GH4 Anybody thinking of trading the GH4 for the new camcorder?

[yslee]

You seem to go over this everytime and everytime you are told that it isn't possible on a budget. Would you pay the $10-15K price for this mystery camera? We all would like everything for cheap but its down to simple physics.

Not to mention the size. Have you seen a 24-70/2.8? Well a 20x f/1.8 lens is going to be like 10 times the size and weight.

 

[filmguy123]

I would like to know if this does timecode burn in for sending out to direct to DVD recording or burn in straight to the SD card.

For legal videography.

Also I would very much love to see modular design with Panasonic stuff, like RED. Wouldn't it be great to have this body + GH4 sensor & interchangeable lens mount? I think that would have been pretty awesome VS the YAGH module... replace the YAGH module with the body form factor on this. Then you buy the "brain" and choose your lens mount...

oh well!

 

[Sonny Bill Williams]

Why on earth are Panasonic wasting their time with this camcorder which nobody will buy, when millions want a AF100 M2 ffs? What is their problem or is it just pure stupidness?

 

[TheDingo]

Why on earth are Panasonic wasting their time with this camcorder which nobody will buy, when millions want a AF100 M2 ffs? What is their problem or is it just pure stupidness?

The non-professional market is much much bigger than the pro market is, so purely from a money-making perspective Panasonic will probably sell many more X1000 cameras than a revamped AF100 ever would.

 

[Barry_Green]

Why on earth are Panasonic wasting their time with this camcorder which nobody will buy, when millions want a AF100 M2 ffs? What is their problem or is it just pure stupidness?

Why they refuse to release an AF200, I cannot say -- we've been asking for it for years, and they just haven't.

But that has nothing to do with this camera. This camera looks brilliant, to me, on its own. It's smaller than an AC90, but has a 20x zoom lens and 4x the resolution. You could, theoretically, crop into the center of the image and end up with effectively an 80x zoom on a 1080p camera. Does that still sound like they're "wasting their time with a camcorder nobody will buy?" Because if it pans out, I'd buy that in a heartbeat. It's got more features, functionality, and shooting modes than the original DVX100 or HVX200 had, at a lower price, and (almost) all the essentials. I'm disappointed it doesn't have an SDI port or a waveform monitor, but that's not really its target market.

Would someone shopping for a GH4, consider this instead? Probably only if they shouldn't have been shopping for a GH4 in the first place... the GH4 is great for what it is, but it's not what it isn't. This camera is what the GH4 isn't. It's a live-events, ENG, superzoom, small, handheld, long-battery-life, 4K/1080p camera with a decent sized chip for an ENG camera. The chip in there is almost 1/2", so almost the same size as an EX1/EX1R, but 4x the res and half the price and almost 50% more zoom range, while still retaining XLRs with phantom power, all the Panasonic image controls and scene files and other features, and with (presumably) better OIS. If the street price is under $3,000 then I'd say they're going to sell truckloads of this camera.

But not to those who think a GH4 is the right type of camera for them. This isn't in direct competition with that, any more than a pickup truck is in direct competition with a motorcycle.

 

[Barry_Green]

The non-professional market is much much bigger than the pro market is, so purely from a money-making perspective Panasonic will probably sell many more X1000 cameras than a revamped AF100 ever would.

Yes, perhaps, but there's another angle to look at it from.

This HC-X1000 is a professional camera, but it's being brought to market by the consumer division of Panasonic. Don't know why, but that's how it is. So it will benefit from the consumer division's vastly bigger (presumably) infrastructure and distribution, but it has nearly all the professional features one would need to do handheld/ENG/doc/event cinematography. There are a lot of professionals out there who use pro cameras but can't work with (or don't want to work with) the limitations of a DSLR-type camera.

The AC90 has been a big seller for them, and this looks like a 4K AC90 to me, but with controllable ND filters and a much longer zoom range (I love my AC90, but I gotta say, those are two things that really stand out as potentially big improvements over the AC90!) Oh, plus the heavenly integrated lens cap... such a tiny thing but sooooo convenient!

From the reported specs, it's even smaller than the AC90. That's a good thing; the AC90 is small compared to an AC160/HPX250 camera, but it's still a full-size handycam. I wouldn't mind a slightly smaller camera, as long as it's big enough that the controls are easily manipulated.

To me, this looks like it could potentially be the true spiritual successor of the HMC150. The HMC150 and HPX170 were, IMO, a nearly perfect blend of features, controllability, ergonomics, and price. I think the HMC150 is probably one of Panasonic's most-belived pro models. This new camera looks like it is intending to fill and overflow the HMC150's shoes. It's not CCD, but then again, nothing else is nowadays. At least the HC-X1000 offers flash band compensation, which overcomes or minimizes that particular annoying distraction that CMOS cameras introduced to footage.

I'd like to know more about video performance -- D/R, sensitivity, noise, etc. Just on features alone I think it's promising, but if it can deliver the goods in the images, what's not to love? Unless, of course, your overriding goal is shallow DOF; in that case, no, this isn't the camera to be shopping for. It'll do shallower DOF way better than the AC90 would, and better than a 1/3" camera would, but it's not going to compare to an m43 or S35 or 135-sized sensor.

 

[mcbob]

No, but my HMC150 on the other hand...

Exactly. Just sold mine... I never used it enough to justify upgrading to something like the PX270 or PMW200, and the AC90 or XF100 wasn't IMO much of an upgrade... but this, yeah. Inexpensive and capable.

There's always room in my kit for a compact, self-contained prosumer camcorder

 

[izoneguy]

The HC-X1000 is what I have been looking for…..I still shoot video with my GH2 but for most shooting I am using the Sony RX10. It has an upgrade to the firmware which should produce better video. However the HC-X1000 is on my radar. It will be this camera or the Sony PXW-X70…..I will wait until I see videos and reviews from each.

 

[edithouse]

"To me, this looks like it could potentially be the true spiritual successor of the HMC150"

Barry, I think you've nailed it here, still using the HMC150 with clients paying for it, along with the AF100 and GH4. Moving towards 4K production though, the balance seems to say there's finally a reason to possibly remove the 1080 cameras and systematically replace those with similar products in this new format, and this may be the tipping point. Some sort of AF100 successor in 4K still would be a much sought after item for me, but as a second camera, I'm looking at this with keen eyes.

 

[mcbob]

It's not even the 4K... High bit rate 1080 without all the HMC noise, USB3 and HOST ports, dual recording, 'background' recording where you can set one card to capture what you might miss and another to run on trigger, closer to 1/2" sensor, separate focus/zoom/iris rings... enough there to make 4k one of those 'oh yeah, it does that too' checkboxes.

 

[Barry_Green]

It's not even the 4K... High bit rate 1080 without all the HMC noise, USB3 and HOST ports, dual recording, 'background' recording where you can set one card to capture what you might miss and another to run on trigger, closer to 1/2" sensor, separate focus/zoom/iris rings... enough there to make 4k one of those 'oh yeah, it does that too' checkboxes.

All of that, definitely, but as a tech geek I'm also highly interested in seeing what the 1080 can do, because according to Panasonic it's a full scan of the full 4K sensor, then downconverted internally. It should, potentially, be as sharp as 1080 can get. It's not like the GH4's 1080 where it's pixel-skipped, this is supposed to be a full downconversion, so -- when used as a 1080 camera, it might be a really, really sharp 1080 camera. I'd like to compare it against the HPX250 and the AC90 and see what it really can do...

Sensitivity is a concern, obviously, since the pixel density is quite high, but it's also three years' newer technology than the AC90 so maybe they've made good strides there. But even then, the 1080 mode will benefit, because sensitivity is often viewed in context with how much noise is generated, and the 1080 in this camera could potentially be quite a bit cleaner than the 4K since in a downconversion the noise will be averaged out and should potentially be visibly visually reduced. A roundabout way of saying you might be able to gain up a good 6dB or maybe even more in 1080, and have it still look no noisier than it would have looked in 4k...