Robert Collins

2 minutes ago, MdB said:

Until Sony made sensors available that could downsample on the fly for third parties, everyone cropped to get 4K. Nikon, Panasonic, Sony, Leica and Canon. 

I see only Canon get flogged for it though. It was fine when the GH4 cropped, fine that that X-T2 and X-H1 crop. Fine that the SL crops... 

Yes Canon don’t buy their sensors from Sony. Thank you Sony for giving most other brands cutting edge tech. 

I agree. But that sort of raises a fundamental question. Is it that Canon is crippling their cameras or is it that their technology is crippled??

The problem I have with Panasonic going full frame is that I think Panasonic's very success in video is down to the competitive advantage they enjoy by using a 'smaller sensor'. The M43 sensor size brings a lot of advantages to video - better ibis, faster frame rates, more bit depth, higher bit rates and lower cost - than can be achieved with a bigger sensor. And of course they enjoy the widest and most mature, native lens lineup of any mirrorless system.

I just dont see what they bring to the table in FF mirrorless especially against 3 'big players'. They may have lots of experience but that still hasnt prevented them from having woefully uncompetitive video autofocus (even with a small sensor.) I think Panasonic has been taking a lot of missteps recently - not capitalizing on their competitive advantage (by removing ibis from the GH5s) (or handing the update for the LX100 to the teaboy to do over lunch) and not resolving their weaknesses (as in sorting out their video autofocus). I suspect this will be another stumble....

They may prove me wrong - a full frame LX100 with a Leica fast zoom - now that would be innovative and different....

1 hour ago, Emanuel said:

 

 

The image quality in the first 20 second intro to this video looks really good to me. You can see some great dynamic range from a 1 inch sensor and really good color tonality. This was DLog, 4k HQ and sharpness set to '0'.

7 hours ago, anonim said:

What comes to my mind is bizarre idea - if this war of announcements and future promises goes on with such started direction, people will be paralyzed, living in constant expectations (maybe in on/off preordering state) and actually not buying anything

Yes. Very much my thoughts too. Its called the 'paradox of choice'.

Not only is their a wealth of options in new mounts but Panasonic, Canon and Nikon are making people question whether they should invest further in their legacy mounts. Canon's messaging seems particularly confusing to me. They are introducing a relatively low end FF mirrorless with high end lenses - two of which will likely be heavier and more expensive then the underlying body. The main advantages of mirrorless is in video but apparently Canon are going to bring out a full frame mirrorless that isnt FF in video? Furthermore, Canon's FF mirrorless mount looks to be incompatible with the EF-M mount (which I guess will have to be phased out.)

13 minutes ago, matthere said:

For me, Panasonic has listened to what people have asked for and consistently developed their cameras in a meaningful direction. 

Honestly, listening to customers and moving your product forward is not a 'competitive advantage' more a 'prerequisite for survival'.

P.S. Continuous autofocus - cough, cough....

3 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

And I don't accept your Panasonic jibe either.

You may not accept the jibe but it is based on reality.

Panasonic is currently in M43 where it competes with Olympus. They are pretty equally matched in terms of market share. Olympus which breaks out its imaging division in its accounts has lost money in 9 out of the 10 previous years. And based on their own forecasts, Olympus will lose roughly US$150 on every single ILC it makes this year. So it is somewhat heroic to think that Panasonic has ever made money in M43.

So why should anyone think anything otherwise than they will simply flush even more shareholders funds down the toilet when starting a new mount competing with Sony, Canon and Nikon in FF mirrorless.

Less face it..

Sony has a 5 year head start, 70 native lenses and the most advanced sensor technology

Canon is the largest ILC manufacturer in the world with an installed base of over 200m lenses that can autofocus on their new mount (with adapter)

And Nikon is no.2 (but with attitude) and 100m lenses to be adapted to their new mount.

And Panasonic competitive advantage is what exactly? 

Out of interest doesnt anyone see what is going on in ILCs as slightly surreal?

We have just had 3 totally new mounts in ILCs announced in the last 3 weeks.

And here are the latest numbers from CIPA.

http://www.cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/d-201807_e.pdf

Compacts are down 40% this year (over 90% from their peak)

DSLRs are down 25% in July from this time last year and even mirrorless is down.

6 million ILCs sold in the first 7 months v 800m smartphones.

Everyone investing headlong into a small market that has been declining for 5 years. Panasonic stands a snowball chance in Hades of being successful with a new mount in FF cameras. I would be surprised if their camera goes beyond the prototype.

27 minutes ago, Jonesy Jones said:

What if they skipped full frame and went medium format? The gap between the two would be significant enough for neither to cannibalize the other. Man if they could democratize medium format that would be cool. 

You are not the first to mention this but I am at a loss as to see what is so cool about 'medium format'

Some simple maths.

FF is 36mm x 24mm

It is 2.25x bigger than APSC (a little over 1 stop)

It is 4x bigger than M43 (2 stops)

Medium format is 44mm x 33m or about 1.5x bigger than FF (or about half a stop). Doesnt seem much worth fighting over to me.

Even worse from a video perspective most of the gain is in the vertical as the sensor is 4:3 (great if you like to shoot say a square format) but not very useful if you shoot say 16:9. In fact, the horizontal has only an increase of 20% in resolution - from 36 to 44mm. The standard 'medium format' (as opposed to say Phase One's medium format) will never become democratized because there simply isnt a 'significant enough' leap in quality over FF.

2 hours ago, Grumble said:

Tried to work out which of the @Cliff Totten images were from which camera/mode and gave up. But I will put them in order of what I think quality wise:

• Top one looks the best and sharpest on details, some moire

Dont agree at all. The first one is massively 'oversharpened'. You can tell because 'sharpening' increases contrast at the 'edges' within an image. Oversharpening results in halos and the first image has halos in spades (or in the case of the playing card - diamonds.) This sort of sharpening results in horrible motion artifacts.

1 minute ago, mercer said:

So you guys think Canon, Nikon, Pentax, etc,... will stop making DSLRs within 5 years? Lol. 

I don’t know the exact numbers but I would guess that APS-C DSLRs make up over 50% of all interchangeable lens camera sales.

But yeah, they’re going to be relics delegated to museum showcases in 5 years or less.

It wasnt exactly what I meant. What I meant was this. I suspect that most DSLR owners will switch over to mirrorless in the next 10 years. So there must come a point - well before you switch - that you stop investing in your DSLR system. And even if you dont plan to switch, many people will be reluctant to invest in the DSLR system because they dont believe the equipment will hold its value in the resale market.

As I said investing US$10,000 in the new 400 2.8 or 600 4 would seem a big ask for a system that people are gradually moving away from.

4 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

I don't know how they gonna handle the customer perception management. With m4/3 the message was "for high quality photo and video, you don't need FF, and with fast lenses we and others are making for the system, you don't even miss FF DOF". With jumping to FF, its like saying "sorry guys, we were wrong about that". 

I agree (so much so that I dont think Panasonic is coming out with a new camera system but a new videocam.)

To a lesser extent, I see this as a problem for Canon and Nikon too. For instance, Canon is set to announce 2 x US$10,000+ DSLR lenses (400 2.8 + 600 4). If the underlying message to their customers is that their DSLRs will become increasingly obsolete over the next 5 years, who is going to buy them?

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it
I'm about to lose control and I think I like it
 

59 minutes ago, ntblowz said:

I predict back single digit market share for Sony.

The problem with this prognosis is that I think it is far easier to predict that Canon and Nikon are going to sell less 'DSLRs' in the future than Sony is going to sell less 'mirrorless'.

21 minutes ago, Django said:

They got SO much flack for that crop factor on 5D4,  wouldn't be wise doing that again knowing what they're up against. then again it's Canon..lol

I think that is part of the problem though. The specs, on paper, look really great as does their lens choices. It looks like - assuming a US$2k price - it will make a major dent in A7iii sales and in Nikon's mirrorless aspirations. The problem is, it will also affect Canon 5D mkiv sales (and 6Dii even more) and I am not sure Canon's bean counters will stand for that. So I suspect there will be a lot of crippling....

13 minutes ago, sanveer said:

Could you share some link to this fact about the fov being the same for 8-bit and 10-bit. I could be wrong, but all documentation so far, proves things otherwise. 

Sure.

Just to be clear what I said was that if you shoot DLog (which requires the h.265 format) both 4k FOV and 4k HQ record in 10 bit. It was dark and raining so I didnt fly the drone - just took some video. 01 is 4k HQ and 02 is 4k FOV (you can see the wider angle v the crop.)

And here are the original files to download (only about 400mb)

https://1drv.ms/f/s!Arx347dcSG470VzSNBiy1QaErAXn

The exif data shows both are 10 bit.

27 minutes ago, jonpais said:

FT5! A full frame GH5 with PDAF would wipe all the rest off the map where video is concerned. According to many, they already do!

Although being Panasonic they may well come out with a FF camera with no 'af' or 'ibis'.

Wonder if there will be an adapter for their M43 lenses?!!

40 minutes ago, Inazuma said:

They can maintain the flange distance whilst still having a smaller depth of camera if they put the electronics to the side and front of the focal plane., rather than behind it as is the way on most digital cameras.

I wonder how price competitive Canon's system will be. One of the issues with Sony is the expensive lenses. $1000 for 55mm f1.8. $600 for 35mm f2.8 (or was it 600 for both?)

Personally, I dont even think this is strictly necessary especially amongst a core target DSLR audience who tenc to actually rather like bigger bodies - look at how excited people have got from Nikon's 'bigger' mirrorless. I happen to like smaller bodies but I still think the inherent advantages of a short flange distance are more myth than reality for 'FF'.

If we think that the EF-M flange is 18mm and with the EF mount it is 44mm the difference is 26mm or 1 inch as us Brits like to say. Now look at my A7riii with a 24-105 on it.

http://j.mp/2lgszKR

Note that the flange itself sticks out a bit and then there is a narrow tube. And if I look at the bottom of the lens I find that the rear element is at least an inch away from where the lens meets the flange. Sure there are some advantages to a short flange distance even with FF - say an ultra-wide zoom - but this is definitely a minority sport.

10 hours ago, wolf33d said:

Can someone confirm if 10 bit is only available in HQ crop mode or not ?!? Cant believe after a week we still cant find a clear answer. 

The short answer is that both 4k FOV and 4k HQ shoot 10 bit with H.265.

Long answer.

I think Phillip Bloom confused matters by saying only 4k HQ shoots 10 bit. However, when you get your Mavic 2 Pro it asks you install a 23/08 firmware update. My guess is that this enabled FOV 10 bit but that Phillip Bloom was using earlier firmware (a couple of comments from DJI imply that a firmware update is needed.)

It is further complicated by the fact that nothing in the app (or online manual) says anything about 10 bit or 8 bit.

So I simply took some quick video in both 4k FOV and 4k HQ and looked at the underlying video exif using mediainfo. Mediainfo says both videos are 10 bit.

18 minutes ago, Yurolov said:

Are we sure it isn't the other way around? I don't see if it is 44mm like the ef why even create a new mount? Why not just use Ef lenses?

Because the new mount will use a combination of ospdaf and cdaf which needs new lens motors to work efficiently. The existing EF lenses are designed with motors solely for pdaf. They will work fine on the new mount but wont be as fast as combination cfaf/ospdaf lenses. Also the existing pdaf EF lenses are unlikely to work as well with ospdaf as an existing dedicated pdaf array that you get on a dslr especially in lowlight - that is because the pdaf sensors cant be made as large on the sensor as off the sensor in a dedicated array.

It cant really be the other way round as the ef-m flang distance to sensor is 18mm - a 1cm adapter would put it 8mm away.

21 minutes ago, Django said:

oh shit! hot lens line-up ?

now let's hear more about the body.. still no IBIS from Canon?

The fact that there is an RF adapter for the M mount points to the fact that the flange distance is going to be pretty long - most probably they are sticking with the 44mm of the EF mount so there is no need of an adapter for EF lenses. Nice lens specs.

1 hour ago, jonpais said:

Ken Wheeler, rabidly anti-Sony, who’s shot with the D850 and owns a ton of Nikon glass, would unhesitatingly recommend the a7 III over the Z7. If indeed there is an echo chamber, strange that some of the harshest criticism should come from the very customers Nikon is courting - Nikon shooters.

I dont really find it 'strange' at all (well Ken Wheeler is obvious strange but that is different.)

The D850 user with 20 DSLR lenses tends to believe he has the best camera system out there (and may well be right.) Generally speaking I doubt they think that the Z7 brings anything to the party as they probably dont do video. They consider mirrorless cameras too small (unergonomic) and little more than consumer toys. And their worst nightmare is a successful Z7 - because it means that Nikon will increasing direct resources into the Z system and neglect DSLR system. And ultimately a successful Z system will reduce the resale value of their D850 system.

I think the headline 'tech feature' of the A7siii will be the 'virtual global shutter' that can be created by a BSI stacked CMOS sensor (rather like th A9's ability to shoot 20fps, silently with no rolling shutter.) Now I realize that really most people here just want 4k/60 and 10 bit output om an A7iii and dont really want to pay a huge premium for the 'virtual global shutter'. I am sure some film makers will be very excited about it though.

For instance here is the DOP of the new top gun movie talking about the Venice sensor 'Another being the effective global shutter of the Venice (I'm still confused as to how it's not a "global shutter", but also not a "rolling shutter", but whatever weird techiness lies behind it, it's effectively a global shutter (I tried an insane wobble test on one, and there's zero perceivable skew - so as far as I'm concerned it's a global shutter).' 

To some extent I think that many people already have a replacement in the A7sii - namely the A7iii (at a bargain price.) I am sure that Sony thinks that gives them license to show off their sensor tech in the A7s3 at a premium price point.

3 hours ago, wolf33d said:

Again, WOOW. 24mpx 4K60P with FS5II color science +5.6M dot EVF + all A7RIII improvements (including AF, battery...) + 10 bit external (well nice to have but not for me this one) is a dream come true.... The 24mpx means I do not need a A7III for stills, and it means 1.5x crop video mode with 1 button. MAKE THIS REAL.
It will be 3000/3200 like the previous one for sure but fuck that, happily paying 1K more for an A7III with better color, 4K60P, 10bit external, and better EVF. Hopefully 240fps FHD too... 

Come on Sony do not disappoint. 

I think the price might well be US$4000+ A fairly consistent rumor is that the sensor will be BSI stacked sensor like the one on the A9 (and Venice I think). This would mean (virtually) no rolling shutter. It is very advanced tech and presumably very expensive....

16 minutes ago, Cliff Totten said:

One thing about noise reduction and detail - Ambarella noise reduction is not our friend. It's usually poor quality and ALL noise reduction destroys detail at certain levels. It's just a side affect that we need to live with. Noise reduction is also a DESTRUCTIVE process. Once you apply high amounts of noise reduction, it cannot be recovered or removed in post. Once noise reduction destroys detail, there is no plugin on planet Earth that can undue it when you get home. Therefore it's better to limit the amount of noise reduction in camera and capture more detail and noise in your file and then soften and apply noise reduction in post editing. Softening and image is the easiest thing to do in a video editor. Plus, you can surgically clean noise FAR more efficiently when editing than any camera can do live on the fly.

Applying +1 sharpening tells Ambarella's processor to ease up on this crappy noise reduction allowing more detail to come through. This gives you WAY more accurate options to soften and clean an that image in your editor.

For the most part I dont disagree with you. But 'sharpening' is inherently destructive too - it is just that DJI's sharpening is less offensive than its noise reduction and easier to deal with in post. So with the Mavic 1 Pro, it was best to oversharpen +1 in order to minimise the noise reduction (and then soften in post.)

I would have thought though that unlike the Mavic 1 pro, the Mavic 2 Pro would have a '0' sharpening setting which had zero sharpening and zero noise reduction. I am guessing this isnt the case though.

6 hours ago, Mmmbeats said:

I don't quite get it.  The main point of 180° shutter is to emulate typical film motion blur, no?  Switching to 1/200 SS is going to reduce the motion blur and leave you with that (to my taste) yucky video-ey feel.  If so, the idea is dead in the water.  Or have I missed something?

Yes you are. You are right that each individual photo taken taken at 1/200 will be sharper and 'too sharp'. But if you take 4 consecutive shots at '1/200' and blend them together by 'mean averaging' you will introduce the same motion blur on anything moving as one shot taken at 1/50. You can test it yourself with stills and photoshop.