Panasonic AG-AF100 series

[Floris van Eck]

Don't forget this is a pure videocamera.

A lot of problems VDSLR's have are because they also need to be good photocamera's. And if you improve one aspect, you weaken the other.

Anyway, I am very eager to learn more about this camera.

[Ethan Cooper]

It may be a pure video camera but is the sensor a purpose built video sensor? Not if what Jan said about it being the same as the GH1 is accurate. I'd love to be wrong.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Even if it's line skipping, that's okay as long as they use an appropriate optical low pass filter. If they develop a dedicated sensor, that's even better as it will capture more light.

[Ethan Cooper]

A new sensor design in a year or two is almost a given at this point now that they've finally gone down this road.

I'm curious as to why they'd release this from the consumer division? Is there possibly a 'pro' version coming in the near future?

[Jonathan Palfrey]

I really cant wait to see a Canon competitor to this.

Also I did find some photos of this camera from the press conference but I cant remember the site I saw them on. In terms of size its only a bit bigger than an SLR.

[Paul Curtis]

I can't see panasonic line skipping in a dedicated video camera like this.

i'm not convinced the GH1 line skips either, it doesn't suffer from the same level of artefacts that the canons do. It does suffer from a OLPF for stills which can obviously be fixed. Like the Panasonic LX3 - that doesn't seem to line skip either (i have one of those).

Much more likely that the sensor would be supersampled down to 1080, which could provide a very sensitive noise free image.

It's a question of how fast can the sensor be read and to speed up read times the sensor is split into parallel taps. Perhaps what they mean by dedicated video electronics if they've increased the number of taps to the sensor.

It will be interesting to see what sony does with their APS-C mirror-less cams that do 1080p too - whether they are line skipping or not. And in fact whether their next Alpha dSLR would do video like that too. I'm holding off a 7D/550D until i find what they're doing. Although my trusty old Canon is beginning to show it's age, so i hope they hurry up!

cheers
paul

[Tom Hardwick]

The GH1 points the way and shows the compromises that having a big chip entails. If you want a 10x zoom (and I reckon that's the bare minimum if you want to shift any movie cameras at all) then either it's huge and heavy or compact and slow.

Take the GH1's 10x zoom. It's a nice range (28mm to 280 mm equiv) but it's a gloomy f/4 to f/5.8. The low light gathering has been hugely scarpered at a stroke, and if you're after shallow dof at full tele then f/6 (near as) puts the kibosh on that one.

Let's hope the forthcoming camcorder will have a quiet zoom motor, OIS and inbuilt NDs. I'd accept 82mm filters if I could gain a stop or two.

tom.

[Henry Olonga]

I believe that this is from the pro division.

[Richard Lacey]

Originally Posted by Tom Hardwick

The GH1 points the way and shows the compromises that having a big chip entails. If you want a 10x zoom (and I reckon that's the bare minimum if you want to shift any movie cameras at all) then either it's huge and heavy or compact and slow.

Take the GH1's 10x zoom. It's a nice range (28mm to 280 mm equiv) but it's a gloomy f/4 to f/5.8. The low light gathering has been hugely scarpered at a stroke, and if you're after shallow dof at full tele then f/6 (near as) puts the kibosh on that one.

Being micro 4/3 there's an adapter for the use of original 4/3 lenses.
Olympus do a couple of 4/3 f/2 zoom lens, a 14-35 and 35-100. Then there's the Sigma f/2.8 zooms.
Pretty quick as zooms go.

I don't think a 10x zoom is that important for movie making.
Most of the productions I've worked on use prime lenses for 95% of the shots, since they tend to be a stop or 2 faster than the zooms we have available to us.

[Gary Nattrass]

I just got the PDF link from panasonic:http://www.panasonic-broadcast.com/c...c_AG-AF101.pdf

[Felix van Oost]

This sounds awesome...

A 4/3" chip in a prosumer-style form factor (I'm assuming) which I can use my 35mm lenses in would be a godsend for me. Wonder how much it will cost though...

[Ethan Cooper]

Originally Posted by Henry Olonga

I believe that this is from the pro division.

ah, I figured if it was from the pro division it would have been P2 with Intra. That's what I get for guessing. I'm assuming they went SD with AVCHD to keep the cost down?

[Tim Polster]

Originally Posted by Paul Curtis

I can't see panasonic line skipping in a dedicated video camera like this.

Coming from the company that championed pixel offset HD chips, I can.

I would think they will carry forward with the exisitng chips for the consumer/prosumer model (this one here) and design a dedicated chip for the pro model(s) with AVC-Intra. Obviously just a guess on my part.

[Michael Maier]

This sounds very interesting and it was just a matter of time. I'm surprised Canon wasn't the first. But if any competition from Canon is coming it is probably not in the near horizon as they just announced a new camera.

But although this is interesting, having used a GH1 I'm not really impressed with it's sensor or it's codec. This seems to be the same sensor and codec, so essentially it's just a GH1 in a more video friendly body, which means it will have most if not all the GH1 image quality problems. Nonetheless props to Panasonic for this move.

[Jeff Regan]

This camera is aimed at the VDSLR's. Price point is rumored to be $6K. If Panasonic had gone P2, the cost would have been $2K more plus P2 cards. This camera will have much less aliasing than VDSLR's, supposedly. It will have Panasonic colorimetry, proper image control via menus, proper monitoring, proper audio. micro 4/3" mount means the ability to use any 35mm lens.

When it comes to video cameras, no matter the sensor size, I know who I would choose between Canon and Panasonic.

Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video