(Rumored) Panasonic FF mirrorless

Cary Knoop said:
You are assuming that full frame lenses are better than other lenses.
I think that is not correct at all, there are wonderful smaller frame lenses and there aslo not so great full frame lenses.

Sure, full frame lenses can support higher resolutions, so yes if you absolutely need to make that 36 Megapixel movie go ahead and use a full frame lens but for 4K I think it is absolutely unnecessary.
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Nooooooo, please not again :)))).

Ok, I will try to describe it again.. It is about lens selection!! I have never said that FF lenses are better, I am not saying FF is better, I am not convincing anyone, I don't say brand X is better than brand Y, I am not saying anything about DOF, I am just saying that there is way better lens selection when you are shooting FF.

So, again, lens selection. When I say selection, I mean number of different focal lengths, apertures, stabilized, fast etc.
 
S35 vs. FF is not the argument anymore...it's FF vs. larger formats, which is where the future lies as we are seeing with the newer blockbuster cameras.

IMO, the smaller sensors will eventually disappear and only be used by a niche group.

The majority of photographers who use full-frame or APS-C sensors is astronomical compared to MFT photographers, and this practice will eventually transition into video (it already has started of course) as motion pictures and technology in general continue to improve.

It's also only a matter of time before machine intelligence takes over everything.
 
NorBro said:
S35 vs. FF is not the argument anymore...it's FF vs. larger formats, which is where the future lies as we are seeing with the newer blockbuster cameras.

IMO, the smaller sensors will eventually disappear and only be used by a niche group.

The majority of photographers who use full-frame or APS-C sensors is astronomical compared to MFT photographers, and this practice will eventually transition into video (it already has started of course) as motion pictures and technology in general continue to improve.

It's also only a matter of time before machine intelligence takes over everything.
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And yet s35mm is still used for movies that earn a lot more money than you or I will ever see from a production. Just because some movies have made use of 65mm doesn't mean it is about to become the norm. Its the same reason why a 2.8k Alexa is still the King of Hollywood vs the slew of 4k options out there. Just because there is higher doesn't always mean it is better.

65mm is neat but to me it doesn't make or break a film. Its also a higher cost barrier than what is necessary to tell a story. Same reason why Hollywood tends to shoot ProRes vs raw for a lot of productions now. It just wasn't worth the extra cost vs the ROI.

Just because an option is now a reality doesn't mean it will become the norm.
 
Thomas Smet said:
And yet s35mm is still used for movies that earn a lot more money than you or I will ever see from a production. Just because some movies have made use of 65mm doesn't mean it is about to become the norm. Its the same reason why a 2.8k Alexa is still the King of Hollywood vs the slew of 4k options out there. Just because there is higher doesn't always mean it is better.

65mm is neat but to me it doesn't make or break a film. Its also a higher cost barrier than what is necessary to tell a story. Same reason why Hollywood tends to shoot ProRes vs raw for a lot of productions now. It just wasn't worth the extra cost vs the ROI.

Just because an option is now a reality doesn't mean it will become the norm.
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How do you know how much money I've earned? ha

It will take time (not overnight) but it's coming...very obvious. Their smaller sensors will soon be forgotten like their classic cameras no one ever talks about anymore (or even knows about them), and the ALEXA LF will be in everyone's hands.

Plus, larger sensors just started rolling out for some other companies and everyone is releasing one...it's not obvious?
 
How many of you shoot mostly FF?
I like FF but I prefer S35 for video generally.

As mentioned earlier, it would be good if this helps make Panasonic step up their auto focus
 
firehawk said:
How many of you shoot mostly FF?
I like FF but I prefer S35 for video generally.

As mentioned earlier, it would be good if this helps make Panasonic step up their auto focus
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I've shot both and much prefer S35. The DOF characteristics of FF don't work for me at all.
 
NorBro said:
How do you know how much money I've earned? ha

It will take time (not overnight) but it's coming...very obvious. Their smaller sensors will soon be forgotten like their classic cameras no one ever talks about anymore (or even knows about them), and the ALEXA LF will be in everyone's hands.

Plus, larger sensors just started rolling out for some other companies and everyone is releasing one...it's not obvious?
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But what advantage does a larger sensor really provide to the story? DOF? To what purpose? How does s35mm not provide enough control? If one cannot get the right DOF with s35mm they need to find a mentor to learn how to shoot properly. I’m not trying to be rude here but realistically every award winning film maker has created fine art with 35mm motion picture film or s35mm. Why is it a group of indies can’t do the same magic and need a larger sensor to be successful?

Resolution? To what end? Cinematic doesn’t mean high resolution. In fact it generally means the opposite. The GH5 often gets criticized for having too much detail and there have been plenty of debates on how 4k isn’t all that necessary vs 2k. Alexa is still the king at 2.8k to 3.2k and nobody can prove a 4k Alexa would actually be any better. I personally prefer 4k as well but when it comes to resolution I just don’t see the need for 65mm.

Low light? Only if one is accustomed to shooting badly with no light. Just because a sensor can suck in more light with less noise at a higher ISO doesn’t mean that’s the best way to shoot something important. Higher ISO will always have some level of image compromise and pushing an extra stop just to be lazy and not use any lights is not enough to make FF worth it. If a s35mm can’t pull in enough light it is not the camera that is the weakest link in the production. Honestly the GH5S and BMD Pocket 4k likely already pull in enough light with a m43 sensor on their own before one should seriously kick on some kind of light kit for the love of all things digital.

Anamorphic 65mm Glass? Ok yeah that’s a thing but it’s really more of an aesthetic choice vs actually delivering a product of higher quality. The cost associated with this is still out of reach for most productions outside of big budget Hollywood movies.

Even if we are talking 65mm that has absolutely nothing to do with FF sensors and spherical FF lenses. That is a niche since Hollywood doesn’t work that way. By the time Hollywood would shoehorn in a FF workflow 65mm could be more common. FF just doesn’t really provide any tangible advantage over s35mm cinema sensors. Especially when those FF sensors are designed to also capture higher resolution stills. A hybrid FF sensor is rarely as good as a s35mm sensor optimized precisely for video capture at a native resolution.

Panasonic is moving to FF for likely one main reason and that’s photography. M43 was always going to struggle to go beyond 20mp and FF is the way to do that. It’s a way to achieve the sensitivity of the GH5S without sacrificing the stills down to 10mp. It also means not having to sacrifice IBIS because of the enlarged image circle. Finally it’s a way for Panasonic to achieve their goal of an 8k camera which again would have been insanely brittle/fragile with m43.
 
Taking about the FF-race now. Forgive if this have been dealt with a thousand times over here, but I just want to sort the crop/aperture factor out:
A 12-35 2,8 movie of a GH5 equals a FF (for instance sonyA7iiiii) 24-70 5,6 DOF right? What happens to the DOF/aperture of a crop FF, for instance 5D4? 100mm 2,8 becomes a 170 2,8 DOf Or do you do he math on the aperture as well (ie the Canon equals a 170mm 4,7ish...:).
I’m asking because I wonder if there still can be some advantages with light with a cropped FF vs a 4/3. (The cons with weights d so on are obvious)
 
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puredrifting said:
True enough, but the practicalities of shooting FF video often mean that you must close down the lens enough to get enough DOF to be practical to where you question why you have fast lenses when you can't use them wide open or even at 2.0/2.8. People are done with the 2" of DOF with a large portion of the frame radically out of focus that was popular ten years ago. I'll take the ability of the S35 imager to make shallow DOF when needed but also having enough DOF to make a shot actually look in focus any day over the soft, blobby mess that FF imagers present at a decent focal length with a lens wide open. Once again, for stills, it's a different game but for video, for these types of cameras (small, handheld, consumer) FF have more points against them than for them for the average user. I think it's different with the RED Monstro, C700 FF and Venice. With those cameras, you will typically have crews with ACs pulling focus, much more carefully planned, blocked and composed scenes where you can utilize that wider FOV and shallower DOF at longer focal lengths. I don't think many adequately crewed feature films are being shot with mirrorless FF cameras. It's much more about weddings, run & gun events and documentary coverage and for those types of shoots, FF is sub-par to S35 IMHO.
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I think it's about having more choices. I find that the shadows are frequently noisy in M43 cameras for instance. Working in low light FF does make a big difference. I also think wider angle shots are more easily obtained with the greater lens selection coming from the FF market. For me the possibility to use a center crop to S35 from a Full Frame sensor with either S35 or FF lenses also means that I can use the sweet spot of a FF lens to have less corner distortion, fall-off and vignetting. It also means that the pixels can remain larger in a sensor and that frequently yields a more organic look to me than when they are being crammed in there for high resolution from a smaller sensor....
 
Thomas, I agree with you in various ways; I never mentioned I was in favor of one choice or the other.

I'm just sharing what the future looks like with my own opinion on the matter.

I - and maybe yourself and many others here - have used dozens of different cameras. I like and dislike all of them in many different ways.

My post (#22) was a statement on the industry and its potential direction. Your thoughts are totally valid either way, but would even be more pertinent if I mentioned S35 is no longer usable and completely obsolete. However, I'm simply mentioning the transition that is (may be) taking place.

This is what happens as technology advances. I'm currently myself questioning how soon 8K will truly be embraced. Whether we (I) require it or desire it is an afterthought.

No matter what the specs or features are of any camera, sensors will continue to grow until I don't know when (no knowledge of the limitations). Whether one size is better than the other or provides any advantages or disadvantages is not for me to argue...I truly don't care either way, haha.
 
As an old school videomaker, I can use a camera that has FF stills, and a crop mode that would allow the use of my existing m43 lenses, which are pretty good, but cannot be compared with 10000 $ + glass. I don't necessarily need more resolution, 4k is great, but 10 bit 422 is a must. That is why I would be interested in the BMPCC, but if the Panasonic is weathersealed, and has the ergonomics I am used to, gives me FF Stills, the occasional FF video, and a crop mode at a sub 3500$ price I would very be interested. Lighting, edge to edge sharpness, composition, production value, lenses with character, talent, storytelling and smoke machines, are the factors IMO contributing to a cinematic image. Resolution and razor thin DOF, while welcome, are not my cup of tea at the moment, and wouldn't really help at what I am trying to do: Perfect, beautiful "moving" images that say something worthwhile.
 
In regards to 8k video we know from the Sony A7R III that we can have a 42mp sensor with enough width for 7680 video. If the Panasonic continues its 4x3 shape sensor it could still pull that off with 44mp so its actually very possible to do.

This would yield some pretty darn high resolution stills and provide 8k video along with a nice perfectly scaled 4k video option. We already know from the GH5 that Panasonic has a great scaling method to get a larger sensor down to 4k. I would even love to see them continue their ETC mode and provide a 4k and HD crop of that sensor for a 4/3" and 2/3" size capture area for extended slow motion options without a horrible scaling method. What would be even better is if the camera could use existing m43 lenses when used with a 4/3" crop essentially making it a m43 camera for 4k video.
 
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+1...talking about choice of lenses, one of the great M4/3s benefits currently, is that you can shoot with just about any lens...so regardless of the sensor size, it would be great if the camera could shoot at various crops...there is some wonderful 16mm glass for instance if one was looking for the 16mm look. For photography I could see the benefit of a large sensor, but as was discussed in another thread recently, IMO shooting with razor thin DOF is not only totally impractical, it would to me become very tiresome to watch as a viewer. This is regardless of the enormous extra expense of the longer shooting schedules. A cinematographer from this forum did post examples of shows where they shoot everything wide open now, even in anamorphic...just because some are choosing to do this for reasons I find baffling, I think this will remain as "exotic" a niche as anamorphic, as it's a bad idea to burn out your crew and perhaps most importantly actors with endless takes because in a non static shot either they or the focus puller can't hit their marks. It's simply needless stress and boredom to expose everyone to. If all one does are 30 Vimeo or ytube clips, it would be fine, but a 2 to 21/2 hour feature would quickly become a nightmare. Lastly, we are rewatching Ozark shot on the Varicam LT (looks lovely IMO) and not a single shot of thin DOF used, and I am for the second time completely immersed. So I believe that like anamorphic it will be a razor thin segment (fully intended) of the market going this way...most of those shooting FF will probably at 5.6 and higher!
 
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Vino said:
Taking about the FF-race now. Forgive if this have been dealt with a thousand times over here, but I just want to sort the crop/aperture factor out:
A 12-35 2,8 movie of a GH5 equals a FF (for instance sonyA7iiiii) 24-70 5,6 DOF right? What happens to the DOF/aperture of a crop FF, for instance 5D4? 100mm 2,8 becomes a 170 2,8 DOf Or do you do he math on the aperture as well (ie the Canon equals a 170mm 4,7ish...:).
I’m asking because I wonder if there still can be some advantages with light with a cropped FF vs a 4/3. (The cons with weights d so on are obvious)
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A 1.5x "software" crop from a FF sensor and an APS-C sensor with a 1.5x "hardware" crop will have exactly the same FoV and DoF. So that 170mm is 4.7ish.

Regarding noise, it depends on whether the big sensor is reading all the surface or is skipping lines. If it just has bigger pixels, or has more of them but reads them all and then properly averages that information (instead of skipping rows and/or columns) then it will have less noise at the same ISO, and this difference will (at the same tech level, which is something you'll never find in real life, but well...) exactly counteract the f/ difference. So, at the same tech level (again...) a 75mm f/2.8 on FF at ISO 200 will have the same FoV, DoF and noise as a 50mm f/2.0 on APS-C at ISO 100.

After all that stuff levels up, what you end up with is that a FF f/2.8 zoom or f/1.4 prime is available and not all that expensive, whereas a f/1.4 zoom or f/0.7 prime for m43 is, well, not. So there's not much reason to go FF if you're going to stop it down to f/5.6 anyway because you don't want your DoF to become too shallow, and you don't want super-sharp images either (MTF on FF lenses is higher than the adequately-transformed m43 or APS-C counterparts, but you'll hardly notice that even at 4k, it's more of a thing for 40+ Mpix still images).

Personally, I think I'm going to be super happy with the p4k, and the one feature that that will eventually make me go back to FF is killer AF that works better than what I can get focusing manually. No current camera offers that, but at some point it will come. And then I'll have, once again, just one camera for both stills and video.
 
so 43rumors are saying it will be yet another new mount...

If true, that to me is a massive mistake by Panasonic.
 
TheTrickster said:
so 43rumors are saying it will be yet another new mount...

If true, that to me is a massive mistake by Panasonic.
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Unless they created a new mount that can be adapted to m43 lenses which in effect means it can be adapted to just about anything else. Imagine having a single camera that can use m43 glass, APS-C glass and FF glass natively.

M43 glass for 3840 wide stills/ 4k video
APS-C glass for 5120 wide stills/scaled down to 4k video just like the GH5
FF glass for 7680 wide stills/8k video that can have a perfect ratio scale to 4k and 2k video or a cropped version for 4k and 2k video at 4/3" and 2/3" sizes.
 
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