AF100 depreciation is bad for Panasonic

B

biginvegas

Well-known member
Trying to sell my AF100 and looking at what I can get for my used but almost brand new AF100. Paid $4700 at Abel Cine a year ago. BH now sells to cart for $3895 plus $500 mail in rebate $3395. At $3k here on sale on DVX not a sniff for sale in NYC. An $1800 depreciation on a 18month old camera system! That is outrageous on the part of Panasonic dealers to sell of the AF100 at IMO way below market price for this technology. Please someone show me a camera in the last 20 years that lost so much of it's value in months. Looks like I will end getting about $2700 in current market if I am lucky! yes it is the times we live in and there is a lot of cameras out there but 1. It shows you the AF to start with was overpriced 2. Panasonic USA betrayed it's customers base by selling off this model at such discounts BEFORE a succesor is announced. 3. Panasonic AF was cannibalized by the GH2 hack and the perception from filmmakers was the AF was crippled and in my opinion it was. 4. The AF got a bad rap online ina very fickle market place and never recovered or built a reputation beyond the DVX user base, fault who? I dunno either way a substantial investment onmy part although paid off in hardware the depreciation irks.
 
agreed David, nothing taking away from the camera. I'm just working in a different environment and need a fair trade that's all.
 
biginvegas said:
Trying to sell my AF100 and looking at what I can get for my used but almost brand new AF100. Paid $4700 at Abel Cine a year ago. BH now sells to cart for $3895 plus $500 mail in rebate $3395. At $3k here on sale on DVX not a sniff for sale in NYC. An $1800 depreciation on a 18month old camera system! That is outrageous on the part of Panasonic dealers to sell of the AF100 at IMO way below market price for this technology. Please someone show me a camera in the last 20 years that lost so much of it's value in months. Looks like I will end getting about $2700 in current market if I am lucky! yes it is the times we live in and there is a lot of cameras out there but 1. It shows you the AF to start with was overpriced 2. Panasonic USA betrayed it's customers base by selling off this model at such discounts BEFORE a succesor is announced. 3. Panasonic AF was cannibalized by the GH2 hack and the perception from filmmakers was the AF was crippled and in my opinion it was. 4. The AF got a bad rap online ina very fickle market place and never recovered or built a reputation beyond the DVX user base, fault who? I dunno either way a substantial investment onmy part although paid off in hardware the depreciation irks.
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To be fair it's the market determining the pricing for these cameras, not the manufacturers or resellers (in the interest of full disclosure I work for a major reseller). Resellers have put the AF100 on sale or dropped the price because they're just not selling all that well anymore, that's the same reason Panasonic put the rebate on, to spur sales. If customers were still buying the product the prices wouldn't be dropping so much. And about your second point, if the AF100's sales are already dramatically declining then what do you think will happen to the remaining stock once a successor is announced?
 
I understand your frustration. That's a big hit to take, and I'm sure your camera is mint. I think it's a function of the marketplace right now. I'm trying to sell a used matte box, works great, for 50% of it's value. No luck. Apples/oranges, I know.

I think your first two points can be considered as reasonable from your POV but I don't know about the GH2 hack cannibalizing the market for AF100s. I think the communities are so different and look for such different things in their gear that one doesn't affect the other all that much. Just my opinion there. Your assumption that the AF was crippled smacks of conspiracy theory. I can't see why Panasonic would intentionally tick people off. They are entitled to add or remove anything they want from their cameras, hacks out in the wild notwithstanding. How can they bear responsibility for the results in the marketplace, imagined or real, of someone hacking their consumer DSLR? It's kind of far fectched. I understand they are different divisions entirely. How could they have anticipated it? I think they probably lowered the price because sales fell off and their margins supported that decision. Business, not personal. It may be no more complicated than that.

I agree with 4 wholeheartedly. It is a mystery to me. I think the AF100 is grossly underrated. Perhaps we here have some responsibility in the on line perception of it. The noise problem, the highlight problems, the banding problem, "crop factor", where are the wides?, took up a lot of bandwidth here early on. There was not a lot of love when it first came out. That's a sort of cannibalism. I see it in the FS100 community too. The DSLR community, the RED community are far better advocates for their camera than we may have been here. I still don't get it though except everyone I talk to who "doesn't like the AF100" has never seemed to try one. Odd.
 
im a satisfied af100 user. i wanted to sell the af but its still earning money for me. id probably sell this to buy the successor.
 
If the AF100 had a 'hackable' bitrate, and Panny/Leica servo-zoom M43 lenses, it would have retained tons of value. The GH2 hack slaughtered the AF100 market. I personally had been considering an AF100 but settled on TWO GH2s, a few lenses, and a tripod, for that cash. I have a few friends who are filmmakers who went the RED and AF100 routes... I don't have my own pet projects or 'greatest film ever' that I'm trying to sell to the world. I produce promotional/commercial/music work as well as corporate stuff. No servo zoom means I can't use the AF100 for event work. Instead I rely on an AC160 or HMC150 for that type of work.

You couldn't pay me to work on RED due to the insane workflow, batteries that drop like flies, so forth... The AF100, on the other hand, produces great work. I would HAPPILY work on one any day! A GH2 with ND filters, true color reflection on monitor, proper outputs and advanced color profiles... game on! But yes, it was insanely overpriced to begin with.
 
I've never understood why people complain endlessly about the AF100 bit rate. I've used this camera for a while now, on everything from tripod shots of low detailed scenes, heavily shadowed scenes, and pointing it out the car window to film the passing landscape. I've never had an issue with codec mush or just crappy quality images due to the bit rate. What's the big deal?
 
tommygdawg said:
I've never understood why people complain endlessly about the AF100 bit rate. I've used this camera for a while now, on everything from tripod shots of low detailed scenes, heavily shadowed scenes, and pointing it out the car window to film the passing landscape. I've never had an issue with codec mush or just crappy quality images due to the bit rate. What's the big deal?
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Trust me when I tell you that the AF-100's codec can hang with the best of them:

 
Ok. In order of mention from the OP:

1. The AF may have been a bit overpriced in the beginning, but not by much. The FS100 didn't have nearly as many features as the AF100 out of the gate, and it cost a good $1000 more with the same recording options as the AF (24mbs). The only real difference between the two was the more sensitive sensor and lack of a highlight issue. At the time, for the price it was worth it for the feature set IMO.

2. Sales tapered off due to the reputation that filmmakers (US!) gave the camera. We have no one to blame but the filmmaking community for the price decrease in the AF100. The preliminary reviews for the camera were really quite promising, and the reviews of the final product were actually quite favorable. When the FS100 came out and a few prominent bloggers began to praise it over the AF for it's higher sensitivity, the pixel peeping poparazzi (many of whom are amateurs at best) latched on to that, and they trashed a perfectly good camera that was really capable of creating very competitive images in the right hands ("The Raid" for example). The hype over the GH2 hack didn't help matters either. The price drop is a result of Panasonic trying to keep the line profitable. Don't blame Panasonic, blame the filmmakers who didn't support the camera like we should have.

3. See #2. The GH2 hack was yet another example of internet hype and the "more is better" mindset doing its thing. If the people championing the GH2 hack were shown an identical GH2 clip and AF100 clip side-by-side, 90% of them wouldn't be able to tell the difference. They just parrot what they see in the blogs. The AF100's fall from glory was very much in progress before the hack, though this seems to have dealt a large blow simply because of what came before it. That said, it's very silly IMO to hold Panasonic accountable for something that an unlicensed hack did to one of their cameras. The AF100 wasn't crippled, the higher bitrate was just never a part of the plan in the first place. If you wanted that, you were meant to just use an external recorder. Sometimes I think people forget that Panasonic asked US what WE wanted in a camera and hit almost everything on OUR list. The bitrate comparison is more than a bit unfair IMO. Also, I don't see anyone knocking the FS100 for its 24mb/s bitrate, but I supposed that's moot at this point.

4. Internet parrot syndrome at its finest. See #3 and #4.

Now, all that said, I'm not exactly pleased about the price decrease of my AF100 either. Producers often want to hire a 7D over my gear until I prove them the AF is far more capable. Regardless, I've never regretted my purchase, and while I'm sad that the camera has been devalued so much, it still produces great images for me, and I love it for that. Like these guys said, if you're upset about the bitrate hacks and such, just grab a Hyperdeck and go to town. It might be your best bet in this case.

Anyway, sorry you're having such a hard time selling the camera. Hope things turn around for you!

- Jon
 
mcgeedigital said:
Trust me when I tell you that the AF-100's codec can hang with the best of them:

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Great comparison, where the Red really excels is in the compositing of the motion blur, which added bit rate for the AF100 wouldn't fix anyway. I've recently shot a short super hero film completely on the AF100. I did a TON of green screen work on it and 9 times out of 10, the AF100 footage performed flawlessly. The only times I really had an issue was when there was a lot of motion blur. Again, higher bit rate wouldn't fix this. Here's a couple of screenshots, one of the original flat footage, and one from the final shot. I had to pull these off of my facebook because I'm on my laptop and don't have access to the original high res files. Never-the-less, you get the idea...

cb_composite.jpg

cb_green.jpg
 
HotConductor said:
Very true. Using that input would require an external recorder. That added equipment defeats the purpose of purchasing an AVC camera with an SD card workflow.
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Kind of like saying recording ARRIRAW to the Codex Onboard recorder defeats the purpose of purchasing an Alexa with an SxS card workflow.

That's the whole point of including the SDI output, for those that need it.
And is where much of the cost that people have been bitching about the AF100 being overpriced went, into professional onboard tools like SDI, waveform/vector scope and the like.

Very similar to Matt's post, I tested the AF100 internal recorder against uncompressed SDI straight into a Kona card right after I got the camera. To be real honest the internal codec is really quite robust, and the only time we use an external recorder is for broadcast content which requires such. By the way, external recorders aren't much bigger than a deck of cards now.
 
Mark Williams said:
I would get an outboard recorder with a decent codec and keep the camera until it wears out.
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I'm not so sure of this idea.

The first reason is that an outboard wont work with overcrank.

The second is that I'm not sure I've seen that much of an improvement with an external recorder. Where is the evidence for this? I've seen the GH2 hack which shows better resolution with higher bit rate but haven't seen the same kind of evidence with the AF100.
 
Steve above is correct. While the hack increases the quality of the GH2 over the internal, the AF100 doesn't really offer that...at least not in the same way the GH2 does.

AF100 did depreciate quickly and I lost on mine when I sold it, but I still find myself missing the camera at times. I think a lot of the what the OP has to say is a little blown out of proportion and while it does suck, it's easy to point the finger at Panasonic. I lost on my AF100 because I bought it hoping to make money with it and I didn't which was my fault not the cameras. It was my fault, regardless of it losing value. If you even had a few days shooting or a few projects with it in the year you owned it, shouldn't that make up for what the camera lost value wise anyways?

AF100 is a solid camera and although I think the GH2 has more wow factor in the image, the AF100 offers far more then just a good image. I have a GH2 in the mail to give it a go and see if I can deal with the challenges of a DSLR...but the AF100 is far from a slouch or a poor product. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can get something similar image wise to the GH2 (I'm talking more sharpness and resolution then anything else) but inside an AF100 body. I would be all over that action...lol.

Hope you sell it quick!
 
Jon Hout said:
2. Sales tapered off due to the reputation that filmmakers (US!) gave the camera. We have no one to blame but the filmmaking community for the price decrease in the AF100. The preliminary reviews for the camera were really quite promising, and the reviews of the final product were actually quite favorable. When the FS100 came out and a few prominent bloggers began to praise it over the AF for it's higher sensitivity, the pixel peeping poparazzi (many of whom are amateurs at best) latched on to that, and they trashed a perfectly good camera that was really capable of creating very competitive images in the right hands ("The Raid" for example). The hype over the GH2 hack didn't help matters either. The price drop is a result of Panasonic trying to keep the line profitable. Don't blame Panasonic, blame the filmmakers who didn't support the camera like we should have.

3. See #2. The GH2 hack was yet another example of internet hype and the "more is better" mindset doing its thing. If the people championing the GH2 hack were shown an identical GH2 clip and AF100 clip side-by-side, 90% of them wouldn't be able to tell the difference. They just parrot what they see in the blogs. The AF100's fall from glory was very much in progress before the hack, though this seems to have dealt a large blow simply because of what came before it. That said, it's very silly IMO to hold Panasonic accountable for something that an unlicensed hack did to one of their cameras. The AF100 wasn't crippled, the higher bitrate was just never a part of the plan in the first place. If you wanted that, you were meant to just use an external recorder. Sometimes I think people forget that Panasonic asked US what WE wanted in a camera and hit almost everything on OUR list. The bitrate comparison is more than a bit unfair IMO. Also, I don't see anyone knocking the FS100 for its 24mb/s bitrate, but I supposed that's moot at this point.
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This isn't aimed at the OP, but a general agreement with the your post in general and these points in particular. I'm associated with someone who bought into the GH2 hack hype and got one and is charging a pretty penny... but his stuff looks like absolute s***. And these are spots being broadcast on a network affiliate in a top 15 market. Me and a few others I know cringe ever time we see a lot of his stuff. That said, at work we aired a weather doc produced by one of the local PBS stations (we have two in Seattle) that my station helped with that was shot on a pair of non-hacked GH2's. It looked fantastic.

The point being that if you don't know how to use your camera, how good or bad it is is a moot point. And if you do know what your doing, there is no reason why you can't get stellar results out of it.
 
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