Let me tell you, I love me some Adam Wilt. His no-nonsense honest approach to testing is second-to-none, and this article on sensor low-light performance is a great example. Recommend reading this one if you’ve been feeling that your beloved EX1 or HPX has lost it’s lustre with all the recent DSLR video developments. Adam’s comparison test shows that performance is actually pretty close in these modern camera systems at high ISO and gain levels.

Phillip Bloom is at Canon Expo this week, and has posted some pictures and preliminary reports from the event. Canon is showing off a 4K camera with a 2/3″ sensor, something that isn’t likely to ever ship, but might be a harbinger of things to come. They are clearly flexing their muscles a bit in the direction of Red’s own non-shipping concept camera called Scarlet. You may have heard of it. Anyway, competition is good for end users, so bring it on, Canon!

(Via C5D News)

I hear it all the time…complete novices and non-techies look at the image from a Canon DSLR and say something to the effect of “I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t look like video to me. It looks filmic.” There’s a lot of reasons why they might arrive at that conclusion…a shallow depth of field tends to be associated with production value and “films,” and the $2500 Canon 5D MKII offers about as shallow a focus field as you could hope for, with it’s massive sensor size (as a side note, this shallow DOF is also an annoyance, depending on the application). Canon DSLRs also render skintones and color in a very natural and pleasing way. Or maybe it’s the 24p cadence of the video capture that appears filmic. Like I said, there are many factors that contribute, and a few that don’t.

But one more area that the Canon DSLRs shine is in dynamic range. Video traditionally has had a very limited dynamic range, with the best of video cameras rendering only 6-8 stops of usable image information spanning the darkest blacks and the brightest whites. Film, on the other hand, is generally somewhere north of 13 stops, depending on who you talk to and what stocks you are using. So when people like Art Adams do tests on the Canon 5D MKII and show it has 10 stops of dynamic range, there’s one more subtle reason why people may think the image is filmic…it’s approaching the range of detail in film. That’s a significant accomplishment. When the Red One camera came out a couple years back, I recall that they were aiming for 12-13 stops of range, and most folks I believe tested it at around 11-ish stops. A significant development at the time (which has been improved of late with the MX sensor upgrade program).

And there’s reason to believe that DSLRs will improve over time…as I anecdotally recall, didn’t Zacuto recently test the Canon 7D at over 10.5 stops of dynamic range? Or was it 11? I can’t recall ofhand, but do remember if being marginally better than what the 5D offered. So there you have it…pixel pushers like Art Adams (and I say that with the utmost respect and appreciation) are telling us WHY we unconsciously appreciate the images coming from a Canon DSLR. And as a facts guy, it makes me happy that I can associate a factual number with the image that I already knew and appreciated from an aesthetic standpoint. Thanks Art!

Shane Hurlbut has posted a good article on the many ways you can monitor with Canon DSLRs, and of course the challenges of trying to work with them professionally. Good stuff.

HD Warrior has posted a review of the Sony PMW-320K, a shoulder mount XDCAM ala the EX3 but aimed at a slightly different market. It’s a short and to the point review that covers the major areas of the camera. Check it out.

As an unrelated side note, apparently the folks at HD Warrior are graduates of Jim Jannard’s school of Posting Text Info As Huge Image Files…

PMW-320K pre-orders/purchases via this B&H link help support FreshDV at no additional cost to you.

Here’s a simple side-by-side comparison of the same test scenes that show how Red and Alexa handle it both pre and post grade. It is not explicitly stated, but I would assume that the Red One was equipped with a MX sensor upgrade. Caveat emptor. Watch below.

Arri Alexa vs Red One from D-Vision on Vimeo.

Unrelated to this test, Bill Bennett has also posted some framegrabs from a recent Alexa shoot that show good highlight handling in a technically challenging situation (sun reflections from silver car). See here.

I recently picked up a GoPro HD Naked camera specifically for a vacation in Cozumel. We had scuba dives scheduled, and I wanted a simple point and shoot option to capture video and stills with a minimum of mess and annoyance. Sure, I’d have loved to rent a full housing for a 5DMK2…but that’s relatively bulky, and I wasn’t looking for perfect quality; I wanted simplicity on this trip. After all, who wants to work on a vacation?

From that standpoint, the GoPro really fit the bill. It’s a simple little camera, with very few controls and not even an LCD for framing. You just point it blindly, trusting that it’s ultra-wide fixed-focus f2.8 lens will get the shot. And along the way, can capture some really pretty stuff. It’s actually a little bit freeing to not be able to see the LCD…you just “spray and pray,” and the results can be surprising. And did I mention it’s cheap? The HD Hero Naked is only $260.

Underwater, the current stock GoPro housing has a bit of an issue. It is waterproof to beyond normal scuba depths, but there is a problem with soft edges in the video frame. Apparently this stems from the curved-lens housing design. It is my understanding that GoPro is aware of the issue and is officially working on an updated housing for divers.

Knowing this in advance, I picked up an Eye of Mine flat-port housing, which is basically a DIY mod of the stock GoPro housing. The Eye of Mine housing will vignette a touch in the stills mode, but the GoPro’s slightly cropped 1080p mode doesn’t have any issues with vignetting. This modded housing looks a bit ugly, but performed perfectly for me at depths up to 85ft.

Battery life on the camera is excellent. The small rechargeable battery is good for upwards of an hour of on-and-off shooting. I was able to get two full dives out of the camera, with plenty of battery to spare. I recorded to an el-cheapo 16GB Transcend media card.

The size of the camera is both a pro and a con. On the pro side, you can just stuff it in a pocket on your BCD and just pull it out when you wish. But that svelte size also means that the footage can be shaky as there is very little inertia and it’s difficult to grasp well with two hands. Thankfully, the wide lens hides some of these small camera indiscretions. You could easily attach handgrips or even headmount the camera to help avoid handheld shakes. I’m sure Zacuto or someone else as prolific will release full rigs for these cameras at some point. GoPro also has a number of mounting options, though they tend to market towards extreme sports shooters.

I shot quite a bit of video from our dives, and will be doing some CC and editing on that footage for a later post, but for now here are some stills snapped with the relatively low-res 5MP GoPro stills mode. Some of these have had minor retouching. Click through for larger versions, and enjoy!

Full disclosure: FreshDV is now a GoPro affiliate (because we think they make cool gear), you can shop via our link here: Official GoPro® Store.

Here’s another reason why every surfer should have a GoPro camera. Watch below…

Me my Shark and I from Chuck Patterson on Vimeo.

Really cool footage that Chuck captured! As a side note, I shot some scuba footage in Cozumel recently with my shiny new GoPro HD, and I was really impressed with how it performed. I used the Eye of Mine flat-port housing mod, as GoPro’s housing is currently soft on the edges of the frame underwater (they have stated that they are working on update to the housing design for underwater shooters). However, with the flat-port mod, my GoPro Naked performed beautifully in the reefs and walls of Cozumel, even at 85ft depth. I’ll be posting footage when I get a chance to do a quick edit.

Full disclosure: FreshDV is now a GoPro affiliate (because we think they make cool gear), you can shop via our link here: Official GoPro® Store. You should also be aware that GoPro will soon be selling a 960p version of their camera for a chunk of change less, so for those who don’t require 1080p output (web and SD delivery, etc), it might be a good option at a lower price.

There’s a new firmware out for the Canon EOS 7D that fixes an aperture-change bug. No new features, just a few bug fixes. I’ve shot extensively with the 7D and haven’t personally seen this issue, apparently it only affects certain lenses. Get the 1.2.2 firmware update here.

Subject says it all. If you’ve got a Canon DSLR that is not equipped with a video function, you might still be able to capture HD video from LiveView with this open-source software. The software comes with all kinds of caveats of course, but hey, maybe it solves a problem for ya. Check it out.

Watching our Panasonic coverage from NAB 2009 and 2010, it’s clear that Panasonic is embracing affordable, easily usable 3D tech. Now it seems that a consumer camcorder model information has also been leaked, showing they intend to take it down to the soccer-mom market as well. Interesting development. The camera is reportedly called the HDC-SDT750.

Engadget has some info here, and more specs/pics have been leaked here.

Hot on the heels of Sony’s announcement of the VG10 last week, it looks like the first E-mount lens adapters are already in development. And they are exactly what users would ask for…PL to E-mount and a Nikon G lens to E-mount. Very very cool.

With the release of Canon’s XF300 and XF305 camcorders, no doubt forum threads and geek discussions will raise the topic of color sampling. These new Canon cameras are equipped to record in the venerable MPEG-2 codec at a bit rate of 50 Mbps and 4:2:2 color sampling (to compact flash media, no less). In contrast, cameras in this price range generally utilize a much lower bitrate and 4:2:0 (HDV & XDCAM EX) or 4:1:1 (DV) color sampling. Canon DSLRs also chroma subsample at 4:2:0.

So while the XF-series of cameras are in general an unsurprising solid evolutionary step for Canon camcorders, the addition of this high bitrate codec at 4:2:2 is a rather significant development! But what is color sampling? If you are a bit confused by all the colons and numbers, this blog post from Adobe should help dispel some of the myths and inform you for that next “who’s camera is better” geeky throwdown discussion. Enjoy!

Jim Jannard has posted some test charts shot by RED, comparing ARRI Alexa with the Red Epic MX. I’ve spent several hours looking over these charts and here are my opinions on what information they reveal about these two amazing camera systems.

Nikon Rumors says that the Nikon D3100 is coming, and that among other features it will support autofocus in it’s 720p and 1080p video modes, as well as AVCHD as the video codec. They link to a post on a Nikon Live View AF patent application as supporting evidence.

This is probably also a good time to mention a new Nikon patent on a small mirrorless camera, with a MP and sensor that would neatly divide down to 4K and 1080p without funky scaling. EOSHD has some thoughts on this news. Hat-tip to Ajit for the link.