KnightsFan

I'll be honest, when I saw your topic title, I was legitimately hopeful that it was actually good, because as much as I dislike Disney, I am all for any movie being enjoyable. Now I'm sad. However, I read the comments on the trailer, and they got me smiling again, so there's that.

Agree with what everyone has said regarding there being many poor looking film movies that we forgot about, many great looking digital movies, and everything in between. I believe a better thesis would be, "movies looked better before smartphones were invented" A big reason that mainstream movies look bland is because they are no longer designed for a giant screen in a dark theater, nor even on a big flatscreen in your living room. They are increasingly consumed on 6" screens in broad daylight (as well as theaters and living rooms). Now to go on a sight tangent, the same can be said of writing. Often when I talk to friends, they'll say, "oh yeah, I saw that movie. It was on netflix in the background while I cleaned my house" To some degree, it's not that writers are worse, it's that modern writing is designed to be consumed at 50% attention with chunks missing. The percent of audience that watches every second at full attention is simply getting smaller. I don't believe that shift has anything to do with filmmaking technology.

It's more depressing than embarrassing being American. Helplessly watching government institutions crumble one by one. Republicans have become the doublespeak party, talking about rule of law while favoring criminals, talking about freedom while banning parades, talking about balanced budgets while having the largest deficits, complaining about "mainstream media" from the largest broadcast company, and so on. And as much as Trump was the worst possible outcome, Biden being the actual candidate for so long shows that we have no one competent to turn to.

I don't know which settings CVP used for that shot, but if they weren't using DR extended mode, the 25 ms 16:9 FF mode is not far off from the S5II's 22ms. Now I've said many times in the past that rolling shutter is the only part of the S5's image that I dislike, so I'm totally with you in absolute terms, and I personally am willing to pay more to get faster readout. So yeah I think for me personally, I'd be willing to pay more for a stacked sensor competitor, but many people are happy with the S5II or even A7IV, so all in all it's not terrible, if you view the extended DR as a specialty tool rather than the default. That's my opinion anyway.

I obviously have zero hands-on experience with Sony sensors, but if it's like other computing hardware, the sensor's interface might use a timing input pin. Driving the clock past a certain rate is unstable, like overclocking a CPU, leading to Sony's nominal max rates. So maybe it's the exact same sensor, but Panasonic has opted to use a different clock speed, possibly to reduce heat or because the limiting factor is the processor that the sensor data is fed into. Higher clock speeds means more heat, so that's a likely reason Panasonic doesn't drive the sensor to its max speed. Agreed, outside of extended DR mode, RS is similar to the S1/S5/S5II. Overheating after 40 min of nonstop recording in >4K seems reasonable for a hybrid. I mean obviously a dedicated video camera like the FX6 or C80 is better for... dedicated video. But as a jack of all trades, the S1RII hits a lot of high marks for both photo and video at a great value.

Those are not great RS values, that is quite unfortunate. I hope they have an option to do the 15ms and 7ms readouts in 24p, as extra options. And it looks like there is no timecode input, according to Newsshooter. So those are two things that a potential video-oriented model could still include and add value. Still, it looks like a great camera. I said it back when the GH7 came out, but the 32 bit float XLR module is a really excellent feature that, so far, is still unique to Panasonic. If they nail the rumored video app, it will almost certainly be a front runner for video in my book.

Haha in fairness, I liked the S9 as well, my main complaint also being lack of EVF.

I don't hate the design philosophy. I like minimalist controls. When I'm taking photos for fun, I really only touch a couple controls: ISO, focus magnification, and shutter. I use a manual lens, shoot raw, and almost always use auto-shutter speed. I'd love an ergonomic camera with just those controls. As much as I love having 100 many options for serious projects, navigating camera menus with 27 overlay options and 15 AF settings really just makes my mind go blank when I'm taking my camera on a hike. As with the fp and S9, I personally cannot live without an EVF--I'd rather they ditch the screen and only have an EVF instead! And the angular design, while pretty, looks rather terrible to hold.

Maybe evidence Panasonic is saving that for a more video-centric camera? From the specs so far it's not a particularly video centric camera, but if they've gone through the trouble of making a video-first iPhone app, then probably there's another camera on the way. Certainly the rumor sites seem to think so. And while we're on the subject, a proper video monitoring app is huge! That is one of my absolute favorite features of Z Cam. We'll see if Panasonic deliver. If I can have wireless, full HD monitoring with reasonable latency on 2-3 devices simultaneously, that's an immediate, massive plus. I'm really hoping for a BS1H successor now!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveon_X3_sensor Tl;dr it captures RGB data at every photosite, instead of using a color filter array to capture RG or B at each photosite. Thus it does not require color interpolation, aka demosaicing, to reconstruct its color image. It's not as good as it sounds, however, because interpolating colors from the vertically stacked photosites is very complicated. The upside is less color moire, higher resolution per nominal pixel count, and arguably "better" color accuracy. The downside is that (with current technology), it has significantly lower SNR, sensitivity, and readout speeds.

So my gut is that it's not real, unless it's a very far-future "we have decided to begin development" kind of announcement, but just for fun... Sigma already makes a large number of APS-C lenses. Is it far fetched that they would make an APS-C foveon fp camera? Or maybe not foveon at all, with a sensor similar to the XH2S? This is pure speculation. It just seems odd for Sigma to make a competing L-mount announcement with Panasonic, unless it's a vastly different camera, or one that won't be available for a long time.

I'm definitely a "wait and see the official announcement" person, but some of these rumors are somewhat strange. 8K sensor with 6K60 raw? Maybe it only shoots raw in a crop, or maybe it also does 8k FF but not at 60 and the leaker doesn't mention that. Also curious whether "4k120 without crop" means it's line skipped, because that would be a shame. Although if it also includes 4k120 crop without skipping, that would be awesome. Anyway, it has my interest, so looking forward to the announcement!

Or a box camera with 1st party accessories to make it camcorder-like. Take a BS1H body, add a new side handle with full control, a single cable USB C monitor (or compatibility with Blackmagic's!), Panasonic's existing XLR module, and you've got a similar setup to a C400, ergonomically. All that's missing are ND's, which require a bigger body--not that I mind!--or some kind of eND adapter for EF/PL lenses. Of those, ND's are probably the only one that's particularly difficult to develop, if Panasonic thought they had the market for it.

Even with extremely good technology, there is still an artistry and subjectivity in image creation. No cinema camera aims for "color accuracy above all else." Arri wants their images to look Cinematic--and at this point in time, many cinematographers' taste has been developed specifically by Arri's colors. Sony might have a choice between spending millions on user testing, expert opinions, and fine tuning, OR they could save all that money and probably not take much of a sales hit. Fwiw, I have never liked Sony cameras in blind tests, however, I love Panasonic's S1 and S5 even compared to Arri. So I actually don't even believe that "expensive" cameras always look better. I also don't believe Sony is incapable of making more or less identical colors to the S5. Maybe they decided keeping the same pipeline is a better business investment, or their product managers prefer the Sony look out of pride, or different taste--or maybe I'm simply not their target audience.

I'll put my conspiracy hat on for a moment. Maybe BM knows about imminent competition, and want to get a few more sales out before that happens?

I saw that! What a deal--priced under the C400 even. I wouldn't be surprised if the kits come down in price to match.

Well there are certainly paths to limit AI's improvement, such as nuclear war or catastrophic asteroid impact. And eventually we will run out of resources, but a lot of poor people will die of hunger before resource limits affect AI. I don't even think legal limits will have any long term affect either. Sure if the US bans AI development and stops Google, OpenAI, etc, there will be setbacks. But other companies in other countries will step up. If you look at all of human history, technology has always improved, and always improved at an increasing rate. I don't think there is much reason to believe that the trend will suddenly stop.

So are you saying that AI generated video will never become indistinguishable from real video? Its still obvious in most cases right now, my point as that it will become better. CGI is difficult to keep improving because it's largely a manual process. Some CG artists are very good, but many are not. It took decades for us to go from moving a cube across a screen to the very best CGI today, which takes enormous effort from large teams of extremely experienced and skilled people. AI generated video has gone from nothing to this ad in what, two years? And how many people were involved? And the same AI model will continue improving, and never retire. Even without improvements to the methods of training or reinforcement learning, imagine the output when it has 10x or 100x the training data.

*yet It's hard for me to believe that 20 years from now, AI will be unable to produce videos of any type that are indistinguishable from videos shot with cameras. It's an interesting discussion how much diverse training needs to be given to a model before its output is presumed original. I mean, we're all trained on images from other artists, and at the moment the primary difference is that our brains are way less adept at permanently storing precise information. And at this point, these models have ingested more videos than any of us have seen, so the inspiration is even more spread out than a human's. It's probably not that far off before some of these big companies start collecting training data straight from the real world, that combines binocular vision, audio, and other sensors into a combined stream, like our own.

1) With the caveat that I don't use AF, the Panasonic S5 is a wildly good value at $800 used (what I paid for mine). Imo, the improvement in noise and dynamic range over the GH5 is worth it, but if you're always in well-lit areas maybe you won't notice much benefit. If you aren't tied to existing lenses, camcorders can be more convenient than hybrids. I'm not familiar with available models since I don't shoot events, but I'd research camcorders for event videography with no photos. 2) C400 or FX6. The C300 Mk III is also fine--I choose full frame because of the lenses I own. It also depends on how much weight matters, as the FX6 is extremely light. If I need photos as well, then add a photo body in addition, and honestly everything is so good these days that I'd take anything modern. 3) Assuming 1-3 person camera crew, it depends on the script. My general pick right now for myself is a C500 Mk II (cheaper than a C400). I used to have Z Cam, which has unbeatable wireless monitoring and control, but I don't like the lack of color management support in Resolve. I would pick a Z Cam F6 if I need to fit the camera into tight spaces. If it's a lot of fast action like a car chase, a Komodo's global shutter would be great. The Ronin 4D is also very interesting for extensive handheld--never used one myself, though. If I can step up in budget, I'd love to try the Blackmagic 12k LF.

Agreed, that's why I don't think they'll update the S1H unless they have a new sensor. But it's always going to be the case that more specialized models will command a much higher price and have far fewer sales.

The obvious one is support for their 32 bit XLR module. But I agree that more features cost money, and people who expect a revolutionary step forward for $3k are going to be disappointed. I tend to think that the S1H successor will have a different sensor with faster readout and higher frame rates. Either that, or they will need to add non-image features like NDs, SDI, builtin XLR--and while entirely possible, I don't think Panasonic will move in that direction again.

I definitely agree that more SDR luts would be great. It would be nice if cameras could share luts with the same ease as using a new snapchat filter. Or if you could connect your camera to an ipad wirelessly and build the lut in real time using color correction software. There are so many UI/UX barriers to cameras still. However, for narrative projects, I would never shoot anything other than a standard log profile anymore. I shoot in log on large projects because it allows a color managed workflow. If I shoot a scene one day, and then have pickups a month later, with slightly different lighting because it's cloudier--or with a different camera system altogether--log is very useful. Partly because of added dynamic range, but, more importantly, the shots are standardized to reduce the guesswork for adequately matching. I also shoot a kelvin white balance rather than balancing to a card for the same reason. Standardization is key.

Google's version looks good, too. I do think we're still a couple years off from good, reliable video generators for serious videos. 2025 will see a flood of "content creators" using it for sure, but gluing together multiple layers of neural nets and traditional programming into a cohesive unit will take some time. Image generators typically work on multiple abstraction layers, so the model has a concept of what a "cat" looks like inside a prompt "cat holding a beer." To solve physics and object permanence, I believe that video will need to have a concept of 3D space and objects in that space, and specific characters are conceptualized as a character that can be reused, etc. So I think significantly more work will need to be done on each layer of the network to get beyond making portraits with minor movement. Then of course going off my earlier comment, I think that a significant constraint for something like Sora is that it's designed to be used by absolute amateurs. Professional software, like an integration into Adobe CC or DaVinci Resolve, can expose more controls or even basic scripting (e.g. in Fusion) and expect users to reference a manual to learn it all. The user base for that is so much smaller, it will take more time to get there.

Which is why I mentioned Z6 III. For the R5, if you're comparing used prices, then I'll revise to "I won't complain about Panasonic cameras until Sony, Nikon, and Canon all have real next-gen FF sensors in $900 used bodies" The Nikon Z6 came out in 2018, and the S1 in 2019. Z6 III released this year, so if a Panasonic camera comes out with a similar sensor, then next year will have the same latency in terms of time-to-new-sensor.