45 replies to this topic

[Phil Rhodes]

Jan Crittendon Livingston

Oh, god.


P

[Peter J DeCrescenzo]

Jan (Panasonic product manager) has confirmed the US list price for the AF100 will be $4,995:
http://twitter.com/J...tus/25117867556

[Phil Rhodes]

So hang on.

Exactly what does this have that a GH2 doesn't?

[Peter J DeCrescenzo]

So hang on. Exactly what does this have that a GH2 doesn't?

Pay attention, Phil! :-)

http://www.cinematog...ndpost&p=332658

In addition to the info in Barry Green's video linked in the post above, Barry has also compiled a comprehensive list in the following post:

http://www.dvxuser.c...045&postcount=5

The wonderful (& less expensive) GH2 has some features in common with its (more expensive) cousin the AF100, but the AF100 has many, many more features geared towards professional video production.

[Martin Hawkes]

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Oh, god.


P

She must have an outstanding memory for details.

[Peter J DeCrescenzo]

Just an FYI:

Quite nice footage shot by Matt Meikle & Joe Lawry of Crews.TV using a late prototype version of Panasonic's m4/3 AF100 camcorder:


Watch Vimeo's (highly compressed) "HD" version, but turn off Vimeo's "scaling" feature for best results.

EDIT: They've also posted some follow-up articles on their website as the footage worked it way through post:
http://crews.tv/blog/2010/10/22/af100-images-pushed-to-the-limit/

In addition to the discussion on Vimeo, there's also a discussion of this footage on DVXuser:
http://www.dvxuser.c...c-AF101-Footage

Meanwhile, B&H is now taking paid-in-advance pre-orders for the AF100 @ $4,795:
http://www.bhphotovi...our_Thirds.html

[Peter J DeCrescenzo]

Zacuto cobbles together several rigs for use with the AF100 prototype (starring Jan C-L):



There' more info on the YouTube page.

[Peter J DeCrescenzo]

Philip Bloom has a prototype AF100 for testing. Here's his first test video @ ISO 3200:



See the Vimeo page for a bit more info.

... there's more info on his blog:
http://philipbloom.net/2010/10/19/af100/

See also:
http://www.dvxuser.c...om-s-first-test

[Dal Neitzel]

F&D has a nice review of the AF100 today at:
http://www.fdtimes.com/news/?p=2780

[Albert Smith]

more philip bloom...

first footage ive seen that puts it to use in pretty standard natural light situations....looks ok...still some minor rolling shutter issues it looks like and definitely major clipping issues, digitally over sharpened edges seem present... Very videoy.


its a $5000 camera....I dont think its giving you anymore than you really expected for 5k in 2010...Sony's camera is at like 13k I think so well see what that footage is like.

[Phil Rhodes]

My suspicion that this is a perhaps very slightly improved version of a GH1 deepens.

[Shidan Saberi]

I believe this camera and sony vg10 will give the SLR cameras with film feature a real good run for their money.

[Tim Tyler]

I'd like to know why Panasonic chose not to include P2 support.

DVCPRO-HD is an old codec, but Panasonic owns it and it would have been a nice option on this camera. AVC-Intra would have been fabulous.

No timecode connections either?

[Peter J DeCrescenzo]

Hi Tim: I suspect the answer to all of your questions is, "To keep the price of the camera below $5K US."

Panasonic would probably have to charge considerably more for a AF100-like camera if it included P2 & AVC-Intra, if the rest of their product line & pricing is any indication.

I also wonder if, since the AF100 is a not-too-distant cousin of the GH1 & GH2, it might be problematic for Panasonic to sell the current AF100 for significantly more than $5K US.

That's not to say Panasonic is prevented from coming out with a higher-end version of the AF100 which includes significantly increased performance & features. If such a camera produced hugely better-quality video than the GH2, and included P2 & AVC-Intra, it would be well worth an increase in price.

Given the apparent pre-sales success of the AF100 (and forthcoming competitive products from Sony, RED & eventually Canon), I'd be surprised if Panasonic doesn't build on that success by offering a follow-on model.

Just my $0.02 US. Cheers.

[Tim Tyler]

Adding P2 and DVCPRO-HD to the AF100 probably wouldn't have cost them more (they offer those in the less costly HVX's) but those features would drive up the costs for new users who don't own P2 cards and media management tools.

I've always liked using Panasonic's cameras and I have purchased several over the years, but I get the feeling that they omit small features from their lowered priced offerings to encourage sales of their more expensive lines.

Like you I suspect they'll offer a large sensor camera in a year with better codecs and more professional features, but only they know that for sure.

Sony's forthcoming F3L seems like a good solution for those who want more pro features sooner than later, albeit at almost three times the price of the AF100. And the F3L's EX codec is just a shade better than AVCHD.

[John Sprung]

They showed it at EVS today, along with Ilya Friedman's PL mount adapter for it. It does 1080p/24 native, using MPEG-4, with a 12 frame GOP. We weren't able to do any flash tests, but on rapid movement, it didn't exhibit detectable rolling shutter artifacts. It does indeed have dual on-board SD cards, and offboard recording via HD-SDI. It has a nice pre-record buffer, which even works with the offboard or velcro-attached NanoFlash. It can go up to 60p for slow motion, and also does 25/50 for the PAL/SECAM markets. And, it has time code and two channels of sound. For dynamic range and color gamut, it ain't an Alexa, but for $5K, it does more than fine. It's only eight bits, though, so you don't want to stray too far from your intended ballpark.

The one downside is substantial viewfinder and monitor delay. On fast motion such as stand-ups, it looks like the operator had a three martini lunch. Doug Leighton's checking into that to see if it might be a readily fixable menu and settings issue. Nobody was particularly familiar with the menus, so it took a substantial amount of futzing around.

It doesn't Moire like the DSLR's do, so it should pretty much kill them off except for cases in which you want to shoot motion while pretending to do stills. Red it won't kill, but it will nibble away at the low side of their lunch.....




-- J.S.

[Tim Tyler]

Thanks for the report, John.

The HD-SDI and off-board recording flexibility is very good news.

I hope the viewfinder delay is software-fixable even if it means routing an unprocessed, off-color image to the viewfinder during recording.

Although the AF100 is sure to sway some potential D-SLR buyers, I doubt it will "kill them off" since the AF100 is four times the price of a 60D.

You didn't by any chance notice if the AF100 has a 1:1 mode like Panasonic's GH2, did you?

[Deniz Coker]

Spent some time playing with one of these and I was pretty impressed. I liked how a lot of the menus seemed much more optimized and another gentleman also noticed it seemed much quicker as well. I didn't have a chance to scrutinize any of the footage but from the quick stuff we shot it seemed like it had lots of potential. I like that you can now quickly overcrank/undercrank using a dial on the back. Not a game changer for sure, but a nifty feature. I'm a little too lazy to go on, I'd probably only be repeating what others already stated; much more elegantly at that. But from a personal perspective it was odd for me to see them seemingly "ditch" P2 so quickly. I know they haven't and the way I see it is all of their major cameras have heavily adopted the format. But on a personal level as someone who invested in both P2 hardware and established a workflow around it, I wasn't crazy about such a change, especially because of how close I'd like to lump it with an HPX170. I mean the ingestion process isn't different at all, I had just assumed it would be an HPX that natively has interchangeable lenses. Maybe that's what the HPX370 is for...

[John Sprung]

You didn't by any chance notice if the AF100 has a 1:1 mode like Panasonic's GH2, did you?

Not sure what you mean by a 1:1 mode....





-- J.S.

[Tim Tyler]

From http://www.eoshd.com...verything-again

1:1 crop mode is a tap directly into the sensor, it takes a 1920x1080 window from the centre of the sensor so no scaling or image processing is required. It then takes this RAW sensor data and bypasses the usual image processor completely, sending it direct & uncompressed to the encoder chip. It's stored in AVCHD 24Mbit, 24p but unlike the GH1 this is a decent rock steady implementation of AVCHD - a bit like the AF100, with b-frames and just more advanced all round. It looks better than the GH1's hacked 44Mbit AVCHD.

A 16mm or Super16 lens mounted on the GH2 just covers the 1920x1080 portion of the sensor, so you get a cleaner image but you loose the shallow DoF.