Video Hummus

Internal ProRes HQ and internal 12-bit RAW coming in firmware. Nikon is going all out with this for video it seems. 

For video, on an R6, the RF 24-105 is an excellent, versatile, and frankly underrated lens. Pair it with a cheaper RF STM f/1.8 prime for more flexibility (16mm, 35, 50, 85 depending on your needs).

M1 Max looks like a pretty impressive chip. If it handles 8K RedCODE RAW (perhaps even multiple streams) without problems that would be amazing. Apple really pushing ProRes hard into the consumer spaces with it on iPhone and in non-technical keynotes.

On a side note they also added a built-in ML tracker to Final Cut 10.6. It's not perfect but its pretty slick and easy to use.

1 hour ago, MrSMW said:

How many seconds do you get to comply?

 

Looks like something from the Half-Life Combine Confederacy.

Would rather skip wires altogether for consumer applications and have some kind integrated wireless audio standard (perhaps the upcoming bluetooth low energy audio standard). It would be great to have my camera record internal audio to card and also offer audio out/in via Bluetooth LE to a wireless lav (or even apple AirPods) that seamlessly connects to the camera after a one-time peering scheme. The person behind the camera can also use any bluetooth earbuds/headphones to monitor the audio.

Low battery consumption, decent range within 10 meters, very convenient, widespread support.

Pro applications will always need something more robust, of course.

This is why cameras are so far behind the times when it comes to interfacing. Make it easy and people will come.

16 hours ago, bjohn said:

The rumour sites (especially SAR) are right about 5% of the time so I wouldn't put much weight on any specs or release schedules. Maybe it'll be released in October, maybe next June; the only people who know aren't saying, and the people who say don't know.

They also try to make a news story out of each specification line to try and milk a cameras release for as many "rumor" stories as possible for ad revenue.

I wouldn't be surprised to see dramatic 60p "leak" in a few weeks.

A few people will create videos in a new genre with this...perhaps, but the vast majority of the billion or more phones being sold will be used to make cheesy rack focus tiktok memes.

Personally, the trend towards short social media content is disturbing. Spend 5 days straight swiping through instagram reels or tiktok and then step back. You will be less patient, dull, and be addicted to instant gratification.

Shits toxic.

Gordon Laing's video is the best. DPReview hardly told us anything.

He shows samples of log video (un-graded) in clog3 and shows detailed 400% zoom chart tests to show detail in all the modes versus R5. It does look like the R3 is landing solidly in-between the R5 and A1 as far as quality and specs go. No 30 min record limit. Gordon got 6 hours of record time off external power source, 2h 12m off of internal battery shooting in 4K25p. 

With the new data hot shoe, IBIS, and DIS the R3 is shaping up to be a pretty capable video camera with plenty of room for R1 to flex.

Also, setting white balance is now like all the other cameras. No more taking a picture and loading the white balance. Please bring this to R5!

On 9/10/2021 at 11:00 PM, kye said:

2) The Atomos Ninja Star cost roughly 10% the cost of an R5, and if you take into account the total cost of selling everything I own, buying an R5, re-buying all my lenses, batteries, accessories, well, your "but the R5 has a nice codec" argument is really "why bother with a recorder when you can pay 20x for a completely new camera setup.....  just to get a better codec"

Never did I say you needed to buy an R5 or that even R5 was superior in anyway. Not sure what you are reading.

On 9/10/2021 at 11:00 PM, kye said:

Once again, you suggest that instead of buying an accessory that I re-buy my entire setup.

Again, no I did not. I suggested today’s cameras and future ones will make external recorders less useful in the IQ department which is good because I don’t like the concept of external recorders at all and find latest internal codecs get me 95% or more there. I would welcome any smallish mirrorless camera with internal ProRes. 

On 9/10/2021 at 11:05 PM, kye said:

Anyway, it seems pretty obvious that @KnightsFan and @Video Hummus don't shoot for an organic look

Come on, like a codec is the only measure of the “organic look”. I think we both know it’s far more complicated (and subjective!) than that. 

14 hours ago, kye said:

Back in the real world we have cameras with good features and poor codecs or good codecs and poor features, but external recorders is a way to get the best of both worlds.

In the real world, today, we have cameras with good features and good codecs that make external recorders less valuable if IQ is a big concern. Tomorrow, we will have better cameras with better codecs that make external recorders pretty bulky and not worth it.

|--8Mbps H264-------------------------------150Mbps h264----480Mbps HEVC--1000Mbps ProRes--|

14 hours ago, kye said:

You're confusing capture codecs with DI codecs with delivery codecs.

Your argument suggests that there's no point shooting with anything above 8Mbps because YT and streaming platforms distribute in that format.  

I'd suggest you watch some comparisons where people compare capture codecs and the differences are clearly visible, despite the low bitrate you're watching them in.  One of the reasons is that the capture codec gets heavily manipulated after it's captured and before distribution, and another is that a poor quality copy of a good source will always look better than a poor quality copy of a poor quality source.  That's why a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a document was almost unreadable.

No, that is not my argument. Of course sourcing video at 8Mbps is stupid and laughable today. I'm saying as you go up, the differences become less and less to the point of not making any meaningful IQ difference whatsoever. The lions share of benefits are on the backend.

I'm posing the question to you, if I capture the same scene in ProRes HQ and say the R5's 480Mbps HEVC, and then upload it to YouTube or Vimeo will you be able to tell which one is which at normal viewing distance on a normal laptop or monitor? Was it worth your effort and time (strictly comparing IQ; not editing performance) to have a $600 external recorder, with SSD, and HDMI cable plugged in to capture something that is 0.02% better than internal 480Mbps HEVC at the end of the pipeline? The answer for me is no, its not worth it at all for image quality.

14 hours ago, kye said:

Why would I care if some mythical bride I don't know likes my home videos?  Unless you're talking about my wife?  If so, she can tell footage from Alexa/RED vs h264 cameras while watching Netflix far better than I can!

My scenario was hypothetical for people that use their camera to make more than home videos....

External recorders are like the donut spare tire of the camera world. Like @KnightsFan said, I would much rather pay several hundred dollars for some firmware upgrade for internal features than bolt on external products through flimsily breakable ports, etc…

Perhaps they could pay the patent royalty man and then pass the charge on to me plus some markup for profit to have internal RAW in some future mirrorless cinema camera. That would be great. Everybody makes money and I get what I want for a cost I could determine worth it or not for myself.

Back to the topic, most video is going to get compressed to some shitty h264 format because most video is going to be compressed or streamed in some way. Also, is some bride or corporate manager going to spot the difference between ProRes and a good internal H264 (which most 2 year old cameras have) if the material you give them is lit, shot, and composed well?

I just don’t think it’s worth the time to fret over and really the only benefit of products that shoot ProRes is the editing performance and availability of cheaper capture media. All of that will improve over time with internal H265 capture as CFExpress gets cheaper and new CPUs hardware accelerate. 

7 hours ago, androidlad said:

Chips to encode ProRes have to be built from scratch (essentially a CPU), hence the size and thermal requirement.

P4K has this and it uses a FGPA. I think Apple has a ASIC ProRes chips but probably isn't sharing.

On 9/5/2021 at 5:00 AM, TrueIndigo said:

and was surprised there weren't many products to choose from and somewhat mystified that the Ninja Star had not been updated.

If the product doesn't exist from any manufacturer there is probably some kind of liability or patent around such a concept. Otherwise there would be something from Atomos and 10 Chinese knock-off products for cheaper.

1 hour ago, Marcio Kabke Pinheiro said:

Already saw a manufacturer (don't remember which) that used the "Hybrid AF", using PDAF in the initial stages to know what direction to go, and using CDAF in the final stages for precision (was Sony?).

Yeah, It is Sony.

On 9/1/2021 at 4:26 AM, Amazeballs said:

Specs look awesome, but does anybody has an estimate on its weight? I bet its heavy 😉
Double camera idea is nice, smartphones are doing it for a decade. 

I love my Air2S size and weight and don't want to go any further. Actually I would love them to slim it down. 

The dual camera could make up for the size and weight. I can imagine, if true, you could get some very dynamic shots with this that were only possible before with much bigger drones or needing two models.

I liked the Air 2S a lot but the lack of variable aperture killed it for me. Still waiting on a smallish drone with variable aperture. Someday we will have a 250g Mini with variable aperture and 4K D-Log....

Hybrid AF could mean many things.

Perhaps with faster scanning speeds and readouts from newer sensors DfD is finally able to achieve performance like PDAF. The inherent weakness of DfD is it having to pulse focus to achieve focus. This side effect is clearly hard to hide and ugly and undesirable.

I just don't think they will get over the stigma of DfD without getting rid of the pulsing (which becomes more apparent with wider and wider apertures) and then rebranding their autofocus technology. Anything branded as DfD Version 3 has already failed in its naming alone. Overcoming the interia of years of "contrast based AF is inferior to Phase Detect AF" in almost every camera review featuring a Panasonic camera will be hard without PDAF or a massive performance improvement and a rebranding of the technology—at least in the mirrorless market dominated by Sony A7 and Canon R series cameras.

9 minutes ago, ade towell said:

Seems bonkers that a product like this even has to exist

Yeah, the whole device is silly. If you need it, you bought the wrong camera to begin with.

I think film is a great exercise from digital photography and I enjoy the slower process and the space between time photo was taken to development and viewing.

I own three film cameras. For 135 film I use the Nikon FM2 with 50mm f1.4 lens. I vastly prefer the FM3a metering system but the prices are insane for a 35mm camera so I settled for the FM2.

My second two cameras are for 120 film. I have the 6x6 Yashica-Mat 124G TLR camera. Small and light as far as medium format cameras go and a unique square format and a solid, built-in Yashinon f3.5 lens.

Third, and my favorite medium format camera currently, is my Mamiya 645 Pro TL. Excellent meter, packed with features, 90s nostalgia design. For me, the perfect balance between size, weight, interchangeability and negative size for landscape photography. Love the 645 format: 2.5x larger than 35mm film, 4:3 aspect ratio, with a few more extra shots per roll (15 shots) for bracketing compared to 6x6 (12 shots) or 6x7 (10 shots).

Sekor C 45 & 80mm f/2.8. There is also a 80mm f/1.9 available which I hope to snag. I believe it is one of the fastest medium format lenses made.

2 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

The A1 8k is less sharp than the A7S3 4K?

 

8K from A1 is much better.

From what I've seen, the 4K out of the A1 is very similar to the 4K out of the A7SIII even though the A1 is pixel-binning in 4K. Noise performance is also surprisingly good with very little difference between the two. It's pretty much does everything the A7SIII does but also has 8K and has a 5.8K oversampled S35 mode.

Perhaps the only downside is aggressive noise reduction and the price.

5 hours ago, MrSMW said:

Smug S1H owners titter in the background 😬

Canon R5 owners counter and bring up the subject of tracking AF 🤣

I like pretty much everything about the R5 and wouldn’t mind adding the fan…but then the power bank also…? 

I would just wait for R5C or R3...worth the money, imho, to just not faff around with something like this.

On 8/25/2021 at 5:36 PM, TheBoogieKnight said:

Still looking for a B (sometimes A) cam to my Panasonic S1s. Has anyone tested the A1 and compared its footage to the A7SIII or S1/S1H? I really don't want to spend that kind of money but if it's a step up from the SIII then I could probably be swayed (I do a lot of photography too so if I ponied up the extra for the A1 I could sell one of my S1 bodies). Love the image out of my S1s to be honest but want a body with great AF (and 4k 120 would be nice) to be used on a gimbal and the A1 (and 7SIII) seem to tick the required boxes.

 

Cheers

 

Gerald Undone tested some of this and Gordon Lang has some test chart shots comparing A7Siii, A1, and R5.

I think this update was needed for the R5 and R6 to be reliably used in weddings and other corporate jobs were there is potential for no do-overs or very expensive do-overs.

Glad we have it now.

2 hours ago, seanzzxx said:

It’s a shame because if I read CineD’s test correctly the G2 is still the leader of the pack in dynamic range. In this tense the 12K has felt like a step back from the beginning.

I think this is the general impression with the 12K. The G2 still produces a better image and I know some people that decided to stick with the G2 over 12K. Especially since the 12K suffers a lot from moire in certain circumstances.

I do think it is an interesting concept.

On 7/22/2021 at 7:11 PM, TomTheDP said:

I could see that maybe in the 10k price range. They'd need a C500 MK3 with the DGO sensor too.

It will probably be a while. If R5C is a real thing it sounds like it will get us 75-80% the way there minus internal ND and DGO. However, I think product supply chains have been so disrupted that any plans around R5C have probably been heavily disrupted as well. R3 not so much because they needed a more flagship fast readout photo camera to compete with A1.

I have access to an R6 as a B-camera so I'm fine waiting it out for several years. Not to mention the wallet will need a rest.