Still hard to beat for the money

B

bhdfield

Well-known member
Looking back and forth at footage from the short film commissioned by Sony, meticulously shot and posted to promote their upcoming $13,000 PMW-F3, and then looking at the short-notice, one-man band footage shot by Philip Bloom in the Japan, it's become very clear that the Af100 is a phenomenal value - one hell of a camera for the money. And we still haven't seen it at it's best - maybe not even close. The F3 short film used the best lenses, the optimum environment for soft ambient light, and lots of nice long lens shallow DOF situations in carefully composed shots. And yet when you look at Philip's footage, with much cheaper glass, somewhat overexposed, saturation and detail set too high, I still come away impressed. (Remember those guys didn't have time to really set up those cameras). And let's not forget the Af100 can overcrank at 1080p, and the F3 only at 720p. (that's my understanding).

I know Barry and others have mentioned it already, but let's keep this camera's virtues and shortcomings in context with it's cost. It's an impressive product.
 
bhdfield said:
I know Barry and others have mentioned it already, but let's keep this camera's virtues and shortcomings in context with it's cost. It's an impressive product.
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I think what most people get frustrated with is the shortcomings on purpose. When companies (both Sony and Panasonic) purposely limit a camera via software for no other reason than to clearly market to one audience or not disrupt another camera line. Look at the GH1 hack, which Panasonic has tried its best to disrupt themselves or Sony's NXcam offering 24p and 25p but not together -- just so they can sell a camera in one location. Don't even get me started on region coded dvds :P
 
Well these companies are in business to make money, not to make cameras that compete against themselves and drive down profits. That's just the way it works. Honestly, in the world of professional video $4800 is nothing, absolutely a tiny sum. That might buy you a 2x extender on a broadcast ENG lens.
 
vagarob said:
I think what most people get frustrated with is the shortcomings on purpose.
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It's fine. I'm sure there will be an AF100 hack with a bit rate hike, audio in overcrank and extended finer gamma control. The ruling against Apple earlier this year makes this completely legal, btw. I wouldn't even doubt an Andromeda AF100 with an extra HD-SDI port and 444 uncompressed out and no doubt there will be 422 uncompressed recording out of the HD-SDI within the next year or two.

The point is that film makers have always modified their gear far more than ENG camera operators. That is what Panasonic is going to have to learn. I know they are not used to working with our type but there is a definite difference and it would certainly be in their best interest to understand it.
 
My impressions were that the Af-100 looked like slightly better than gh13 footage, whereas the F3 looked similar but very slightly worse than Red.

The AF looked very nice, but I thought the F3 was a cut above. If it drops closer to 10 grand, I'll snap it up.
 
vagarob said:
I think what most people get frustrated with is the shortcomings on purpose. When companies (both Sony and Panasonic) purposely limit a camera via software for no other reason than to clearly market to one audience or not disrupt another camera line.
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Jan has stated multiple times that's it's a hardware limitation that makes them limit features in the software. You don't want the camera to overheat or lock up like the Canon 5DmkII and 7D because it's electronics are being pushed too hard for too long.

The AF100 to me is a far superior camera to the HVX200 at about the same price (if you add a lens), so I'm not disappointed at all with any of the limitations. I saw one of my short films I shot with an unhacked GH1 projected on two large theater screens (one at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in Hollywood along with Jack Daniel Stanley's short) and I was actually very very pleased and am excited that I'll be shooting a feature with the AF100 knowing it will look even better than that, and for only $5k (I already have lenses and an adapter).
 
I think we need to see proper footage, properly graded before we declare the AF100 a GH1 Plus.

I think Bloom's GH2 new cooking video would've been a better first look at the footage than his Japan shoot, to be honest.

Regardless, I don't like Sony cameras and I don't like their philosophy in general.

For me is either Panasonic or RED.
 
Does anyone see the upcoming Canon XF100 as a cheaper stepbrother to the AF100 and the Sony F3? I know that the Canon will be much less flexible in terms of its imaging capabilities (given its fixed lens, and so on) but by going with one large sensor, might we not see some pleasing bokeh out of the little fellow?
 
Candiness said:
Does anyone see the upcoming Canon XF100 as a cheaper stepbrother to the AF100 and the Sony F3? I know that the Canon will be much less flexible in terms of its imaging capabilities (given its fixed lens, and so on) but by going with one large sensor, might we not see some pleasing bokeh out of the little fellow?
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Not sure where you're headed with this... the XF100 doesn't have one large sensor, it has a tiny 1/3" sensor. The AF100's sensor is 16x larger, and the F3's sensor is even bigger still.
 
I've stated this time and again in all of the bash threads that seem to be around (not this one) whether it be RED or AF100 or anything else, we are ALL SPOILED.

There is far more whining than I can tolerate sometimes. We get to hold something in our hand that wasn't anywhere near possible just a number of years prior. Suddenly all these companies owe us something? Come on now...

Being able to have this kind of technology available is a privilege, and while everyone can say what they want about this camera or that camera, they're ALL a wonder to me. We get far to comfortable with what we have here. Be thankful you're not paying thousands at the film lab anymore and can export your stuff through a wire to a computer (likely a laptop) that's lighter than a 1980s keyboard. Lets look at these things for what they are at the price they're at, and choose the one we want.

How much more would we be shooting if we spent less time crying about what Panasonic DIDN'T include on this camera (that we can't change or do anything about) and more time shooting? Hmm...
 
I think the next few months are going to be interesting, either way I am probably going to buy the AF100. When Scarlet is here it's here and if it's worth it I will get that too.
 
As expected, according to Jim Jannard's new post on REDUSER, EPIC is going to be a little late.

I wouldn't expect Scarlet S35 before mid-2012.

Thank God the AF100 is almost here.
 
Thomas Church said:
As expected, according to Jim Jannard's new post on REDUSER, EPIC is going to be a little late.

I wouldn't expect Scarlet S35 before mid-2012.

Thank God the AF100 is almost here.
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And by all recent reports, and contrary to how other folks are doing it, it looks like the AF100 will be delivered earlier than promised.
 
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Barry_Green said:
Not sure where you're headed with this... the XF100 doesn't have one large sensor, it has a tiny 1/3" sensor. The AF100's sensor is 16x larger, and the F3's sensor is even bigger still.
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My fault. I was wrongly under the impression that the upcoming Canon had a larger sensor. Despite the 4:2:2 color space and relatively high bitrate, it looks like minor league material from Canon by comparison.
 
Thomas Church said:
I'm pretty excited about the AF100.

But to me it's pretty much a warm up for Scarlet S35.
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That was my thought until RED dropped the bombshell about moving the Scarlet S35 into the EPIC line....
No way they will keep Scarlet S35 at the initial price promised. If a RED MX body is $25,000
how could they now price "EPIC lite" much lower than that? At 7K or 8K I could have stretched for the Scarlet S35
and would wait and see about the AF100 purchase. I wanted Scarlet mainly for Green Screen work, so having
larger plates would have been nice. Looks like an AF100 with something like a Ninja or Nanoflash will be it then.
 
How quickLy things change. Wasn't it about a month ago when Jannard posted The Scarlet, and we all thought or hoped he meant S35, would ship "April"?

Of course no one knew April of what year but April of no year? Things must be a mess over there at Redcon.
 
Honestly, this is one of the biggest disappointments I've ever seen.

This new "Epic Light" will most likely cost what a RED One used to cost.

I can understand bumping the price a little, but having a camera go from 8K to 15K-17K overnight is insane.

Only RED can get away with this stuff.
 
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