My two-day assessment of the AF100

J

jmarkham

Well-known member
I'm going to premise this with the fact that I've only had two days with this camera to
give an assessment .. and, therefore, I may miss the subtleties of the camera. But,
here goes.

Firstly .. I *love* 4/3 sensor on the camera .. it's big enough that my
Lumix, C-mount and adapted 35mm Zeiss lenses do wonderful things with
this unit.

For the Lumix and other automated lenses, the OIS/AF/Auto-Iris features
are potentially useful .. although I have found myself turning most of these
off. Latency of lens response has been poor. The Lumix lenses have
s**tty "F" ratings .. I'm waiting on the Voigtlander to get a reasonably
fast lens. Of course, the C-mount lenses have some wicked fast lenses ..

I have fallen in love with the Lumix 7-14mm lens .. it is a beautiful lens .. ridiculously
wide .. deliciously so.

The fact that I can leverage the incredibly rich set of C-mount lenses has made me
like a kid in a candy store .. the richness that one can harvest from a previously
"abandoned" lens family is unprecedented. Incredibly fast glass at a great
price-point. Hopefully the rest of the MFT world won't snag them all up.

My biggest problems happen from what goes on from behind the sensor. Even at the
PH encoding "max" for the camera, I find that the encoding and data rate reduction
are entirely unacceptable for this camera. I have to question Panasonic's motivation here.
I would have paid at least $1k more to have a decent storage format. As a result, I'm
going to have to get a NanoFlash, Ki Pro Mini or Atamos Ninja (whenever) to capture
what the sensor is capable of.

I love the price of the AF100 .. but i would pay more to have an integrated solution.

It seems like Panasonic cow-towed to the 5D-MarkII / DSLR more that it should have. As a
result, we're going to have to spend more to work around the back-end shortcuts
they took ... no offense to Panasonic .. i would never use the 5d MKII without a NanoFlash
(or similar) either. But there's the rub . i bought the AF100 to work around the
many shortcomings of the 5DMKII / DSLR cameras ... DOF with a minimum of
pain. In this regard . it has fallen short.

So . in conclusion:

Is it a great camera? .. sensor yes ...

As i told my friend .. "buy it for the sensor and form factor ... replace what's behind..."

Would I buy another one? .. Nope .. they have to fix this unit up .. and I know they
know what they have to do .. mainly .. do justice by your imaging sensor!!.


jeff
 
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Well it's a 5K camera and you're complaining about the codec which you can easily circumvent with a $1K outboard recorder if it's too objectionable- seems a bit much. A year ago no camera came close to this level of performance for under 18K...

Noah
 
well think of it this way, at least with a separate recorder you have the internal cards for redundant backup. Plus, think of how many people would not have bought this camera if it was 1k more..myself included in that.
 
What exactly is letting you down regarding the on board recording?
My experience is that it holds up exceptionally well. And that the benefits of an out bound recorder are marginal.

What type of recording format would you consider "acceptable"?
 
Yeah, I don't get it either; from what I've been reading, most people were expecting external recorders to produce significantly better results than on-board, and many have been surprised at how the on board recording is stacking up.
 
Steve R said:
Yeah, I don't get it either; from what I've been reading, most people were expecting external recorders to produce significantly better results than on-board, and many have been surprised at how the on board recording is stacking up.
Click to expand...

"most people" ? .. I don't know how you could qualify such a statement. my experience with an HD-SDI input to a 10bit 422 10bit ProRes 422 encoder is is night
and day vs. the camera's on-board. If you can't see how the AVCHD 4:2:0 looks compared to what this sensor can do, then i really don't know what
to say.

I don't want people to assume that I "hate" this camera .. I don't . I just think that it didn't meet my needs as a camera to overcome all things
i hate about DSLR cameras like the 5D MK2 (of which i own two).

We have to employ nano flash acquisition systems to overcome the current DSLR limitations .. i was hoping the AF100 would remedy that.
Panasonic has made statements that they feel they have addressed that gap ..

In my opinion .. the AF100 doesn't do so. It's a wonderful sensor trapped in a crappy package.

Is it a better DSLR than the 5D MKII? yea .. is it a "video camera"? .. not until they remedy the encoding side of
things.

I also want to be clear that I'm not hating on the AF100 .. I just feel it fell short of what we wanted it for.
We can buy as many 5D's and Nanoflashes as we wish ... and I have to say a 5D with a Nanoflash
vs an AF100 with a Nanoflash is a $1.5k tradeoff in favor of the Canon ... and the image comparison
to the Canon is only marginally better for the AF100. Would I spend the extra on the AF100? .. No ..
only if I had a bunch of MFT or C-mount lenses.

We have an AF100 .. but I'm not going to buy any more until they make a more compelling
difference between a DSLR and this format.


jeff
 
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jmarkham said:
" is it a "video camera"? .. not until they remedy the encoding side of
things.
Click to expand...

not a video camera? really? are you serious?

jmarkham said:
Can we fix it? . yes .. would I pay more not to have to .. ? ... yes.

jeff
Click to expand...

Fix it? You're assuming it's broken. It's not. It has the appropriate features for it's price range. There's a class of camera that has everything you want. You just have to pony up the pennies.
 
NoahK said:
Well it's a 5K camera and you're complaining about the codec which you can easily circumvent with a $1K outboard recorder if it's too objectionable- seems a bit much. A year ago no camera came close to this level of performance for under 18K...

Noah
Click to expand...

Well dude .. I get that .. but I have 5D MKII's with a 1K outboard recorder that look better than the AF100 without. .. so what gives?
We all know the DSLR format has suck points and we wanted a "video" format camera to remedy. The AF100 at least over comes the
dreaded 8 minute shot limit . but in terms of shot quality? ... I'm waiting for someone to explain the economics to me if i have to replace
the back end on the AF100.

jeff
ps: I'm not a Panasonic hater .. we have 200's and 300's and love them.
 
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jmarkham said:
Well dude .. I get that .. but I have 5D MKII's with a 1K outboard recorder that look better than the AF100 with an outboard recorder? .. so what gives?
We all know the DSLR format has suck points and we wanted a "video" format camera to remedy that. The AF100 at least over comes the
dreaded 8 minute shot limit . but in terms of shot quality? ... we're not seeing it.

jeff
Click to expand...

I would be keen to see a demonstration of what you are stating. eg a side by side..same shot with each camera.

I shot footage AF102 ( music video in a bar) last week and my colleague shot the same simultaneously with a Canon 5D MkII.

We combined the footage today ( native footage from each camera into a Premiere CS5 project)

The issues with the Canon were very apparent to us both
 
I really don't get all the whining about these cameras in the sub 10K category. For the money they are amazing. Step back a few years and look at these cameras and it is all amazing. You can get so much for so little these days.... But still the crying continues.

Step up, buy a Red or Alexa or be happy with these little cameras these companies have made available to you for lunch money.
 
Shooter said:
I would be keen to see a demonstration of what you are stating. eg a side by side..same shot with each camera.

I shot footage AF102 ( music video in a bar) last week and my colleague shot the same simultaneously with a Canon 5D MkII.

We combined the footage today ( native footage from each camera into a Premiere CS5 project)

The issues with the Canon were very apparent to us both
Click to expand...

I'm game . but let's be clear about what we're recording. Was it the Canon native vs. the AF100 native? .. or a Canon 5d MkII
to a Nanoflash vs. an AF100?

My contention is that the Canon MkII with a Nanoflash looks better than an AF100 native (e.g., on camera .. no external devices).
It is also my contention that an AF100 to a Nanoflash looks better than a Canon MkII to a Nanoflash.. but the
difference in image quality between the 5D and the AF100 (both) using the Nanoflash doesn't justify the AF100's price point.


jeff
 
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Missing the Point

Missing the Point

Dude,
You've stirred a hornet's nest. Panasonic has done a great thing by creating this affordable digital filmmaker's camera. Thank God we now have a better option than the 5D Mark II. This new PH on-board codec looks truly amazing for a 24mbs video stream. The HD-SDI output is a powerful feature when you need the broadcast output of 50mbs or more. Don't lose sight that the point of this product range is to 'democratize' the filmmaking process by offering a large sensor camera to the masses who can't afford higher $.
DC in NC
 
Hello Jeff,

This maybe a bit offtopic but how does the Nanoflash work with the 5D?
Last thing i read was the HDMI of the Canon only outputs 480P... But this was a Year ago..
I couldnt find anything over Google... Is there a Hack or Firmware update?

This could be handy Information for Future Shoots...

cheers...
 
I agree with this guy. The onboard AVC. Is not very robust. I see far more banding with it, first generation, than my nano. And then add compression on top of it for your delivery format - banding and macro blocking. If I were less demanding, or only did video for web, I wouldn't have purchased the nano. If I had time for the 3:1 transcode times in Avid, or didn't care about the enormous disc space that transcode takes, I wouldn't have needed a better recording format. There a lot more to a recording format than how it looks playingright out off the card. I would have paid more for P2, for sure.
 
Here at this forum, most of us have had the camera since December, we don't want to read "oh I only had i two days, big flaws"

-1
 
Not so .. the Canon drops format when you record .. but if you don't record to camera
.. it's full-frame.
jeff
 
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