utsira

Great stuff. 10(?) bit colour and fog, what a combo. Is that Durham cathedral I saw in one shot?

I just got an A6000 and the SEL 35 1.8 lens. On some shots I occasionally see a very subtle ripple effect. I don't think it's caused by rolling shutter and sensor readout speed, it seems like it's optical to me. I say this because I haven't noticed rolling shutter when shooting with un-stabilised lenses. I had the optical steady shot on, and I wonder whether this is the culprit. I'll try to post a clip later, but I wondered whether anyone has had similar experiences either with this lens or other Sony OSS lenses?

I've never really understood this either. I guess the way the camera samples the sensor (full read-out vs line-skipping etc) has a bigger impact on the image quality than what codec it is put through. Maybe you'd see more difference in a shot with lots of detailed motion?

Have a look at this review from the guys at Alpha/ Omega: The HDMI out section starts around the 10:12 mark. (although there is a very brief side-by-side of HDMI vs internal earlier on, at the 6 minute mark). Basically, as with a lot of cameras, it seems to make a barely perceptible difference. I guess it would give you some audio inputs.

Does it have manual focus ring? This worries me. The most recent kit lens on the gm1, the pancake zoom, doesn't have manual focus.

Here's what I think is interesting about this camera. Panasonic is reducing the number of interchangeable lens lines that it has. The GF has gone, there won't be a successor to the G6 or GX7 (if we can believe anything on 43rumors....), so in future it will just be GH and GM. And this cam, the LX100, is the missing midrange cam, which inherits many of the exciting features from the flagship. This is where the GX8 or whatever should have been. And Panasonic is saying to us, how much do you really need to swap lenses around? Do you really enjoy messing around with adaptors, carrying heavy glass around etc etc? Because we're going to offer you the camera and the lens, for the same amount as you would have paid just for the lens, and in a package that is somehow pocketable. It's a kind of test. Is the flexibility of an interchangeable lens system so important to you that you would pass up a deal like this? I was weighing up buying a GH4 and the 12-35 2.8. Now I think I'll just get this.

2 questions to ask the Sony rep, or the Atomos rep (if this isn't too off-topic): 1. are there 4k external recorders in the pipeline that are more compact than the Shogun, more towards the Atomos Ninja end of the price/ weight scale? 2. are you going to put XAVC-S into the A6000, or release a A6100/ A7000? Or are you too worried now about cannibalising A7 series sales to do a proper high-end APS-C camera?

It's the fine 1080p grain that comes with the ImpulZ LUTs, overlaid at 30%. I've tried uploading H.264, Prores proxy etc. I think there's maybe too much else going on in these shots for vimeo compression to also render the grain well. I was feeling lazy, and the OM-D is quite clean (tho I suspect that's because the NR:off setting is ignored in video mode maybe?) so I didn't bother denoising with neat video. I think if you have very clean shots, locked off on a tripod, then maybe the grain survives. With the music, I was initially thinking of something a lot more upbeat, to match the tempo of the performances, perhaps something electro, Hot Chip-esque, then going to town with the edit. Couldn't find anything I liked licence-free. (do vimeo really block your video if the soundtrack is commercially available?) So slow edits in contrast to the performances was the easier option. But yes, Zabriskie is great. Glad you liked it! Fascinating area with a long history of street performances (and cop trouble). And that long highway stretching down to the Wald 9 building guarantees you nice bokeh!

Of all the announcements at photokina this is the one that's got me most interested. I love that it has dedicated shutter and aperture dials (each with an auto setting), so no need for pasm dial. Like a Fuji x series.

A bit of both, it's multi aspect, so full sensor isn't covered, but also advances in lens design. Dpreview: "The first thing that went through my mind was 'how on earth did they pull that off?'. The answer: major advances in lens design. http://***URL removed***/previews/panasonic-lumix-dmc-lx100/5

Rumours? Oh no let's not start all that again.

the idea that at the push of a button the camera could go from being one where exposure doesn't lock when you're in "manual" mode to being one of the most impressively specced video cameras in its class would be the most dramatic change in a camera's capabilities since Magic Lantern. I would love for this to be true, but I'm pretty sceptical.

The buskers around Shinjuku station, Tokyo, shot on an E-M5. On the wide shots the codec craps out completely, but the medium shots with some subject separation it looks OK. Terrific fun to shoot with. I might trade it in for an E-M1 regardless of what happens with rumoured firmware, just for the extra mbps. I finally worked out how to set the IS focal length correctly when using a focal reducer. I still can't get film grain to look any good after it's gone through the vimeo upload process though. This was a large prores proxy file, and in most of the shots it looks like mud.

I think what people are saying above is accurate, it's a word that gets used a lot, and the meanings of it change quite quickly within the videography community. I think it's constantly used as a kind of gold standard that video has to aspire to, but which is always out of reach (JJ Abrams said something along these lines when justifying his decision to use film to shoot Star Wars 7, rather than video like the prequels). In other words, it means "not video", but the question of what is "not video" shifts all the time as video changes. One example: I remember in the days of the HV20, which was just before the DSLR video revolution broke, people were really hung up on shallow depth of field, in part I think because it was very expensive and cumbersome to achieve with a small-sensor camcorder. People would attach their HV20s, upside-down, to a "depth of field adaptor" with a focal plane that needed to vibrate in case a speck of dust landed on it, and get a razor thin DoF that was a nightmare to focus. Then, as soon as large sensor video became readily available with DSLRS and mirrorless, videographers got less fixated on shallow DoF. This is good, as "cinema" shouldn't be stereotyped by one aesthetic, as it covers an enormous number of styles and practices. Citizen Kane is frequently voted the best film of all time, and what is it famous for, cinematographically speaking? It's incredibly DEEP depth-of-field. So deep in fact, that some shots are actually trick shots made with back-projection: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2007/10/10/do-filmmakers-deserve-the-last-word/ Nowadays, Kane DP Toland could just use a GoPro... :P

What I've found works, and no idea whether this is the most efficient way of doing things, is simply to turn off all of the neat video effects (i.e. lasso everything and click the blue on/off flag in the effects pane of the inspector) and you can edit quickly again, playback without dropping frames etc. Then turn them all back on again just before you do an export.

Congratulations on reaching step 3 of GAS anonymous ;) I know what you mean though, the Panny cameras are basically mature now, there's only incremental things they can improve with each new iteration. Enjoy peak Panasonic! I think we're still a few years away from peak Sony though. Apparently the OMD E-M1 2.0 FW has leaked already, and..... no new video features. 2nd time this year some kind of videography update was rumoured, and nowt delivered: http://www.43rumors.com/e-m1-2-0-firmware-already-unofficially-available-at-olympus/ I still might trade my E-M5 in for an E-M1 though. I don't mind 30fps, and I could use the extra mbps the E-M1 has.

That's a real shame about the GX7. I think Maxotics had an issue with the shutter breaking on his GM1. I suppose if the repair estimate comes back and it's unreasonably high, then maybe you have nothing to lose attacking that shutter. So you're not worried about buyer's remorse when the Photokina announcements come in? ;)

I just realised that the last time I used the OMD I made a stupid mistake. When I was dialling in the focal length for the image stabilisation, I forgot to account for the focal reduction of the lens turbo. On the OMDs you don't factor in sensor crop when you enter the focal length for the IS system; so if it's an 85mm lens, you just put in 85mm. But of course, if there's a focal reducer, you do need to include the 0.72 reduction (so an 85mm lens comes out as 61mm). I just tried again with IS set to 65 and it was much smoother. I thought I'd found the limits of the stabilisation system, but I guess not.

43 rumours reckons that a gm1/gx7 successor will be announced at photokina.

I had similar problems with my lens turbo on the E-M5. It fit fine on the Panasonic G6, but at first wouldn't go on the Oly E-M5 at all. It seemed to sit in the mount snugly, but I couldn't turn it at all. Eventually I noticed that it wasn't quite sitting flush in the mount. On the side opposite the red dot, there was a tiny gap, less than a mm. By first pressing hard on the lens turbo towards the sensor (ie along the axis of the lens) to close this gap, I eventually found I was able to turn it. It did grind a bit the first time I put it on. If you leave it on a while, take it on or off a few times, it seems to be ok.... On the plus side, when it does go on, there's no wobble at all. Examining the two mounts, I can't really work out what it was that was causing the problem on the Olympus. It doesn't seem to be anything critical though. So far.... (mind you, I'm using a second hand $300 E-M5 and a $140 lens turbo so it's not like I have a $2000 investment to protect) So yeah, it seems that Olympus mounts are a bit tighter somehow than Panasonic ones.

Yeah, there is quite a bit of noise on the G6. I have no idea whether this person's testing methodology is sound, but ISO 640 seems clean: I do use noise reduction quite a bit I guess (I use neat video), and I seem to be able to hold onto the low light detail, it doesn't become mush. With fast primes (panny 20 1.7), or as you mentioned the 1.8 sigma zoom on a speed booster, and a bit of NR, it's OK in low/ available light.

Congratulations on finding an actual camera store with display models where they'll let you put a memory card in - they seem to be increasingly hard to find in the UK recently, sadly. I'm really surprised about your comments on motion. You're talking about 30 fps with a 1/50 shutter?

One more thing to add to my list of E-M5 usability gripes, 4, the magnification focus checking is disabled on the movie dial. If you have a custom key set to focus magnify, it now does nothing. You have to use the electronic tele (only 2x) as a substitute, and remember to disengage before you start filming. It's almost as if it's a bug. If they made one tiny change, namely allowing the video exposure to lock in "M" mode (as it should do, that's why they have "manual mode" on cameras), then the whole thing would make sense. People who want point and shoot fully automated video can use the stripped-down video spot on the mode dial, and those who want access to everything, exposure metering and locking, focus checking, iso/ wb/ picture style short cuts etc, can use the "M" mode. I should stress this is the E-M5 I'm talking about. I did play with an E-M1 when it first came out, but I hadn't had the E-M5 long enough at that point to work out what the problems with the u.i. were and hence to check whether the E-M1 improved things. I'll have another go with an E_M1 next time I'm at the camera store to see if things have improved. By contrast, the G6.... great focus peaking (somehow more discriminating than the peaking on the NEXs I've used), focus magnification (including picture-in-picture so that you can maintain an overall sense of your framing while checking the centre point), an onscreen focal distance gauge etc etc. It's a joy. And the image quality rocks. A real shame that it's apparently being discontinued, with no G7 replacement. According to 43 rumors, the GX line will also not have a follow-up (once GM gets an EVF). So going forward they'll only have GH and GM. I think before they had too many lines (GF etc), but now apparently they'll only have 2? I think there's definitely room for a "rebel" style camera in their lineup (ie a camera like the G6 which debuts at $700 or whatever, has a mic port and everything videographers need, falls to $500 or so after 8 months)

I think the bit rates I suggested above are a bit high. 100 mb per minute or so should be more than enough. Do you have any way of previewing it? Even just watching it on a decent monitor, and really eyeballing it for artefacts can be useful. I'm sure most viewers will be engaged with the content and won't notice occasional blocking.

On the E-M5 I use a custom picture mode (in order to save the settings) that uses picture mode natural, sharpness -2, saturation 0 (though this could be -2 if you really want it flat), contrast 0, with a custom curve of shadows +2, highlights -2. The idea is that the custom curve is more controllable than setting contrast to -2. Never use auto WB as rather than setting wb once at the start of the shoot (as most other cameras I've used do), it will continuously vary the wb throughout the shot. NR to off. You have to shoot with the mode dial on "movie", as it is the only way to lock exposure (yes, even in manual mode, exposure doesn't lock in video for some reason). Unfortunately movie mode is a kind of baby mode that gimps the best features of the u.i: 1. it removes the exposure meter from the display (why, Olympus why??). 2. it overrides your custom settings for the down button and right button. I have these set up for one touch access to ISO and WB, the same as on a Panasonic. This setting is only recognised in the photo modes. 3. it replaces the fantastic quick menu that the photo modes get with a stripped down menu that doesn't include, for instance, picture styles. So you have to jog the dial round to one of the PASM photography modes if you want to see the exposure meter, check which picture style you're using, have one touch access to wb ISO etc etc. For photos, the UI is absolutely perfect. For video, it's gimped, for no reason that I can fathom. There's nothing remotely deal-breaking of course, but it will come as a bit of a shock coming from a Panasonic, which has a wonderful UI for videographers. Of course, perhaps all these UI complaints were fixed on the E-M1. I'd be very interested to hear. To maintain 180 degree shutter, shoot at 1/60. This will make electric lighting flicker in 50hz environments though, so use 1/50. Honestly, I don't think you will be able to tell (did you watch my video on one of the OMD firmware threads that mixed 1/50 and 1/60 shutter? Could you see a difference?) If you retime 30p footage in a 24p timeline, you'll get a nice 80% slow motion effect. I'm not sure that you'd want to put it in a 25p timeline, but presumably it would be 83 and a third % slow mo.