Bruno

  Many DSLR shooters are single shooters. Most use Zoom or Tascam recorders, which aren't professional either, but will give them a much better sound quality than the built in sound capabilities in most if not all DSLRs. These are small devices and yet still a pain in the ass to have to carry and operate by yourself, having similar quality if not better is a big plus. This camera doesn't seem to be designed for large crews either, though it could be if the image quality and workflow live up to the specs.

They published the exact dimensions recently and the camera body is smaller than I had imagined from the pictures. Pistol grip is optional too.

Sounds like it's getting closer, but how close? :)   http://www.digitalbolex.com/100-changes/

Every Canon DSLR can get peaking with Magic Lantern, except for the 1DX and 1DC, that's kind of funny!  :)

  Here, see if this one helps: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8569573/rx100review/testClip2.MTS

  It could be down to the people shooting with it. I haven't made any tests myself, but apart from the price, I don't see a single reason why the 5D2 would be a better choice than a 5D3, especially now that the clean HDMI out update is coming...

  Exactly, and on top of that, they don't buy them, they usually rent, so they'd only pay full price for the ones they end up destroying, if it does come to that. From now on, I doubt any DP on a high budget movie will use a 5D if they can get a 1DC shooting 4K.

I'll post something later on tonight that will allow you to evaluate color clipping, just hasn't had a chance to do it yet. :)

Do you agree though that the images seem to be captured progressively and only interlaced when recording the file? Do you see any interlace weirdness at all after de-interlacing?

Ir you look at the Portrait Style (standard vs flat) test image you'll see that even within the same profile, using flatter settings will give you a cleaner image after grading, compared to leaving everything at 0. Of course we're talking about subtle details, but everything helps when you only have an 8 bit image. Sending a flatter image to the encoder will allow it to do a better job, leaving you with less compression artifacts, banding, etc. One extreme example of this is the B&W test, just not having to deal with color makes the same bit rate footage look A LOT less compressed.

  Keep in mind that clip was shot as 50p.   Shooting 50i does seem to look interlaced in most apps. Have a look at the new .mts clips. The question here is, I don't think it's real interlaced footage, the camera is probably interlacing it AFTER capturing a clean 25p frame.         The difference is that de-interlacing true interlaced footage will never give you 100% clean results, you'll always get some interlace artifacts, which does not seem to be the case here, which leads me to think it's a fake interlacing, that you can easily undo to get a clean 25p image.

  It seemed to me that the footage is actually interlaced, shot as progressive but interlaced before encoding. The good thing is that de-interlacing it works perfectly well, leaving no weird artifacts as real interlaced footage would.   I've just updated the original post with a new "Record Settings" segment right at the beginning, I also uploaded 3 source camera files, please let us know what your thoughts are regarding color clipping and interlacing!

  Sounds good, I'll add it to the list!

  Really? That is quite misleading. I confess I have no interest in shooting interlaced footage, so I stayed away from 50i, but I'll definitely give it a shot!

  Sure, I'll post one later on today.     I wrote about 5DtoRGB on the 5DtoRGB section, and wrote about Creative Styles on the Creative Styles section, different things, and in the Creative Styles section I did not use 5DtoRGB.     That was not the point of the test. What I tried to show is that there is an advantage to be had by shooting with a flat profile, since it makes it easier on the codec compression and gets you cleaner images, with less compression artifacts. Shooting with less saturation and contrast and then turning saturation and contrast up in post will give you better looking images than shooting with the saturation and contrast up to begin with. Obviously I was not trying to prove that when you turn saturation down you get an image with less saturation. :)       As I said in the original post, these are just some of the first tests I ran, there's a lot more to test. I didn't look into any color clipping issues yes, but it's definitely on my list. My 5DtoRGB test dealt only with how it smooths out nasty compression aliasing in the color channels, which it does, and is very helpful when grading. I'll definitely compare it with alternatives such as denoising in 32bit as you suggested though.

  Could be, or maybe it has both options. Seriously, an s35/APS-C crop mode on the 5D would make it so much more appealing. At least to me. I was never interested in the 5D due to it being full frame only, but being able to switch between full frame and s35 would change everything!

ClipWrap doesn't do anything at all to the images, it just rewraps the .mts file into a .mov file, which I opened directly in Photoshop, that was my workflow for these tests. It's possibly that the color channels were clipped since Photoshop uses Quicktime, but for the sake of these tests it wouldn't change which Creative Style is the flattest or the cleanest to shoot with.   5DtoRGB was only used in the section where I wrote about it. From what I understood, 5DtoRGB transcoding avoids or fixes the Quicktime issue with clipped color channels, I'll look more into that and post any relevant updates.   Meanwhile I added a small Quicktime link to the original post, it's been rewrapped from the original AVCHD .mts file, but not recompressed.

It also shoots MP4 files, but not at its highest bit rate, and not progressive, so if you wan the best quality it needs to be AVCHD. For these tests I rewrapped the AVCHD files as Quicktime movies using ClipWrap, but for proper work I'll be using 5DtoRGB and transcoding to Prores.

  Thanks! I'd say it's definitely due to the lack of color information, which allows for more detail to be stored using the same bit rate. The Portrait profile actually looks better than other color profiles at the same bit rate and is still the best option for color shooting in my opinion, but for black and white, definitely go with B&W (with all settings set to -3, for the flattest black and white image), the results are indeed amazing.   Also, keep in mind that all those tests are done without using 5DtoRGB transcoding, which could potentially make that B&W footage (and all the other footage) look and grade even better!

I just bought a Sony DSC-RX100. After a couple years shooting my personal projects on a Canon 7D, I needed something more compact that I could carry with me at all times, and the Sony DSC-RX100 looked like it could be the one. The great reviews, the ability to shoot 1080p at 50fps with a fast Zeiss IS lens, full manual control in video mode, focus peaking and a 16mm sized sensor convinced me to go for it!   My footage shot on the 7D improved quite a lot during the time I've been using it, knowing a camera's strong points and especially its limitations is very important to getting good images out of it, so the first thing I did with the Sony DSC-RX100 was to shoot some tests to help me decide which settings I'll be using when shooting video with it.   Like most people around here I learn so much from online reviews and discussion forums, and those have been a great help deciding my gear purchases, so I'm sharing what I learned from my tests as a way to return the favor and give something back to the community. There's been some good reviews of the Sony DSC-RX100 online, and some useful info spread around the internet, but I think this post will cover a lot of useful information for whoever's interested in this camera for video, and much of this info will also apply for any other similar camera.   I started by turning off all the automatic picture improvement options, as they usually degrade the quality of the image and make it less gradable, then I set the codec to AVCHD at 28mbits and 50p (PS).   SHOOTING MODE For video shooting I'd recommend setting the top wheel to video mode and then selecting video-M for manual video shooting The RX100 does have a dedicated Movie Recording button, and can shoot video on any Stills mode, but you might get aspect ratio and exposure changes once you hit the Record button in these modes. In video-M mode you'll get what you see on screen.   RECORD SETTINGS   The Sony RX100 can shoot movies in two different formats, MP4 and AVCHD. All MP4 options are below 1080p resolution though, so I won't get into those. In AVCHD mode however, we get 3 different 1080 options:   50i 24M (FX) (50i @ 24Mbps, Blu-Ray AVCHD disc compliant) 50i 17M (FH) (50i @ 17Mbps, DVD AVCHD disc compliant) 50p 28M (PS) (50p @ 28Mbps, Progressive Scan)   So it seems like we get 50i at 17Mbps and 24Mbps, and we get 50p at 28Mbps, but not really… The 50i mode is actually capturing 25p images out of the sensor and encoding them as 50i footage, this means that we do end up with interlaced footage, but since it was captured progressively, de-interlacing it will produce a clean 25p image!   So if we're looking for the best possible video out of the RX100, we should use 50i 24M for 25fps video and 50p 28M for 50fps video. In theory, shooting 50i 24M gives us the best bitrate per frame in this camera, almost twice as much as shooting 50p 28M. Shooting 50fps however would have neighboring frames changing less than when shooting 25fps, helping the encoder do a better job, but still the per frame bitrate is lower, and here's a comparison that shows is. If you look at the darker areas in the back where the window is, you'll see that the 50i version is slightly cleaner.     Here's an example of something in motion shot at 50i and 50p, the 50i frame was de-interlaced and as you can see there's no interlacing artifacts at all.     Considering all of the above, I think it's safe to say that the 50i 24M mode, which is in fact 25p @ 24Mbps, will give you best video quality out of this camera.   CREATIVE STYLES Creative Styles is the RX100's designation for Color Profiles. My first test was to choose the flattest Creative Style the camera had to offer, so I shot some footage of all the different styles.     After looking at all these different images, I decided to go with the Portrait Creative Style, as it seems to be the flattest of them all.   EXPLORING THE PORTRAIT CREATIVE STYLE Each Creative Style has settings for Contrast, Saturation and Sharpness that can be set from -3 to 3, so I shot some more footage using the Portrait Creative Style in a number of different settings.     Using the Portrait Creative Style at the minimum settings (Contrast: -3, Saturation: -3, Sharpness: -3) definitely (and obviously) seems to be the flattest style in this camera, but I had to check how well it graded and how it compares to using the default values (Contrast: 0, Saturation: 0, Sharpness: 0).     On the top left you have a frame shot using the Portrait Creative Style, with all the settings set to 0, on top right you have a frame shot using the Portrait Creative Style in its flattest settings (Contrast: -3, Saturation: -3, Sharpness: -3). On the bottom right frame I added some sharpness to the flat image, which responded quite well, and on the bottom left frame I added not only sharpness but also increased the Saturation and Contrast in order to match the top left frame (Contrast: 0, Saturation: 0, Sharpness: 0). The result is an image that matches in color saturation and contrast, but with a much nicer detail and less compression artifacts. It looks sharper and cleaner overall, which made me decide to use this Creative Style and these settings from now on.   SHOOTING BLACK & WHITE The following test is something I've been wanting to do for a while, regardless of the camera. The thinking behind this test was:   "If the camera is compressing B&W footage instead of color footage, maybe it can do a much better job at it since it doesn't have all the color information to process, so even using the same bit rate could give us better results."   Of course I don't know the details on the cameras' inner workings, but assuming the B&W Creative Style is applied BEFORE the footage is compressed to AVCHD, then this should work. Maybe.     So I shot some footage using the B&W Creative Style in its flattest settings (Contrast: -3, Saturation: -3, Sharpness: -3), which you can see on top left, and then some more footage using my new favorite Portrait Creative Style, also in its flattest settings (Contrast: -3, Saturation: -3, Sharpness: -3).   On the middle left frame, I increased the sharpness and the contrast on the image to make it less flat, and on the middle right frame I did the same, and also desaturated it. As you can see both images are different, since the B&W Creative Style's color conversion is not merely desaturating the image to create a B&W version, it's using a more clever process that also looks better, but anyway, the point here is to test the image compression and figure out which one gives cleaner results, so on the last test frames I increased the exposure by 2 stops to find out how well the images handled it. On the bottom left frame you can see how much cleaner the image shot with the B&W Creative Style is, compared with the one shot using the Portrait Creative Style, it's actually beautifully clean and overexposing it by 2 stops didn't show any ugly artifacts at all.   So my conclusion on this one is, if you're shooting for black and white, and you're sure that's the look you'll want (since it's kind of hard to color B&W footage if you change your mind afterwards), then using the B&W Creative Style will give you far superior results!   DYNAMIC RANGE OPTIMIZER The Dynamic Range Optimizer works when writing to compressed formats, such as JPG, MP4 or AVCHD. It has no effect when shooting RAW. Its purpose is to capture more detail in the areas that are more prone to get lost when using compressed formats, such as dark shadows. It works in the darker areas of the image, making them brighter and producing a flatter image, which makes it easier on the image compression to achieve better results. Here's a test scene shot using all the DRO levels available. There's also an Auto Mode, but I suspect it wouldn't give predictable results when shooting manual video.     The result is quite clear on every mode. Personally I think 5 is too much and might be actually degrading the image more than it helps, but lower settings definitely look not just useable but very useful in achieving a flat and clean image. I'd say using the DRO in its modes 2 and 3 would definitely help achieving a better flat image. I'll probably leave it at 2 all the time and increase it to 3 in situations with more contrast.   5DtoRGB I've used 5DtoRGB on Canon footage since the early beta versions, and I honestly don't understand how come it's not used by everyone. 5DtoRGB features one of the best YCbCr to RGB compression out there, and it's free!!! (the Pro version with batch capabilities costs $50 though)   5DtoRGB does a great job improving aliasing and compression artifacts and transcoding to 10-bit Prores (can also transcode do DPX image sequences and DNxHD files), or at least it did with Canon DSLR footage, so I thought I'd try it with the RX100.     The top frame is from the original AVCHD file and the bottom frame is from the Prores transcoded file out of 5DtoRGB. 5DtoRGB automatically changed the Decoding Matrix setting to ITU-R BT.709, so I assume that's the one to use with the RX100 (Canon DSLRs like the 550D, 60D or 7D used the ITU-R BT.601 Decoding Matrix, the 5Dmk3 however used the ITU-R BT.709). Looking at it like this there's not much of a difference, so I went looking in the channels.     The Red and Green channels looked quite clean in both versions, but looking closely at the Blue channel you can see how 5DtoRGB makes a pretty good job at smoothing out some of the compression blockiness, but mainly smoothing out the aliased lines you get on sharper edges. Using 5DtoRGB won't do any miracles, but when shooting to 8 bit compressed codecs, every little bit helps, and using it along with a flat Creative Style will definitely help you getting cleaner and better images.   SHUTTER ANGLE / SHUTTER SPEED The Sony DSC-RX100 has the annoying feature of only shooting 50fps (or 60fps on NTSC markets). On one hand it's great to be able to shoot 50fps at 1080p, but on the other hand, shooting 25fps at the same bit rate would probably produce better results with less compression. One of the advantages of this could be that you'd always have the extra frames in case you needed the slow motion effect, but unfortunately that's not quite the case, since the ideal shutter speed for 25fps real time playback is different than the ideal shutter speed for 25fps slow motion playback. If you're planning on shooting for 25fps real time playback, then you should set your shutter to 1/50, but if you intend to shoot for slow motion playback at 25fps, then you should set your shutter speed to 1/100.     Using a shutter speed of 1/100 for real time 25fps playback will not give you enough motion blur, and the motion playback will not be as smooth as it should. Also, playing back footage shot at 1/50 shutter speed at 25fps slow motion will have too much motion blur, making its motion look rather fuzzy.     Here's a sample file you can download yourself. This was shot at AVCHD, 1080 50fps with a shutter speed of 1/50, meant to be used on a 25fps timeline, playing at real time: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8569573/rx100review/RX100videoSample1.mov     That's it for now, I really hope it helps some people out. I have some videos I can share later on if you're interested, and I also might update this review with tests of the different Steady Shot modes once I get to them. Keep in kind that these are only my findings and personal opinions, it would be great to hear from people with different opinions, or about settings you think would give better results.   Enjoy!

  I actually think that would make a lot of sense.   Many software packages do that, you pay to unlock specific features. Not every 5D user needs video, not every 5D user needs advanced stills capabilities, this way they could keep prices down and you could build up modularly, firmware wise. This would also be way more ecological than upgrading the hardware all the time just for a couple small features.   The BMCC for instance doesn't support Cineform, most likely because they'd have to pay a licence if they did, I think it would make all the sense for them to sell it separately to whoever wants to pay for it.

A Red One MX at $4k would have been a much wiser choice than a Canon 1D C if you really need 4k, the only down side could be the size, but the quality you'd get out of it would make up for it. 

Breaking your budget to get a 5Dmk3 is one thing, but this is totally different. If you don't have a project lined up that will pay for the 1DC straight away when you buy it, then don't.

I have to say that it's highly unfair to judge that footage based on the youtube version, can you find a way to share the original footage?   I watched the master projected in 70mm and it looked stunning, but if I was judging it from a youtube clip like the following one, I probably wouldn't have thought much of it, it doesn't look any better than DSLR footage with the crappy compression.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzqJMIN3Yco

Have you tried using 5DtoRGB? Not sure if it has the settings for the 1DC compression type yet, but it does a great job with 5D/7D footage. It gets rid of a lot of compression artifacts and does a good job at transcoding to prores at a higher bit depth. It doesn't do any miracles, but the improvements to the footage are quite noticeable, especially if you're gonna grade. Denoising software is usually also effective when trying to improve the bit depth, it's at least better than just directly transcoding to a higher bit depth codec.