Panasonic AF101 Footage

PaPa said:
Honestly, all the 7D was missing is all of the things that the AF100 is bringing to the table. I was quite pleased with the image quality, but wanted to sync good quality sound to the camera. I like implementing camera movement whenever a scene calls for it, but if the lens was too long and I wanted a hasty handheld, I would have to resort to using wider lenses to avoid seeing intense skew. Deep focus shots were riddled with Aliasing and moire, which made it impossible to have any type of camera movement without throwing the image slightly out of focus and then sharpening in post.

Now if the AF100 delivers on those respects and can still provide an image as nice as the HDSLR's have been producing, disregarding that we are gaining another stop to two stops of latitude (suggested), then I think the AF100 is a total hit and did exactly what it was sent out to. The image quality/ compression isn't worse than what the 5D, 7D or GH1 have been producing is it? Cause if it's even a bit better then another sweet plus.

The pre order is done with BandH and I guess the real test will be when those of us who ordered one receive them and learn all about them inside and out.
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I have the same feeling. I've honestly loved my 7D and continue to shoot on it non-stop. That said, I too would like the freedoms you mention with less skew, less moire/aliasing. Those two things alone are more important for me than ANY of the other additions. Most issues on the 7D at least had work arounds, like audio, but for something like the sensor performance, there wasn't a work around.

Otis, I understand where your viewpoint is coming from, and that is a valid question. If the sensor is still at the root designed for both stills and video, it means that from both ends there comes compromise. However, we just don't know that. We don't really know anything about what they physically did to the filter layer, or how they are binning, etc.

This is a case of waiting and seeing. Luckily, these are easy things to test as well.
 
grimepoch said:
Being 10% or 15% faster or slower IS important... I am amazing at what imagers do these days given that!
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That sounds logical. Manufacturers makes shutters slow/inferior on purpose. Right...

Grimepoch, I can tell your dayjob is in the CMOS industry. You don't even notice the rolling shutter any more! jk. Do you have something that records video using CCD? Even a low end DV camcorder will do. Get back to that for a while, move the camera around and compare. Rolling shutter is a serious issue because it affects they way people shoot. It has changed the camera operation in low budget films. In the (CCD) DV days we had more active camerawork.
 
RieniO said:
lol. The GH2 will come in black and silver only, not in red :-)

I pre-ordered one to use as B camera with my AF101. Of course it will be better than the GH1.
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depends what is 'better' to you i suppose. it's already been proven to be INFERIOR to gh1 in high bitrate recording, mud, resolution etc to my knowledge. So the only thing that will be 'better' is probably low light. So to me that still leaves gh13 as king considering it's normal light detailed scene footage will probably still be superior...
 
Otis Grapsas said:
That sounds logical. Manufacturers makes shutters slow/inferior on purpose. Right...

Grimepoch, I can tell your dayjob is in the CMOS industry. You don't even notice the rolling shutter any more! jk. Do you have something that records video using CCD? Even a low end DV camcorder will do. Get back to that for a while, move the camera around and compare. Rolling shutter is a serious issue because it affects they way people shoot. It has changed the camera operation in low budget films. In the (CCD) DV days we had more active camerawork.
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It's not that they make them slower/inferior on purpose, it's just they have to balance the pros and cons of what they give up in active area real-estate on the sensor. NOTHING precludes CMOS from using a global electronic shutter, just as CCD has been made before with rolling shutter. It's the fact that if they add in all the logic required, it reduces the active area for the pixels, and that is never a good thing. So you are going to be trading your light sensitivity for eliminating rolling shutter. Now, I've not seen any numbers as to how much is lost, but given that CMOS with global shutter is rare, I have to think it is significant.

And slowing down the read/reset as I mentioned can be due to the manufacturing of the sensors. Most chips are designed to what they call the 6 sigma point, meaning they measure process, temperature and voltage variation and find design the part so it is functional between the 6 sigma on the gaussian distribution. For mass produced CMOS, this means you are going to have to run it slower and add a lot of margin in.

In cutting edge design, you know that if you design the circuitry right, you could have higher performance parts in a certain range, called yield. Companies like Intel speed sort their CPU chips and sell the smaller number of ones that will work at higher speeds for more. I've not seen imaging companies doing that, but given they are working in CMOS, they are going to suffer yield hits when they try to push the speed of the sensor faster and faster. And this doesn't account for the issue of on chip variation which could also be another significant hit on yield. All pixels WILL NOT be created equal, therefore, there must be a threshold where a pixel is just too far out of the rest and the sensor isn't used.

I've used CCD cameras for YEARS. Before I used the Canon HV30 I had a Sony TRV CCD camera. I've also used 3 chip cameras as well. I understand the difference between global and rolling shutter. I think the magnitude of the rolling shutter and what you film is a HUGE consideration on whether it matters to you or not. If I was shooting sports and the like, I'd not be wanting shallow DoF or a rolling shutter. But, as I said, rolling shutter is closer to what real film does. As I said, I've seen and measured film skew in released movies. (Not all shutters, but the spinning mirror shutter that is so commonly used with film cameras).

And I DEFINITELY agree with you, it is a problem. That said, if the AF100 is say Twice as fast as the 7D, that is a HUGE improvement. The Red One M sensor was I think something like 8.9ms read/reset and now the MX sensor at least on the epic is 5ms. From what I've been told by Graeme Nattress over at RED is that film equivalent is like 4ms. I've never measured it, so I can only related what was told to me.

What I do know is my HV30 has SIGNIFICANT less rolling shutter than my 7D, and it too is a CMOS sensor. I'd be happy with that level on the AF100.
 
Homunculus said:
depends what is 'better' to you i suppose. it's already been proven to be INFERIOR to gh1 in high bitrate recording, mud, resolution etc to my knowledge. So the only thing that will be 'better' is probably low light. So to me that still leaves gh13 as king considering it's normal light detailed scene footage will probably still be superior...
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In all the samples floating around the web, the improved rolling shutter of the GH2 doesn't even matter, since the codec cannot handle a high detail scene.

At this point I'd rather have a GH13 + neat video than a GH2.
 
plasmasmp said:
In all the samples floating around the web, the improved rolling shutter of the GH2 doesn't even matter, since the codec cannot handle a high detail scene.
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The last samples GH2 I saw including the mts file from that Polish site looked ok to me, after that I stopped following the GH2 thread so I might have missed anything new, so I will do some reading on there to "ketchup".

Edit: Btw I see in your link that you are the eyepatch dude, I saw your videos on Youtube... it's a small world :-)
 
plasmasmp said:
In all the samples floating around the web, the improved rolling shutter of the GH2 doesn't even matter, since the codec cannot handle a high detail scene.

At this point I'd rather have a GH13 + neat video than a GH2.
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exactly my point. Just as I predicted many months ago, GH13 still owns GH2. Thus Gh2=ugly red headed stepchild no one wants. Either buy a gh13 or an AF100. If you want stills, buy a rebel or 7d, unless you're a super die hard, hardcore Panny fan and want to take stills with a Panny cam then I guess that's the GH2 target market.
 
Yes I believe people have already compared original mts files of gh2 and gh13 and proven scientifically and numerically that gh13 still outperforms gh2 in high detailed scenes period.


GH2 is DOA, a dud just like me and many others said months ago.
 
Well I still have two hackable GH1s, didn't bother hacking them but maybe I should keep them and hack them, just for the hack of it :-)
 
Slow down in judging the GH2................................Uncompressed HDMI will make the GH2 THE indie camera - if we discover that it is unfettered - there will be no contest guys. This camera will then kick some serious behind..........if you have never seen how good uncompressed HDMI looks - just wait a little while...........It is mind blowingly good.
 
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Ok,

Yep all good and thanks for running us through the ringer, I appreciate we need to back up claims and opinions. However you are pushing the limits of what I/we are capable of answering. Remember we had the camera for 5 hours. I could comment on all of this if I had it longer and not doing a shoot, so my information will be hypothetical. Where we can comment as experts is in what you see, freezing every detail and being accountable is probably not fair. But I can comment as much as I can and I have diverted to others who know more than me. Remember we are not defending this camera, we are users just like you. So I am not hiding or candy coating anything. Jan/Rick and others are in a funny way being forced to step in and thank god we have them. Other manufacturers I know for a fact have policies not to interact with forums. If Jan says there is no jello and I say I didn't see any, that should be enough for us until a engineer can have a look in December and trust me, when I get my hands on a production model that is where its going. That is what our members will want to see.

RE: rolling shutter, agreed, I anticipate some but this was not our primary test, in a hypothetical way we checked saw little and moved on. We spent no more than about 10 minutes talking about it. I expect other independent reviews to do a much better job, given more access.

RE: Skin Tones, yep there are times I am not quite happy with them. Cannot dissect it, this was our first run at it.. when I say run.. I do mean run. We covered 5 locations in 5 hours with an entourage. Encountered problems and everything you'd expect on any shoot. Technical testing was secondary to actually shoot some good video. We did that so please just cut us a little slack.

Why are some of the skin tones looking blue, yellow, warm cold.. we could hypothesize. It looked good to me on the day, we moved on. If it looked ugly I'd be concerned, it doesn't and I am happy with it as raw footage, our preliminary grades made it sexy. In my world that is mission accomplished. The clipping came in the down convert. Why? Don't know, I'm not an expert. Simon our editior is grading footage, hopefully we can post our findings more in depth.

RE: Noise in blacks. Correct, it is there in the original but it is nothing like what you see on vimeo. I just said its not there because in my opinion it was looking pretty acceptable. Yes it is there if you turn up the black level or nose up to the monitor but from the plushy leather couch I did not see anything worth talking about. I don't speak on behalf of everyone in the edit suite I am only speaking on behalf of me. You may differ. (joe might comment in depth here) I'd suggest to wait until you can decide for yourself before cutting it apart. Again, this is a variable of releasing teaser footage. Panasonic could have just said no and the only people to ever view this worldwide would have been the members on CREWS.tv, I for one am glad everyone can have a look.

I will repeat this again

We tested the camera to find out one thing alone. Does it look better than DSLRs or did they compromise look in order to give us a proper shooting camera? Our article outlines it pretty well. So much of your answers are there but I appreciate you want more, we simply have not tested it properly to do that. The main reason we didn't do that is 1) no time 2) there are other who will be doing that later 3) I wanted to shoot something cool with some great people I enjoy spending time with
 
Thanks Yves, as for the noise: To me the noise actually looked VERY encouraging and good. Reason? Because it looked like actual film grain and not the atrociously dreaded FPN/banding B.S.(!!!!!!!!!!) of the GH1 that makes me want to punt this thing straight through my window.
 
Homunculus said:
Yes I believe people have already compared original mts files of gh2 and gh13 and proven scientifically and numerically that gh13 still outperforms gh2 in high detailed scenes period.


GH2 is DOA, a dud just like me and many others said months ago.
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You believe!!! care to give us some actual link or fact to where we can find this that gh13 still outperforms gh2 scientifically and numerically . I have followed the gh2 thread and have not seen once that somebody has been able to do a side by side test of the gh13 and GH2, an unreleased camera. On the contrary people have been quite impressed by a polish test and a guy from asia. I mean technically not necessarily esthetically. There are still some question on some part of the footage but until now no one has an answer and the general feeling has been quite positive.
 
Danielvilliers said:
You believe!!! care to give us some actual link or fact to where we can find this that gh13 still outperforms gh2 scientifically and numerically . I have followed the gh2 thread and have not seen once that somebody has been able to do a side by side test of the gh13 and GH2, an unreleased camera. On the contrary people have been quite impressed by a polish test and a guy from asia. I mean technically not necessarily esthetically. There are still some question on some part of the footage but until now no one has an answer and the general feeling has been quite positive.
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You can search for the link yourself, it's here on the forum. Multiple people have done so, one of whom was Vitaly himself the expert engineer who reverse-engineered the GH1 to turn it into the GH13. I won't do the work for you only because I'm very busy at the moment preparing for a 14 hour shoot tomorrow but like I said multiple sources have tested and shown Gh13 to be superior to GH2 in several ways already based on original in-camera files and knowledge of the sensor/codec.

People have been impressed by Polish test you said? Which test is that? To my knowledge recently Panasonic sponsored a Polish group to shoot a short with GH1 to my knowledge not GH2 and people were fawning over it. Perhaps you are confused, unless I am, but I clearly recall it being a GH1 polish video, so once again that would be more notches on GH1's belt.
 
Thank you Yves and co. for posting that footage and helping people like myself make a decision.

This camera was made for people like me. People who didn't pull the trigger on getting a Red because it was too expensive, didn't get the HPX170 because getting a quality 35mm adapter rig almost doubles the price, and didn't get a DSLR because the expense and rigging of these still cameras to become video cameras was too involved. I know most people on this site are professionals who spend thousands of dollars just on lenses but there is an entire market of mid-level customers looking for something with the features of a video camera and the film quality of a 35mm but WITHOUT the hassle of rigging a DSLR unit. While I can't speak for the rest of the world I can tell you that my introduction to DV (and a lot of other people's from what I've read) was the HVX200. Once that $3,000 price tag is ingrained in your psyche it's asking a lot of people like me who aren't used to spending $2,000 on a single lens to all of a sudden pony up $8,000 for a fully rigged EX1. At that point we have to ask ourselves "Can I really afford to do this or do I just need to settle for an HVX200 (i.e. older technology) and try to make that work?"

The fact is that people like me don't obsess over P2 vs. SD. We don't really take offense at Intra vs. any other codec unless there is a REAL loss of quality. People like me aren't pixel-peepers and aren't really into greenscreening. It's cheaper for us to avoid bad footage than spend even more money for a better camera. I know what rolling shutter is and didn't like it in the 7D. I see no such rolling shutter in Yves footage. Period. People like me have been holding out for a video camera that can deliver the "film look", 35mm quality of the DSLR. The people arguing about minutia in image quality fail to understand that the cameras they are comparing priced most of us clean out of the market. Our price point is in the neighborhood of the HVX or HPX. Before the AF100 the only alternative for us seemed to be a 35mm adapter or an Inspector Gadget type DSLR rig. The AF100 is just what the doctor ordered. It relieves us of our excuses NOT to buy a camera now.
 
I think Yves post has summed up our conclusion. Im bowing out of this conversation for good, some of us have work to do...
 
Atraael said:
Thank you Yves and co. for posting that footage and helping people like myself make a decision.

This camera was made for people like me. People who didn't pull the trigger on getting a Red because it was too expensive, didn't get the HPX170 because getting a quality 35mm adapter rig almost doubles the price, and didn't get a DSLR because the expense and rigging of these still cameras to become video cameras was too involved. I know most people on this site are professionals who spend thousands of dollars just on lenses but there is an entire market of mid-level customers looking for something with the features of a video camera and the film quality of a 35mm but WITHOUT the hassle of rigging a DSLR unit. While I can't speak for the rest of the world I can tell you that my introduction to DV (and a lot of other people's from what I've read) was the HVX200. Once that $3,000 price tag is ingrained in your psyche it's asking a lot of people like me who aren't used to spending $2,000 on a single lens to all of a sudden pony up $8,000 for a fully rigged EX1. At that point we have to ask ourselves "Can I really afford to do this or do I just need to settle for an HVX200 (i.e. older technology) and try to make that work?"

The fact is that people like me don't obsess over P2 vs. SD. We don't really take offense at Intra vs. any other codec unless there is a REAL loss of quality. People like me aren't pixel-peepers and aren't really into greenscreening. It's cheaper for us to avoid bad footage than spend even more money for a better camera. I know what rolling shutter is and didn't like it in the 7D. I see no such rolling shutter in Yves footage. Period. People like me have been holding out for a video camera that can deliver the "film look", 35mm quality of the DSLR. The people arguing about minutia in image quality fail to understand that the cameras they are comparing priced most of us clean out of the market. Our price point is in the neighborhood of the HVX or HPX. Before the AF100 the only alternative for us seemed to be a 35mm adapter or an Inspector Gadget type DSLR rig. The AF100 is just what the doctor ordered. It relieves us of our excuses NOT to buy a camera now.
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Great post, Atraael. This is exactly why I believe the AF100 will be a huge hit. Just look at the breadth of the market this camera appeals to. And why? Because Panasonic listened to their customers. Did they listen to every comment from the group they assembled to tell them what they wanted? You bet they did. Did they include every suggestion in the AF100? Of course not. Impossible. So people will dissect and praise and criticize. And criticize, praise and dissect. Gives us all something to do until Dec. 27.

The first footage and reviews of the actual production model will soon come out and a LOT of people will be scrambling to buy it. Hopefully, they'll all be able to find one. But I kind of doubt it. Which is why I not only pre-ordered the camera, but sprang earlier than planned on some of the lenses I'd long been lusting for...thinking the popularity of the AF100 will make some of them very hard to find, at least at a reasonable price.

Good times ahead.
 
Have being looking for some answers which have being bothering me for little while now.
1. If the uncompressed data from HDMI port is recorded by an external pro-res recorder with higher data rate greater than 200 mb/sec to get 1080p frames, will the visuals have less moire. In the current recorders such as Aja ki pro is the codec better than AVCHD?
Edit: forgot to mention a new pro-res recorder coming up:-
http://urbanfoxtv.blogspot.com/2010/09/enter-ninja-prores-recorder.html
2. Dont have the budget to use zeiss cine lenses so how good the lumix lenses say Lumix G Vario 14-140mm is, say compared to the L series lenses. Offcourse it won't match the cine lenses.
3. Any suggestions for good lenses in the price range comparable to Canon L-series.

Thanks in advance!

Manjeet Singh
 
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