Andrew Reid

I'm starting to believe more in the merits of 4K but the 1D C was horrible to use. Such a shame.

I feel a folly coming on.   There are much better options than the Sigma. The Samyang 35mm F1.4 is only a bit more money and is way sharper wide open. The Sigma has no hard stops on the focus ring so cannot be used with a follow focus. You can get the cinema version of the Samyang. Why get the Sigma? It doesn't make sense.   The Samyang 35mm F1.4 is also a full frame lens and has a physical aperture ring unlike the Sigma which is APS-C or Four Thirds and over 5 years old.   I have both the Lumix 20mm F1.7 and the Sigma 30mm F1.4 which is on loan from a friend to test at the moment.   The Canon FD 35mm F2.0 is sharper and smaller. The Lumix is sharper and smaller too. Is there a unique reason for considering the Sigma?

[media]http://vimeo.com/64879501[/media] Iscorama anamorphic on the 1D C and my test footage at Vimeo I shot with the Canon 1D C and Canon C100 Cinema EOS cameras recently with SlashCam in Berlin. The 1D C is the most Jekyll and Hyde camera I've ever used and a difficult camera to review. The 1D C is a marriage of beautiful 4K images and an unwilling partner who hasn't shifted an inch to accommodate it. [url=http://www.eoshd.com/content/10179/the-canon-1d-c-review]Read the full article here[/url]

Get the Lumix. The Sigma 30mm F1.4 is nice when stopped down to F2.0 but needs the rather pricey Panasonic adapter to work properly on the GH2 and when you go into magnified manual focus assist the lens always goes wide open to F1.4 which is really damned annoying.   The 20mm F1.7 is sharper, smaller and has better AF.   Have you considered a Canon FD or Nikon AI 35mm F2.0? Certainly advantageous if you don't need AF.

  That would be interesting to try with 1D C footage. Stutters in Premiere but fine in FCPX or when converted to Prores.

You see how much confusion bad marketing causes?   Stills shooters would not put up a JPEG compressed to hell as representative of the camera's outright image quality, so I have no idea why these YouTube uploaders feel it is good practice to put broken video samples up and not provide the original files.

I've never seen a single YouTube 1080p stream that looked anywhere near the original camera file, so for me all the YouTube uploads are invalid. Vimeo streams too are only 7Mbit. Much better to wait until people with a clue get hold of the camera :)

No chance for the CX stuff. No focus ring, it is all done electronically.

    It's coming.   Have you tried the Touch AF options?

No not hackable yet, though Vitaliy is working on it.

The Panasonic G6 has been announced and to be honest it is a bit of a surprise, culling very little in the way of features from the GH3 and quite possibly taking video to new levels on a mid-range camera. Based around the GH2's multi-aspect sensor (18MP total, 16MP effective), the sensor is larger than the one in the GH3 (1.86x crop vs 2x), the new camera updates the AVCHD codec (adding 1080/60p) and even focus peaking, something the GH3 doesn't (yet) have! [url=http://www.eoshd.com/content/10172/gh2-sensor-goes-into-impressive-panasonic-g6-adds-108060p-and-focus-peaking]Read the full article here[/url]

The 14-50mm is nice and sharp but there's a step in aperture when you zoom and the lack of hard stops on the focus ring means it doesn't work with a follow focus properly - it is a weird fly by wire focus ring that varies in how much it racks focus depending on how quickly you move it.   The optical image stabiliser works pretty well though in video mode, for an old lens!   You will need the Panasonic Four Thirds adapter for that to work.

Here's a more technical description of the new sensor http://www.vlsisymposium.org/circuits/program.html#pro03     A 1-inch Optical Format, 14.2M-Pixel, 80fps CMOS Image Sensor with a Pipelined Pixel Reset and Readout Operation, H. Honda*, S. Osawa*, M. Shoda*, E. Pages*, T. Sato*, N. Karasawa*, B. Leichner**, J. Schoper**, E.S. Gattuso**, D. Pates**, J. Brooks**, S. Johnson**and I. Takayanagi*, *Aptina Japan and **Aptina Imaging, Japan A 1-inch optical format, 14.2M-pixel, 80fps, digital-output CMOS image sensor that employs a row-shared dual conversion gain pixel is presented.  To achieve the 80fps readout rate, a pipelined pixel reset/readout scheme named "nesting scan" has been introduced, where the charge sense node inside a pixel is reset during the previous row. Readout noise and maximum handling signal charge of the sensor are 1.7e-rms and 16ke-, respectively, and the ratio of column FPN to readout noise is lower than 0.03 in all gain conditions.   -----   Also note Panasonic are developing an organic sensor with a similar effect on colour as an OLED panel has on an LCD display.     An Ultra-Low Noise Photoconductive Film Image Sensor with a High-Speed Column Feedback Amplifier Noise Canceller,M. Ishii, S. Kasuga, K. Yazawa, Y. Sakata, T. Okino, Y. Sato, J. Hirase, Y. Hirose, T. Tamaki, Y. Matsunaga and Y. Kato, Panasonic Corporation, Japan We developed an ultra-low noise image sensor in which an organic photoconductive film (OPF) is laminated on the entire surface of the pixel circuits. In order to suppress the kTC noise in the pixel circuit of a three transistor configuration, a high-speed column feedback noise cancel circuit is newly developed. An ultra-low noise of 2.9 electrons during the horizontalblanking period of only 5 μs has been achieved.

I watched this, was OK but felt a bit let down. Basically it doesn't really enter into much of a debate between the filmmakers who are pro digital and those who are pro film. Most of the time it is just explaining, explaining, telling us the obvious. Reeves is a bit insipid, doesn't seem to hold any conviction as a story teller. It has a few nice lines from the interviewees, for example David Fincher on the rushes in the film days and not knowing what you've got until you see it days later and sometimes you'd be happy and sometimes it'd be "What the fuck", that made me chuckle :)   Ah - could have been amazing, with that number of famous faces in it, would have been fantastic to have them all in one room arguing about film vs digital.

The chipworks link is on this very page. Scroll up.   Your flyer refers to the 1011, the old 10MP in the V1.   We're talking about the 1410 and 1411. The former is in the V2. The latter is similar in spec but now available on the open market.   What is so hard about this?

On that DR chart the Fuji X Pro 1 never reaches super white. It may have a smooth roll off in the highlights but it isn't a free lunch.   Also, these are raw photographic tests remember, so little to no meaning when it comes to video mode.   AR1411HS is not what is printed on the V2's sensor when Chipworks opened it. Says AR1410.

In raw stills mode it is better than or on par with all but the new Nikon APS-C cameras in low light especially when you factor in a T0.95 lens like the SLR Magic 25mm.   Video mode and the D5200 is better in low light.

  Nice find. So AR1410 and AR1411HS specs seem pretty similar to me, maybe they have just tweaked the Nikon sensor and put it on the market or maybe HS does indeed stand for 'high speed' and it is a faster chip, 1080/120p etc.   I always assumed the sensor was always capable of high frame rates just that Nikon couldn't be bothered to write the firmware to support it :)

  This is all quite disappointing.   EF-S and APS-C lenses were a prime selling point of the Micro Four Thirds version of the Speed Booster.   When it was announced these were supported, no? What's changed?

Great to have you here Thomas.   Good reasoning on the vari-ND. You will have my $200 soon :)

There's nothing better in the price range. I'd keep the Canon lenses as they will be great on the Metabones Speed Booster. However it is delayed and there's not a confirmed release date for it yet unfortunately.   In the mean time you can use the $200 Olympus 12-50mm until you're ready to get the Metabones or invest in good lenses. If you need low light performance, a cheap 35mm F2.0 or 50mm F1.4 from eBay will work for you whilst you wait to use your Canon glass again on the GH3.

  And you know the sales figures.... Riiiight.

  They put in what they need for stills, and see video as a bonus. When they come to do a proper video camera I am sure they will ensure a margin of at least $10,000 :)

Ah got you. 79db still a nice improvement on the old sensor which was rated 66db.   I wish they'd just use stops!

  Not the V1. It is 14MP so likely the V2. (This announcement was made yesterday by the way)