Notes On Video

Lensbaby started out with odd little lenses in flexible-plastic housings, but they seem to be moving towards lenses that look like lenses... Unveiled: Lensbaby 5.8mm f/3.5 Circular Fisheye Lens | B & H Photovideo Create full-circle images using your cropped-sensor DSLR, with the new Lensbaby 5.8mm f/3.5 Circular Fisheye Lens, available in Canon EF and Nikon F mounts. Featuring an ultra-wide 5.8mm focal length and a 185˚ angle of view, this lens provides you with an expansive, sweeping perspective, even in tight spots. With an aperture range of f/3.5 to f/22 and a close minimum focusing distance of a 1/4", you can practically touch your subject and still have sharp images with expansive depth of field. Amazing Sony A7s Low Light test video! | SonyAlphaRumors Den Lennie just updated his A7s post by including an amazing A7s High ISO test (Click here and scroll down to see the video). The screenshot on top shows you the noise at crazy 409,600 ISO. This is really a co...

Digital Bolex Announces PL Mount for D16 Goes on Sale Next Month for $995 | No Film School Up until now, the default lens mount for Digital Bolex’s D16 digital camera came with a  C mount. The aim was to really capture the design of the original Bolex 16mm film cameras, allowing filmmakers to use vintage 16mm and Super 16mm lenses, but the PL mount will take the D16 up a notch. The DB team has been working on a PL mount option for quite a while, and in their blog post, they explain where the decision to include a PL mount came from. Exclusive: here is the first app to resample Panasonic GH4 4K 8bit to 10bit 4:4:4 | EOSHD As this panel aptly put it at NAB this week, 4K delivery is very rare at the moment so most filmmakers are shooting 4K acquisition to get the benefits in post for 2K delivery. For a while now I’ve been suggesting on EOSHD that 8bit 4K can build a 10bit 2K image due to oversampling, a theory which was backed up by David Newman at GoPro / CineForm in this EO...

GH4 FASHION FILM | Vimeo Mytherapy was given an unreleased prototype of the Panasonic GH4 camera to test. We brought exciting young photographer Michael Furlonger on board and created an amazing 4K fashion film. We were also able to extract high quality 8 mega pixel stills, which prove that the size of the camera is no longer a barrier to the quality of the image it creates. This little compact camera captures 4K images that rival anything we have seen from the big players. Watch our superb behind the scenes video to see how it was all done! Here's a BTS SKINTONE SHOOTOUT: PANASONIC GH4, BLACKMAGIC DESIGN 4K, SONY PXW-Z100 | Slashcam The article's not in English, but you can watch the video! NAB 2014: The Year of Unusual Cameras | Filmmaker Magazine It was clear that this would be the year of 4K, but perhaps more surprising is who plans to ship 4K cameras this year. Sony, who actually bought out two new 4K cameras last year – the F5 and F55 – clearly d...

I finally did some resolution tests with the Sony FDR-AX100 . This camcorder records 4K to internal memory cards, and I was really wondering if 4K was going to be that good, or would it be so compressed that there was virtually no difference to the HD video. The camera also has an XAVC recording option (and you can buy a cheaper version of the camera, the HDR-CX900 , that just has the higher data rate HD format recording) so I wanted to see how that compared to both 4K and HD AVCHD recording. I actually wondered whether it would be better to get the HDR-CX900 instead, as it would be cheaper and frankly, all I was looking for was better HD, rather than 4K. So for this test, I took the 4K footage, and the HD footage, and output it to HD in ProRes 4:2:2 from Final Cut Pro X. And if you're looking for really good HD resolution, than the FDR-AX100 in 4K mode is pretty amazing as a source. The FDR-AX100 4K footage blows away the best AVCHD camera I currently have (the NEX-EA50 .) And...

As they usually do, Sony held a press briefing the day before NAB opened to cover their announcements. This year was focused on 4K, though HD video did get a mention! One interesting thing; they didn't announce any new video cameras, instead they announced upgrades for the F5, F55 and F65. For the F5 & F55 they announced a new documentary base designed to help make the camera more ENG-like. They also announced new recording format support for ProRes and Avid's DNXHD. There's also a software update coming for the F65 with improved color management. Perhaps most interesting of all is that they announced a consumer camera - the A7s - at the event. This is pretty unusual (they certainly haven't announced a consumer camera at a pro event in the last three or four years!) On the face of it, the A7s looks interesting;  the A7s has a smaller total sensor pixel count than the A7r, which probably helps give it much higher sensitivity. It also outputs 4K video, but on...