This is vital for skin tones, gradients etc.
As has been noted though, the only people using words like "holy grail" are those saying 10 bit is not that great. The rest of us just see it as another piece of the puzzle and one we would like to see hit the mainstream. 

I guess when people actually start using 10bit everyday, they might get it. To suggest a colourist wouldn't know the difference is scarily off the mark.

8 bit is mostly a delivery bit depth. It is true that you can replicate most colors. Try to mess with the gamma and push the image around and you start seeing the limitations. 
So one of the reasons that the C-log from Canon performs much better is because is not pushing the image as much as the S-log. It is using a normal gamma for most of the range and compresses the highlights more. That was a wise decision from Canon because they understand what an 8bit image can do and what it cannot. 
Here there is more information:
http://www.xdcam-user.com/2011/12/canon-c-log-on-the-c300-compared-to-s-log/
 

10bit is good when working with log, shoot jps with a log profile and you can see the problems. Personally I want good compressed raw because it's actually a better way of compressing files (14bit per pixel vs 30bits per pixel (10bit 4:4:4))

Because they dont want to.

0_0
You should seriously run a service. 

200mbps 10-bit is a far cry from uncompressed 14-bit DNG for file sizes and workflow. 

It seems to me with storage prices plunging lower and lower, double the files sizes for quadruple the tonal precision seems like a fair middle ground between 8-bit 4:2:0 and uncompressed Godzilla files. It's not "the holy grail"--no one said that but you--but it is a noticeable increase in quality. Funny how you put down the importance of higher color depth after spending an entire article beating on the NX1 for not being as good with color as your 4:2:2 camera. 

My money is on Samsung or Panasonic. The other important question is whoever puts a full sized HDMI out on their body. No, really. I think a lot of users don't even consider the 10-bit of the GH4 because micro HDMI is so breakable and easy to slip out during a take.

Ahah, thanks mate! I'm not sure i have particularly steady hands so that probably means the stabilisation is pretty good indeed! :-) I'm not sure if SteadyShot works in conjunction with the IS in the Canon lens or not but the results are pretty good indeed! 
I wouldn't worry too much about the colours being muted, that is my choice of grading really! 
Some shots are a bit noisy indeed but keep in mind that I was on a f4 lens so the ISO i've used at night ranged from 6400 all the way up to 25600 in three shots, that's quite impressive if you ask me! Also i haven't denoised the footage, i got very nice results using the temporal noise reduction in Resolve on the a7s so i have no reason to believe it won't work as good on the a7rII.
Last but not least youtube compression is quite severe so i wouldn't use that as a judgement of quality.. I've inspected the source footage quite carefully and it looked very clean and free of muddiness and/or macro blocking. 

Remember that with the Ursa, you'll need a battery solution and (unless you already have an SDI VF) their $1500 EVF looks like a must-have. Throw in the shoulder kit and realistically you're around $8k for ready-to-run - still an impressive value though.
The 4.6 camera really looks like your next 5 to 8 years worth of camera. Hard to say that for anything else on the market, but what else is coming that will be a must-have feature? 6k? 8k? 6k 3D? 18 stops of DR? 1000 fps at 6k becomes a staple of corporate videos and TV spots?
Am I missing something or is it viable to think the 4.6k mini would get one out of the yearly "do I upgrade??" agonizing… I think I'd even stop reading reviews for at least three years.

I'm in your camp on this. There are so many positives to what Sony is doing with these cams, but from what I've seen so far from the A7s and the A7rII i'd rather save up and spend the extra cash on the mini Ursa, if it ever comes out ;-) wink, wink. I love the low light abilities and small form factor of the Sony cams, and am super tempted to replace my D800 with an A7RII for stills/B Cam, but the image in BM cams trumps all sony cams to me. I know this is all in everyone's personal opinion, but to me image is first, all the other stuff, even if kind of a PITA is workable. I may change my mind as more comes out from this cam, as I don't want to be so stubborn to not see the reality, but I can spot Sony footage immediately, and that isn't that great of a thing.

hello everybody!
 
Yesterday I’ve been to the Southbank in London to shoot some footage and do a quick grade to see how the camera perform in a real world situation. I’ve also wanted to check how an adapted EF lens worked on the camera so i used a Canon 24-105 with a Metabones Mark IV. Apart from a couple of very wide shots everything have been shot handheld in S35 mode. (therefore apologies for the odd shaky clip!)
 
I’m gonna due a proper write up in due course but for now some random thoughts:
 
- Overall the camera have been an absolute pleasure to use: the ergonomic of the body is much better compared to the previous generation cameras, the slightly chunkier body provides a much better grip and the EVF is big and bright, the best I’ve ever used together with the Fuji X-T1
 
- Having an extra custom button and, most importantly, being able to assign the record to a button of your choice makes a big difference!!
 
- Unfortunately some software limitations that i always found annoying in the a7s are still present, namely: the inability to set a custom white balance from the movie mode, the focus magnification which is way inferior to the one in still mode (only 4x magnification, sometimes in not enough to achieve a proper focus!), the inability to assign the S35/APS-C crop mode to a custom button and the bloody NTSC warning message! I really hope some (or better all) of these things will be fixed with a future firmware update!
 
- Unfortunately the experience with the Metabones have been quite frustrating as usual… Like other users reported the focus performance in still mode is indeed impressive, almost on par with the one on a canon body but in movie mode things are very different: definitely much better than the a7s but not as fast as still mode, moreover i couldn’t get the camera to focus at all past 70mm, i don’t know if it’s a lens problem, an adapter problem or something with the camera but in the end i went back to manual focusing because it was super annoying! 
 
- I’ve tried to shot a variety of material to test the camera strengths and weaknesses and i have to say I’m even more impressed now after I quickly graded the footage with film convert (using the a7s profile since they haven’t released one for the a7r II yet). I once again had the impression that the camera is as good as the a7s in terms of dynamic range and the files are generally cleaner to start with because of the lower native ISO. This is completely unscientific and untested so take this with a grain of salt but there is something that i really like in the colours that I never experienced with the a7s before (at least not with so little grading work required) so i’m starting to wonder whether Sony improved the colour science on this camera.. again, totally unscientific and unsubstantiated, just a gut feeling really but I’ll definitely do some more comparisons to find out!
 
- Real life usage confirmed the very positive impressions about the low light performance of the S35 mode.. the camera is remarkably clean all the way to the top ISO setting (and yes, there are at some shots in the clip that have been shot at ISO 25600!) 
Before last week if somebody told me that I could have shot usable material at ISO 25600 on a 42 megapixels still camera i would have laughed in their face! 
 
-I’m pretty sure that part of the great performance of the camera is down to the extremely efficient codec and there’s a shot in the video that i think show this very well: at 04:59 there’s a blue flag on an almost completely flat blue sky shot at ISO6400… while i was shooting i thought “right, this is the recipe for disaster: an uniform colour in the whole frame at high ISO with a compressed 8bit 4:2:0 codec, it’s gonna be the festival of banding!”… boy i was wrong! there’s not a hint of it, the file is clean as a whistle!
 
Thanks for watching!
 

Was anyone denying that a good sensor is the first step in achieving good image quality in video quality? No? Cool. 

Was anyone denying that some 8-bit codecs can be pushed more than other 8-bit codecs? No? Cool. 

Are people saying that higher bit depth is essential to getting peak image quality out of LOG files originally designed for 10-bit, like S-LOG? Yes. Posting examples of 8-bit C-Log footage proves nothing, because it's a much less steep faux-log designed for lower bit-depth cameras. So let's focus on some non-Canon examples. 

Perhaps the A7sII will also gain S-Log3 and 10-bit output..... yes please.

Definitely purple flare on the Tokina, but I see that with a lot of older lenses.

If you have time, I would love to see a comparison between the 4K and 1080p modes, as well as an over and under exposure recovery test, rolling shutter test, DR test (just a super contrasty scene, like a dark interior with a bright window) and a low light comparison, all on both 4K and 1080p. 

Definitely purple flare on the Tokina, but I see that with a lot of older lenses.

If you have time, I would love to see a comparison between the 4K and 1080p modes, as well as an over and under exposure recovery test, rolling shutter test, DR test (just a super contrasty scene, like a dark interior with a bright window) and a low light comparison, all on both 4K and 1080p. 

I think I read somewhere that, like contrast, setting sharpness too far down causes problems. Maybe you could try a few sharpness settings and see what happens. I agree the colours look a little strange, but that may be down to the custom profile. Maybe you could do another video running through all the picture profiles with the same contrast/saturation/sharpness/NR settings so we can see what gives the best look. I like what I've seen of Standard, but there's very little out there to compare it to.
Great work on the shoot, though! Backlit trees are a good stress test for the codec and DR, which both look solid.

Ok, so my adapters arrived in the mail this morning. First thing I noticed was how small they are compared to NEX and eos-m adapters... Obviously due to the flange distance, but that is a major plus for me. I like mirrorless cameras because they're small, but I also have only vintage lenses, so adapters are a must, but the adapter is usually so long that it makes the camera seem that much bigger. On the nx500, the adapters are half the size of the others. 
I, pretty much, immediately took a drive out into the Pine Barrens to take some test shots. I brought my Canon FD 17mm and 28mm f2. And my Tokina 17mm and 25-50mm. And a Miranda 28mm f/2.8 macro m42 lens I also got in the mail today. 
As soon as I got into the car, I threw the Tokina 17mm on and it looked nice. 
When I got out to the Pine Barrens, I was blown away by the iq of the camera and these lenses. Even with everything dialed down the image was so sharp and contrasty, in a good way. I'll have to mess with some of the profiles to try and get the flattest image, but for the first time out, just messing around... I am pleased. 
The crop factor is not bad at all and the movie standby mode is smooth, even going out of movie standby mode to use focus magnification and peaking is a breeze.
I did have a card error in my second recording that worried me, it basically would not let me do anything with movie recording, but when took out the card and turned the camera on and off as instructed, it worked fine the rest of the time without any hiccups.
When I got home, I tried converting the footage to prores, it worked fine in editready, but it was slow. About an hour and forty minutes to convert a half hours worth of footage. 
When they were converted, they worked fine in QuickTime, but when I imported them into fcpx, I had nothing but a black screen. The inspector recognized them as 4K h.265 clips but not as prores... Not sure why. 
Does anyone know the best workflow with these clips? I would rather down sample to 1080p and work in it there, but editready didn't give me an option to downsample, of course I very easily could have missed it. 
I will try and upload some of the clips to Vimeo over the weekend. 
 

Exactly. Color exists because of specific wavelengths of light being reflected off surfaces. Color doesn't exist without light, so if there is less light, there's going to be less color. If you're shooting a scene at 52,000 ISO, of course the colors will look weird because they literally aren't there!
(physics people please correct me if I'm wrong about this)