Panasonic GH5?

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Febuary 10 is hardly a "long" ways ahead. Who wants to bet they upgrade the GH1 and ignore our firmware update requests.
 
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I'll tell you what -- Panasonic will recall all the GH1s and exchange 'em like Red does, as soon as Sony recalls all the EX1s and exchanges them for EX1Rs, and Canon recalls all the 5Ds and exchanges them for 1D Mk IVs, okay?

Why do people even make these suggestions? Sigh.

Okay, back to the topic at hand -- if it's February of 2010, is that a long way off? Think about it, that's probably three and a half months -- about as long as the GH1 has actually been on the market.
 
Chamber005 said:
Weird. I didn't know the GH1 was only 17mbps. My HF200 is 24mbps.

Most prosumer cams are 35mbps, right?
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You're talking about apples, oranges, and lawn furniture.

You cannot compare megabits (as a sole data point) and reach any meaningful conclusions.

The EX1 is 35mbps of MPEG-2. The HMC150 is 21 megabits of H.264. Which one has the better, more robust codec? The 21-megabit h.264.

The 7D has an h.264 codec at 50 megabits. Is it 2.5 times better than the HMC150's codec? No, it's probably about the same.

Then there's the 17 megabits of h.264 in the GH1. Is that almost as good as the 21 megabits of the HMC150? Not within three country miles. It's more like about 6 megabits worth of the HMC150's codec.
 
Barry_Green said:
... if it's February of 2010, is that a long way off? Think about it, that's probably three and a half months -- about as long as the GH1 has actually been on the market.
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Hi Barry: What you say is relevant to the US market primarily, but you'll recall the GH1 was available in many parts of the world by mid June '09, and late April/early May '09 in Japan. So, Feb. 2010 isn't completely out of line for some sort of "G" video-capable cam product line addition/change.

Also, wasn't the GH1 originally announced at a big industry trade show back in 9/08? If so then Panasonic has had lots time to gather feedback from potential & real customers & dealers and apply it to whatever internal roadmap they're using.

Meanwhile, it'll be fun if the Sony 11/18/09 announcement rumor turns out to be relevant: We know Sony is capable of making a kick-*ss cam in this space if they want to. Competition is good, sometimes even if it's only in the form of a rumor. ;-)
 
Yeah, I don't know if a GH5 coming in June 10 is quick or not. Plus, if all we know about it is that it has a "5" in its name, that doesn't even mean it's gonna be in the same class, right? A 1D Mk IV is $5,000, and a 7D is $1700, so who knows, a GH5 might be a $300 microcam or a $3,000 ultra-M43 cam...

Looking forward to the Sony announcement, that's less than a week away! And then, of course, the Red announcements are a couple of weeks after that...
 
On a more serious note, it would nice if Sony were to announce on 11/18/09 what I call a stop-the-madness "HD"* video-capable "DLSR" cam.

By that I mean, a cam with a strictly traditional DSLR form factor but without purely "arbitrary" limitations on its capabilities as a "HD" video & audio camera and recording device.

I'm not talking about some ideal, do-all HD cam. I'm talking about "simple" stuff:

For example, the new cam could have a full-time live audio line level outputs, or a headphone jack, without changing its DSLR form factor, with no significant engineering cost.

It could allow the user to turn audio recording AGC off/on (and switch the mic inputs to line level in) without changing its DSLR form factor, with no significant engineering cost.

It could record "HD" video without pulldown; the 7D shows it's possible to do this in a DSLR form factor, and maybe w/o much of a price penalty.

It could record "HD" video at a data rate higher than 17 megabits/sec. Again, the 7D shows it's possible to do this in a DSLR form factor. But, do we know if this can be done for significantly less cost than the 7D body?

It would be nice if it used a studly codec implementation (including B frames, etc.), but this may or may not be possible with current tech in a DSLR form factor, or for the price of a 7D or less.

It would be nice if it supported full-time quality uncluttered "live" HDMI output, but again: This may or may not be possible with current tech in a DSLR form factor, or for the price of a 7D or less.

Most importantly, it can make sense for Sony (or any the other major manufacturers) to do these things _today_ business & profit-wise because customers can always buy whatever camera _most closely_ has the features they want in whatever form factor and at whatever price point makes sense for them.

For example, if you must have XLR audio input connectors built-into the cam, then buy one of the many bigger-than-DSLR cams which include them. If that cam doesn't have a big sensor, too, then better luck until next year, or the year after that. The DSLR physical form factor can be a useful way to differentiate these cams from traditional HD video camcorders in the marketplace.

But this month, Sony _could_ release a "HD" video-capable DSLR which has the best features of the 7D, 5DM2 & GH1 with hopefully none of the simpler of these drawbacks and at a competitive price, too.

I can't think of any technical, business or market reason for _any_ of the manufacturers not to do it.

However, I could be way off base here. :-)

*I've put "HD" in quotes unless the video res is better than poor-quality 720p. :-)
 
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12 megapixel sensor. How's this going to work for scaling video? I can't remember who said it, but was it a 13mpx sensor that would be perfect for scaling down the video?

... This isnt' a Sony topic BUT for some reason, they just don't excite me? I can't see the Sony Alpha product being anything incredible... if at all matching what we already have or had.
 
I might be mistaken, but for a single sensor using a bayer pattern, isn't the rule of thumb 1920 x 1080 x ~3.5 = approx. 8 megapixels?


P.S.: If this is true, then I vote for a ~8MP "HD" video-capable DSLR! Speaking for myself only, I don't really need any more than that for stills, especially if it means getting much better HD video. But I fear the MP horse may have left the barn a long time ago ...
 
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Peter J. DeCrescenzo said:
But this month, Sony _could_ release a "HD" video-capable DSLR which has the best features of the 7D, 5DM2 & GH1 with hopefully none of their drawbacks and at a competitive price, too.
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Not likely. All engineering is a trade-off, it's all a compromise. If any of the manufacturers were able to do something that was better in all ways, with none of the drawbacks of the others, at the same price, then it could only be explained as profound incompetence on the part of the other manufacturers!

These manufacturers pick the compromises that they think are most appropriate.

Look at the last generation of HD camcorders:
Panasonic wanted variable frame rates, and needed 720/60p. So they built a CCD chip that could do that -- and the only way they could do it, was with a lower pixel count. You can't have a 1920x1080 1/3" 60P CCD, with any sort of sensitivity, the engineering on that is just impossible. So they made the compromise they felt they needed to make, to deliver the features they felt people wanted, and used Spatial Offset to up the resolution.

Canon, on the other hand, wanted the highest-pixel-count chip they could get, 1440x1080. Three times the pixel density of the HVX. But the only way to do that was with interlaced chips! So the Canon gets no 720p mode, and a pseudo-24p mode known as 24F, and no variable frame rates.

JVC wanted 720/60p and full-raster chips. Couldn't be done. So they took a wild approach -- two chips side-by-side. The tradeoff? The dreaded split-screen effect.

Sony wanted full-raster chips and 720p and variable frame rates. Not possible on a 1/3" CCD. So they did the only thing they could -- they went CMOS. And along with that came rolling shutter, partial exposure, skew and wobble, etc.

Tradeoffs are all inherent in the engineering industries, you have to pick what's important to you and live with the compromises it engenders (or, just raise the price tag high enough that you can afford better technology).

No matter what any manufacturer introduces, you can be absolutely assured that there were compromises made along the way -- either in capabilities, or side effects, or in the price tag.
 
Hi Barry: I hear you.

I edited my post after you replied. I changed "the drawbacks" to "the simpler of these drawbacks", which is closer to what I meant.

I agree with you that all products have compromises.

The point of my post was that it's time manufacturers moved on and added just a few more no/low cost features in their HD video-capable DSLR cams, more similar to what are the baseline features of most high-end consumer and entry-level prosumer camcorders (e.g.: headphone jack, line level audio I/O, live video out, etc.)

And to answer the question: _I_ get to decide which features are "baseline"! :-)
 
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