Panasonic AG-UX180 & AG-UX90

Panasonic Announces New UX Series of 4K High-Powered Handheld Camcorders, Delivering VariCam LT 4K Cinema Camcorder

[Glen Vandermolen]

Interesting. I like the 1" sensor. I guess it's the competition to Sony's Z150.

Except that the AG-UX180 has an 20x optical zoom and UHD 60p, two things that the Sony doesn't have.

[Glen Vandermolen]

Originally Posted by Ed Arszyla

Except that the AG-UX180 has an 20x optical zoom and UHD 60p, two things that the Sony doesn't have.

Good point!

[Ron Evans]

It is what I was hoping Sony would bring out as an upgrade to my FDR-AX1. Mayb e even better it lives up to the initial information. I expect it will have the capabilities of the HCX1000 and DVX200 so things like touch focus that the PXW-Z150 also lacks. DVX200 for the people who want the shallow depth of focus and 1" for those like me that shoot events where we want everything in focus !!!

Ron Evans

[Zach Love]

Maybe I'm just nostalgic, but is it at all possible to get a 2/3" camera in a body this size? Even single chip?

The Sony EX1's 1/2" chips were a really nice blend of low noise, while still being relatively cheap & the 14x zoom was great. 2/3" would still give more (or less?) DOF than 1/3" or 1/2" cameras, but it's a little easier to put on a long zoom lens.

Still, I'm OK w/ these 1" chips since the 180 has a much longer zoom than the DVX200, and could possibly be a really nice event camera. (Keeping fingers crossed for good user feedback when they hit the streets.)

[Glen Vandermolen]

Originally Posted by Zach Love

Maybe I'm just nostalgic, but is it at all possible to get a 2/3" camera in a body this size? Even single chip?

Not in that size, but there is a new 2/3" 4K camera: It appears to be a single chip.

Sony PXW-Z450 Is First 4K XDCAM Shoulder Camcorder With 2/3-type image sensor at DV Info Net

[Jack Zhang]

I was expecting a lot from the Z150, but now I'm kinda miffed Panny is offering the same thing for cheaper and has a 4K 60p option. I guess the chips aren't there yet for XAVC-L 4K 10bit 4:2:2. Maybe that's what Sony is waiting for from the ASIC manufacturers.

But as of now, Sony's getting the cheapest, highest volume ASIC encoder chips which currently are still limited to 4K 30p. Panasonic seems to have the 4K 60p budget market in their sights. The UX180 is perfect, aside from 8bit 4:2:0 Long-GOP.

If the UX180 has no arbitrary HDMI 2.0 8bit 4:2:2 limit, I might go for a Shogun Inferno if the DNxHR mode also supports 4K 60p (Before Convergent Design, bear in mind)

[Ron Evans]

I expect it is purely marketing. They do have the processors because they are in my FDR-AX1. I suspect they do not want to have a camera recording to SDXC cards because that would hit the reason for XQD for high data rates. The internals of the FS5 clearly support high frame rates since they have just announced a RAW option for UHD 60P. So the only difference is encoding/recording for 8bit 4:2:0 ( just like the Z100 ) but to SDXC cards which are quite fast enough for 150Mbps. Yes you may be correct in that the processor that Panasonic uses encodes to h264 and not XAVC ( i, S or L ) however Sony does have processors to do this in the FDR-AX1 and PXW-Z100 in both mov and mxf. These are also in the same price range as the DVX200 and the upcoming AG-UX range. Marketing not engineering I am sure. When the UX range comes out this fall Sony will not have a competing product to the AG-UX180 it will be a better and lower cost product than the PXW-Z100 so I expect both the FDR-AX1 and PXW-Z100 will be discontinued. They could of course upgrade the FDR-AX1 and PXW-Z100 with a new lens and 1`sensor as all the rest of the camera will work fine !!! Will they do that ?

Ron Evans

[Jack Zhang]

If they did a proper UX180 competitor with 10bit 4:2:2 for both XAVC-I 4K and XAVC-L 4K, that would be the new EX1 of the 4K generation.

Your AX1 and Z100 use FPGAs rather than ASICs. Sony can source ASICs for cheaper and in much higher volume than expensive FPGAs, so that's what's holding back low power 4K 60p. Remember that Panasonic has been known to use multiple encoder chips to achieve higher pixel counts. DVCPRO HD was just 4 DV codecs and encoder chips.

As for the cards, Sony isn't as lenient about advertised SD card speeds... which UHS-II could go a long way in helping solve this problem.

[Ron Evans]

The point I was making Jack is that the core of the FDR-AX1 and PXW-Z100 are already there and in the same price range as the Panasonics. If they left most things the same and just upgraded the lens and sensor they would have some competition. Yes I agree they could make it lower cost and likely use less power with newer electronics. So what ? They are setting themselves up to loose this market segment to Panasonic.

Ron Evans

[Mark OConnell]

Could be good. Fingers crossed.

[Jack Zhang]

Originally Posted by Ron Evans

The point I was making Jack is that the core of the FDR-AX1 and PXW-Z100 are already there and in the same price range as the Panasonics. If they left most things the same and just upgraded the lens and sensor they would have some competition. Yes I agree they could make it lower cost and likely use less power with newer electronics. So what ? They are setting themselves up to loose this market segment to Panasonic.

Ron Evans

Actually, they are purposely using lower cost and less power to produce in higher volumes, at the absolutely unjustifiable cost of a 30p limit in 4K. Most companies in Japan are putting less money into R&D and it's just progressively getting worse. I totally agree they're setting themselves up to lose. If they did take the FPGA guts of a Z100 and put it with a 1'' sensor capable of 60p, that would be your camera right there (and a Fujinon manual lens would make the deal even sweeter)

Sony needs to realize to duplicate the success of the Z1U and the EX1, they need to not just rely on the FS7 to be the ONLY decent 4K 60p camera.

[Zach Love]

Originally Posted by Glen Vandermolen

Not in that size, but there is a new 2/3" 4K camera: It appears to be a single chip.

Yeah, but the price tag is as big as the camera. Worth it for sure, but I'm still wanting the 2/3" 3k for $3k that Red promised in 2009.

The most reasonable thing that I could see happening is BMD taking their $300 B4 lens mount adapter for the Ursa Mini & revision it for their Micro camera at that same cheap price. Yeah there are other adapters that correct for the 3 chip to single chip, but they're all $1k+.

[Glen Vandermolen]

Originally Posted by Zach Love

Yeah, but the price tag is as big as the camera. Worth it for sure, but I'm still wanting the 2/3" 3k for $3k that Red promised in 2009.

The most reasonable thing that I could see happening is BMD taking their $300 B4 lens mount adapter for the Ursa Mini & revision it for their Micro camera at that same cheap price. Yeah there are other adapters that correct for the 3 chip to single chip, but they're all $1k+.

I remember the original Scarlet. I wish RED had gone through with it. I would have gotten one. 2/3" sensor would have been fine with me, especially for only $3,000. I heard they couldn't get the fixed zoom lens to work.

Actually, the Canon XC10 doesn't seem to be that far off from the Scarlet concept.