EVA1: EVA1 Completely lost its value?

Here’s my funny sad story buying a pair of EVA1’s after a good client approved the budget for a series of 2 camera shoots. Between the shoots and the post work, I would have paid off the cameras and some of the lenses within the first month or two.

Then the client postponed the project, and it never happened. And being a good client, I couldn’t complain too much about it.

This was about the time the cameras price dropped $1000. I had been looking at grey market non USA versions that were much cheaper than USA versions, and there was some crazy promotions going on at Rakutten, where they gave me over $800 to spend on the second camera, and I got over $500 to spend on other gear with the 2nd EVA purchase.

I had my eye on the Eva from before it’s release, since I had owned a DVX100 and HVX200 in the past. While I didn’t make any money the first year or so owning the cameras, I did shoot a short comedy film where we got access to a theater for only 2 hours and having 2 cameras was critical to getting enough coverage. Then someone hired me to shoot single camera interviews for a doc and at least I made a couple of thousand off that.

Just last week the original client finally hired me to shoot something using my camera, and were very impressed with the Eva on rails with a matte box, and of course the results. The guy that hired me for the low budget docs also has a new film so finally after several years owning the cameras I will be starting to earn as much as they cost.

My lenses are all mostly prime Manual cinema lenses so I couldnt care about auto focus.

Of course I wouldn't have bought a pair of Eva's if I had to do I over again, but the film did get in several festivals and is a great directors showreel for my feature, which a manager is pitching right now.

Incidentally I was out of town for a long time and wanted to shoot another short. Since I didn't have my cameras I found someone with an Arri that shot for me but made many mistakes, that it shows the cinematographer is much more important than the camera.
 
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I am an early adopter to the EVA and it's served me well. I switched to Komodo recently but am keeping the EVA-1 cause it's just too good of a camera to let go. I have a job tomorrow shooting an event, in which the Komodo is staying in the office and the EVA will be utilized as I want internal ND and XLR.

​​​​​​Even though the EVA has dropped significantly in price, I do no see it dropping too much further. It has insanely good 1080p due to excellent down sampling, and the slow motion RAW options are a real treat.
 
michaelbabbish said:
It has insanely good 1080p due to excellent down sampling,
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Image coming out of the camera is wonderful, but I do wish that some more options would be available through a firmware update.
By now I was hoping that a 1080/ 200mbps option would have been available (as in the BGH1)
I also wish some additional gamma options were available. Lately I've been doing some multicamera live shoots where I'm matching the EVA1 to multiple FX9 and FX6 cameras. The better color adjustability of the EVA1 actually makes color matching easier than getting the FX6 and FX9 to line up properly, but a gamma that more closely approximated the s-cinetone from those cameras would be really helpful.
 
This is likely a silly bump to an old"-ish" thread, but I am selling my C100 mkII that I've hardly touched since purchasing an S1. Handling that video-specific camera again - it's weight, built-in NDs, and ergos (I know the ergonomics of the C-series is a bit contentious) - has had me yearning for an updated EVA1. I really hope Panasonic still has it in them. I love the colors from their sensors.

This market is brutal.
 
Still thinking about this, too. Love my S1s, would love to have an Eva here too, but not enough to pay for one unless it was bargain basement pricing.
 
Camera could have, would have had a lot of success in 2017 if it was reasonably priced around $4K or so.

They eventually dropped the price a bit, but by that time the C200 had 90% of the market after both shipped side-by-side.

And can't believe it's been 5 years already.
 
5 Years? Don't rush it -- I don't think you could buy one until October of 2017. (I bought mine back in Nov '17)
My feeling is that the market it was competing with was the FS7 - which was actually quite a bit more expensive, particularly if you wanted a time code connector. So from a cost perspective it was well positioned at the time.
The problem was that not enough owner/operators bought it to make it a common request -- or a camera that 'everyone had' -- so it never reached the point where it was an option for multicam shoots since it was too hard to bring in a four or six operators who all owned one - so the FS7 had too large a share of that market and just kept rolling. And a better designed viewing screen (that you could use outside on a bright day) might have been helpful as well.
I know I got the EVA1 because I thought it looked better than the FS7. I probably would have made more $$$ with an FS7, but I wanted an image I was happy with.
Of course it hasn't gotten as much use during the past couple of years with all the covid cancellations and postponements, but I do still use it (and did a shoot with it just last week.) It'll never be a cash cow the way my old EX1 was, but I still expect it to make back at least 4x its cost before it gets retired, though it may have legs and make it to the 5x point by then.
And my clients are still VERY happy with the images!
 
haha, okay 4.1-ish years...

I'm sure the FS7 didn't help but the biggest problem by far was the C200.

It was the beginning of hype cinema cameras and the EVA1 never had a chance for its introductory price.

At that point a lot of minds were already on the no AF = no sale bandwagon...and CRL was the icing.
 
I know exactly the numbers. It wasn't the C200 that held back the EVA1, it was the fact that Sony already had the market. Competing against a camera with more advanced autofocus certainly put a dent in things, but the biggest hurdle for the EVA1 was hitting the market a couple years too late.
 
I can't agree with that logic because the C200 shipped around the same time.

The FS7 was one of the greatest cameras and camera releases in the history of the business, but at that point it had a nice run for 3-3.5 years and many people were ready to move on, upgrade their gear.

The EVA1 could have been that camera.

But instead the C200 instead went on to be a #1 seller and a top-seller everywhere you looked. It also dominated YouTube where marketing is most important in the new world for camera sales.

Why? Because $7,500 for an 8-bit 60p system (future FW was too late) with no AF or IBIS - or anything just to really make you want the camera - doesn’t sound very appealing to many no matter how beautiful the colors may have been.

The formula was very simple: Old yesteryear prices were finished and people now needed lower-priced cameras loaded with features. The C200 wasn't exactly that much cheaper, but it was more desirable.

We continued to see it time and time again with over a dozen $3000-$6000 cameras for the next 4 years.

If the EVA1 was introduced at $4999 we’d still be talking about it.

Truly a no-brainer and IMO it was terribly mismanaged by Panasonic.
 
It's hard to say what Panasonic could have done with EVA1, except for the drastically lower pricing. It was sort of FS-7 type camera, which had already been established for three years at that point. C200, on the other hand, offered something completely different - an homage to Monty Python - CRL and a very good AF with Canon's own lens lineup. (CFast 2.0 cards may have been a tad pricey at first but soon the situation worked itself out, even without the fake card/cable solution). Sure, Canon played ball with the cartel by crippling its own codec but it looked OK even in 8-bit and CRL gave it an additional edge over the reigning champion FS-7. And then Canon did both C500 MKII and C300 MKIII to provide additional competition and prove that it was serious about the lower end pro tier cameras while Panasonic stayed silent on both the low and high end. And so the market went.
 
Walter Hergt said:
This is likely a silly bump to an old"-ish" thread, but I am selling my C100 mkII that I've hardly touched since purchasing an S1. Handling that video-specific camera again - it's weight, built-in NDs, and ergos (I know the ergonomics of the C-series is a bit contentious) - has had me yearning for an updated EVA1. I really hope Panasonic still has it in them. I love the colors from their sensors.

This market is brutal.
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This market is brutal. I'm in the exact same boat as you —
S1 owner who loves Panasonic colours and systems but desperate for an A cam with video-centric ergonomics.

I've gone down a rabbit hole the last 24 hours researching (again) all the current options and my last port of call is this thread as what I really want is an EVA 2 with L mount. Returned for a sip at the Bar of Forlorn AV Dreams.

I was one of those people that, despite owning a GH5 and having been in the Panasonic ecosystem for 8 years at the time, went with a Canon C200 over an EVA1. The deciding factors were EVF, 10 stop ND, AF, and a fellow production company who sometimes hired me all used Canon. I wanted to finally experience the dark side, even though the EVAs colour science is on a different level to the C200, especially with its cinematic separation of colours (I don't know the technical term, but once I saw how different colours could exist in the frame independently instead of having a glaze over the image like the C200 I knew it was special).

Anyway, I went for the ergonomics and AF (and damn, when cameras have base iso 800 then 8+ stops of ND in the field are imperative), and I wasn't disappointed. The C200 was a gorgeous camera to use and I'd probably be full Canon right now if it wasn't for Covid that saw a quick strategic decision to swap the C200 for a bargain S1 and lens and bank a couple of grand to ride the bumps in 2020.

In the market again now, and tempted to pick up an EVA 1 to compliment my S1 and GH5s (what an incredible little camera) but... I'm stuck on the same things I was 3 years; no EVF, that mirror for a screen, and 6 stops of ND that I know will bug me. Oh, and having to buy an EF lens or two when I have a beautiful S Pro 50mm wanting to be used.

The FX6 (if you can find one) is a beautiful combo of size and features but Sony's rapid camera release programme makes my head spin and the C70 just isn't quite the A Cam I'm looking for. Neither gives me enough confidence to fork out for the ecosystem switch in this moment.

So here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
 
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C70 is getting a CRL update but only to make owners a bit less jealous since the new full-frame R5 C has some insane specs coming for $4500.
 
NorBro said:
I can't agree with that logic because the C200 shipped around the same time.

The FS7 was one of the greatest cameras and camera releases in the history of the business, but at that point it had a nice run for 3-3.5 years and many people were ready to move on, upgrade their gear.

The EVA1 could have been that camera.

But instead the C200 instead went on to be a #1 seller and a top-seller everywhere you looked. It also dominated YouTube where marketing is most important in the new world for camera sales.

Why? Because $7,500 for an 8-bit 60p system (future FW was too late) with no AF or IBIS - or anything just to really make you want the camera - doesn’t sound very appealing to many no matter how beautiful the colors may have been.

The formula was very simple: Old yesteryear prices were finished and people now needed lower-priced cameras loaded with features. The C200 wasn't exactly that much cheaper, but it was more desirable.

We continued to see it time and time again with over a dozen $3000-$6000 cameras for the next 4 years.

If the EVA1 was introduced at $4999 we’d still be talking about it.

Truly a no-brainer and IMO it was terribly mismanaged by Panasonic.
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I know how well the C200 ACTUALLY sold as well as the numbers for the EVA1 and the Sony cameras. By your logic one might think the Sonys would have sold very few because they were old and had saturated the market, but the opposite is true. Once you own the market you keep the market, and the Sony cameras outsold the others several times over.

The EVA1 would have sold better with an initial lower price, which is why I was able to get it lowered. It would have sold better with a more advanced AF and a better monitoring solution. But those are relatively minor factors compared to the fact that it would have sold better if it had been released two years earlier.
 
Mitch Gross said:
I know how well the C200 ACTUALLY sold as well as the numbers for the EVA1 and the Sony cameras. By your logic one might think the Sonys would have sold very few because they were old and had saturated the market, but the opposite is true. Once you own the market you keep the market, and the Sony cameras outsold the others several times over.

The EVA1 would have sold better with an initial lower price, which is why I was able to get it lowered. It would have sold better with a more advanced AF and a better monitoring solution. But those are relatively minor factors compared to the fact that it would have sold better if it had been released two years earlier.
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lol. You do not need to work at Panasonic to obtain that information. Like with most things in life, it's about who you know and who's willing to provide you data.

I said the FS7 was one of the greatest cameras and greatest camera releases in the history of the business, so I don't know if one could be more clear in implying that it did pretty well. How's it possible you've landed on analyzing that statement to imply the opposite?

If it's unclear; yes, the FS7 was a GOD. But it's also common sense that people move on and want new cameras. No one keeps any market besides ARRI because some would say they are a monopoly and mostly chosen by default by the people who control the industry, but not many are still buying the Classic.

In general, and with all due respect, your perspective about the market is flawed. Because, for instance, the Panasonic tape Varicams were the gold standard for so many years and they entirely lost the market and disappeared overnight.

They once owned the market, but they did not keep the market.
 
Mitch Gross said:
I know how well the C200 ACTUALLY sold as well as the numbers for the EVA1 and the Sony cameras. By your logic one might think the Sonys would have sold very few because they were old and had saturated the market, but the opposite is true. Once you own the market you keep the market, and the Sony cameras outsold the others several times over.

The EVA1 would have sold better with an initial lower price, which is why I was able to get it lowered. It would have sold better with a more advanced AF and a better monitoring solution. But those are relatively minor factors compared to the fact that it would have sold better if it had been released two years earlier.
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Always grateful for your insights, Mitch! So nice to have you here.

Do you think Panasonic have the will (or the pockets) to get back in the game? I feel they are laying a solid foundation with the S series at the entry point into the market. I mean, the S1H is a compelling offering, and the S Pro lenses are best in class for video from what I've seen, especially with features like the almost non-existent lens breathing and close, if not fully, parfocal ability of the 24-70mm 2.8. Although damn it, I wish their marketing was better on things like this =( It would give people something important to consider when choosing which system to plump for.
 
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NorBro said:
lol. You do not need to work at Panasonic to obtain that information. Like with most things in life, it's about who you know and who's willing to provide you data.

I said the FS7 was one of the greatest cameras and greatest camera releases in the history of the business, so I don't know if one could be more clear in implying that it did pretty well. How's it possible you've landed on analyzing that statement to imply the opposite?

If it's unclear; yes, the FS7 was a GOD. But it's also common sense that people move on and want new cameras. No one keeps any market besides ARRI because some would say they are a monopoly and mostly chosen by default by the people who control the industry, but not many are still buying the Classic.

In general, and with all due respect, your perspective about the market is flawed. Because, for instance, the Panasonic tape Varicams were the gold standard for so many years and they entirely lost the market and disappeared overnight.

They once owned the market, but they did not keep the market.
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I wasn't at Panasonic back in the tape VariCam days, but I was at their #1 US dealer and had a lot of insight into what was going on both in the market and behind the scenes (two very different things). And I know specifically about changes in management that affected the direction of the company at different times.

My comment about the FS7 was about the fact that years after it's introduction it was selling far more than the Canon or Panasonic offerings on a monthly basis. Sony owned that market segment. I can't go into specifics because I've probably already broken some contractual obligations but I will state that I do have information that you are most likely not privy to and I'm not trying to hold it over your head just saying that I disagree with your analysis. But whatevs.
 
James Fisher said:
Always grateful for your insights, Mitch! So nice to have you here.

Do you think Panasonic have the will (or the pockets) to get back in the game? I feel they are laying a solid foundation with the S series at the entry point into the market. I mean, the S1H is a compelling offering, and the S Pro lenses are best in class for video from what I've seen, especially with features like the almost non-existent lens breathing and close, if not fully, parfocal ability of the 24-70mm 2.8. Although damn it, I wish their marketing was better on things like this =( It would give people something important to consider when choosing which system to plump for.
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It would be wrong for me to forecast on future Panasonic plans. I had access to certain information and I'm bound by contractual obligations. I will note that cameras such as the S1H come from a different development group and different factory than the EVA1 and VariCams.
 
Mitch Gross said:
My comment about the FS7 was about the fact that years after it's introduction it was selling far more than the Canon or Panasonic offerings on a monthly basis. Sony owned that market segment. I can't go into specifics because I've probably already broken some contractual obligations but I will state that I do have information that you are most likely not privy to and I'm not trying to hold it over your head just saying that I disagree with your analysis. But whatevs.
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No doubt about it because it pretty much had no competition.

Blackmagic was for amateurs and the new generation, and most tried-and-true old-timers never trusted the company, at least not yet.

RED was too expensive.

ARRI was for the 1%.

You know way more than me about the internal stuff going on, but the findings are pretty obvious even based on a simple eye and ear test and working in production and seeing camera requests whether in real life or through job inquiries and applications, and/or other means with potential employers.

So that only left the C300 Mark II which was its closest competition, but also a brain fart trying to live off of the glory of the C300 - which was a GOD as well - but $16000 for no 4K/60p after the FS7 which was pretty much half its cost is even worse than $7500 for the EVA1.

The FS7 came at the right time with the right specs for the right price and it absolutely dominated camera life.

___

We're just chatting and I hope I didn't offend you - I think you're a fellow New Yorker so you can handle it :)​ - but I'm kind of mad at Panasonic for always messing it up.

2 cinema cameras for less than $10K in over 10 years...just unacceptable, IMO.

Even the LT...such a miss. And Panasonic could make such great cameras! [The S5 was one of my favorite mirrorless' ever even with no AF!]
 
NorBro said:
lol. You do not need to work at Panasonic to obtain that information. Like with most things in life, it's about who you know and who's willing to provide you data.

I said the FS7 was one of the greatest cameras and greatest camera releases in the history of the business, so I don't know if one could be more clear in implying that it did pretty well. How's it possible you've landed on analyzing that statement to imply the opposite?

If it's unclear; yes, the FS7 was a GOD. But it's also common sense that people move on and want new cameras. No one keeps any market besides ARRI because some would say they are a monopoly and mostly chosen by default by the people who control the industry, but not many are still buying the Classic.

In general, and with all due respect, your perspective about the market is flawed. Because, for instance, the Panasonic tape Varicams were the gold standard for so many years and they entirely lost the market and disappeared overnight.

They once owned the market, but they did not keep the market.
Click to expand...

One constant of internet is that whenever a reply starts with "lol," what follows will completely misunderstand every point it intends to rebuff.
 
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