kadajawi

There's no reason why Canon would market the camera at pros, with the intention of disappointing them. You make a customer spend thousands on a camera that he then realizes is useless for his task. Do you think he'll say... oh, in that case I'll buy an even more expensive camera from this brand? I think most people will boycott the company that has fooled them. As for 47 degrees or whatever being perfectly fine, as CPUs can hit 95 °C... erm, no? There are chips which will have no issues with that, there are chips that do. Also, you have no idea at which point of the camera the temperature is taken. The sensor could be so far away that if at that place 47 °C is reached, parts of the chip are boiling. Also, pumping out the heat to the casing/accepting high temperatures (say 95 °C) is a bad idea that no manufacturer in the right mind would accept on a mobile device. There'd be lawsuits. It boils (no pun intended) down to this: If the CPU heats up to nearly 100 °C, and the heat is immediately transfered to the casing, it is transfered to contact points. Best case scenario, the screen is used to dissipate heat, which damages the screen. Worst case: The photographers/videographers hands are burnt. I have a Samsung tablet where the heat output when not used in the keyboard casing is reduced. The CPU is throttled to roughly 1.1 GHz, vs 2+ GHz. Why? If the tablet is not in the casing, it is probably in the hands of the user. Allowing it to hit 90 °C would be BAD. Another example is the MacBook Pro, Retina vs Touchbar version. The Retina is better at dissipating heat, however, hot air was blown over the screen, leading to discoloration on some devices. So Apple has fixed it by only piping heat to the rear, downwards. Unfortunately depending on how you use it this blocks the cooling solution. In any case, notebook manufacturers try to keep touch points cool enough, even if letting them get hotter it would mean better performance. But how about a camera? Which parts are not considered touchpoints? Would you be willing to accept skin burns? Really, it seems like Canon should have been using heatpipes and a small fan. However that'd be bad for sealing, the camera would be bigger, etc. Or, more likely, Canon shouldn't offer these features internally in the first place, even if the camera would be capable enough.

I haven't read through the whole thread yet, but did anyone notice that if the camera is held too stable (but not stable enough), the SR will turn off? ie. completely handheld at 200mm... smooth as a baby, almost, although the framing may wander around. But rest the hands on, say, a table, and hold the camera from there, and the camera will turn off SR with no (?) way to turn back on except shaking the camera quite a bit. When doing that, the image will be quite jerky. It's pretty bad. Or say you have it on a tripod that isn't the smoothest, and you try to turn the camera. Then it will jerk around instead of having the SR smooth it a little.

The NX1 is already a very advanced camera, and, sadly enough, there won't be successor the hacks can be ported to. IMHO Pentax is a more worthwhile target. They have a FF sensor for the price of a NX1. They use the same processors Nikon uses, so raw video seems to be a possibility. Add the fact that their higher end cameras feature 2 SD slots, dramatically increasing write speed...? And that they have a very efficient SR system that just needs to be enabled during video? And lets not forget the headphone jack. There's plenty of potential for massive improvements that could turn their cameras into serious tools. Plus they will continue to release cameras based on these processors, so it isn't a dead end. And there are many beautiful primes for the system. Though I must admit the NX1 looks like it is pretty easy to hack. wow. Now THAT is user friendly :D

I'm a Pentax owner. As for video capabilities: Until the K-5 (launched 2010) Pentax cameras had SR during video. It worked very well. I like the look of the SR more than what Olympus is doing, although you can get away with more with an Olympus. Then they introduced electronic SR, and it is easily one of the worst implementations of electronic SR. They call it movie SR, and apparently it is mentioned somewhere in the official documentation or so that the K-1 has that. Movie SR does not even make use of the sensors the camera has, so it tries to detect movement by the image. a) there is always a crop. Even when deactivating Movie SR. b) What you see on the display is not what you'll get in the file. c) Massive rolling shutter amplifier. d) Random motion blur. e) Wobbling lower half of the image. For years I and others have been complaining to Pentax, and for years Pentax ignores it. When asked, Pentax said that the SR mechanism creates noises, and thus they deactivate it for video. Stupid explanation, there's always the option to use external microphones and recorders (plus the SR mechanism on my K-5 is barely audible during recordings... only when it is really quiet in the room it gets picked up). I'd greatly appreciate any support in convincing those fools at Ricoh/Pentax to re-enable IBIS, because it is gorgeous, it works very well (you can see it in action in live view...). Another issue with Pentax is that bitrates are rather low, and the encoder they use isn't good. Basically a same bitrate file out of a Panasonic or Sony or Samsung will look better. No idea if it has improved, I have my doubts cause the video specs sound exactly the same as their older cameras. Same processor perhaps. As for the mount and lenses... Pentax has amazing lenses, some of the best ever made. Especially their primes are top notch. IMHO with activated SR/IBIS, a flat color profile and higher bitrates it would still be a wonderful camera for videos. The sensor will be fine I think and that flippy screen looks like it is rock solid and really useful (and which other FF DSLR has a flippy screen?). In terms of ergonomics Pentax beats Sony and Canon hands down, and is IMHO even better than Nikon. The body will be weather sealed, and properly so...: These things are tough as ..., and reasonably sized.

I mostly agree with you there. I don't think we could have a Klaus Kinski these days... However HSBC? There is nothing about that bank that needs to be saved. There were plenty of investigations into that bank that pretty much ended up with showing it was Satan itself, that it supports drug cartels, terrorist groups and other enemies of the US, and the only reason why it was allowed to go on was because it's too big to fail. It has a ton of blood on its hand. The bank needs to go away, and it's staff need to be investigated and put into prison.

​Pentax DSLRs aren't exactly bricks either... for what they are they are small and light. I think they are trying to spread their wings, cover different segments. The K-S1 is aimed more at people who don't want a serious looking camera (which can be an advantage... you won't be kicked out trying to enter a concert for example, security guards won't see you as a threat, ...). The K-S2 is a mix between that and a serious camera, finally with a flippy screen and built in WiFi. Then there's the new full frame Pentax, which looks pretty bad-ass, including some big, heavy and expensive new lenses. They are on a roll! (And I can't wait to get my hands on that pancake kit lens...). As for zoom lenses and SR... if the lens can communicate the focal length to the camera, it should be able to adjust just fine. My Pentax stutters a bit while zooming, but otherwise no problem. Otherwise you have to go to a menu to change the focal length in steps (it's a bit flexible). The further you get away between real and entered focal length the less effective does it become, compensating too much or too little.

The video looks great (what has loaded so far). That SR is magic. But if it is SR you want, maybe you should start reporting about Pentax and make a fuss? Up until their 2010 Pentax K-5 (and the mildly modified II and IIs that followed) Pentax had SR in their bodies. Similar to Olympus. Not quite THAT good, but in turn you get a larger APS-C sensor. They also had MJPEG with 80 Mbit, and a rather filmic look. There were some downsides, like lack of full manual controls and hot pixels that appear over time, but the codec is wonderful, and the shake reduction too. I can get reasonably smooth video while walking, completely handheld. At 50mm. It doesn't stabilize to such buttery smooth levels as the Olympus seems, but it's more organic. It looks a bit handheld, but without the rough edges, without the jittering. Like a much heavier camera sitting on the shoulder perhaps? Then Pentax decided that the SR is too noisy (I think they got that idea from dpreview, hint: It isn't, it's barely audible in a quiet room, let alone in the real world) and replaced it with useless digital IS. They also switched to h264, which looked bad. However they use pretty much the same processor Nikon does (just, at the moment, older iterations), and they use the same sensors Nikon does, so in terms of image quality they can compete. They just need to activate SR and maybe re-enable MJPEG, for the situations where you'd want that. So let them know, make some fuss, and who knows? The K-3 successor showed they care for video, just that they don't have a clue about it. Why else would it have a headphone out with manual gain?

1. What you list as a problem... meticulous planning... can also be seen as a big advantage. Many advocates of shooting film (stills) say it improves the quality of their photos, because instead of aim, spray and pray they are forced to make sure the shot fits. I imagine this can also lead to sloppy film making, to the crew thinking "meh, so what if I screw up". For some movies the spray and pray approach is ideal, for others not. I also disagree with what you say about dynamic range. You can push films in ways you can't do with digital, and it doesn't fall apart at the extremes the way that digital does. 2. What about archiving? Archiving digital is very expensive, difficult and requires constant attention. As long as you store film in a decent location you can basically forget about it, it will last almost forever (compared to digital). With digital you have to keep moving the files every few years. That's a process that will only be done for movies that are seen as bringing in profit in future.

Canon is profitable because they are the default choice by people who don't know much about cameras, and because many people have already bought into the system and are reluctant to switch (yet). Seriously, I've seen billboard ads in foreign countries that can be translated as "Canon. Duh." or "Canon. What else?" Pentax is doing the same as Canon on the video market (their DSLRs are all technically capable of pretty decent in camera stabilisation, yet they haven't activated it on any new camera since 2010 or so (previous ones had) giving the reason that it is too noisy... I happen to have the last one that had the feature, and one barely ever hears it... and that is with the built in microphone). The difference is that Pentax doesn't have a built in audience, nowhere near as big as Canon at least. And it shows. Sony has long overtaken them it seems, Panasonic too, Samsung will eventually... Keep in mind that Pentax used to dominate the SLR market. They were everywhere. But lack of going with the times technologically, not catering to professional photographers etc. has put them in a position where people are suprised that they are still making cameras. Sony and Panasonic are struggling probably because their other businesses are not doing too well (sadly... the X9005B is the only LCD TV that can even come close to a plasma... and the best plasmas were made by Panasonic, who have stopped making them). I wish Pentax would talk to you, Andrew, but unfortunately they are completely oblivious to the wishes of video shooters... despite their intention of catering to that market (why else would their flagship APS-C camera have manual gain and a headphone jack?).

Encoders at this point are probably realized in hardware, there's no way they can integrate a general purpose processor that is able to encode h264 or h265 video in real time. So perhaps it may lack a h264 encoder that is strong enough for 4K (though h265 builds upon h264... I'm only speculating here). Just transcode... Intel processors have a pretty reasonable and extremely fast h264 encoder built in, though I'd rather use something like ProRes if possible. You can always delete the transcoded files after the project is finished, and keep the small original files. When you do need to revisit the project you can transcode again.

Don't hold your breath on OLED monitors. They aren't going to happen any time soon. OLED has pretty heavy burn in issues, which make them useless for use as a computer monitor. Cost wouldn't even be that much of an issue anymore, Samsung has a 10" (?) tablet that uses an OLED screen, and it isn't that expensive compared to comparable tablets with a LCD screen.

@pietz: 10 bit h264 does exist... in the Anime fansub world it has been used for the past 3 years, and Sony's XAVC does support 10 bit, and AFAIK some of their cameras do use it. XAVC is h264, though with a rather sophisticated profile that is quite efficient. I agree that h264 has a ton of potential, but requires a lot of processing power to utilize it. It's the same with h265, just that the potential is even higher. How good the encoder in the NX-1 is remains to be seen, of course, but there's potential. In any case I think we're much more likely to see proper hardware decoding support for 10 bit h265 than for 10 bit h264...

10 bit XAVC is a bit of a problem, AFAIK, when it comes to editing. I don't think Premiere CS6 can take it, and there are no hardware decoders available for it, nor will there ever be (probably... 10 bit h264 has been around and in use for at least 3 years, and hardware makers have had absolutely no interest in making their decoders decode it in hardware). So the load on the processor is pretty high... might as well use 10 bit HEVC/h265, which has a higher chance of being properly supported. Any chance of you releasing that Canon interview, Andrew?

Another great review site is prad.de. As for this monitor... I'd normally recommend having a look at Korean brands apart from Samsung and LG, like for example Yamakasi, Crossover, Shimian, Wasabi, ... They usually offer pretty great panels at ridiculously low prices, like the panels Apple uses in their Cinema displays. However I've only seen a Wasabi that has 4K, and that's using a TN panel and isn't much cheaper than the Samsung. Not really worth it then. But I'm sure they'll come. TN has come of age lately, IMHO, they are not that bad anymore. And I'm personally not a big fan of IPS, I have an old HP LP2465 that is equipped with a S-PVA panel, and I like it a lot. Viewing angles are great, there's little backlight bleed, it can get really bright, despite being used a lot already, colors etc. are good...

@Andrew: Only 8 bit h264 is supported by hardware decoders, however XAVC allows for 10 and 12 bit h264, and, if I'm not wrong some Sony cameras do make use of 10 bit h264 files. Hardware makers must have known that for 3 years 10 bit files are in use, but they never bothered adding support for that. I doubt that will change, ever. On the other hand, h265 IS going to be supported, and from the start does higher bit depths. I would not be surprised at all if "official" content is delivered with 10 bits, and thus there is a big incentive for hardware manufacturers to accelerate that sort of content. I wouldn't even be surprised if, to be able to be called HEVC capable it is required to support higher bit depths. In any case, someone has to start... and that someone seems to be Samsung. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 btw. does support HEVC, AFAIK, and other new-ish smartphone chips should too.

h265 is the future, and from the start supports higher bit depths. So I would be extremely surprised if the next generation of editing software and GPUs won't support it, including perhaps 10 bit files. This thing is straight from the future, so right now support may not be that great. But that will change. Maybe you shouldn't buy one right now, but... In contrast Sony's XAVC does support 10 bit h264, and some cameras produce it AFAIK, but hardware support? I really doubt that will happen at all. If only this thing had built in stabilization...

We will see graphic cards that can natively decode h.265, possibly at higher bit depths too. h.264 will probably never get hardware decoders that can decode the 10 bit version of it, so it is very taxing on the CPU. I wouldn't worry too much about being able to decode h.265, even if the current generation might be unable to have it hardware accelerated. The advantage of BSI seems to be that you can create as many pixels as you wish without losing sensitivity, and when you downscale the image you'll get the same sensitivity as you would on a lower res sensor. i.e. at least on the stills side it's the best of both worlds. Being able to capture great 40 MP stills when there is plenty of light, and clean 12 MP stills at high ISO when there isn't. Readout speed is a problem though, and rolling shutter. We'll have to see. But this is a very interesting camera, IMHO. You don't have to go for a small mFT sensor.

Can you please, I beg you, please! interview someone from Pentax too? The only one who seems to bother is that guy from the Pentaxforums, and his opinion is that video is completely unimportant and thus he doesn't ask about video at all. Giving Pentax the impression that no one gives a f***. Most of all I'd like to know from them all of what you ask Canikon + why the hell they have deactivated in body video stabilization for video recording (in live view it is still active and working great!) (feel free to mention Olympus having in body stabilization and how that is a very big deal, and how they are upgrading their cameras after they were launched). Also why the awful codec, low bitrates, ... why no MJPEG if they can't do anything better, how unimportant video is to them, if they have noticed that some professional photographers do need to shoot video too for work.

Not going to try watching this on my laptop, but as for resolution: Last year I was in China, and in a normal electronics shop pretty much every TV at 50" or above was 4K. You can't even buy non-4K TVs! Also there are more and more laptops with > 1080p screens, tablets with higher resolutions, etc. Soon enough any device you buy will have that sort of resolution, like most TVs had 720 or 1080p despite no one having a Blu Ray player or a HD capable receiver. 4K does look great. It's nice not being able to see any pixel on a screen. That being said, it's a shame that plasma had to die for 4K. I'd take a 1080p plasma from Panasonic over any 4K TV. ANY. As for codec... I doubt VP9 is any better than h265, apart from the licensing thing. There have always been claims that VPx is better than h26x, and nope, not true.

So I guess that ugly "video-look" of the a57 is gone? Sounds interesting.

That was a VERY jarring and striking scene because of that though. Yes, you CAN do it, but it will have a certain effect on the viewer, which may or may not be wanted (usually in cinema it is not, IMHO). Try to shoot a romantic wedding video like that... There's a reason why DoPs use ND filters at times to get down to a 180 degree shutter... because it tends to look better. Btw., if you watch Star Trek: TNG on Blu Ray, watch for the flybys of the Enterprise. They did motion control photography, and sometimes there is no motion blur, the model was completely stationary when they took the single photos. As a result it's stuttering like mad, and looks quite bad and awkward (it's great for taking stills though).

The $99 is only with contract, and the contract is very expensive. Now the 1020 is quite impressive (and expensive, around 450-500 Euro in Germany), but I doubt it comes anywhere close to a DSLR, despite the high amount of megapixels. They are only there to enable a digital zoom that is actually usable, cause there is just not enough space for a zoom lens in a phone (though I'd argue that the Sony T series of cameras is pretty damn small and thin, someone just needs to combine that with a phone... even if it ends up being a bit thicker). Also, if you spend $6000 on a camera you should fully be aware of what the camara is capable of. It's no secret that the D4/D4s are pure, specialized photography tools, for those who need speed. If you need video, buy a D800! It's still a very capable still camera, and it is good at video. And so will the successor be. Nikon has confirmed in interviews that they take the video market serious, though they may not release a pure video camera (yet). Olympus too seems to have realized the importance of video and is investing. Just give them time. I'm much more worried about Fuji and Ricoh Pentax, though Fuji has a nice market cut out for them, the Leica at 1/5th the price segment. They'll be fine. Ricoh Pentax though... @fuzzynormal: Good luck shooting 6K raw for wildlife... especially if you have to wait for the animal to appear. I could see it in combination with some motion detection system, or a "capture the past 3 seconds and the next 3 seconds when I press the shutter" feature. But constantly recording... Or maybe a "superburst" function. Totally going to happen, I believe Casio had something like that for a while in some of their cameras. You could just record while the shutter is squeezed (with some looking back into the past perhaps). Eventually we may get there, but it will take a long time. Also, at some point are photographers even needed anymore? Just point the camera at some place, press record. You can select the right moment later (instead of having to develop the skill of when to press the shutter), you can select the focus later and crop later. Great.

I doubt that pros shooting stills at 6K will happen any time soon. For sports photography, perhaps, if they are allowed to shoot video. But otherwise I'd take RAW stills over a video to grab a frame from any day. The amount of data is also way too high. What I do expect to happen is that it is expected that you can shoot stills and video. I doubt that it is about it being worth the effort, the D4S is simply a refresh of the D4, probably most of the camera is the same. And there is just so much you can get out of that old hardware that wasn't good for video in the first place. Besides, the D4S is more of a sports photographer camera anyway. Get a D800 instead, seems to make more sense... also since the target audience for that camera seems to be more inclined to have to shoot video.

According to interviews etc. they do understand. They also say that it is hard to get full sensor readout for such a big sensor, so aliasing is to be expected. Basically since this is just a mild facelift/update they only can do so much to the video functionality, and pray that people will still buy it while they work on the next generation camera which will hopefully be much more competitive. Meanwhile enjoy the D5300 and soon (?) the D7200.

Sounds exciting, but expensive. 2 axis stabilization would be fairly limiting. My camera has a 3 axis stabilizer, though in video mode it is only 2 axis. It certainly helps, but rotation is an issue. That should be stabilized too. Ideally one can also tilt the sensor, cause the inability to do so is quite noticeable on a 2 axis camera.