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On the snipers, it isn't so much the fact they point out an error as the sheer hatred and bitterness in which they do it. I don't want a forum full of people like this, therefore both users have been banned permanently.

This is a bit of a misnomer. The fast CF and SD cards required for raw video didn't exist 'years ago', which is likely why the DSLRs of yesteryear didn't have it as an option. Even now with the tech we have in 2014, raw recording is still very hit-or-miss and unstable. These cameras were released in '08. Developed with tech at latest from '07. It's not so much that camera companies were 'hiding' raw video... it's just that there was no way they could make it consumer-friendly. The tech did not exist then, in a stable and economical form. But yea, the rest of your stuff is on point.

There's no need for petty sniping. Seriously. If you think someone made a mistake, and you feel like you can offer a correction, there are far more civil ways to open a dialogue, ways that might actually be of benefit to the discussion as a whole. You need to chill out.

thats the one I have the old one , it amazing to think a 50 year old lens is just as sharp as any L Series modern lens , they must have been very good at making glass in that Zeiss factory 50 years ago ! I imagine alot was done by hand ! no computers to assist! they where made to resolve an image over 2 1/4 inches square - thats a big area to cover with no distortions! thats about 55mm x 55mm

On the topic of medium format lenses... I actually think they are better on full frame than lenses designed for full frame. particularly wide open due to the fact that vignetting wide open is cropped away - if you take measurement of a helios 44 wide open on full frame the vignette at the corners is over 1.5 stops. There is CA and softness, but these are what make the lens look so lovely due to the aberrations being of the pleasing type. With medium format lenses, you lose a lot of the lovely edge nasties that make the helios 44 so lush. a Vega12b (90mm f2.8) is awesome on full frame since it is literally a scaled up helios 44. however the creamy portion of the lens is not used due to the 1.5x crop and the image lacks those traits we all love of the helios 44.

Philip Bloom on Twitter :

Ha ha ....I will comply! But you can't really call what i wrote poetry! That would be an insult to poets! cheers.

4K mirror-less creating a verbal mess to shoot or snipe? to hoot or gripe? 4k may it liberate 'ess Andrew let the B.S. dissolve into whence it came. Keep sharing... Your intention is the most important thing! You are not trying to deceive anyone. It's wonderful how crazy we all become about 'new' gear and it's pro & cons. But they are simply tools to show & tell.... So sorry for the very poor 'almost limerick! I did not fact check any of this either. cheers, Here's to the year of affordable 4K possibilities let the shoot outs begin!

As a Sigma aficionado, I doubt very much they would use a Foveon sensor, as good as they are in still photography. As a purist, Foveon does sensors right, it samples light in horizontal layers, blue, green then red. It means you don't need any debayering, all you have to do is combine those values and you have a true 3-color pixel. In theory ;) In practice, the red layer gets so little light, sitting beneath the other two, that it's signal must be amplified and luma information from the top two layers must be used to negotiate a true color for the three. There is also a problem that when light angles into the sensor it creates distortions. I don't know the half of it. What I do know is that the video on Foveon cameras is worse than the worst video you can imagine. Why they even put video onto the camera is a mystery to me. The write times of RAW images on those cameras, or at least the latest one I have DP1M, with the best Sandisk card, is around 11 seconds! And though you can still take photos until the buffer fills up you can't preview images, etc. The write time is long, most theorize, because a lot of computations have to be made before converting the analogue signals to digital. Other research by Bill Claff shows that the nothing changes in the sensor from a change in ISO. Everything is shot at 100, the metadata is used, if you set higher, by post-processing. Recently, Sigma/Foveon is coming out with a new camera that has a more detailed top layer. Again, stuff to make your head explode. I could see something similar in sensor design from Sony, maybe a top layer of pixels for focus, who knows! But a Foveon sensor... inconceivable :)

Hey Andrew, just wanted to thank you for the awesome website and forum. I cringed when I read the comments by the two incredibly rude and ungrateful people who are now (properly) banned. As someone pointed out, you're not the NY Times. You don't have a huge staff behind you to fact check everything you say, this is a one man operation. We're all human and mistakes are bound to happen. To insult you and act like it's a capital offense when you get something wrong is nuts. I know dustylense from dvxuser and think he's a better person than that. I really hope he reaches out to you and apologizes. Kind of in disbelief at the things he's said. You can disagree with someone or correct an error without coming across as a total jackass.

I noticed this aswell. I still think the 5D raw is better all around in low light BUT the price point for the GH4 + Speedbooster is a tremendous combination that is impossible to ignore.

just read that link Sean , so it looks like mine is a 1963 model with the plastic ring pre zebra , so 51 years old!! and yes they will be faster on a smaller sensor , so not really f2.8 on micro 4/3 maybe more like f1.7 maybe will do some tests and see this is the one I have , looks like the plastic focusing ring has come off this one on ebay http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Carl-Zeiss-Jena-Biometar-MC-80mm-f2-8-Pentacon-Six-lens-P6-2-8-80-5D-7D-EOS-50-/251487856131?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item3a8dd82603

Not according to what I've read (here's one: Vintage Zeiss MF). If you're talking about the 80mm. The older non-MC are supposed to be the ones to get. That's what was used for the 35mm portions of The Master.

the Zeiss one is slightly better the Russian one is slightly more arty - there really is not much in it at all , this was the 'Standard' lens on these cameras so they made them good!! I only have a 1964 Zeiss one not the newer MC version ....that might be even better?

Did they "hold back" with 240p in the FS700? Did they "hold back" with amazing 1080p in the FS100? Did they "hold back" allowing the 4K RAW of the FS700 being allowed onto a much cheaper recording option than their own? Sony are a pretty progressive company, in my eyes. People need to learn that datarate usually gets limited, not because of greed or crippling, but because it's a consumer product that needs to have mass appeal and not cause constant customer service complaints about the camera not working with a cheap SD card from Best Buy. The fact they are launching it at NAB suggests we might be in for some pro options though, even if it is via the hdmi slot.

it's gh4's 4k vs 5d3's raw. I think being able to compete with full frame raw in low light is very impressive. a little bit of noise reduction and there's nothing to fear anymore!

Yea, I hear your frustration. I think there is still some confusion about removing artifacts with some conversion workflow, but I don't want to beat a dead horse. People will just need to get their hands on the footage (the source from camera footage) and give it a shot. We had a studio that shall go nameless (but the name rhymes with Disney) once deliver footage to us as 8bit prores! So we "had" to work with it.. it took maybe 10x the amount of work because you can't it's more challenging to: camera track, planar track, color key, degrain.. it's just wrecked it's degraded once it goes to 8bit. the information is not there to recover, ever, not there... no matter what your subsampling scheme is.. for good... a black spot stays black, even if it goes from [0,0,0] black to [0.0] black .... it's still black! So when you grade that footage, those artifacts come back. But I agree, it's interesting to see what Panasonic is doing. I kinda wish vendors were focusing more on nice 1080 though, less on selling 4k TV's. To be honest, 4k is about 2k too much IMO, unless you're making a movie.

AX1 does 150Mbps 4K with XAVC-S, 60Mbps is a chosen limitation of the AX100 aimed at consumers. http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.sonydigitalimaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/AX1_Brochure.pdf&sa=U&ei=9nY_U7zKE4nwkAWakIHADQ&ved=0CBUQFjAE&usg=AFQjCNEnzhcRHMt1363hqjOHZH4woLmqtg Edit: 150Mbps @ 50/60fps 100Mbps @ 24/25/30fps But this shows XAVC-S is not limited to 60Mbps.

Never said you get paid to promote, or that you get free gear to test and keep, or any kickbacks or favors or any kind, did I? I said none of us actually know what the real motivation of any person running any site that tests and promotes gear. So, unless it's a user telling us about gear they bought for themselves and want to report how the gear is performing for them in real life situations, then we really don't know much about the gear until it is out in the wild. Andrew, you have a way of turning a perfectly reasonable response into something offensive. Are you aware of that? If so, is it intentional? If so, what is it exactly that you gain from it? Anyhow, if I didn't value your reports and tests, I wouldn't bother with frequenting your site. I appreciate the time you take, but I take all "review/promo" site opinions with a healthy grain of salt until I've read data from users who've spent their own cash and are using the gear in their livelihood. Until then, it's very nice to have previews from folks like yourself who're blessed to have early access to all the gear and evidently don't have to keep forking over their own hard earned moo-lah. Cheers, and thanks for the advance on the GH4. It is looking like what I'll eventually end up with after all the actual user data is in and the other competitors have played their hands.

I have recently been playing with a rather ineresting medium format lens. The Noritar 80mm f2, which i needed to fabricate a mount for due to their being no adaptors manufactured for this exotic beast. It has gotten the nickname 'The medium format Noctilux'.... > as you can see, even wide open the lens is creamy which being sharp enough for its purpose. due to the 1.5 crop of its image circle (its a medium format lens) the vignette and ca is lost, but the bokeh rendition is still present. this is likely gonna be fitted to a tilt shift type adaptor as some point.

the biometar will smoke the helios40 for image quality wide open on full frame, but will not show as much of that lovely swirl effect we know and love of the helios40. if you look at the aperture measurements vs the optical surface measurements of the helios 44, helios 40 and similar full frame lenses you'll see the optics don't quite accommodate for the aperture size and from my basic but informed understanding it is this attribute which is delivering the strange and wonderful swirling. the biometar will show these nice things but only when used on a 6x6 format where the lens is pushed to within a micro of its capabilities.

It's awesome and also confusing. I assume the 1.1x crop is relating to the 16:9 mode so the sensor will remain 36mm wide I'd hope My heart sank when I saw X-AVC-s rather than XAVC. Sony's codec choice puts this in consumer territory, when the 12mpx sensor suggests a degree of careful thinking by the designers. Again, Sony techs making a deadly machine then crippling the camera at the software stage in order to prevent it harming their pro division:( That said, I have always found AVCHD had a lot harder time than it deserved and as the FS100 and FS700 have shown, the 24mbs at 24p mode creates incredible things for such a small file size. I'm pretty sure the 4k xavc-s (if it is shabby) will benefit from a downscale to very crisp FullHD. Damn, if I hadn't had a taste of how awesome a 36mpx full frame sensor is for stills I'd be jumping on this regardless. Alas, I love the A7R too much to part with the 36mpx stills

Why do people take any of Andrews words seriously? Andrew says "I also did some research on XAVC-S. It records in MP4 format but perhaps rather disturbingly it has a much lower bitrate than the GH4′s 4K codec. It is just 60Mbit/s vs 100Mbit/s on the GH4 in Ultra HD." He did his research eh?. Then explain the Sony FDR-AX1's 150M/bit XAVC-S in which a 1 minute research would find and I quote, "In order to provide 4K video recording in a consumer model, Sony designed the FDR-AX1 to support the XAVC-S 4K/HD recording format which is usually reserved for professional applications. However, since the XAVC-S codec will save as an MP4 wrapper, you can still create web-friendly videos that can be easily shared on social media sites like YouTube. Another highlight of the XAVC-S recording format is its ability to record images at 150 Mbps in 4K". Seriously, do your homework Andrew.

From my week long experience with shooting GH4, dynamic range is at least a match for the 5D Mark III raw.

5D Mark III is in raw... that is the optimal setting :)

Well, you failed. I find people why try to sell stuff with such a markup in a small community of enthusiasts very annoying.

LOL. I was talking about your obsession with the GH4. And I didn't mean to be insulting or condescending. Apologies and keep up the great work.

Ya see... that's why I don't jump on the bandwagon, pre-order, and fall for all the pre-release HYPE. Wait until this stuff gets actually released, find out what the hidden bugs are, and see what game the competition brings first.

Ok before this goes further off track.. 1. I don't think as far as specs go at the price point anything will come close to the GH4. Hell I think it's better than the 1DC as far as specs go. With the speed booster the crop factor shouldn't be too much of a difference either. I am super stoked about it as I could probably buy the GH4 with a 12-35 2.8 or a Speedbooster and Sigma 18-35 1.8 in what it would cost just to buy a 5D3 body or 2 of them with lenses for the price of a C100. (A camera who's form factor and ergonomics I love) 2. Also Andrew, please don't jinx the GH4. I know you are really excited about it, SO ARE WE! It was a light hearted dig at your obsession. Has the time you've spent in Germany robbed you of your humour? I get it's your forum, but take a chill pill.

Carl Zeiss 20mm f2.8 is a great 20mm - with all the Zeiss goodness!! also the Panasonic 20mm f1.7 is a very good sharp small lens

Something to consider while looking at the Jena series is I've read steer towards the Pentacon 6 mount and not the M42 version. P6 is the medium format version. Performance is reportedly about twice what the numbers would lead you to expect when paired with a smaller format camera. Also, it may be better to go for the "zebra" versions rather than the black painted or anodized "MC" version because I've read at least one reference that states the coatings on these later versions suffered from supply problems in communist DDR. The earlier, larger, single-coated versions are going to have more "magic". I don't know if this is true for the entire family of Jena glass or just the longer end, or just folklore but the proof is in the pudding AFAIC with the 80mm Biometer. The DSO option sounds like a great alternative if nothing in the 28-35mm range pans out.