squig
Veteran
I conducted some slow and fast panning tests @ 24, 25, and 30p with a nikon 35mm ai prime @ 1250 ISO in low light with a sandisk extreme III 16Gb 30MB/s card. My MKII had a problem with horizontal judder on slow pans with the old firmware and I'm pleased to report the problem has gone. I viewed the footage in Quicktime 7 and every frame rate was jerky. In Quicktime X 24p and 25p played back as they should but 30p stuttered. I converted the 30p to prores LT and viewed it in FCP 7, sometimes it stuttered and at other times it was smooth. It didn't stutter in exactly the same place every time so I think it's just a playback issue and not judder or dropped frames. My playback machine is a Macbook Pro 2.5Ghz with 4Gb ram.
The other thing is the codec appears to be cleaner @ 24p and at 1250 ISO there was no macroblocking/compression artifacts or banding and the noise looked more like film grain than it did with the old firmware. The macroblocking was an issue in large blocks of solid colour/greys, hot pink was particularly bad but no longer seems to be an issue. Only a pixel peeper will probably notice these improvements but for me they are significant.
I don't have another body with the old firmware to do a conclusive side by side comparison but I figure somebody who does will either confirm or refute my claims.
The other thing is the codec appears to be cleaner @ 24p and at 1250 ISO there was no macroblocking/compression artifacts or banding and the noise looked more like film grain than it did with the old firmware. The macroblocking was an issue in large blocks of solid colour/greys, hot pink was particularly bad but no longer seems to be an issue. Only a pixel peeper will probably notice these improvements but for me they are significant.
I don't have another body with the old firmware to do a conclusive side by side comparison but I figure somebody who does will either confirm or refute my claims.
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