Andrew Reid

No the cinema look doesn't depend purely on an aspect ratio, but for me - personally speaking as ever on EOSHD (my own site) - I prefer the wider aspect ratio to that of a television. Also I have no problem with 1.33 (4/3) if you stick an anamorphic on it. I want this on the Blackmagic Camera desperately. The GH2 in 4:3 with the hack is basically upscaled VGA!!

http://vimeo.com/59539071 The Lens Whilst Canon L lenses are like a fleet of company Lexus cars. This isn't really what I want in my films. I need something different. Something with character. For this reason I've long been using anamorphic lenses. I recently shot some test footage with the Iscorama 54 anamorphic. This is essentially an Iscorama 36 but instead of a 36mm rear element it is 54mm. Even though the whole lens is double the weight, not as sharp and almost triple the size I like it because it has character.  

There's a lag of 1 second from when record button is pressed and recording begins. More worryingly there's a 1.5-2 second curtailment at the end of the clip so if you stop recording a stopwatch on 10 seconds, the end of the clip will show the watch on 8.5 seconds.   This was in the pre-production model too and I told Panasonic to fix it.   Seems they did not do this.

I very much doubt raw is coming to a Canon camera circa $4000!

  Coming very soon.

That was in a different CR post.   "Canon will be announcing new cinema lenses and a new cinema camera for NAB 2013 we are told. The camera will sit somewhere between the EOS C100 and EOS C300, but will not be a direct replacement for the EOS C100. It will have both a PL and EF mount option. At present, no specifications for the camera have been given. Canon may also show a prototype that would come above the C500, but apparently that has yet to be decided internally."   http://www.canonrumors.com/2013/02/new-cinema-camera-lenses-for-nab-2013   I don't think it is possible to fit something in-between the C100 and C300 since they are already so close, so for me the C50 rumour is more plausible.

The Cinema EOS range for pros seems to be a blazing success. It isn't that the C300 has the best image or the best technology, it is one of those products where the yin and yang is so perfect it 'just works'. How can Canon bring the same magic to the prosumer market?

Indeed, this is why the GH2 is underrated in low light. I'd rather have a lot of fine grain / noise at ISO 1600 than a lot of blocky noise reduction and less detail at ISO 3200!

It isn't moire. I'd invest in a good vari-ND filter and put the shutter speed to a more optimal 1/50 or 1/100.

  We only really tested the dynamic range from the middle down into the blacks. We didn't do a latitude test or overexpose the scene. Since we only had 2-3 hours for this test, that was an oversight. I'd really prefer next time to do a real world test and a comparison with the Alexa, since that takes the issue of 4K, 5K out of the already complex task of comparing the cameras.

  A real world test is definitely an aim. Just need to find the time.

That's a good question Rungunshoot.   I will probably add that comparison to the Nikon D5200 review.   So far it is really nice in low light. It will be cleaner (no moire) and more detailed. At ISO 3200 with Speed Booster the NEX 5N might get you more in the shadows though.

    Above: the Epic with anamorphic lens In the second and final part of this mini-shootout with the Epic and Blackmagic Cinema Camera, we take a look at the resolution chart.

What makes you think the markup isn't that much Paul? I found the 128GB version of that Toshiba SSD with matching model number on amazon for $79.   http://www.amazon.com/Style-Original-Toshiba-Micro-Thnsnc128gmmj/dp/B009TF135S   The Red Mag version is $1250   http://www.red.com/store/products/redmag-ssd/750-0026   I'm a little baffled as to what it is about the Red version that is supposably giving it such a high rate of reliability under constant use over the standard drive.

2000 lines of resolution you mean. 4K is a measure horizontally.   It's 4096 x 2160.   Saw my first 4K TV in a high street store yesterday.... 19,000 euros. Anyone want one!?

Neither does the Nikon unless you invest in Nikon glass!

  Click the image to view at 100%   Now considering the GH2 is almost as sharp as a Canon C300 in 1080p with the hack (EOSHD Unified 99 applied for this test), the Nikon is pushing to within 98% of the resolution on the GH2 shot.   However it has the advantage of a more gradual fall off in tone, a smoother looking image, less noise at high ISOs and a larger sensor.   This was shot at ISO 800, F2.8, 1/30.   Lens on the GH2 - Samyang 35mm F1.4. Lens on the Nikon - E Series 50mm F1.8 (pancake)   On APS-C, 50mm gives the same field of view of 35mm on Micro Four Thirds.   The rolling shutter seems similar to other DSLRs on the D5200. For some reason the Nikon seems to have worse rolling shutter on the live view display than on the actual recording.   As you can see from the codec info about the GH2 is pushing upwards of 90Mbit and the Nikon is at 22Mbit (seems a constant bitrate codec).

Locking post as I feel the topic is not constructive.   Certainly interested to hear more from Sean though.

I don't care how it reflects on me.   Talk talk talk... Reputations... Brown nosing... Is for people who give a shit about what others think of their narcissistic self-brand image.   I have no interest in what you think moebius22, and frankly if you can't support the site owner in a difficult situation like this it reflects badly on you, not me.

Technically almost no camera has zero aliasing or moire. It's always lurking on a test chart somewhere.   The D5200 rates very highly where this is concerned, it has virtually nothing noticeable similar to the 5D Mark III.   720p mode is worse though.

Well it seems Leang just got bitch slapped and well deserved it is too.   I find it amazing how much disrespect goes round on the internet from people literally with no justification, aimed at people who have shared a wealth of knowledge and experience such as BurnetRhodes here.   On subject of Bloom - This started because his responses to my 1D C observations were rude, prickly, pompous, belittling putdowns and I will not stand for that in front of a crowd of 60,000 followers. I was debating with absolutely no malice at all but he took it personally. If he can't deal with criticism, even criticism of his camera(!) then he has an major ego issue.

Yes lenses - forgot to mention in the post. The Epic had an EF mount. We used the Canon 85mm F1.2L on that and a Leica R 50mm F2.0 on the Blackmagic to match the field of view, roughly, across varying sensor sizes. I say roughly because the Epic has a different readout area depending on the resolution selected. 5K is more like APS-H, 4K is Super 35mm and most commonly used, 3K and 2K are smaller crops.   We did not use the lenses wide open for the resolution chart stuff. A minimum was F2.8. The Leica is plenty sharp at F2.8 but I did notice some drop off in the corners so won't be using the corners in Part 2. I'll be judging the resolution from the centre of the chart.

It is limited to Nikon and Leica R glass, maybe some medium format stuff.   No Canon FD, M42, EF, Leica M, Pentax, Minolta, Olympus OM. None of it can focus to infinity on the Nikon mount. You're in a similar boat to Sony Alpha owners I'm afraid.   Happily though there's a lot of goos Nikon glass around and you can buy the old AI/S stuff with manual aperture rings.

  Yes clean HDMI.   I'm still not convinced about the merits of HDMI on DSLRs yet though - it never seems to look any different to internal codec! Even though D800 was uncompressed the noise grain still looked blotchy and 4-2-2 didn't seem to make much difference either - not as if it is making full use of 10bit ProRes is it? I thought the hacked GH2 looked better!   I've recorded to Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle on the D5200 but only a couple of clips. It looks pretty good but again the internal codec seems to give similar results.

Let's stop that line of conversation here shall we... And get back onto the article.