Camera Update by PlanetMitch: Mid-Year Progress Report

2016 has been a very interesting year so far. We are just over half way through and we're bound to have some more tidbits coming our way.

So what things might you have missed?

Nikon?

Well, it appears that Nikon is getting out of the professional video arena blog They ended up pulling out of NAB at the last minute. Financial troubles abound for Nikon and we may even see reductions in other areas.

Many may argue that they have never had a very large presence in the first place, but they were the very first to come out with a DSLR that shot HD video. The Nikon D90 was announced several months before the Canon 5D Mark II, but unfortunately it only had 720 HD, where the 5D2 was the first with 1080 HD. Many people considered the D90 to be somewhat inferior video quality in the first place. Plus, they didn't have the excitement generated by Vincent Laforet’s 'Reverie'. If you are new to the HD SLR revolution, you may not remember or know about Vincent's movie, but it garnered over two million views in the first week it was released and basically launched the revolution.

Nikon wasn’t ever much of a force at NAB. It took them several years to have their first booth and a couple of years ago, they took a year off from NAB. Last year there was some excitement at their booth, but it wasn't as big a crowd as the other major vendors like Canon and Sony and Panasonic.

Lytro switches

If you recall, Lytro introduced several years ago what they called a 'light field camera', which would allow you in post to define where the focus was and the end user could even switch the focus on-the-fly. Earlier this year, they announced that they were getting out of the consumer photo camera market and a few days later announced they were getting out of cinema camera market. Unfortunately, the first camera in their cinema line will not only be available to purchase, but it will cost over $125,000 to rent!

They had some private demonstrations at NAB, but I was not able to attend one. There is a lot of excitement around this camera, because it has the ability to isolate every item in a shot, such, that it could be pulled out separately in post production and entire backgrounds could be inserted and the ability to change focus is also included. So if you missed something in the shots or needed to pull something out individually and make it move, you can do so easily and post. It requires major computer banks and a lot of software on the backend to handle this and because of the rental fee, it will only be available to the major studios, but eventually this may trickle-down to the lower end market, but it would take quite a while if ever for it to appear for consumers.

Sony continues.

There isn't a whole lot to say new about Sony. They continued to release new stuff seemingly every day, (okay, that's an exaggeration, but they do have a constant stream of new products or upgrades to old ones).

Panasonic rocks the variCam, but we’re still waiting on lower priced cameras.

We're all still waiting for the next major announcement from Panasonic in terms of their mirrorless cameras. The update to the very popular GH4 is hopefully due later this year. There are some rumors this might even include 8k… the big question is why? LOL.

They did announce at NAB the new The VariCam LT which was highly praised by those who saw it as a 'game changer', likening it to the Arri line with a lower price. Still over $16k tho for the body.

Blackmagic gets smart.

One thing that impressed me at the NAB this year, was the fact that while Blackmagic had several products to announce, they weren't brand-new cameras and they were all available starting immediately.

This was a very smart move on their part, because they have gained a reputation of announcing cameras and not delivering until many months. if not all year, later and often they have been prone to products that have problems initially.

It is like Blackmagic has grown up and learned from the past, realizing that it is better to have quality, timeliness and low cost than to trump the competition and be first to market.

Canon (and others) dips into 8k and rocks the EOS-1D X II.

Canon’s big camera so far this year is the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II (one I wish I owned!) and there has been a lot of praise for this one. I had my hands on a prototype just after they were announced and it is truly drool worthy if you’re a DSLR fan like me. Yes, I still take plenty of photos and enjoy being able to have one camera to do both photos and video.

Canon did talk about how they’re exploring 8k cameras and why nobody’s really ready for them yet.

Why 8k? Well, just as the question 'why 4k' was asked initially (and still many are in this boat). If you’re going to deliver in 1080, it is nice to shoot 4k and be able to crop and select portions of the image and even down-res to 1080 to get a ‘better’ 1080 image.

So the same is true for 4k. Filmmakers lust after the abilities to shoot 8k and deliver 4k.

It isn’t like we’ll be getting 8k in the home any time soon (tho they’re doing it in Japan).

Also, let’s not forget there are plenty of manufacturers working towards 8k so it will be coming. Red is working on 8k with their Weapon and as I mentioned, there are inklings that Panasonic is thinking about it for the GH5.

The Rest:

Well, there is plenty of little stuff going on and lots of cameras continue to come out and confuse the heck out of everyone. It has become a scenario where I can imagine a new photographer or filmmaker would have a hard time figuring out what camera to use, not to mention, plenty of rumors of new exciting cameras coming down the pike. I'm especially eager for the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV which is rumoured  which is rumored to be announced in the September timeframe. We believe that photographers have already had the camera in their hands for final testing.

It should be an exciting fall!

About Mitch Aunger:

Mitch "planetMitch" Aunger is the creator and mastermind behind planet5D.com — which covers every aspect of HDSLR cameras (and a whole lot of other cameras as well). A lover of photography since his early days, he graduated to selling stock photos to make a little bit of spare cash. It wasn’t much, but it allowed him to upgrade to better cameras as well as computers, and it wasn’t taking money away from feeding his family.

He loves the stories that the still image can tell. In the summer of 2008, he read a story written by Arnold Kim called “I Quit My Job” — Arn is the owner of macrumors.com. He started macrumors in 2000 as a hobby, and by 2008 he was making more money with the site than he was on his day job, so he quit. The surprise to the story is that he was a doctor making more than six figures! Right then and there, planetMitch dreamed about doing the same thing.

September 2008 rolled around, and Canon announced this new version of the incredible 5D — the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. It was the first Canon DSLR to shoot full HD video and the earth moved! (It really was a huge deal in the photography world.) planetMitch knew if there was ever a chance to ride a wave of something he was really passionate about, this was it — and the blog at planet5D.com was born. It is now one of the most popular HDSLR blogs on the planet, and he is making a full-time living from blogging. He couldn’t be happier! You can network with him on Stage 32 by clicking here.

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