There’s no footage on the site, no release date and no price.

But it’s clear that Panasonic is going to be the first camera manufacturer to release a camera that shoots like a DSLR but has features made for professional film and video production.

Here’s what you’ll like about this:

• HD-SDI output for true HD monitoring and recording direct to disc (uncompressed output? not defined at this point).
• XLR mic inputs supporting professional mics and systems (can we assume standard audio controls and meters? – it would seem likely).
• Records to two SD cards rather than CF cards and can work with 64GB SD/SDHC/SDXC cards.
• Records continuously to the two cards – no more 12 minute limit for clips.
• 1080 from 59.94i to 23.98p and 720 from 50p to 23.98p to fit most project requirements.
• Dynamic Range, Gamma Select and other image features inherited from previous Panasonic professional camcorders means you can get the look you want in-camera or create your own super-flat profile for more flexibility in post.
• Designed like a professional video camcorder with a form made for shooting video and variety of buttons and controls (full functionality not defined at this point).
• Standard 4/3′s DSLR lens mount plus adaptor for standard PL mount film lenses – your current lenses may work and you can go for professional film lenses when you need them.

Here’s what you may not like about this:

• AVCHD recording format means high compression – the copy on the site does promise “maximum AVCHD bit rate” in a professional PH mode but exactly what that means is not defined.
• 4/3-inch sensor will not have the same look as a full size sensor on the Canon 5D and it’s even more cropped than the 7D and T2i – 2x versus 1.6x (more on this later).
• Price is an unknown but, as reported here and other sites, the list price when this camera was announced was $6K USD – less than a pro video camcorder but more than the cost of three Canon 7D bodies or eight Canon T2i bodies.

Let’s talk about the effects of the sensor size first.

The Micro 4/3 sensor on the AG-AF100 measures 17.3mm x 13mm. The APS-C sensor on a Canon 7D measures 22.2mm x 14.8. That means the Panasonic has a 2.0 crop factor. And that means a 50mm lens on the AG-AF100 will look like an 80mm lens on a 7D and a 100mm lens on the Canon 5D.

If you need a wide angle shot, you’re going to need an extremely wide angle lens.

On the other hand, you’ll get great telephoto shots with normal lenses with this camera. It all depends on how you look at it and what your needs are.

More information about sensor size here.

As for image quality, that’s the sum of many factors.

A Micro 4/3 sensor is still much larger than the sensors in most high-end HD camcorders so you’ll still be able to get the shallow DOF we love in DSLR cameras. Not as much as on a 5D but more than a regular video camcorder by far.

Another important factor in image quality is the compression rate of the camera. If you can tap the HD-SDI port on this camera and record uncompressed video straight to a disk the resulting image will be stunning. You would need to spend many times over the cost of the AF-AG100 to get a higher quality image. That’s a big “if” right now as we have no data.

However, the files recorded to the SD card system in this camera will be highly compressed. Until we see actual footage we won’t know how well Panasonic managed the compression.

And, while it is possible to edit AVCHD clips directly in a timeline of some editing systems, you will almost always gain more than enough flexibility to make transcoding a good idea. You may even save enough in final render time to regain the lost time in your overall workflow.

What’s Interesting

• While there’s a view finder on the back of the camera, there’s no LCD monitor visible on the camera. It looks like there’s a fold-out panel on the side that is likely an LCD monitor.
• There will be no auto-focus. While this means nothing to all film and professional video shooters, I’m always amazed at the interest in auto-focus while shooting with a DSLR. It must be something that photographers are into but they won’t find it here. All the lenses that fit this camera are manual focus only. Looks like you’ll need a decent follow-focus for the budget as well.
• No electronic zoom either. The film shooters and photographers don’t care about this one but those video guys are so used to just hitting the zoom rocker for lovely sloooow zooms. Zooming while shooting on this camera will take a very steady hand.

I expect a lot of moaning and groaning from all sides. The T2i market will complain about the price and the 5D market will complain about the sensor size and the price. The video market will complain about AVCHD compression versus RED codecs. Sony lovers will complain about Panasonic user interfaces and wonder why the Sony didn’t include XLR and HD-SDI connectors on their new camera.

And, in the middle of all this, a bunch of people looking for a great camera at a great price will jump on this and start making the films they’ve been dreaming of.

With the original announcement, the release date for the Panasonic AG-AF100 was “the end of 2010.” It looks like they are serious about that date. We’ll stay tuned for more information.

And, no, this isn’t the end of DSLR video. I believe it’s the start of a transition to a new category of video cameras and it’s a great thing.

Magic Lantern – 550D/T2i port from Trammell Hudson on Vimeo.

If you want to shoot high-end video with this camera you’ve had to use a separate microphone and audio recorder to capture high-end audio. That’s all changing.

Magic Lantern is a firmware hack for the Canon 5D MarkII that turns off the auto-gain in the audio recording section of the camera. It adds stereo audio meters, audio level control and other features to make the camera more usable for professional video recording. Now it’s coming to the Canon T2i (55oD).

Here’s what the programmer of Magic Lantern has to say:

I am very proud to announce that we have started support for the Canon 550D / T2i in a branch of the Magic Lantern tree. Thanks to the assistance of arm.indy and an anonymous contributor, we were able to sign an initial Magic Lantern firmware image and port the existing code to work with the version 1.0.8 firmware in the 550D.

The first version will have audio meters, lens data and maybe manual audio gain plus monitoring on the A/V jack. I haven’t found the liveview video ram device yet, so zebra stripes and histograms won’t work for a little while. There might also not be a menuing system initially since there are no “spare” buttons on the 550D in movie mode and we still do not have a way to integrate with Canon’s menus.

Here’s the link to the thread on dvinfo.net.

This is “pre-alpha” – right now he’s demonstrating audio levels only and the installation process is complicated.

Here’s the link to the installation instructions and file download.

I do not recommend installing this version. Wait until the beta version with all the features is ready. You may be wise to wait until a fully tested 1.0 version is released.

Still, this is exciting news and I’ll be giving it a try as soon as the beta is ready.

Leave your comments and let me know what you think.

-a-

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/eosd/firm-e/eosdigital7/firmware.html

I had not updated my T2i since buying it so I was on version 1.6. The new firmware update is version 1.8. I missed a version.

When I buy software I always run the update checker to make sure I’ve got all the current changes. Sometimes I have to run it more than once for system software as the updates have to be installed in sequence.

I know some people rarely update their software deliberately. They may have had an experience where the update fixed one problem and caused a few more.

I’ve had that happen, too. But I find the software developers are usually working on clearing things like this up as quickly as possible so I’m believe in updating early and often.

Note that this firmware update is from a Japanese Canon site, not the main USA Canon site.

When I checked the main site I found no firmware update listed for the Canon T2i (550D). Everything on the Japanese site looks legitimate so I installed the update. So far, everything works perfectly.

The instructions are in English for Windows and Mac. It looks more complicated than it is. Basically, you download the update, copy it to an SD card, put the SD card in your camera and run the update.

Just make sure you’ve got a good battery or are using an AC adapter on the camera. Evidently lowing power in the middle of a firmware update can “disable the camera”. That means it’ll be dead and you’ll have to take it to a Canon repair shop.

Ah, the joys of modern technology!

-a-

Longshan’s People Part II – 50Mbit GH1 MJPEG from Andrew Reid on Vimeo.

Do yourself a favor and go to Vimeo to download this video. It’s worth watching in full HD.

Obviously, Andrew knows what he’s doing with a camera and has chosen a beautiful exotic subject. The sound track fits perfectly and his rough edit makes the most of his clips. And, considering his subject, I believe I can feel a sense of reverence in the work that carries through the video as well.

But the star of the show is a technical fact. The hacked firmware is allowing his GH1 to capture video at high data rates, as much as 50Mbit 1080p.

In other posts I’ve talked about how the quality of a video image from a camera is due to more than just the sensor size. The GH1 has a smaller sensor but this firmware hack results in less compression of the captured bits as they flow to the card. It’s a winning combination.

While the changes to the camera may not be easy for everyone they are programming changes and do not violate the warranty. You can change the programming back to the factory standard just as easily.

Also, the data rate is variable and the camera shifts the rate up to deal with more complex images. Evidently, it can shift the rate up enough that is can’t sustain the video recording for more than a few seconds on some shots.

To deal with this Andrew alternates between using the MJPEG video format and the 32Mbit AVCHD format. Like I said, this may be too much for some people to deal with but it’s very much in the spirit of exploration that is part of shooting DLSR video.

You can read the full details on his blog post.

Will someone come up with the same hack for Canon cameras? After seeing this, I hope someone is working on it.

I think you’ll like what you see.

In my last post I talked about the just announced Sony NEX-3 and NEX-5 cameras and why their HD video functions were not quite going to cut it for ‘real’ video production.

But Sony has released a sneak peek video of a camcorder in development that is likely to be worth a serious look. No specs yet.

Well, there is a little bit of info on the Sony blog.

This video is a very early look at a AVCHD high definition camcorder featuring an interchangeable lens system still in development at Sony. The details are few, but we can tell you it will be equipped with the same “Exmor” APS HD CMOS sensor used in Sony’s newest digital still cameras, models NEX-5 and NEX-3.

Followed by…

In addition, the camcorder will be compatible with “E Mount” interchangeable lenses developed for NEX-5 and NEX-3, and also the wealth of “A Mount” interchangeable lenses from the existing “α” DSLR camera lineup via a mount adapter.

Okay, here’s a look at their video.

How’s the view so far?

• It looks like a camcorder and that means it should have mic inputs, audio level adjustments, headphone jack, and meters so you can record decent sound.
• It should shoot longer than 12 minutes for a clip so you can record events in the real world.
• And it shows a view finder that flips out, swivels and allows monitoring what you’re shooting when the camera is not at eye level.
• As a Sony camcorder it should have manual control over shutter speed and exposure. They’re using so much of the same tech as the NEX-3 and NEX-5 I’d bet on the same autofocus system. Hopefully it will have an easy way to turn it off.
• And you’ll be able to mount manual focus lenses to the body even if it means using an adapter – like that nice Zeiss lens they flash through the scene.

So far, so good.

• The issues of rolling shutter from a CMOS sensor will hopefully be dealt with successfully but we’ll have to see how well Sony does. But they have other CMOS camcorders that have minimal rolling shutter issues so there’s hope.
• And there’s the AVCHD format for the recorded video. I’m working on a post about this format as so many cameras are using it and it’s still difficult to work with in a computer. That depends on the computer and software you’re using – Premier on Windows seems to be okay. Still not much that’s great on Mac but I’m looking into this.
• You lose the cool DSLR stealth-video factor but I think that’s not really that important to most people.
• This will still be a very light camera so you’ll need good camera support for steady shots. Especially if you load up one of those larger lenses on the front end of this thing and need to shoot for more than two minutes!

Am I excited?

You bet.

I know that camera choices are a religious issue and there are plenty of people who would never choose to shoot with a Sony much less own one.

But I’m on the other side of that. I’ve used Sony cameras for a long time and I’m very comfortable with how they feel, the menu structure, and the look of them. I like Sony, plain and simple.

It’s due out this fall and I’m sure we’ll see more of it before then. What do you think – would this kind of camera work for you?

I mean, just looking at the pix of these cameras made me want one. I decided to take a closer look. Here’s what I found.

On the positive side…

• The cameras sport a new lens mount with a trio of lens that cover a decent range plus an adapter so you can use other Sony lenses. Interchangeable lenses in a camera at this price and size is pretty cool.
• These cameras use Sony’s new CMOS Exmor sensor and processor technology designed for video as much as for stills. This means fairly low noise HD video.
• They record in stereo audio and have an optional external stereo mic that can be mounted on the camera hot shoe.
• They record to both the Sony Memory Stick PRO Duo (including Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo )and SD cards (including both SDHC and SDXC formats). Lots of choices for inexpensive media that matches what you already use.
• The LCD view finder tilts to help frame and focus when the camera is not at eye level.

On the not-so-positive side…

• There is no manual control of audio, no 1/8″ external microphone jack and no headphone jack. If you want decent audio you’ll need a dual system like any of the DSLR cameras on the market today.
• While these cameras do a better-than-average job of autofocus while shooting video that is a feature only useful to a consumer. Autofocus is one of the first things you should turn off when shooting serious video. You don’t want the camera deciding what the focus of the shot should be.
• There is no manual control of exposure. They provide some easy-to-use exposure control running the great tech inside the lens. Good for consumers, not for setting up great video shots.
• There is no manual control of shutter speed. That’s fine for home movies. Not so fine when you’re trying to get great film-like clips for your short feature.
• The NEX-5 can shoot 1080i60 HD video recorded in AVCHD format or 720p30 HD video in MP4 format. The NEX-3 shoots in 720p30 in MP4 format only. You’ll want to transcode either of these formats for editing. If you’re on a Mac you’ll need an MTS video player like free open-source VLC just to view your clips. Transcoding AVCHD on a Mac is still an issue. Windows users are a little luckier.

Of course, you can always use an adapter and go with a full manual control Nikon lens. Older Sony alpha lenses should give more manual control – depending on the lens.

But it’s you’re doing that, why wouldn’t you spend a little bit more and get a Canon 7D with manual control over so much more that’s important for video?

Want to see how the video looks for yourself?

Here’s a link to a solid review including downloadable raw footage showing the 1080i60 and 720p30 modes of an NEX-5. Lots of good info from a photographer/home video perspective.

Here’s the official Sony press release

These cameras are  priced from USD $550 to $750, available for pre-order with delivery scheduled in June 2010

Bottom-line: If you need to shoot video for serious projects you’ll likely run into enough issues with either of these cameras to make you wish you’d gone with something else. Like I said, close but no cigar.

But they are so hot – I still want one!

freshdv_nab10_Panasonic

So, it looks like pricing has been announced at around $6,000 – more than I thought. This puts this camera into a range with several other highly respected cameras but the feature set it offers may make it worth every penny.

Jan Crittenden Livingston, the Panasonic executive being interviewed, confirmed that the HD-SDI out was uncompressed so if you want serious picture quality this baby will get it.

I’ll leave the AVC/H.264 discussion for another post but she did mention converting the footage from the camera into ProRes HQ for pulling a green screen key and that is likely the work flow you’ll need. Editing MPEG4 video directly in a timeline is not the most effective work flow making conversion to an editing format pretty well necessary.

But nothing new there. Like I said, I’ll take up this discussion in another post.

She also confirmed delivery for late in 2010. December was the month mentioned and product delivery schedules from here to there can slip a lot.

Although much of this camera can be built using off-the-shelf parts. There is no new technology here. From the sensor to the card slots, the mic inputs to the output selections, Panasonic has been building units with all these parts for a good bit.

I know it’s still more than just getting a prototype to work to have a unit actually in production but their aggressive schedule for delivery seems like it could happen.

Livingston mentioned that they brought in a lot of film makers and the requirements for this camera came from those discussions. One thing that caught my ear was a brief mention of including low-pass filters to eliminate aliasing. And then there is the inclusion of ND filters for shooting outside in the sun.

Having used ‘regular’ camcorders for years and shooting with a DSLR for the past year or so, it will be great to finally get the best of both worlds in one unit.

Personally, I like Sony video cameras. It’s not so much the technical performance, though Sony holds it’s own by any standard. It’s that I’m very comfortable with their ergonomics, menu structures and feel in my hand.

I spent over two hours trying to figure out a Panasonic camcorder recently and never completely succeeded at getting basic configuration settings in place.

But this camera could make it worth going through the learning curve to get used to Panasonic’s interface. I look forward to seeing real footage from it soon.

In the ’80s slide shows made a huge leap with simple digital control of projectors. Before digital control of a projector most productions consisted of a single projector and a sound track that went “beep” so you’d know when to click to advance.  Suddenly we were loading up racks of six, twelve and even twenty-four projectors controlled by dedicated computers and programmed to match stunning images to high end sound tracks.

Then somebody came up with the idea of “branching” and everything changed.

Branching means that when you arrive at a certain point in the show you provide two or more paths for the show to follow. You might provide an overview then give an option for more details or advance to the next section of the overview. You could tailor the show to meet the needs of the situation.

We were delivering sound, text and moving images in an interactive environment. What a concept – Interactive Multimedia 1.0!

In the early 90′s we made another huge leap with DVD media. We went from 700 MB to 4.7 GB on a single disk. We had disc access times fast enough to play small video files on screen.

We could put dozens of programs on a single disk that each was more powerful than our expensive, noisy, difficult-to-manage twelve projector slide show. And we could include pdf files for spec sheets, detailed drawings, and order forms.

And we could author environments with almost endless branching.

Then the web explosion began and we took a huge step back in bandwidth and media standards but gained instant delivery to any computer connected to the net. We are still delivering sound, text and moving images but now in a much more powerful and pervasive interactive environment so let’s call it Interactive Multimedia 2.0.

This month we have another potential leap about to happen.

With the launch of the iPad the promise of interactive multimedia delivered anywhere in the world looks like it’s finally going to become real.

Take a look at this prototype of a totally digital publication – interactive books and magazines with text, audio and full motion video embedded.

VIV Mag Interactive Feature Spread – iPad Demo from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

Yes, it’s sexy in so many ways. They’ve combined a titillating topic, seductive images, interesting headlines delivered in a stimulating conceptual environment. Bingo!

Could they hope to produce a new issue every month and keep up the production value?

We have a well developed network and cable broadcast industry that cranks out a hundreds of new episodes every week to millions of viewers. And with the newspaper and magazine industries struggling to stay alive it shouldn’t be hard to find good writers, art directors and other staff highly skilled in periodic production workflow. Put the right team together and you’d have no problem  producing a great issue like this once a month.

What’s this got to do with DSLR video?

Whether you have a calling as a producer or a shooter, your skill in delivering digital video will continue to be in demand for the foreseeable future. If you’re a producer you need to get well versed in interactive environments. I don’t mean just adding a streaming video to a web page. And I don’t count the simple click-to-advance arrow in this prototype as great interactive programming.

Like said, letting the user drive the show while making it easy for them to get vital information is still an art that most people in this business have not mastered. But guess what?

Hundreds of thousands of programmers producing games and applications for mobile phones have learned a lot about user interfaces and interactivity. Add some of those guys to your production team and get ready for some real excitement.

The iPad is not the only show in town for Interactive Multimedia 3.0.  Go to vook.com and check out their publication list. Sure, the quality varies greatly and that will always be the case. But the writing on the wall for the future of this business is not youtube.com – it’s fully interactive multimedia programs that captivate an audience enough to make them easily part with their hard earned cash.

I think we’re about to go through another learning curve so hold on for the ride.

Vimeo.com and youtube.com both have HTML5 in beta. It’s time you learned something about what this means to you.

I’ll make this as simple as possible – learn to create H.264 video for online distribution. Now for the back story…

Flash video players used to rule the web. 98% of all web browsers come with a Flash video plugin. No other video player even comes close to this level of penetration.

But Flash has problems, way too many to go into here. One serious issue was that it would only play Flash video, a proprietary video format licensed by Adobe.

Flash video does not provide the best online video experience. It was created to handle small graphic animations, not streaming HD video.

A year ago Adobe upgraded the Flash player to handle H.264 video so you no longer needed to use the proprietary .flv video format. Which was a very good thing as H.264 provides a much higher quality online experience in every way. And you can compress your video to H.264 using most any video editor as it’s an industry standard.

All’s fine and well then along comes the iPhone.

Actually, all kinds of smart phones with extended web access but without the ability to use a Flash player. That’s why it was a big deal when youtube.com worked with Apple to create a youtube app for the iPhone.

Within a few weeks of the release of the iPhone 3Gs uploads to youtube.com soared by 400%. Good thing you could watch all those videos on the same iPhone you shot them on, right? But you couldn’t watch them if you uploaded them to most any other video server.

All that changes with HTML5.

Again, the bottom line as a film maker is learn how to compress your final render to H.264 for web distribution and upload to Vimeo or youtube and you’re good to go. On your blog or site you’ll need to look for plugins or work with your programmer. I just added a cool WordPress plugin to this site and it’s now iPhone compatible.

While the videos I embed don’t play inside a post, the links to Vimeo are functional and all Vimeo videos do play on the iPhone. I checked out an HTML5 plugin for WordPress but I like the “share” options built into my current Flash player so I’m staying with Flash for a bit longer.

Right now most HTML5 projects on sites like Vimeo and youtube are labeled as experimental. That’s because Internet Explorer browsers can’t work with HTML5. As more than half of the people on the web use IE you don’t want to create a site that won’t work for the majority of your visitors.

But this is true of many other web technologies besides HTML5. I don’t remember the first time I built a site that had to have special code just for IE browsers but it was many years ago.

Every time I get the chance I recommend using the FireFox browser. Personally, I use both Safari for my normal browser and FireFox for site development or for sites that won’t function on Safari. The latest version of both browsers are compatible with HTML5.

So, update your browser, head on over to Vimeo.com or youtube.com and click on the link to change to HTML5. Chances are you’ll be underwhelmed. It just plays like normal. But the coding going on under the hood is significantly different and the page is likely to display on your iPhone pretty well just like on your computer. That’s pretty cool.

If you want to learn a bit more about HTML5 here are some useful links:

• Google Voice Arrives on iPhone With HTML5-Powered Web App
• The HTML5 Video Element
• 70 Must-Have CSS3 and HTML5 Tutorials and Resources

Learn to compress H.264 video for online distribution and you be in good shape. At least, until online media evolves again. And again. And again.

Canon fires another round in the DSLR HD wars!

This is the new flagship for the EOS Rebel line and comes in with a suggested price tag of $899 with an 18-55 MM IS kit lens.

Not bad when you realize this camera has almost the same video specs as the Canon 7D. Yep, we’re talking 1080 at 30p, 24 and 25p. At 720 you get 60p and 50p if you want that nice 2x overcranked slo-mo look.

And you can store that juicy HD video on inexpensive SDHC or SDXC cards. Cool.

Read the official info here

Canon EOS Digital Rebel T2i.

UPDATE: Amazon just dropped the pre-order price to $799…

$799 Canon EOS Rebel T2i (Body Only)

Footage – from an identical model known as the EOS 550D when this was shot