"One big question, have they fixed the yellow over-exposure issue?"

Not even heard of that issue and very few have had their hands on the FS700.
Agree re the lack of NDs on the FS100. One thing I like on the C300 is the servo driven NDs. On the EX1/3 it is possible to get the ND filters half way between indents and that's caused me a panic attack a couple of times.

So far one feature that's really warming me to the FS700:
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Selectable magnification and positioning of expanded focus
Expanded focus improvement allowing 4x and 8x
magnification and a moveable area of expansion for
easy focusing with shallow depth of field.
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What bugs me with this camera and the C300 is the simplest of things, they don't run off 12V. One can buy adaptors, we bought two for out 5Ds and both have failed with a nasty intermittent problem. I've found on the FS100 getting the battery out is a PIA.

Bob.

$9K plus lens and media is Prosumer now?

I paid around $6K for my PD170s, 3x1/3" sensors. I consider them Prosumer cameras.

The next step up in the Panasonic line for 1/2" sensors hovers in the $12K for camera body and $7K for lens + 4x$600 for P2 Cards plus cash for batteries, adapters, etc. totaling a little over $20K with discounts. I'd consider this the bottom end of pro gear.

Sigh. Why did I pick such a freakin' expensive business to be in???

"I paid around $6K for my PD170s"
Yes, that's for two cameras.

It's rare for me to shoot with only one camera. Mostly two and sometimes three. Three cameras would cost more than my parents' first three houses. I currently use two PD-150's and two Z1's. All total, about $12K invested.

I'd knew Sony had to adjust!!! With JVC announcement of 4k. Sony was starting to lose sales on the pro camera division. And you ask? How do I know this? Well, while attending NY Fashion Week the last past seasons, I noticed the shift to DSLR cameras were about half. Compared the previous year. When Sony had 50%, Panasonic 30% and Canon 20%. This season 2012 almost 50% DSLR cameras.

http://www.studiodaily.com/2012/04/sonys-nex-fs700-shoots-super-slo-mo-with-a-4k-cmos/

In addition...the iPad 2 had about 40% market penetration at NY Fashion Week 2012. I see the iPad out selling the PC and overtaking sales in the next several years. I see more and more business adapting this to their workflow.

One thing I do like… Sony did response pretty fast this time. If they would've waiting until next year. Game over for the Pro Camera Division.

I look forward to this new camera.!!!

I would buy one in a heartbeat if Sony came up with an adapter that allowed me to use the extensive array of glass that I have for my Canon EOS still cameras. And I'm not talking about a flange that allows me to screw the lens on. I would want all the electrics so that the exposure, etc were controllable from the camera. Won't happen in my lifetime I guess. Prolly have to wait until Canon update the features and drop the price of the C300 in response to Sony.

We have the adaptor from MTF Services.
Probably the best of the bunch as the iris steps are as small as they can be but it doesn't work with our 85mm prime. I really would not rate the solution as all that viable IF you ever need to rack iris.

Bob.

I remember speaking with a Panasonic engineer a few years ago and he was telling me that they were using pixel shifting technology to get 1080p because the expense of going with a true 1080p sensor was not justified because in the sub $10,000 prosumer price range the lenses really aren't capable of 1080p resolution anyway.

Has affordable lens technology advanced to the point where these relatively inexpensive lenses can actually resolve 4k? I would love to seem some pixel level sharpness comparisons of 1080p and 4k cameras at the same price point.

I have a feeling that outside of movie theaters 4k is going to be a shooting and editing format but not delivery for a long time. 480i to 1080p was a tough sell to the average consumer and the improvement in picture quality as tremendous. Moving from 1080p to 4k on the average 46" display is definitely going to look better but it won't be have the jump factor of the last generational move. Notice I'm not talking about a $25k projector on a 10foot screen. I'm talking about display sizes most people have in their homes.

That being said working above the final target resolution allows for cropping and slight focus errors and that's always a good thing. I remember when I first started recording 88.2k/24bit and mixing down to 44.1k/16 bit. It was nice to finally be recording and mixing at a higher resolution than delivery.

"Has affordable lens technology advanced to the point where these relatively inexpensive lenses can actually resolve 4k?"

No, not even cheap lenses around that can resolve 2K edge to edge especially at the shorter focal lengths.

"I have a feeling that outside of movie theaters 4k is going to be a shooting and editing format but not delivery for a long time."

Down here there's an absense of 4K even in cinemas and even for their ultra-mega-massive screens and on them 2K looks like SD with your nose against the glass.

"That being said working above the final target resolution allows for cropping and slight focus errors and that's always a good thing."

If you had real 4K optics on front of the camera that would be of greater benefit.
Focussing at 4K is going to be quite an issue.Assuming you have the optics that can resolve 4K and it's being correctly viewed at 4K the DOF gets even smaller, all else being equal as the Circle of Confusion gets smaller.

Personally I'd rather see a lower cost 10 bit 4:2:2 2K camera with a great zoom lens to match at an affordable price but I'm sure not holding my breath. Even display / projection systems seem to be going backwards.

Bob.

Question... What other cameras do 1080-60p and have built-in ND filters and XLR inputs?

Bob,

Would the following be plausible?

Currently BD delivery format is 4:2:0. We know that chroma subsampling doesn't really affect the picture quality since the human eye is not adept at registering chroma info as compared to luma. So in an effort to save bandwidth, going from 4:4:4 to 4:2:0 saves 50% on storage space.

But isn't it more correct to say that when the subpixels are small enough chroma subsampling is not noticeable? For example at normal viewing distances, say 8 or 10 feet, I doubt one could tell the difference between a 4:4:4 and 4:2:0 stream on a 52" display. Assuming both were encoded properly.

But now we are seeing people viewing 100" displays at 10 foot distances. Would the difference between 4:2:0 and 4:4:4 or even 4:2:0 be noticeable? The reason I'm asking is that your request for 4:2:2 got me thinking. We can't go into someone's house and insert a higher resolution display, but we can provide the viewer with a higher subsampled video stream, which may be noticeable on very large, high quality displays. And since much content is delivered streaming or via data (USB flash), the mean to get the video to the viewer is available and becoming more available each day.

So if a 4k 4:2:0 video stream were to be reduced to 1080p, would it be possible to create a 4:4:4 1080p stream from the 4:2:0 4k stream? Besides the additional freedom of cropping, which would of course reduce colorspace for those scenes, the picture quality for the 1080p viewer could be improved from a normal 4:2:0 1080p stream. This of course assumes full color space would be noticeable and software available to encode and play back 1080p 4:4:4 is readily available.

Just a thought experiment.

- Mark

"...if a 4k 4:2:0 video stream were to be reduced to 1080p, would it be possible to create a 4:4:4 1080p stream from the 4:2:0 4k stream?" - Mark


scaling resolution won't recover chroma; you'll still have 4:2:0 afterwards. *

you're right that for most viewers the difference between 4:4:4 and 4:2:0 is negligible... i've read estimates the visual difference is less than 10%... but that's playback; for editing / compositing that info loss can/will be very noticeable.


* edit: (15 min later) still believe this is right, but part of my brain is disagreeing... busy now but i'll try to get back to this.

I think the 4:2:0 4k color space would be 1080p resolution since we're talking about 4 times the pixels for 4k over 1080p right? So you should be able to get 1080p 4:4:4 from 4k 4:2:0.
Yeah it's a brain twister.

If you view 4:2:0 480i on a 52" display and then compare it to 4:4:4 480i the difference is quite noticeable. All that stair-stepping is greatly reduced. As a test you can down rez 4:2:0 1080p to 4:4:4 480p. I'll have to mess around with this in Vegas later when I have some time.

- Mark

A 4K image at 4:2:0 contains more chroma data than a 2K 4:2:0 one.
So yes, replacing the 2K sensor with a 4K one does yield more chroma data if the 4K is downscaled to 2K. Sony in their F65 presentation made much ado about this. The sensor is actually 8K but by downscaling to 4K they get better chroma sampling and better MTF. All of that is made more complex with Bayer pattern sensors.
The trap of course is that putting more photosites into the same sized sensor will reduce dynamic range however pixel binning helps. Then you have the challenge of the DSP chips having to handle more data.

As for the visual impact for 4:2:2 compared to 4:2:0. That seems to me to depend on what's in front of the camera. Going back to the days of VHS and composite video with certain things such as grass the low chroma bandwidth could be very noticeable and text / graphics always looked tragic.

Bob.

hmmm... i can't even find which subsample is preserved when one scales down footage... is it the top-left?

oh well, i'm gonna let this go for now, can't find any practical info on this topic right now..

sounds really useful; but i'll let someone else go for it; i still think there's roadblocks and problems in this ...maybe i'm just eeyore today

"Question... What other cameras do 1080-60p and have built-in ND filters and XLR inputs?"With the fireware update (promised, "real soon, now"), the Panasonic AC160 will have all that.

...Jerry (who's wishing the new firmware might include his AC130, but that's not announced)