Video Hummus

AF is much improved and dare I say “impressive” compared to what we had on GH5 and the S1 and S1H on release. But 9/10? I would disagree and say its 7/10 but coming from the older system which I would have given a 4/10 or even lower then that is a very nice improvement. There will always be that pulsing wiggle on out of focus highlights. That’s just how contrast AF works. So you either 1) need to reduce the need to do the contrast wiggle to check focus or 2) make it so fast and so small that is becomes hard to perceive.

Eh, rumors sites need something to post but that would be shitty news indeed. Considering R5 is going to be sold out for awhile and that they are still trying to fix the disaster crippling shenanigans, it’s a good time to wait to see how the market shakes out. So they release a $1800 10-25 video focused lens with almost no focus breathing and a smooth aperture and are now transition GH line to vlogging? Sounds as confusing as that G100 release. IF true, the value of that lens is going to plummet. A lot of what Panasonic has done lately has me scratching my head. Release big expensive S1 and S1R only to release S5 (a camera everybody wanted the S1 to be in the first place). Claiming the S1 and S1R are pro cameras but are lackluster compared to competition imho). They better have a good firmware update for the S1 owner or they are going to piss them off royally. S1H is a big video beast with internal fan cooling but doesn’t offer FF 4K60p...LOL. Then comes the R5 with 4K120p, 8K and yes a horrendous cripple timer (that can be overridden) that seemingly can shoot hours of 8K footage with no problem at all???...all with autofocus in all modes with amazing tracking. Deary me, I’m sounding like a Canon fanboy already. Kinda sad I will be forced to go FF and use huge, expensive, FF glass. Oh well... And what the hell does mobility and high speed mean for a vlogger who can’t get their camera to focus on their face?

Panasonic...please. Arguably some of the best video orientated features in the business: menu, on screen info, custom mode buttons, IBIS, full v-log, with updated colors, robust anamorphic support and modes, decent wireless phone app, one of the best images in the game, balanced and non-compromised codec options, great handling and ergonomics with lots of custom buttons and very practical dedicated ones (WB, EC, ISO), robustly built, practical camera bodies. It’s all let down by the AF. All the hard work in all those other areas...completely destroyed by the AF. Unsold cameras because of the AF. The reason I’m hesitant to give you anymore money, and I’m sure I’m not along, is the pulsing AF. The tracking is much improved, great! Awesome step forward. DfD can work in some situations in a pinch and a few reshoots. But, I’m not going to drop $4000, $5000, $6000 on a system with shitty AF in 2020 and beyond. Not with so many other good choices. It just doesn’t make sense anymore. AF is now very, very useful and reliable (On Sony and Canon anyway) for 90% of what people want and MF is only a tiny switch flick away for that other 10%. The market has shifted. Your competitors now have 10-bit log with good color. AF in all modes including 4K120p slow motion and above. It’s time. I’m a huge Panasonic and MFT fanboy but you gotta do something different or your cameras will go unsold and your L-mount will fail. And that will, with all honesty and sincerity, be a sad day.

I think I’ve made up my mind. I’m definitely going to wait to see what Panasonic does with the GH6, see what Canon says about the C50/70, and Sony’s tiny FF FX6. But if the GH6 doesn’t have PDAF or any markedly improved real world AF performance improvements, I’ve decided I’ll go RF. If it is missing AF and doesn’t have internal ND, internal compressed RAW, or something to make up for it then the writing is firmly etched on the wall for MFT at Panasonic. Personally I think they need to do a L-mount GH6 With S35 sensor and somehow make it work to unify the system and “make L-mount the video mount” as they have said. Anyway...back to RF. The R5, now with latest firmware, is almost a tolerable hybrid camera for my uses. Thank you @Andrew Reid, @horshack, @mechanicalEYE, and many others for doggedly shining the light on the cripple BS. I am convinced if the pressure was not placed on Canon we would not have any firmware improvements at all! The release of these smaller (and more interesting imho) cinema series cameras from Canon has kinda sealed the deal for me. I could never justify spending $8-15K for a big Canon C camera body but 6K and below is more my territory. I fully appreciate more compact bodies. If Panasonic would have added PDAF to the S1H it would have been profoundly popular camera. And with more affordable Sigma RF glass coming and the boat load of used and cheap EF glass from Canon and Sigma, it just makes more sense.

But it’d S35 sensor with FF RF mount.

I haven’t given up on MFT. I have several thousand dollars in MFT glass. I will probably buy a GH6 if it is released. I will probably pick up a EM1.3 or a EM5.3 eventually. If I was to buy a FF camera I would prefer a Panasonic LUMIX since they are great cameras, but the latest AF is so good on the R5 and A7SIII that I would prefer a FF camera with AF. So unless Panasonic magically fixes their AF then its between Canon and Sony and I’m leaning Canon because I find the C70 and C50 interesting as video centric cameras and the R5 with all its flaws does have a great image. Hopefully they will sort out the terrible cripple BS they did to it (or give us something that isn’t crippled). I owned a A7III and that camera didn’t bring me any joy or excitement when I picked it up. I don’t know how to explain it. And I was one of the lucky ones to get one early because they were sold out for months! So Sony has technical chops but their camera’s just don’t speak to me. I’m crazy, I guess. But then I remember the world is literally and figuratively on fire and my business has been affected heavily and I stop thinking about spending money on new toys.

Which bodes well. If Canon releases a EF-RF speed booster you could get FF FOV with EF glass and native autofocus performance.

Olympus now gone. Nikon bumbled D6. AP going Sony only. I think its a toss up between Panasonic and Nikon exiting. Nikon would be a bigger deal. I’m still leaning towards Canon to actually buy my next camera from. With C70, C50, R5.

If this thing works I definitely want CFExpress on GH6 or any future camera. Or better yet, release a battery grip with a slot to take one of these larger M.2 SSD cards + extra battery.

I forgot the iPad Pro can handle R5 no problem! I’m actually pretty excited for the ARM based Apple silicon MacBook pros. If they have hardware acceleration then from a editing standpoint (with FCPX at least) they will be quite awesome. Pretty impressive chewing through 8K R5 footage no problem in a small device like that, add a bigger chassis, active cooling, higher clocks, and more cores...can’t wait! HEVC at around 200Mbps LongGOP and 400Mbps ALL-I with hardware acceleration is a sweet spot from a storage, image quality, and editing performance standpoint imho. Most of the benefits of AV1 are at lower bitrates so its an excellent streaming codec but I think its 5 years or more from going mainstream.

I like the size. I wonder if the C50 will be even smaller...still wish this thing was FF and with R5 internals with out the cripple clock BS.

The rumor that Panasonic might be re-structuring LUMIX is interesting. I don’t see it necessarily a bad thing, really. If they are getting out of cameras, so be it. The market is imploding. I don’t blame them. But they mention about partnering with unknown company for collaboration in expanding into the video space more with LUMIX. Who would that be? My guesses: Nokia or JIP/Olympus. JIP already saying they want to pivot to pro video...could be something there. I don’t know...I wonder if JIP gets a portion of the Olympus patents too related to OM-D cameras? Maybe JIP is willing to strike a deal with Panasonic in exchange for PDAF to help them with their “pro video ambitions”? Certainly Panasonic doesn’t see JIP as a threat to their own market. They are already have a relationship with Leica. Not sure what they could do there expect bring out some luxury leica branded video beast. Leica color and aethsetics and Panasonic internals? That’s what they did with the S1R and SL2.

Yes its pure speculation on my part. The fact that we don’t know why is strange in itself, don’t you think? Olympus is an old player, perhaps they had their finger in the pie and hence had some grandfathered in PDAF use license...who knows. And just to be clear, I’m not giving Panasonic a pass on DfD. I want more reliable autofocus. PDAF would give it to them right now so I am advocating they do that to fix their AF woes and camera sales. Now, if Olympus or JIP could somehow get 10-bit in their camera with their pleasing color science and partner with Panasonic to get good codec and video processing and a proper LOG format then they would have something compelling. They have the lenses. They have PDAF. They have good SooC color. They have the weather sealing and body design. They don’t have good menus (complete shite imo). They have lots of ingredients. Someone just needs to back the pie.

yeah, maybe I’m dense but I’m not sure I see why the Panasonic is better here? The color is pretty consistent up ETTR-6, but so is everybody else. Maybe someone can explain? Is it the fact that it’s only 150Mbps LongGOP and the others are high bitrate ALL-I? Panasonic I think has some of the most sensible and balanced Codec implementations out of all the camera manufactures. They are strong in this area for sure. I think Panasonic needs to go all in and bring the full VariCam V-Log color science to LUMIX. S1H is close but that said it was a “tweaked” color science from the VariCam. They just need to give us the real deal and be done with it. Why segment? They need to do more and more to stand out since all their traditional advantages are now standard features on their competitors. I find it funny Canon finally added 10-bit log and then crippled the fuck out of it with insane bitrates and editing performance. Maybe this will change in the future as hardware gets better but generally this space moves very very slowly because of codec patent prices and negotiations.

Not to mention Leica has said they “don’t have PDAF available to them” which makes me believe Sony has tight restrictions on PDAF patents. And the fact that other, old school camera companies such as Nikon, Fuji, Olympus have it has more to do with weird patent and technology agreements among those companies and perhaps Minolta in the past (or whoever acquired the original patent portfolio for it). Panasonic is a new comer in the camera industry, by a long shot, compared to those companies. And leica is a Germany camera competitor and we all know the Japanese vs German imaging battle that went on for years. Japan won the majority of the market. So I’m more included to believe that Panasonic is in the same boat as Leica and that they “don’t have PDAF available to them” so they built upon contrast based system. I’m not sure there are other ways to do focus except with lasers, or IR, or ultrasonic projection and apparently Panasonic doesn’t like those methods. It’s a mystery and would make a great “industry investigative story” documentary.

I can’t! The fact that every single camera they release people say its great but I want PDAF and Panasonic just ignores their feedback? They have lost tens of millions of dollars because their cameras AF can’t keep up. I don’t believe they are stupid or stubborn anymore. They are pretty responsive to their customers. So I’m more inclined to believe their is some kind of license restriction or something blocking them for paying the money to have PDAF on their sensors. And its not like it isn’t available on the MFT sensors. Olympus had it and they shared a sensor in the latest generation of cameras. Canon designs and manufactures their own sensors I believe. Fuji has some design but they use Sony Semi and their technology in their sensors so it’s not a all Fuji. The whole patented X-Trans layout etc... I honestly think Sony has caught up and is on par with Canon’s DPAF now. Sony definitely has an advantage in lowlight and high ISO focusing as well. If that matters to you. It doesn’t for me, as I don’t film in at midnight lol.

My whole argument was that they don’t have the option to pay the piper so they are stuck with improving what they got!

I don’t think so. I think they’ve invested so much in DfD because they have no other good alternative. DfD doesn’t require any technology licensing from Sony Semi Conductor for on chip phase photosites or any other hardware based thing. It’s purely image processing from ground up. I think with the S5 if you look at direct comparisons to the S1 and S1H they have actually done a remarkable job at reducing the pulsing side effect of a contrast based system. The tracking algorithms are much improved too. So I think it has been a evolution of a “we have no choice” to “with DfD we can make contrast based autofocus workable” to “with new object recognition and 3D object estimation and DfD we might have one of the best systems someday”. There is nothing stoping Panasonic from developing algorithms that mimic what the hardware based PDAF photosites are doing (that is using trigonometry to measure distance from subject) by building a depth map from image data and tracking objects in the space and reducing the need to do the contrast pulse to figure out what direction and how far to focus. I really don’t think Panasonic would ignore the hordes of their users asking for PDAF or something similar for years now.

Ah, thanks! Did a bit more light research. Some gems in the OM lenses from mid 80s. My next film camera I think will be the OM-10. Simple, with just enough features.

They still can dominate the space if they play it right. Release a GH6 like everybody expects. Give it insane specs and decent price and it will be hard to ignore for anybody that has MFT lenses. HFR 6K and 4K modes. Something crazy like 6K120p or internal NDs. If they add PDAF in there then for sure it will be a huge hit. MFT or S35 sensor whatever gets the job done and still has IBIS or IBIS alternative (gyrobased digital stabilization or something better). Competing in the photo department against FF is harder. But I think they should still release a photo centric MFT model that can win over any Olympus refugees and bring new computational photography features and enhancing existing technologies like 8K photo mode, live composite, hi-res handheld and tripod composite photos. They need to do something also to boost DR for MFT sensors to help them compete. Dual Gain ISO has helped with low light performance. Maybe this won’t happen until shrink their organic sensor tech for mirrorless.

?

Ever so slightly bigger body with integrated grip and the Sigma fp would be interesting to me. Also, for the love of god, why are we still getting these 1M/2M Dot LCD screens? Give us bright flip and tilting OLED please!

*turns dial to C1 for 6K60p

I think it’s pretty much a given that the EVA2 (if one is to be built) would be L-mount. They would be stupid to put an EF mount on it again as the L-mount can still take EF glass. I could see them using the 12MP sensor used in the Sony A7SIII perhaps with some tweaks for some extra performance? Who knows. That sensor makes a lot of sense in a EVA2 style camera. My biggest problem with the EVA2 is the existence of a Canon C70. It’s S35 sensor but a much more interesting camera to me. If it has new autofocus, internal NDs, DGO, better audio inputs, in the rumored form factor of a “chunky R5 body”. Very interesting... It also kinda looks like a cinema camera but also doesn’t. Which for me is important because I want a powerful camera that can fly under the radar. That’s why a 6K60p, 4k120p, IBIS, GH6 would be amazing to me. Can get into a lot of places without people thinking you should have a press pass or shooting pass because it looks like you are on a national geo-graphic expedition. ”Oh this...its just my humble family camera for getting the family pictures...for the memories...yes”

I agree sort of. The last 3 releases from them has been stale crackers. I think the GoPro 9, and action cameras like it, are on their last legs. I was surprised DJI entered the market with the product they did. I’m really, really surprised GoPro or DJI didn’t go all in on 360 video as I feel that is the future of the action camera. Maybe the tech isn’t there yet. A new 360 camera would need at least dual 8K sensors for it to come close to replacing what the GoPro 9 offers now.