Cliff Totten

You aren't kidding!! That IMX410 and any variant that Sony SemiConductor sells from it is a sledge hammer on Sony imaging company! I'm sure that Sony Imaging is crying to Sony SemiConductor saying "Guys!,...you are killing us here!" The important things to remember is that both companies have their own profit and loss books. Sony SemiConductor's financial contribution to the Sony parent company is far,...FAR more significant than Sony Imaging's right now. SemiConductor is the real true darling child of the parent company so they will continue to sell their best tech to anybody that will buy it. I do believe that SemiConductor DOES "protect" it's baby brother in some ways though. (Yes,..I'm sure they are closely communicating overall strategy on a regular basis. I don't believe they are "cut off" from each other as some suggest) I think that the Z6 and S1 will both do 4k in super35, not full frame. (It's impossible to have true "raw" 4k and full at the same time unless you line skip your 6k to sample 4k from it. I think that full 6k readout and scaling to 4k wouldn't really be "4k raw" collection. Not 100% sure but seems that way to me.) I suspect that the S1H's major upgrade over it's little S1 brother will be it's full frame raw 6k readout to a Shogun 7. So the Ninja V will do 4k raw and Shogun 7 will do 6k raw. Just my take.....will see soon!

Andrew,....IBC 2019 is next month. I'm certain that it's going to be a HUGE show this year for you guys on that side of the world. I think everybody is going to drop their bomb shell all at once there. A7S-III? IBC and NAB have always been the place for this model line. Lumix S1H - full launch with 6k raw over HDMI? Nikon Z6 - raw over HDMI firmware rollout. (Atomos has CLEARLY said they the are ready for HDMI raw protocol for ProResRAW recording,...they are saying that it's Nikon's developers that they are waiting on.) Sigma - Cine camera full launch with 4k or 6k raw announcement. Atomos Ninja V- Announcement of S1 and 4k raw (super35 frame) support for the Lumix S1 and Nikon Z6. Atomos Shogun 7 - Announcement of full frame 6k raw support for the S1H and maybe Sigma. CT

No, Sony PDAF is a dual pixel structure almost identical to Canon's dual pixel. There are twin photosites that use the space that a single standard image pixel uses. Sony is true "dual pixel" PDAF. Its not just Canon. CT

Its not a sensor lock or any hardware restriction, it's a "legal" contractual restriction. Sony believes that the industry value of their sensor is higher, the more feature liscensing modes you purchase. Its a modular sales contract. In theory, if you want to buy a Sony sensor for a photo camera "only" with no video use modes at all,...that sensor will be cheaper than if you purchased 10bit 4k 60p add on. That same sensor liscensing will now cost you more. (Brcause its industry value is now higher in Sony's eyes)

I know two people that are in the sensor industry. One of them has purchased sensors from Sony for his company. He is under NDA but he has told me that this is how Sony sensor liscensing works. Its not "buy a sensor and get everything" deal. You buy the sensor and license what features you want. If you pay for and licence 8bit 30p and you turn around enable 10bit 60p....you get sued! Your license is specific and affects the price you pay. On the IMX410....we dont know if its that sensor! Why?....because that sensor has dual pixel phase detect architecture! That sensor requires pixel masking...that Panasonic says they HATE doing and wont do on a Panny camera. (Part of their excuse as to why the "prefer" contrast detect AF...even though every moden camera makes the dead pixels on every sensor today) Maybe it is a IMX410 variant with the dual photosite grid removed in the die. We will never know untill Tech Insights x-rays it. The HILARIOUS thing is that every year at NAB, the Panasonic booth continues to say that the GH5 and GH5-S are "Our sensors that are made by Panasonic"....yeah right! Nikon says this too! Why do camera companies HATE admitting they are buying common Sony sensors for their cameras? Is it really THAT embarassing?

Nikon didnt catch Sony off guard. Nikon Z6 is a Sony IMX410. When Nikon purchased the sensor, they would have paid for the 10bit liscensing cost in the contract of sale. When you buy a Sony sensor, the functions you get are negotiated in the contract. So 8bit 4k 30p = $$ AND 8bit 4k 60p = $$$ and if you liscense 4k, 60p 10bit, your cost is $$$$$. The chip cost is higher as you add higher feature liscenses from Sony. The big question is: Did Panny go with an IMX410 for the S1? Or did they avoid Sony complety and go with Samsung? If Panny went with another sensor supplier than Sony was TRULY in the dark over what the S1 and S1H were going to have. If Panny DID buy Sony, than Sony was 100% aware of what Panny was building maybe a year ago or longer.

It's funny. Zillions of people are waiting and waiting for the A7S-III. Its like Charlie Brown in his field waiting for the Great Pumpkin! The A7S-III is HERE and it's right under everybody'nose! It has: Full frame sensor (Very likely Sony Exmor) 6k full pixel readout to 4k scaling 14+ stops of dynamic range 10bit 4:2:2 4k with clean HDMI out 4k 30p 4:2:2 full frame no time limit internal recording. 4k 60p in "Hollywood" Cine super35 frame size. Full size HDMI with 4k raw on the way. Waveform scopes Huge battery Varicam color science....so delicious!!! NO OVERHEATING! Boom!.....that's 99% of what we wanted in the A7S-III....yet nobody is paying any attention to the S1 yet. (Only some people) The S1 should be the industry talk of the town but too many people seem to be unaware of it still. Sony is going to target the S1, not the S1H. I dont know if they can match the S1 using their tiny A7 bodies but lets see how far they go. S1H?....haha...Sony wont touch it! With 6k raw, Its going to be WAY over spec'd for Sony to even attempt to try. They dont have the bawls and XDCAM + Sony internal politics will never allow Alpha the chance.

Its funny. These BBC and Netflix requirements are somwhat silly. They want content at these specs but its impossible to even DELIVER that same content at even 1/4 of what they are asking for! I have been working at the same global media company for 23 years now. (Our social media policy strictly forbids me to say the name as I'm not an offical representative...I will just say that we are showing a ton of sharks on your TV right now) We also have very high deliverable standards too from our vendors. The problem is that we broadcast in 1080 at 12-14 mbps. Cable affiliates take tha in and turn arround and recompress us to 8mbps for their cable systems and even lower if you have DirecTV. There goes all that high quality 4k standard! It's all WASTED on delivery! Netflix gave the EVA1 clearance. The S1 matches the EVA1 in DR and completely destroys the EVA1 in signal to noise ratio! Aside for rolling shutter, the S1 is phenominal in VLog.

I agree with Andrew on this. VLog on the S1 is friggin' spectacular. It destroys the A7S, A7S-II, GH5, GH5-S and beats the FS7 with no trouble. Showdows are clean in VLog, even with noise reduction turned down to zero, there is so little noise even at 2000 ISO...even in pitch black night! (Thank you Panny for giving us actual noise reduction control!!!...I doubt Sony will ever allow that) My A7S-II used to be my "go to" low light camera but this S1 destroys it. The A7S-II's 8bit readout was always "splotchy" as Hell in the shadows and would clip the blue channel WAY to easily in SLog-3. The S1? No way,...its shadows are smooth as silk. Just super clean and highly detailed in VLog. V-Gamut protects each RGB channel beautifully too! Tell me: WHO'S SENSOR IS IN THIS THING??? CT P.s......4k raw over HDMI is coming. I have a good source on this.

I dont see how Sony could make another A7S 8bit camera. Sony is pushing HLG as the future but BBC and NHK specifically call for all HLG to be 10bit in their spec. Sony is the only HLG out there still stuck in 8bit. Panny actually FORCES you to shoot HLG in 10bit. If Sony stays stubburn on 8bit only, Panasonic will throw a company wide celebration in all Panny offices! Sony Alpha "might" make XDCAM managers happy and only allow 10bit over HDMI and not internal. (This could also help Sony fight A7S-III heat too if they insist again on using the A7 small body design.)

The A7S-III is already here. It has; Sony BSI Exmor full frame sensor (highly likely) 10bit color sampling, internal and HDMI. 4:2:2 150mbp/s 4k internal. 6k full pixel readout (6k to 4k oversampling) 4k 60p in "Hollywood cine" super35 sensor size. Full size HDMI port. No recording limit in 4k 30p No overheating whatsoever. 14+ stops of VLog Wave form scopes. LUT support Fantastic color science. 4k raw over HDMI is on the way. See?...the A7S-III is here today! But its Panasonic that made it, not Sony. Its called S1.

I was told at NAB that anybody can do a raw protocol with no legal problems. However RED has a big patent on "compressed" raw. RED tried to nail Sony on compressed raw patent violations but Sony legal fired back at RED on their own Sony pattent violations so RED backed down and let it go. Atomos officially went to RED and got permission to implement compressed raw with ProResRaw so they are in no danger. However, I was told that BlackMagicRaw is a giant patent question mark at the moment. Nobody knows for sure that BlackMagic wont get sued by RED on this one. They might be OK...but tbey also might not. Atomos is VERY interested in this issue for more reasons than just that alone. ?

It seems to me that these reatail upgrade boxes should never be "out of stock" anywhere. Its not like Panasonic us unsure of how many boxes to print and package. Currently, this is nothing more than a 1:1 product for every S1 already sold to date. So, if Panasonic has already sold 3500 cameras world wide, they need to print a bare minimum of 3500 upgrade boxes. If Panasonic knew they sold 5,000 cameras but only printed 3,000 boxes and were sold out...I'd be FURIOUS at Panasonic.

With HDR and HLG becoming more and more common, I'm certain that 10bit will keep moving down the consumer ladder. In order to do HLG "properly" as its white papers say, it needs to be 10bit. Currently, only Sony does HLG in 8bit. The market forces are changing and 10bit will be the new standard for most Alphas and XDCAMs in the future. Im sure the A7S-III will be 10bit. Otherwise, it's going to be dead on arrival.

Ehhh...maybe. However, I think the industry is demanding full frame right now. Micro 4/3 is fine but a huge number of people are looking at large sensor. Even the Sony Venice broke from the Hollywood standard of super35 and went full frame. Plus, this JVC will need to compete with the Nikon Z6, Lumix S1, S1H and future Sony A7S-III. Its going to be hard to steal those people away with a super35 sensor.

Sony has it's superb IMX410 full frame sensor on the market. Its used in the A7III and Nikon Z6. (And possibly Lumix S1 but not verified yet) If JVC can get Sony to sell it to them, they would immediately have a fully competitive cine camera on that chip alone. If they put it into an LS300 body with ND and 10bit color? If they worked with Atomos on HDMI raw? If they priced it at $4,000? Huge winner fir JVC!! They would undercut Sony, Canon and Panny easily. CT.

Andrew....here is a crazy thought; We know that the Z6 uses a Sony IMX410 with PDAF photosites. I wonder how much "help" that Sony SemiConductor gave Nikon on PDAF software and new lens communication protocols. "Could" Nikon have paid Sony as a co-designer of their Z system? Is it "possible" that Nikon's PDAF and lens protocol are literally virtually identical to Sony's code? If so.....how difficult would it be to "pass through" Nikon's PDAF and lens coding to a Sony lens that "might" be the identical language? I wonder if TechChart figured that out and made a somewhat "pass-thru" adapter that requires only minimal translation? Nah......that's crazy talk. Sony SemiConductor would never allow itself to work that closely with another camera company. Im sure Nikon would also refuse to take help from the leasing PDAF developer and seller in the market today too. Nikon just licensee Sony PDAF sensors, they would never pay for any servises from Sony beyond a sensor. Forget I said this....

One of THE most important questions is; Who's sensor is going in this thing. Everything starts with a great image sensor. If JVC can buy Sony sensors, right off the bat they will have a camera that wipes out BlackMagic's super35 cameras.

But how do current S1 owners get it on July 8? Is it still going to be a retail box? Are we supposed to get a voucher? Will it just be a simple web site login and upgrade until Oct 1 arrives? Its all a mystery right now. We dont even know what bit rates we are getting.

This new camera is everything the S1 (with firmware update) but with the addition of; Same sensor? 6k internal recording. HEVC Possible electronic ND filter 400mbps All-I in 4k Vector and waveform scopes 60p 4k from full sensor readout. (Instead of super35 crop) USB-C solid state drive recording? $1,000-$2000 more money? For raw, I was told at the Atomos NAB booth that S1 raw 4k 1:1 super35 crop IS absolutely coming over HDMI. The big question is, will the S1-H have that PLUS 6k raw?

Andrew, one thing that everybody missed is that Panny crippled all audio at 128k AAC! The audio sounds OK, but its so highly compressed that when you upload it to YouTube, they will re-compress it heavily again! No way to avoid this. (128k source crushed a second time by another 128k YouTube pass over) The S1 has the WORST audio compression of any high end camera that I'm aware of. Worse than any GH camera...or Sony Alpha,...or Sony Cybershot....worse than even a GoPro. This was a shameless stunt by Panny. Yes, you DO get linear PCM audio with the paid firmware update but a stock S1?....yeah, I'm sure Panny marketing managers are even laughing at us on this one!

The EVA-1 never was a Lumix or Varicam branded camera. Its also a single revenue stream product with body only sales. Panny makes zero money off that Canon EF mount. An EVA-2 with L Mount will be a two stream money maker with bodies and now lenses. Could Panasonic be moving the EVA-2 into the Lumix branded consumer/prosumer catagory? This same leaker said it was a cine "dream" camera and that it was built "like a tank". Does this sound like an S1 body?

I had read years ago that Sony also traded pattents with Canon with dual pixel sensor construction for PDAF usage. They got part of Canon's pattent and Canon got Sony's on sensor A/D conversion pattent.

Tech Insights, at some point is going to X-ray the S1 sensor and identify what it is. Right now, it ver suspiciously looks like a Sony IMX410. (Sony A7-III and Nikon Z6) "IF" it turns out that is an IMX410, Panny is in deep shit. Panny says they dont like phase detect AF because they are very against masking the PDAF photosites. If they are buying an IMX410...they MUST mask those photosites! "If" this is the case, they masking photosites AND not using the phase detect array at the same time. The only conclusion we could draw....is that Sony simply wont liscence PDAF to Panasonic. By the way....every sensor on planet Earth has dead/defective photosites. A 24 million pixel sensor could literally have several hundred or more dead photosites that the read out system automatically masks out anyway. Photosite masking is a normal process on all cameras. Panasonic says they are against it...but they do it like everybody else does.

Sony will liscence phase detect AF on their sensors to Olumpus and Nikon with no trouble. But,...there is no way they will EVER liscense it to Panasonic. They will say, "we are happy to sell you our sensor and even liscence you 4k 30p and 60p in 10bit....but we will force you to keep contrast AF only....no PDAF for you!" To my knowledge, the only phase detect AF cameras on planet Earth are Canon cameras....or. any other phone or camera that buys Sony sensors. That's it, if you are not Canon than you get your PDAF through your Sony sensor liscense and contract of sale. Panny is deliberetely left out in the cold. They dont "believe" contrast detect is better...no, the truth is that Panny has no choice in the matter.