P.S.:
for the future Dave keep the sarcasm for yourself or somebody you know. Here I am sharing my experience, and seriously, like many others do for the good of our practice. So idiotic sarcastic remarks need to be avoided when talking to me. No exceptions. I hope that I made myself clear.

Sorry you can't take a joke Anthony, I apologise for assuming you had a sense of humour. Remember, you were the one to introduce us all to your knowledgable cat. Perhaps you should reconsider what you said in an earlier post. Should I take this as the type of sarcasm you were so quick to take offence at, or as something different?

no the CD-r and DVD-r are not reliable, they just don't last. Even my cat knows that.

Lets not get personal here, I meant nothing personal and so far I haven't taken any. Let's keep it that way shall we?

Anthony, feel free to trust your world to flash drives and hard drives. Nether can be relied upon long term, and flash drives can't even be relied upon short term either.

For "short term" backups (days, weeks, months) I use multiple copies on hard disks plus online RAID.

For long term archiving I use LTO (again, multiple copies). Hard disks will typically fail within just a fear short years. I've had around 50 fail over my time in computers.

FYI, I NEVER backup to optical media now. Why? It's simply not big enough.

FYI, I NEVER backup to optical media now. Why? It's simply not big enough.

It's not fast enough either as it takes an age backing up even a few tens of GB to Blu-ray.

Sorry you can't take a joke Anthony, I apologise for assuming you had a sense of humour. Remember, you were the one to introduce us all to your knowledgable cat. Perhaps you should reconsider what you said in an earlier post. Should I take this as the type of sarcasm you were so quick to take offence at, or as something different?



Lets not get personal here, I meant nothing personal and so far I haven't taken any. Let's keep it that way shall we?

Anthony, feel free to trust your world to flash drives and hard drives. Nether can be relied upon long term, and flash drives can't even be relied upon short term either.

For "short term" backups (days, weeks, months) I use multiple copies on hard disks plus online RAID.

For long term archiving I use LTO (again, multiple copies). Hard disks will typically fail within just a fear short years. I've had around 50 fail over my time in computers.

FYI, I NEVER backup to optical media now. Why? It's simply not big enough.

yes, hard disks are the most reliable . after all what else can we do? cloud? on-line? I had my service (midphase) down and they lost everything ... TWICE . CDs , Blu-ray and DVDs are out of the question so our only hope are the hard disks. Flash memory are good , as long as the Clients don't use it for their own stuff: they do have a limit writing and re-writing (just like the SSD) : so for distribution (to be written once and then locked) are way better than anything else, but for our backup are expensive, and we are back to the good old hard disks. And remember that any hard disk can be put back to life even after a massive catastrophic damage . There are services capable of saving any hard disk pretty much overnight. It happened to me after burning down the main board (of the disk) creating a short with a screwdriver because I left the computer ON like an idiot. Sent it to florida , $200 job, all data back the next day. You can't do that with SSD cards, or optical.

My main concern and interest in this 4K camera is expanding my low light capabilities. I have a specific church that is popular around here, it is an old cathedral that is very dark, with only spot overhead lighting. They do not allow flash nor on camera lights there. I'm excited to the prospect of shooting with the highlights exposed correctly and being able to bring up the blacks in post. Same with dark receptions, less noise - oh yeah. Even the idea of externally recording 4:2:2 really intrigues me.

Same with dark receptions, less noise - oh yeah. Even the idea of externally recording 4:2:2 really intrigues me.

One thing that may have passed a lot of people by is that the internal codecs generally include some level of noise reduction whereas the external recordings don't, so while you can gain a little extra control from the 4:2:2, which is often a lot less than people realise, you also typically get noisier footage too, which means de-noising in post and all the CPU time that goes with it!

One thing that may have passed a lot of people by is that the internal codecs generally include some level of noise reduction whereas the external recordings don't, so while you can gain a little extra control from the 4:2:2, which is often a lot less than people realise, you also typically get noisier footage too, which means de-noising in post and all the CPU time that goes with it!

That is true, though I'm not doing enough work to have to worry too too much about the render times. If that is the price I pay for having better looking footage at the end of the project, so be it. Though "better" is subjective, it is going to have to be pretty significant. My GH2's still do just fine 99% of the time :)

In that original video, I'm thinking the ugly carpet on the stairs during the 1st look is exactly why super shallow depth of field was invented :)

As for 4K, what's the point? I'm into tech, we dumped cable 6 years ago and stream. Even now, if I buy something, it's almost always in SD, since its so rare that HD matters to me. Rare exceptions include the "Planet Earth" blu-rays, instead of DVD, because, well, it seemed worth it. However, if I were to buy, say, the Avengers movie, what do I care?

I do wish I could deliver everything we shoot in 1080p, just for simplicity. It took a while to get all my settings right in Vegas to make sure the downscaling wasn't ugly as sin on DVD (some bad mistakes on my part, leaving the out of the box settings, 4:3 and 30fps instead of 24fps and 16:9)

As for 4K, what's the point?

Well aside from options to resize the image in an HD project, you have better quality screen grabs, something some of my brides have asked for. Filming in 4k and downsizing in post can avoid moire and other aliasing problems, like the fine detail on a brides veil or some suits too where I've seen it. Apparently there's an option to convert 4:2:0 4k to 4:4:4 HD for better grading, though no proof as yet on this. 4k is certainly far from an essential upgrade. I'd not switch to another brand for it, but in a camera I would buy anyway, I'd find a good use for the option.

Well aside from options to resize the image in an HD project

I've been playing with resizing some of the sample GH4 4K footage down to 1080p and while the resize looks nice, zooming in post to 100% for a 1080p crop has been very disappointing :(

you have better quality screen grabs, something some of my brides have asked for.

Spot on. I'd love to have 4K stills.

Filming in 4k and downsizing in post can avoid moire and other aliasing problems, like the fine detail on a brides veil or some suits too where I've seen it.

This is true, as long as the NLE algorithms work well. I've seen some pretty nasty downscaling over the years in NLEs, but lets hope this works out. Again, it's subject to the quality of the native pixels, which at this point (from the GH4) I've not been entirely happy with @ 100% and using it for 1080p.


Apparently there's an option to convert 4:2:0 4k to 4:4:4 HD for better grading, though no proof as yet on this.

This may or may not prove to be useful for day-to-day filming. When capturing 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0 from the same cameras it's hard to find enough difference most of the time. Downscaling from 4K maybe the key for extra sharpness and detail though.

4k is certainly far from an essential upgrade. I'd not switch to another brand for it, but in a camera I would buy anyway, I'd find a good use for the option.

That's certainly my thinking too. Right now the C100 is proving to be awesome compared to DSLRs or camcorders and I'm concerned about the storage and computing power required fro 4K. In addition, as usual Canon are behind the curve on this stuff for video. My guess is we'll see the 5D4 with 4K sometime in the next 12 months, but video cameras.... hmmmm..... They just released the XF200 and that doesn't even have 1080/50p !!!

Having got one active 4K enquiry (not wedding related) I'm a little concerned about being rushed in to things and ending up not getting it right. I agree about not changing brands where possible because I find the different brands don't mix as easily in post.

I'm a little confused by Sony's offerings. There are the FDR-AX1 @ £3800 and PXW-Z100 @ £5400, both with tiny 1/2.3" sensors & XLRs etc, then the cheaper AX100 (£1800) with much larger 1" sensors but no XLR. What am I missing here? I want larger sensor & XLR. Aarrgghh!!

The GH4 has me interested, but I need to see more footage from production cameras, and then I have no M43 glass and would either need to invest in some or go with EF adapters, which I am sure is less than optimal.

Then there's the new BM camera which looks very interesting, but I don't think BM have yet shipped a camera on time so I'm not holding my breath.

Sigh.