I spent some time yesterday at BVE in London with an old friend. Cards on the table first. I simply can't contemplate recording video in any format on a DSLR, I have two available, but for my work, it's shoulders and tripods, and theatre light levels. DSLRs just don't work for me - thing to do with quality, just ergonomics, feature set, the way lenses work (or don't). I'm cool with others having a real liking for them. My friend is also looking for some new cameras, but his area is aviation. We spent quite a while looking at all the offerings, but one thing seemed very clear to me, that quality - from a subjective viewpoint, is simply down to glass and sensitivity. One booth had ice sculptures as the central feature and this was extremely revealing. There were some rather nice images on the monitor. However, many seemed to have the lenses wide open and the gain low. Adjusting the apertures to a more typical value, and then exposing properly didn't look as good. In fact, a 4K picture with very expensive glass on the front was decidedly average. Sure, this is not scientific or objective, but the images were flat and without anything nice about them. I appreciate, that this is before processing in the computer, but very often the images from the cameras I have in mind - ⅔" shoulder mount types looked better on the same model monitor. Some of the lenses are house extension prices, and some would cost the same a newlyweds first house around here.

There seemed very little truly new to get excited about, but just loads of effort being put into 4K and superlenses.

At the other end, my funniest moment was a huge shoulder brace, twin handles, matte box and other gizmos, with a small handicam as the camera element - the world has gone mad! The number of plain and simple HD cams is on the wane, sadly.

What cameras and what monitors is an obvious question. Also what apertures did you view as normal since if the 4K cameras were 1/3", ( Sony PXW-Z100, FDR-AX1 or Panasonic HX1000 ) aperture should not close down more than f5.6 or image will not be that good. etc etc. Like to keep my NX5U around F4 or wider for sharpest image. I have the FDR-AX1, not great in low light,but clearly a sharper and cleaner image than my NX5U for instance both on a 1920x1080 monitor ( don't have a UHD monitor to try).

Ron Evans