Bruno

60p at 28Mbps will give you almost half the bitrate of 30p at 24Mbps, per frame. I don't know exactly how Sony is compressing the footage though, how many keyframes it uses, their frequency, etc. which would also have an important effect on the final results.   60p however will give you twice as much information if you're planning on retiming using optical flow, so that could make up for the lower bit rate, helping the optical flow make a better job.

http://www.digitalbolex.com/d16s-final-body/

Have you read this? Might be worth a try if you have FCP...   http://philipbloom.net/2009/05/30/how-to-convert-canon-5dmk2-footage-from-30p-to-24p/

I'm actually not in a PAL region at the moment, but I ordered the PAL version of the camera exactly because of that. It's a shame Sony won't make these cameras world cameras.   Anyway, when shooting 60i (30p in fact), have you tried playing around with the shutter speeds and see what looks better? Have you used 1/50? (the closest to 1/48, which would be the same as an 180 degrees shutter in a film camera) Some people here defend that 1/40 looks more cinematic than 1/50, maybe you could try that as well?   I think that might get you closer than using optical flow retimes. At least for handheld or locked camera footage it should look pretty good. Smooth pans or dolly shots could still look a bit jittery though...

Just a heads up, I've updated the Record Settings section and added the Shooting Mode and Dynamic Range Optimizer sections to the original post.

Something else important about bitrate is the codec used, and the settings the codec is using. Some codecs can be more efficient at 30Mbps than similar ones at 70Mbps. Actually, even the same codec could be more efficient at 30Mbps than at twice the rate, depending on which settings it's using. According to the Magic Lantern guys, Canon's H264 compression on DSLRs is not very efficient at all, and that might be the reason why Sony FS100's compression is so much cleaner at half the bit rate!

It's the same sensor as the ikonoscop it I remember correctly. Audio wise, of course I'm all in favour of having the best possible quality, which means getting additional qualified people and equipment, but that's not always possible. Amazing works like Undercity or Hell and Back Again would simply not have been possible with a crew bigger than one single person, and I'm all in favour of making it easy on such artists so they keep coming up with more and better work.

  Sure, but so are single shooters, doing everything on their own and coming up with pretty damn unique work too, which wouldn't have been possible before DSLRSs or if shooting with crews, no matter how small. Of course using a Zoom h4n or equivalent is a compromise, but it's not as big of a compromise as using the camera audio from a Canon DSLR. It's also a modern reality to have the vast majority of your audience seeing your best work on tiny YouTube or Vimeo windows, with highly compressed image and sound...   This all goes back to how many excuses can you get to not got out and shoot your best ideas just because the tools are not quite there yet...

  Yeah, it's not about the settings, it's the shooting mode in the upper wheel, Manual Video will solve it.

Yes, I've been using the 16x9 option for video recording, and I think that if you're in video manual mode you don't get that brightness change when you hit record, isn't that the case on the Nex?

It is very straight forward, but many other factors can influence resolution/sharpness. The lens used is a big factor. It would be a straightforward test if all the cameras were done at the same time with the same chart and preferably the same lens (sharpest possible).

  That would be awesome considering its image quality, and its sensor is pretty much the same size as S16! However, you might get a bunch of errors once you remove the lens, not sure how usable it will be after that, but if you're brave enough to do it, please let us know the results! :)   (if you open it, maybe there's an easy way to just disconnect the lens before actually removing it, so you can see if it would still power up and work in manual mode)

We're going around in circles here, if you'd read my posts you'd know I'm talking about shooting situations where you can't afford sound guys and you don't even have time to properly set up the sound yourself, and having one less device to operate would be a huge help. These situations are not as rare as many people think. If you have a sound guy, even if just one, you probably won't be using in camera sound, I was not advocating the use of in camera sound for every purpose.

  I know that, I wasn't talking about Apogee AD conversion quality, I'd be glad with Zoom h4n quality, which is what most people are using with DSLRs anyway, and that is perfectly possible, in fact, Joe just wrote this on their blog:   "The audio components were carefully selected and should perform as well as a Zoom style device."   He also mentioned Phantom Power and Audio Levels on the display while shooting.   So it really is possible after all! :)

  The cameras already have all they need to record audio: power, storage, processor, even audio recording capabilities, why have all that again in a separate recorder? It's not like we're talking about adding audio to a camera that doesn't have it at all. The main difference in audio quality is down to the quality of the preamps, it doesn't take up more space or more engineering to implement decent audio, it takes a few more expensive components, since the rest is all there already. As far as we know, the audio in this camera could even already be as good as such a device, and the only absurd thing in this post is you picking on something they did well and saying the camera didn't need it just because YOU don't need it, that's not very positive is it?

  I don't think their pistol is passive, is it?   Anyway, a lot of the people pick on so many details on the D16 mostly because of them being so transparent with the whole process.   They're not just being transparent, they're also listening, which is exactly what we keep complaining that most camera makers don't do, and they're getting too much crap because of it IMO.

  This camera doesn't have that large of a sensor :) The Canon DSLRs do and still many people use it for way more purposes than fiction narrative with crews, and they sure as hell would welcome better audio, regardless of the sensor size.   Anyway, to make it clear, I'm not arguing with that, I never was. If you're shooting narrative fiction, I totally agree with you, you shouldn't be using the camera's built in audio, but I never said so, my argument was always thinking of single shooters, as I clearly stated.   I've shot narrative projects where I couldn't care less if the camera even had any audio capabilities, I wasn't even worried about audio since I had the sound guys taking care of it. But I've also shot many documentary interviews where I was lighting, shooting, conducting the interview, placing mics, recording sound, carrying equipment, light kit, tripod, etc. all with virtually no setup time, and I sure as hell would have loved to have 2 decent preamps and audio meters in camera, so it would be one less device to carry, operate, power, etc... I don't see how this is being lazy really.   This camera is priced so any enthusiast could have one, and just like people do with DSLRs at the moment, they'll be shooting all kinds of projects in all kinds of styles, not just carefully planed fiction narrative projects. I don't understand why people would argue against features that others actually have a need for, if I only shot B&W I wouldn't be dissing the fact that the camera shoots colour. The camera already has sound and XLR inputs, so I might as well hope it will do a good job at it, because as I said before, technically and cost wise, it's not hard to make it sound at least like a $300 portable recorder.

Those can still get proper off board sound, my point is that most DSLR shooters are using cheaper recorders which quality could be easily matched if not raised by the camera's internal audio, saving everyone a lot of time in post. For more professional uses, it's also nice to be able to plug a feed out of the sound board to the camera's XLR ports.

There are several devices that will give you much better sound than a Zoom H4n or similarly priced Tascam recorder. I own a Tascam DR-100, it's great for what it is, I've used it and will definitely use it again, but does it have the cleanest preamps out there? Hell no! These things are so compact and try to do so much that you can even listen to the SD card activity interference in some situations! If you know a thing or two about preamps you'll know these recorders' preamps are decent, but far from "professional quality" and perfectly matchable by any camera that tries to. Most of what you pay for is the firmware, card recorder, plugs, headphone amplifier, etc etc, which you already have in any camera anyway!

  That's all very relative, it wouldn't be that hard to stick a couple of quality preamps in a camera and then add it to the videofile at 24 bit resolution, it's all you need from those devices, a way to plug your xlr mics, power them and measure audio levels, do you think it's that hard to get it right in a camera (if that's the manufacturer's wish)?   When you say "These systems are perfectly fine for film production", I know many audio guys that would argue otherwise, it's like saying that a Canon Rebel is perfectly fine for film production, which it could definitely be. Also you're talking about "film production" when I was talking about "single shooters".   This guy would also disagree: http://youtu.be/KKVeBqhXMvM

They mentioned it before, the specs list on their website is updated with this info:   http://www.digitalbolex.com/products/   Resolution: 2336 x 1752 (4×3) 2048 x 1152 (Super 16mm mode) 1920 x 1080 pixels (16mm mode) 1280×720 (720p mode) 720×480 (480p mode)

  I don't think there's a shortage of small, intelligent films at all. What seems to be in extinction these days however, are the big, intelligent films!

If they had stuck to their original specs like BMD did maybe they could have cameras out already, like BMD does. Kind of... Would we gain anything from that though?

And in this post they didn't mention one of the coolest improvements: full sensor recording, perfect for anamorphic!

Dimensions: