Barry_Green
Moderator
And when it comes to the final word, Jan has the final word on this because she was the product manager during the product's development.
AF-100 vs AF-100A in JAPAN as for December 2012
- Thread starter Jiiye
- Start date
I really think this analogy is just flawed. Because it can work the other way around too. You could say that the BMC is the latest and greatest because it cost less than the AF100 and brings features the AF100 doesn't have, such as 13 stops of DR, RAW, better internal recording without the need of an external recorder and so on. It doesn't make sense to say the AF100 doesn't have competition in it's price bracket because no other camera offer the same features for the same price when other cameras offer things the AF100 doesn't too, and for less. It works both ways.
Of course no other camera offer the exact same feature set, otherwise it would be an AF100 clone. It's all trade offs. Saying the BMC is a totally different camera because it's cine-only when the AF100 is marketed as a digital cinema camera also makes little sense. They are targeted at much of the same folks.
And even so people seemed to have skipped the AF100 and be willing to pay a bit more to get something else. Many still preferred something like the FS100, even if it has less features on one side (but more on the other) and even it costing more. That says more about the AF100 than the FS100. That even it being such a great deal with so many features for less, more have probably bought the FS100 over it. We are again looking at it from the wrong angle. It doesn't matter if the FS100 costs slightly more or doesn't offer some features that the AF100 does, when the AF100 also doesn't offer some of the features the FS100 does and when some of the same people who would buy an AF100 buys a FS100. They are competing with each other.
Honestly, when it comes to the AF100 people have already voted with their wallet. I don't see much changing with this A upgrade based on the actual features it brings to the table. 10 bit output was the biggest thing among them and what had people talking the most. But now that has changed quite a bit with the latest announcement.
I don't know, but to me it feels more like a correction than an evolution of the product. More like, let's get what we should have got right back in 2010. Just my opinion.
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Barry_Green
Moderator
Yes, Adam. We know your opinion. It's been stated here lots and lots of times. We get it. And yet, now you're adding your suppositions as if they're facts, such as "the market voted already" and "people skipped the AF100" and "more have probably bought the FS100". Do you have sales figures to back that up? Because apparently Panasonic thought the AF100 did well enough that they're releasing a substantially similar product. Either that means that they're horribly clueless and completely incompetent, and that you clearly must know their market better than they do... or ... maybe, just maybe, the product's doing acceptably well for them and they're happy and it's reaching its target market?
I didn't state my suppositions as if they were facts. I clearly said they were my opinion. Clearly ended my post with that statement. I don't have any sales figures to back anything up. I just came to that conclusion based on what you see around.
Honestly, how much excitement was there on this forum, the largest concentration of AF100 users on the web, about the AF100A? Would you say it was low, moderate or high? I would say it was moderate. How much excitement is there now that the real specs have come out?
Honestly, how much excitement was there on this forum, the largest concentration of AF100 users on the web, about the AF100A? Would you say it was low, moderate or high? I would say it was moderate. How much excitement is there now that the real specs have come out?
well youre contributions will be sorely missed!
"Absolutely not. Trust me, we went round and round with them on that, and in the end it simply is not a feature that the original camera's hardware could support. We badgered them mercilessly about it. They had me & Bloom and Filippo Chiesa and lots of other guys in there for a preview/first use and that was far and away our biggest complaint, and if they could have done something about it, they would have. They similarly didn't have the feature in the 160/130, and issued a hardware update to address that in the 130A/160A. The AF100A is receiving that same hardware change, from what I can tell."
Huh. Weird. Well, it will be a welcome upgrade for sure. 2 questions: 1) any idea on US pricing/availability, and 2) Will this new camera produce better images then the AF100 standard model even when not using an outboard recorder?
Huh. Weird. Well, it will be a welcome upgrade for sure. 2 questions: 1) any idea on US pricing/availability, and 2) Will this new camera produce better images then the AF100 standard model even when not using an outboard recorder?
groveChuck
U-matic Member
8.5-9 bits? :happy:
Barry, as usual- a man of such understatement... :grin:
Don't know which is sadder- the kind/sorta 10 bits, or Jan's departure?
Thanks for all your posts, info and responsiveness, Jan (I asked if she'd been around and, bam, there she was!)
Wishing you the best. :beer:
Barry_Green
Moderator
Barry_Green
Moderator
BTW, Jan's not departing, she's just changed jobs. She's not in product management anymore, she's in sales, I think she's in charge of the Northeast region of the USA. As I understand it (and I'm sure she can clarify) her prior job involved working with the engineers and development teams in Japan, to build the products that she thought would sell here in the USA. Now, she's turned that responsibility over and is instead focusing on actually selling Panasonic products here in the USA, specifically in the Northeast.
So what's is the point about the AF100A ?
BTW Barry, there is a job in product management at Panasonic ?
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+1. I think you have a whole lot of people here who can recommend you wholeheartedly for the job.
Barry_Green
Moderator
I guess so. Are you going to apply?
Barry_Green
Moderator
Yeah, that's not gonna happen. I'm not all that corporate, and besides, those guys don't listen to me anyway; I've told 'em enough at NAB and other places exactly what I think they should build...
dregenthal
Veteran
Well, in the alternative . . . you could always found a new company.
"GREEN" camera has a nice ring to it!
The original AF100 had 10-bit 4:2:2 SDI/HDMI outputs as well. The downside, however, was that the bottom two bits were blanked out, restricting the AF100 to 8-bit resolution.
According to Jan's explanation, Panasonic has added dithering to those two blanked-out bits. This superimposes an interpolated 2-bit gradient on the camera's 8-bit output, which can make transitions between color bands look smoother. This may produce comparable results as 10-bit transcoders such as 5DtoRGB, which use similar digital signal processing techniques to enhance the conversion of 8-bit data into a 10-bit transcoded format.
The good news is that the original AF100 is far from obsolete. The sad news is that the AF100A will not have the true 10-bit output we were hoping for.
i will leave it to you Barry, a Master like you will be more than welcome over there...!!!
If this is true, that's very disappointing and makes purchasing a used AF100 a far more sensible option that purchasing a new AF100A, even with the magnified focus assist (which is really nice to have).
A tweak of the OLPF to add more resolution at the cost of aliasing in certain circumstances, along with a true 10-bit output, magnified focus assist, and nothing else, would have made the AF100A worthy of a second look at the series. As it stands now, it's starting to become less and less exciting.