Panasonic AG-AF100A topic

TheNewDeal

Trip. Fall. Face plant.

Ze_Cahue

This was the only way panasonic found to sell out thousands of af100 already assembled and stoned at their warehouses, after a couple months we will see the af200.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

Would be great if it had ETC mode

It can't have ETC mode as it has video AAF in front of sensor :-)

Vitaliy_Kiselev

http://panasonic.biz/sav/avccam/ag-af105a/index.html

paglez

japanese language Vitaliy. Anyone could explain something new?. Perhaps, a new sensor?

VK: Use online translation :-)

John_Farragut

It seems, nothing too fancy. If priced at $3000. Sure, why not. It would be an option. But for $4500?

evero

This is really strange. No one will jump on this update if the sensor is the same? SDI 10 bit 422 would only be useful with a new up-to-date camera sensor. For day to day use with internal recording, this is basically the same camera.

So this is how panasonic plans to deal with sony FS700 and canon c100? Even when the af100A beats the c100 spec wise, the IQ will not hold up with an old sensor.

Lets hope @Ze_Cahue is right about an AF200 :)

Aria

IMO there has to be some new hardware or else why call it AF100A? Why not let just make a new paid upgrade if it's all software? My guess is that they did change something and hopefully it's a new sensor.

kazuo

Sad if Panasonic doesnt upgrade the sensor. Their finances have really taken a seismic hit and if they continue to churn out white elephants like this, chances are they will buckle under come next year's technical recession

vicx

The Panasonic HPX-250 has 10bit AVC-Intra. That camera with a 4/3 sensor would be just fine.

Jim_Simon

"That camera with a 4/3 sensor would be just fine."

YESSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(But it has to keep the same 20x zoom range, only make it a constant 2.8 parfocal.)

LPowell

Jan Crittenden wrote:

Hi all, Sorry I have been adjusting to a new job at Panasonic. I am now in sales, having moved out of Product Management. The AF100A is/was my last product. So the AF100A/105A/101A are virtually all the same except the numbers. The 10bit output is 4:2:2, but I want to clarify that 10bit output. It is an enhanced 8Bit. It has a bit of dithering to it to help in those banding situations. And it does help. It also has the enlarged 2X expanded focus that everyone said they wanted and you can set it up to toggle between the Focus on Red and the Expanded view. It has the 60P built in and the 2.35 display. The only chip that has been changed is the microprocessor. It continues to offer the best bang for the buck in the industry. In other words the cost/performance ratio is very high.

The original AF100 had 10-bit 4:2:2 SDI/HDMI outputs as well. The downside, however, was that the bottom two bits were blanked out, restricting the AF100 to 8-bit resolution.

According to Jan's explanation, Panasonic has added dithering to those two blanked-out bits. This superimposes an interpolated 2-bit gradient on the camera's 8-bit output, which can make transitions between color bands look smoother. This may produce comparable results as 10-bit transcoders such as 5DtoRGB, which use similar digital signal processing techniques to enhance the conversion of 8-bit data into a 10-bit transcoded format.

The good news is that the original AF100 is far from obsolete. The sad news is that the AF100A will not have the true 10-bit output we were hoping for.