Panasonic S1H Announcement Tuesday, August 27th

Cool, James - I was wondering how it felt in the hand and if the added thickness would be awkwardly bulky. Nice to hear it feels good and compact when gripping.


Smaller than a DSLR, but has the same grip feel. Whereas the BMPCC 4K left my pinky hanging and was a larger bodied camera than the S1H. So, props to Panny on the build, from what i could tell.
 
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For feature work, or anything narrative for that matter FF still presents one fundamental problem and that's one of focus...the cost of shooting at FF level DOF, is simply not practical and the artistic choice to use shallow DOF to emphasize certain scenes dissapears when everything is razor thin. That leaves FF with the low light advantage, but again, no one would shoot a film with a budget without lights...so, with documentary work I could see the value, though it would definitely not be my personal choice, but the multi billion $ market that is narrative will stay with S35 ideally at around 4.0 to 5.6 as someone is responsible for "getting the shot"! As drifting correctly points out, the FF desire is aimed squarely at the prosumer...FF is not practical when you have an expensive crew and actors waiting around while the camera department is trying to get a shot in focus, and it is lighting that creates beautiful footage, not the ability to shoot in the dark. So lastly, to that overused lament "but I just love the look of FF"....if you make your living shooting 20 second clips that you get payed a fortune for (does anybody?) this seems to be purely the sentiment of someone owning a camera as a hobby, and not to make a living with! (All run and gun, documentary shooter or photographers excluded here of course!)
I agree. I shot a feature this summer on Super 35mm sensor with some lenses that are for FF 1.4 f-stop. Getting focus on both eyes on one actor being a bit off on an angle (around 20-30%) means only one of the eyes are in perfect focus and it is noticeable. I mostly shot around F4 and 5.6 to have more room for focus, but sometimes with lights/set design it was needed to either blur the background or open up for light, and it is a pain. No monitor is good enough at that level either since the panels are all Full HD but it is all being shot in 4K an above... Sure I used a lot of times the 1:1 and 2:1 pixel zoom on the Inferno to check perfect focus, but that only works when doing wide shots, not when I have the camera on the shoulder and the actor is just slightly moving. That is then only FF lenses on Super 35, it is even worse when shooting on proper FF (which I done plenty on 5D's and A7R's). I literally see way to many big budget movies with bad focus, on digital systems, it is one thing that La La Land had a bit iffy focus on some scenes (real film) but another when Highway Men or Holmes and Watson have shots that shouldn't be allowed in a finished production. They have some shots that I can't understand how their video-village miss it... So I don't see FF being the end all be all seeing how hard it is for people to master 35mm... My pet peeve in movies are close-ups in which you can tell the focus is razor sharp on the ears and not the eyes...
 
You were off by $1.01. :)

As always - a day late and a dollar short. (or is it long?)

Side note : Newshooter linked to the promo videos. Both the Kepler short and the music video (both shot with Atlas anamorphics off 3:2, it looks like) surely beat the "Trick Shot" on content and image quality. I'd prefer to have seen a richer color palette but this is the current "milky" in vogue style. At least, it's no "orange and teal".
 
BTW this DP review video shows a few things - There is a new Zebra 1 + 2, not false color, but a nice in between. Shutter angle IS back, I didn't catch them saying it (I sort of skimmed) but I did see 180 degrees on the screen in some clips. WFM is there. VFR actually does look robust with intervals all throughout. And some other niceties. Cool.

It also shows some nasty aliasing that I hope is YouTube's fault. See the hosts jacket at 11:15.
 
It also shows some nasty aliasing that I hope is YouTube's fault. See the hosts jacket at 11:15.

Very likely it's a YouTube thing as the S1H has an OLP filter to control both aliasing and moire. ( Viewing YouTube 4K on a 4K monitor will sometimes fix the problem )
 
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