Video Hummus

Boy, all those great films shot on Super35 suddenly look like shit when FF DSLRs came out. That Zombie movie, 28 Days later, I liked it until I learned some of it was shot on a Canon DV1. WTF! They should have used an ARRI for that most iconic bridge shot. Ruined it for me. Most of the new blade runner 2049 was shot with a Zeiss T1 lenses but was stopped down to f2.8, 4, and 5.6. Deakins must be an idiot. This obsession, and yes it’s an obsession, with FF and max aperture shallow DoF lust is missing the forest for the trees. Very little of that shit matters in cinema. You can slap a Vintage FF lens on a GH5 and hand it to Deakins and he would shoot a Hollywood movie with it and the audience wouldn’t give a shit what it was shot on if the story, lighting, acting, and production are good. The camera is peanuts. Only people that care are the sensor gear obsessives and the industry snobs. I’m also still waiting for that FF 24-200 f4 that fits in a cargo pants pocket....who will make it first? And before you bandwagon the notion that I think MFT is somehow inherently better than some other format (like a lot of FF zealots do for whatever reason) I like MFT because it’s a CHOICE. I get a choice of format to shoot in with unique advantages. But instead we have this pervasive FF “green-blue algae bloom” sucking all the oxygen out of the discussion. I can also guarantee you when the first smartphone puts a MFT sized sensor on the back suddenly MFT will be the bees-knees again...funny how they works.

Still not compelling, in my opinion, until there is a ninja star type of device for this compressed RAW external recording. Just not worth the effort, for me that is, over a solid high bitrate 10-bit 422. I wonder if S1H will see BRAW support in the future? They share a sensor with the fp, no?

Maybe Elon Musk is an Olympus fanboy and can’t help himself... The more I read about JIP and the defunct companies it buys almost none of them survive and the ones that do get totally outsourced and lose their soul. Olympus Imaging’s carcass is about to be fed to the vultures. Damn shame. And with the bottom falling out of ILC market in general it’s probably very unlikely Panasonic or Sigma will pony up any money for Olympus patents and R&D.

I’m really surprised they don’t have this already. It would sell well. I could see it being used with EOS R owners, GH5/S owners, anybody that wants to eek out more bit-depth and chroma space if their camera supports it. Especially if it was small enough or shaped like a side grip for a cage.

I’m also a bit worried. They went to build a vlogging camera and almost missed every important mark to hit. You can forgive them for the AF as they are doing the best they can with their tech, but the record limit in 4K, the crop, and no IBIS? Very, very strange. A upgraded LX100 II would have made much more sense especially with the new sound tech, and flip screen, and it’s wonderful 24-75 f1.7-2.8 lens.

Olympus won’t be the last. The camera market is collapsing like a 5 day old party ballon. I just hope one of my favorite formats, MFT, can survive the storm.

Exactly. I think we should prepare ourselves for $4000-$6000 camera bodies going forward. The consumer camera market is shrinking fast to cellphones. Lower cost bodies and lenses don’t sell enough volume. Sad part is Olympus was innovating the stills side with very useful features like HHHR and IBIS. There might still be viable life for MFT in video with blackmagic and Panasonic. But I have a feeling blackmagic won’t produce another MFT camera. It will be super35 and up for them. Doesnt help that Sony innovation on 4/3 sensors stalled or was abandoned except for industrial surveillance.

Sad news. I guess the next Olympus camera will be a toy camera in McDonalds Happy meals. It does put a huge question mark over the entire MFT consortium now.

Honestly looks like a LUMIX Alpha (DfD edition!) but with competent IBIS. Not sure why you would buy this over ZV-1 if it doesn’t have 10-bit vlogl. EM5III seems like a better buy.

Yes the EM1.2 always had PDAF. The firmware enabled it for video mode. I’m convinced the only reason Panasonic doesn’t have PDAF is because they are a new player in the camera field and there was some kind of patent share/partnership or something pre-2001 with the Japanese camera companies. Sony received PDAF patents when they bought out Konica Minolta. Minolta had a patent battle with Honeywell in the late 70s over phase detect concept patent. Olympus has patents related to it as well, including “on sensor micro lenses”. Panasonic as recently as 2018 filed patents “for of multi-PD/pixel sensor for on-sensor HDR and PDAF (http://hi-lows-note.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2018-01-25). It appears the technique is similar to OSPDAF (on sensor Phase Detect AF) as Olympus and Sony, that has dedicated focusing pixels, but uses a different design as to minimize the disruption to the Bayer pattern (you know the reason Panasonic always gives for “degraded image quality” when asked about why they prefer DfD). It also has the pixel design for HDR photosites. Not sure how this is different to Sony’s. Canons Dual pixel On sensor enables PDaf photosites on all pixels so I guess that’s how they are different to Sony’s PDAF. So maybe Panasonic is up to something. I just know a GH, GX, and S camera lineup with some kind of reliable phase detect autofocus and Panasonic’s already awesome codec options, full vlog, and S1H color science would be fucking amazing. It would be like having a Sony A7 series camera with 10-bit. Which is another weird “seems to never happen” oddity in the camera world.

That looks fantastic. Was this straight out of camera?

I already think S1H has very nice color. I hope we get full vlog and tweaked color science in future cameras. Especially GH line so we can have a consistent look when using GH and S cameras together.

I hope Panasonic is self aware enough to know that if they did this the product would bomb hard. They gotta address the AF issue. AF is the most important spec of a “vlogging” camera. ZV-1 and EOS R and RP case in point.

It was tongue and cheek. In broad terms, up-and-coming filmmakers that don’t mind experimenting with using newer gear and aren’t locked into Canon C cameras or RED.

If anything they have been pushing video quite hard since XT-3. I really do think, since they added IBIS to the XT series, that the XH series will lean in to video. They’ve already said they want it to do something different, and the XT4 has obviously slotted into what the XH1 offered. A potential XH2 could have a bigger, chunkier body which adds to ergonomics for video. Add in IBIS, beefy codec, new ASPC sensor, mini XLR, maybe SDI, Fuji colors and Flog. Better AF. Maybe high resolution tilt screen instead of a flip screen. An external monitor is better for sit down head shots or YouTube anyway. You wouldn’t vlog with it. That’s what an XT4 is for now. Could be a real competitor to C100 or C200 for the hipsters 😏

So Apple has confirmed Apple Silicon based macs based on ARM are coming. I wonder what this means for Pro Apps and Resolve on the newer macs. Apple said Adobe’s complete apps, including Premiere and Lightroom, will be supported. They better include hardware acceleration for 10-bit 422 H264 and HEVC. The latest iPad Pro apparently can handle GH5 footage with ease. Exciting to finally see high performance ARM hardware with large thermal and power envelops to work in.

We don’t know anything about the camera except it’s name and launch announcement. Which is a two weeks before the R5 and A7SIII News bombs that will be coming early July. So maybe don’t expect much.

With only 20MP sensor the rolling shutter would be better if it’s a newer generation Canon sensor.

Hoping we will see something, anything, related to AF innovation with this new camera. I’ve said it before but a ToF device that picks up AF duties 3 meters in front of camera would be a great stop gap for improving their AF for vlogging and in front of camera talking head stuff.

So Panasonic has the balls to market a G100 (which given the name may be in the same line as the G95/G99) as a vlogging camera. I’m speculating it may have ToF device like the new iPad Pro for AF. I have no evidence to present only that I find that more likely than Panasonic implementing PDAF! 🙃😂

Very Nice @Alt Shoo! I think it depends on the responses JVC got on their camera survey they sent out a while back. I suspect people wanted a larger sensor. 10-bit 4:2:2 internal ProRes recording and PDAF. JVC seems very interested in delivery exactly what people want. Problem is...sometimes what people want is not what they buy. Go figure.

Worst thing you could do is bog down your production with footage your computers can’t handle. That causes a ripple effect along the whole production line. If your clients are happy with what you are shooting now, they will be happy with it for 6-12 months until you can have an editing rig that can handle H265 and the RAW that will be coming out of the R5.

I don’t think it’s a software problem. It’s a hardware one. H.265 or AV1 won’t become mainstream or useable unless there is some serious hardware encoding and decoding acceleration AND for all the major profiles. FCPX has been overhauled under the hood on using Metal 2. I think we are going to see a major push by Apple for performance improvements and integration with their accelerator cards and maybe future acceleration chips in MacBook Pros (think next gen T3 chip). It also appears camera companies have chosen HEVC as their next codec of choice future generation cameras...especially since its in Canons new cameras.

Maybe they are just cheaper alternatives for Leica ASP-C cameras and a possible ASP-C Sigma camera seems unlikely.. The fp is already full frame and tiny and cheap for what it offers. Any new L-Mount partners are more likely to be up and coming Chinese companies like Z-Cam.

Great video Dave. I like the review format with examples of using its features for real world stuff. Never stop doing your quirky humor. I want a Deity Stereo mic that competes with the RODE Stereo Videomic X with an adjustable gain knob, internal long lasting battery, and some of that excellent Deity innovation. Especially if it matches the Videomic X’s surprisingly good isolation and wind capsule. Stereo audio is a sleeper technology in a mono vlogger mic world.