KnightsFan

If I had $1k to spend on a photo/video hybrid, I'd go with a used XT3. They are easy to find in the $850-$900 range. Directly compared to the NX1 (same sensor as the NX500), the XT3 has more detailed video, much more dynamic range, lower rolling shutter, much better ISO performance, and a larger variety of good color profiles, all of which look great. Photos have slightly fewer MP, but other than that there are no downsides for photography in my experience. I'm not a fan of the XT3's ergonomics, but I think it's pretty similar to the NX500. Samsung's menus are better though. The downside though is the screen doesn't flip out, so it's not ideal for vlogging. Having not used any of the cameras you listed: - Sony ZV1 and G7X have a fixed lens. That would be pretty limiting. If you wanted, for example, to have a macro shot in a vlog, any interchangeable lens camera can do that with a cheap extension tube, but you'd be out of luck with a fixed lens. - M50 has a massive crop in 4k. I would consider this a 1080p only camera. Canon's are usually pretty reliable and easy to use, but I wouldn't want a 1080p camera at this point, not for that price. - Sony A6100 might be okay, but I've really disliked the A6xxx series. But honestly not a bad option. I would rather have the NX500 than an A6100 though, to be completely honest. - Fuji XT200 would be good, if you want to save off the XT3. It has a flip out screen as well. This might be my pick from your list for vlogging and photography. Might want to check the AF performance reviews though, as that's not something I'm familiar with on this model.

The bolded part is the catch unfortunately. Definitely need to be able to monitor it. Also it's over twice the price per channel. Maybe worth it for remote monitoring and remote start/stop, but not for a glorified bodypack recorder. Might as well use a Tascam DR10 with the safety track.

He must have a quiet voice. Mine have hard clipped several times, not even really shouting but just with actors talking with a bit of force. And it appears that the gain settings are applied to the output, so there's no way to mitigate clipping at the transmitter at all. Hopefully. Either Rode or Deity. Seriously all the they need is 32 bit float recording on the transmitter and it's an instant buy, professional or not. I can work around everything else, internal storage/batteries, non-locking connector, and even the weird looping recording.

Good to know. That seems kind of pointless, to be honest. Some real baffling decisions have been made with this product. 32 bit... from a 24 bit source. Backup track... after it's digitally clipped at the transmitter. Well, so much for my excitement. This is another baffling design choice. Have you compared to the original Wireless Go? The original definitely does NOT keep from hard clipping an actor with a bit of energy. If they didn't fix that, then my guess is these aren't intended for anything other than interviews speaking at conversational levels.

Ah, that would be a pity. If true then probably won't be useful for me, as I've had no issues with dropouts in my use case. Though the safety track would get to the same place, if it can do that on the transmitter side. It just means that the data, whether 16 bit, 24 bit, or 32, has not been compressed, for example into MP3. If 24 bit (god forbid 16 bit!) then it will have the same digital dynamic range and potential clipping as other recorders, no matter what you export. Maybe it can autocombine the safety track? That would get the same results, but offloading processing from realtime into post, since that's what any 32 bit recorder does already.

If it has backup recording on the transmitter, then reliability won't be as much of a deal breaker. I have the Wireless Go I. They've been 100% reliable at short distances, but I haven't used them at their limits. I have found them to sound fine. I've never done head to heads, but the results I got were every bit as good as from G3's and UWP's with kit mics... though it's not a direct comparison since it was different conditions, different actors, etc. I guess the takeaway is that they aren't bad by any means, sound-wise. One big disadvantage is that there is no locking 3.5mm connector on Go's though.

Whoa... why was 32 bit not more prominent on the news sites? Definitely going to get one of these at some point if it performs well in reviews. I wonder if the ADC actually has the headroom to take advantage of 32 bit though. It's easy to clip the Wireless Go 1 and as far as I could tell, the gain on the original only affects the output from the receiver. I also wonder how they got around the patents though, but as long as it works and is legal, it doesn't matter to me! I assume some of those quirks, like the loop recording, have to do with it?

Oh wow, I assumed that it could only record when transmission was disabled and vice versa. But that quote makes it seem like it's simultaneous? Maybe if the time stamps of the files don't match it gets around the patent? It says it starts recording as soon as it's connected, so I guess that would mean no start/stop button. I have no idea though. I'm certainly going to look out for more information, because that's a crucial feature! Some of the news stories also mentioned safety track recording as well, but I didn't see if that was on the recorder or output from the receiver. If it can record normal and -20 db safety track on the transmitter, while transmitting... instant buy.

That's not my point at all. Ideally a class will provide the best equipment possible. It's just not feasible for many film programs to have enough "higher end" cameras for large classes. Having high fidelity cameras doesn't hinder an instructor from teaching or grading composition and lighting, and narrative if the class covers that. Meh, it's not that I really care since I'm not getting one of these either way, I just think that there's disproportionate dislike towards EF mounts, compared to what's actually useful. It feels like car snobs talking about how stick shifts are marginally better when most consumers just want to drive from point A to B.

@tupp By software failure, I mean that if you have an existing protocol, like L, and translate to another protocol, such as EF, there is the very real chance that not every lens and camera will work. For example, Viltrox's EF to M43 adapter can control aperture, but not autofocus. Some lenses don't work at all. Adapters between different manufacturers will always have that risk. RF to EF is much safer, since the same company could make firmware updates on both ends to fix bugs that they missed in testing. I think that RF would be the only good option. E, L, and M43 would have a very high chance of failure in some combinations of adapters and lenses. I also suspect Canon isn't licensing RF to Blackmagic. As for mechanical failure, adding support screws would solve it, but would also require 1st party adapters since there is no standard for it. Z Cam did it, to their credit. I just don't know if it would really sell enough extra units to offset the cost. How many people do you really think would have bought on in L mount, but not EF? If Sony allowed it, E might have added some sales since there are numerous E mount lenses, but if you're targeting users who use EF lenses... I don't think the EF mount is a big hindrance.

There's a large swath of people who just want things to work with absolutely no hassle. I have friends who are very good at making movies--better than me, in fact--and are making a living from their art, but would be unable to go on ebay and buy a vintage lens because they can't wrap their head around adapters, and would end up ordering something incompatible. And personally, if I'm adapting to EF anyway... I don't mind an EF mount. I see no reason to add another point of mechanical and software failure. The chances of me ever needing a different mount are vanishingly small. Given the option, I'd probably go with a shallower flange for the exclusive reason of boosting to FF, if I ever wanted to. I'm just saying it's not a deal breaker since I'm 99.9% going to using EF anyway. Yeah true, absolute beginner classes will be handing out fixed lens camcorders, not Blackmagics. But an intro to cinematography class, or anything beyond the "Intro to Film & Video" lecture definitely could. I worked on 4(?) undergrad/grad thesis films in the past 5 years that used blackmagic cameras, and every one of them would have had an easier time with the P6K compared to the 2.5k's and Ursa minis that we did use. I'm not sure it's useful either to first learn about front filters, batteries, rigs, and rigamarole. It's not necessary to learning the art of filmmaking, and it's certainly something that can be taught if there is an interest. It's like asking screenwriting students to start out with typewriters.

In my opinion, this looks like an absolutely wonderful camera for people who want good images without complex rigs. Most of us here are very tech minded and love adapters, and external rig parts, but I don't think this style camera is aimed at us. No adapters, no front-of-lens ND filters, no rigged batteries (if you use the grip), no external monitor or recorder. I'm sure many schools will be buying these. Simple enough for intro classes, don't need to teach students how to rig it up just to use it, but still makes great images. IBIS would make it more handheld-friendly in some cases, sure, but would also increase cost. I suspect IBIS requires more engineering, R&D, and QC than any feature Blackmagic has. Add IBIS and the price goes up. For any planned shoot, a gimbal does a better job anyway. Even a wide set of handles with good balance makes up for it.

If you see it in YouTubers' shots but not Hollywood shots with similar amounts of motion, then it's user error and not a problem of 24 fps per se. Certainly any time you put footage on a timeline with a mismatched frame rate you'll have problems unless you know what you're doing. I've shot a lot of projects at 24.00 fps, but they were shown in theaters on native projectors (nothing big, just screenings for friends, small festivals). On a proper projector it's pretty easy to see the difference between 24 and 30 fps, with the former feeling more like a classic movie to most people. So at this point, under proper conditions and with proper technique, there is certainly an argument to be made for 24 if you are trying to conjure a traditional movie impression. Once we move to 120 and 240 hz monitors though, the technical limitation will be gone and then any problems you see will purely be user error with mismatched settings, or bad technique. Then it will just be a question of the impression you want to give, 24 vs 30 vs 60, or even 120. With 240 hz you could even add 48 to that list of native formats. I do think we should move away from the fractional rates though... 29.97 instead of 30 is just annoying to think about. Probably because it's a lot easier to stare at a still image and painstakingly grade it than to let something play and evaluate the overall effect.

I'm curious @herein2020 if what you are seeing is judder (from playing 24 fps on a 30 or 60 hz screen) or something else. I've never been able to verify that I can see judder personally. Once 120 hz monitors are the norm, of course judder won't be an issue. I watched that drone video you posted, and at the 28s mark there is definitely something wrong. It's jumping all over the place without that much motion, so I would guess at operator error somewhere. Certainly dropping a 60fps clip on a 24 fps timeline will cause noticeable problems without good frame blending.

I did do a quick test. My process was to film a white wall as a 4k Raw clip, which I processed into a 4:2:2 10 bit uncompressed file. I then used ffmpeg to process the uncompressed video into two different clips with the only difference being the bit depth. I used 420 color and crf 16 on both. The two files both ended up roughly the same size. (8 bit is 3,515 KB, 10 bit is 3,127 KB). I applied a fairly extreme amount of gain, and white balance adjustment equally to all clips. I've included a 100% crop of the uncompressed, 10 bit, and 8 bit files. As you can see, the 8 bit has significantly more ugly banding than the 10 bit. As you can see, the 8 bit has some nasty banding that is not present in the 10 bit version. This is of course an extreme example to show a relatively small difference, but also it does get perceptually worse in motion rather than still frames. Also note that the PNG files themselves are 8 bit (which would match a typical delivery). The banding you see is from the color grading, as all 3 versions have been quantized down to 8 bit upon rendering. Moreover, the 10 bit is actually a 10% smaller file. I find 10 bit HEVC is consistently a smaller file size than 8 bit for better quality. The real benefit of more accurate sampling is that it allows more accurate processing throughout, from compression to coloring. On an related note, both the HEVC clips have lost all the grain and detail compared to uncompressed, which is very unfortunate. However, they are 1% of the file size so I can't complain too much! Edit: just look at the file names to see which pic is which

A decent test would be to shoot a scene in as high quality as you can, like uncompressed raw, and then export a 10 bit and 8 bit version with roughly matching codec and size from that Raw master, and compare those results. If you really want to isolate 10 vs 8 bit, export uncompressed videos with those bit depths. You will most likely see the biggest difference in scenes with smooth gradients in the shadow, particularly with big color grades such as incorrect white balancing, or underexposed scenes. Maybe I'll do some tests later today.

My camera owning plan for 2021 is an RTX 3080... It's hard to justify live action movies with Covid, so I've been doing animation instead. Hopefully my ticket comes up in EVGA's waitlist soon.

I'm glad you're bringing attention to this, @Andrew Reid, as everyone should at least be aware of who is tracking them and why. I have two Firefox addons, one is uBlock Origin for blocking ads, and the other is Blur for blocking trackers. I can confirm that the EOSHD main site has those two Google trackers (which Blur blocks), and the forum has 0. Blur blocks 9 trackers on SonyAlphaRumors even after opting out of cookies, and 67 ads are blocked. It's worth pointing out that even if you are okay with being tracked, the richest companies and people in the world make their money off analysis of your data. It's worth considering whether you want to freely donate your data (which YOU pay for with electricity and internet bills!) to the wealthiest people on earth.

@Andrew CalvettiI think it's a special order camera that you can buy directly from Z Cam or maybe some smaller dealers. I don't know if the original E2g ever got listed on B&H or any of the main retailers either. I'm not 100% sure, so the best place the ask is the Z Cam facebook group. Soltys had a "buy" link before but it's gone now.

Why would you set your display to P3 if you are grading for Rec 709?

Oh yeah, I was mainly replying to the post above me

It's continuous. Hold the shutter and it goes until you run out of card space--according to specs. I only ever used it for short bursts.

@fuzzynormalThat's a much better idea, shooting photos. Lots of camera can get nice, high fps. The NX1 can get to 15, I never thought to use it that way.

@kye isn't talking about undercranking though, right? He's talking about slowing down 24 fps. Speaking of Wong Kar Wai, didn't he use used the effect kye is talking about in Chungking Express? It's a nice effect for some scenes. I feel like it's used more for "impact" in action scenes as opposed to the "cool factor" or "rhythm" of normal slow motion, if that makes any sense. Long ago on my GH3 I did that trick with the shutter speed, but a lot of digital cameras don't let you lower the shutter below the frame rate. The Z Cam E2 can shoot any integer frame rate from 1 up to the max, and as a bonus the shutter angle setting always behaves correctly. I did some "retro" tests with 16mm crop mode and a few C mount 16mm lenses, in 15 fps.

The dongle must remain plugged in whenever the software is in use.