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Sony Goes '4K for $2K' with FDR-AX100


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Speak for yourself.  

 

I said "Didn't look too bad to me." I'm sorry for sounding blunt, but I think that was screamingly obvious. I don't know how I could possibly have expressed it more clearly that I was only speaking for myself. 

 

 

 

 

In stills you should never have clouds that blow out like they do in the sheep meadow scene.  When the whole scene is bathed in direct daylight with the sun behind you you can take an incident light meter reading and shoot away.  

 

I was talking in general, (clearly indicated by the use of the word "sometimes"), not about that one particular scene in that particular video. I'm quite aware of how to expose a sunny scene in photography, and sometimes photographers let certain details blow out on purpose. But that's all outrageously irrelevant to the point I was trying to make.

 

Don't read way too much into one scene of just one streaming online video clip. It's way too early. That scenery clip does not tell anything about the prowess of the new camera, it only tells us the shooter probably overexposed the scene slightly, and that's it. YouTube compression is likely to crap things up even further.

 

As we know, pedantic people often read way too much into the details of both written and video content, regardless of the format, and then get obsessed with the irrelevant ones. Sometimes totally ignoring the bigger picture. Which seems to become visible in this thread, too. However, like I already said above, these early marketing videos are not meant (nor good) for overly pedantic viewing, so let's not.

 

I know it's the silly season again but, don't ride the impatient wagon all through the silly season, people. Don't jump into conclusions prematurely, with minimal/poor evidence. There will be plenty of opportunities to examine this and all the other CES novelties later on, when they start spreading out into the wild.  Any camera can be made to look good or bad, especially online.

 

FWIW, I believe this new 4K consumer camcorder from Sony doesn't look too bad for what it is. Not overly exiting either, though. But we'll find out what it really is like, eventually. Meanwhile, I for one welcome this new trend of more affordable 4K gear in all shapes and formats.

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I was talking in general, (clearly indicated by the use of the word "sometimes"), not about that one particular scene in that particular video.

 

Well that was the WTF scene. I mean it was an easy to expose scene that showed a glaring flaw.  That's why I mentioned it.  The problem with this digital world and digital video more specifically is people don't often seen good analog stills nor do they see how good analog stills are made.  I just wanted to make it clear to people who were not as familiar with stills and analog stills in particular that we've had technology that handles highlights beautifully for decades and the highlights in that scene were a huge step back.

 

When people were talking about highlights why would you assume they were not talking about the most eggrigious example?  I didn't pixel peep the video.  I watched it with an honest open mind and the terrible large field of clipped highlights in a straight forward scene smacked me in the face.  A specular highlight here and there in a trickyly lit scene is nothing to write home about.

 

 

 


Don't read way too much into one scene of just one streaming online video clip. It's way too early. That scenery clip does not tell anything about the prowess of the new camera, it only tells us the shooter probably overexposed the scene slightly, and that's it. YouTube compression is likely to crap things up even further.

 

As we know, pedantic people often read way too much into the details of both written and video content, regardless of the format, and then get obsessed with the irrelevant ones. Sometimes totally ignoring the bigger picture. Which seems to become visible in this thread, too.

 

Seriously man this is how I finished my post...

 

 

But it is an inital youtube video so the jury is still out.

 

Maybe they overexposed that scene.

 

 

 

 

Not sure what is "pedantic" about that.

 

No one can deny the highlights in large swathes of that video were terrible and they do not resemble anything in the competent stills world.  I just don't want misinformation spread on the internet.  I don't usually bring up stills and definitely not analog stills but if we are going to talk about stills lets let the digital generation know the truth.  A lot of what was in that video would be considered incompetent in a B&W and even C-41 still.  Of course we could just leave stills out of the conversation.

 

 

Anyway the video is sharp.  It blows Canon mush out of the water.  Obviously the highlights look terrible compared to my Canon consumer DSLR but this is one youtube video so I will reserve final judgement.   I would like to see a video with contrast dialed down and maybe better exposure metering.

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As someone that just did a shoot in NZ barely a year ago on 60i HD and a 5 year old Canon camcorder, I'd just like to say I'm crazy jealous that someone got to run around the country using this gear.  What I would have given to have shot my assignment on this cam.

 

Man, I know a lot of y'all never seem satisfied with limitations, but just take a breather and realize that you're looking at a camera that shoots 4K for less than 2K.

 

I don't know, seems impressive to me.

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As someone that just did a shoot in NZ barely a year ago on 60i HD and a 5 year old Canon camcorder, I'd just like to say I'm crazy jealous that someone got to run around the country using this gear.  What I would have given to have shot my assignment on this cam.

 

Man, I know a lot of y'all never seem satisfied with limitations, but just take a breather and realize that you're looking at a camera that shoots 4K for less than 2K.

 

I don't know, seems impressive to me.

As of right now...I would love to have this in my camera tool bag.  Documentary shooting, concerts, b-roll, establishing shots would all look great off this cam.

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Man, I know a lot of y'all never seem satisfied with limitations, but just take a breather and realize that you're looking at a camera that shoots 4K for less than 2K.

 

So?  There is a cell phone that shoots 4K.  What's your point?  If the highlights in the only video we have suck... they suck.

 

This isn't an opinion thing.  If I turn in a clip with massively clipped highlights like that to my stock agency it will be rejected.  So what good is the camera going to do me?

 

Just because something has 4K painted on the side doesn't mean we shouldn't properly critique it and see whether it can even do the most basic functions.  I'm reserving judgement until we can get a well exposed vimeo download at the very least.  It just boggles my mind that someone would enthusiastically sign off on something like that with such a glaring basic error smacking them in the face.

 

Are you just ignoring the video and assuming the high lights will just work themselves out on the unit you buy?  I mean if we are just assuming then why bother even looking at the video?

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So?  There is a cell phone that shoots 4K.  What's your point?  If the highlights in the only video we have suck... they suck.

 

This isn't an opinion thing.  If I turn in a clip with massively clipped highlights like that to my stock agency it will be rejected.  So what good is the camera going to do me?

 

Maybe just lower the exposure? I mean...that's how we've always shot stuff? Isn't it? Ir is everyone here an Epic user?

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Maybe just lower the exposure? I mean...that's how we've always shot stuff? Isn't it? Ir is everyone here an Epic user?

 

Right. I mean, the foreground was REALLY bright for a midday exposure including the sky. At least that was my sense. I can shoot with my 14 stop d800 towards certain parts of the sky in a landscape shot and blow it out if I were to properly expose for foreground.     I mean, maybe I'm reading it wrong, but, it seems a less aggressive exposure would stack up alright.

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Maybe just lower the exposure? I mean...that's how we've always shot stuff? Isn't it? Ir is everyone here an Epic user?

 

Right. I mean, the foreground was REALLY bright for a midday exposure including the sky. At least that was my sense. I can shoot with my 14 stop d800 towards certain parts of the sky in a landscape shot and blow it out if I were to properly expose for foreground.     I mean, maybe I'm reading it wrong, but, it seems a less aggressive exposure would stack up alright.

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Maybe just lower the exposure? I mean...that's how we've always shot stuff? Isn't it? Ir is everyone here an Epic user?

 

I guess you chose to ignore the part of the thread where multiple people including myself said the issue may simply be operator error resulting in over exposure.  I mean there are multiple possible explanations and I don't think saying I need more information at this juncture to make an informed decision is unreasonable.  Not sure why it turn so controversial.

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This is cool for home videos, but since you can't even get honest 1080p (iTunes "HD" is laughable) on anything other than Blu-Ray, i'm pretty sure the 4K revolution is a bit premature.

 

You're thinking of playback, but it's different when it comes to acquisition. A low cost 4k camera is bound to give you a much better looking 1080p than a low cost 1080p camera did just a couple years ago. Also, being able to reframe or crop a little bit when stabilizing without sacrificing even more image quality is a big plus.

4k's advantages are very relevant even if outputting to 1080p.

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