Panasonic AG-AF100 news by Barry Green (and preorder at BHphoto!)

The Panasonic AG-AF100 is the first professional Micro Four Thirds camcorder. According to [shoplink 16841]BHphoto[/shoplink] the camera will be in Stock within 6-10 weeks. The price without lens is $4,795.00 ([shoplink 16841]Click here to preorder the AG-AF100[/shoplink]).

We collected some of the recent comments made by Barry Green at DVXuser forum:

– In PH (24Mbit/s) mode the AF100 supports uncompressed LPCM audio in addition to the AC-3 audio supported by the HMC series.

– Three chips still deliver superior color to a single-chip system. The reason everyone’s going with a single chip is NOT increased color fidelity; a Bayer chip is inferior to three chips for color fidelity, and that’s why every broadcast camera on the market has three chips and a prism. But there are some things that just can’t be done with three chips — primarily, emulating the way a film camera works and the ability to use lenses that have been developed for film cameras. A single sensor directly emulates the way a film sensor works, and you don’t need to make accomodations in the lens design for a beam-splitting prism.

– I expect we’ll see many comparisons just like the 5D vs. Red comparisons, where people show a whole bunch of shallow-DOF headshots and say “see, the 5D is just as good as the Red One.” If people shoot AF100 vs. 5D/7D and they limit themselves to those kinds of shots, then they’ll probably look quite comparable and there won’t be any “blowing away” going on. Where the AF100 will be hugely superior is in wide-angle deep focus shots, in terms of actual resolved detail, and in features and usability.

– So, is AVCHD a “step down” from DVCPRO-HD? In some ways, yes, in some ways no. It’s 4:2:0 instead of 4:2:2. And it’s long-GoP instead of intraframe. However, it’s also 2001-era technology, vs. 2010-era technology. So would it be fair to say that AVCHD can deliver comparable images as compared to DVCPRO-HD? Possibly. An intriguing question.

– DVCPRO-HD is 4:2:2, but it also prefilters the recording resolution down from 1920×1080 to 1280×1080. AVCHD is 4:2:0, but it retains the full 1920×1080. So DVCPRO-HD will have twice the color resolution but only 2/3 the horizontal resolved detail.

– And DVCPRO-HD is bulletproof as far as motion artifacting, whereas AVCHD is a long-GoP codec. However, as a long-GoP codec, it’s really good; I compared it against XDCAM-EX and found AVCHD to be much more robust regarding motion artifacts from cases where the codec gets overloaded. So while it isn’t a true intraframe codec, it’s much less susceptible to the issues that caused long-GoP codecs to get the reputation they got in the early days of HDV.

Reminder: You can read his initial report at DVXuser (Click here)

And don’t forget. You can support this website by preordering the [shoplink 16841]Panasonic AG-AF100 at BHphoto clicking here![/shoplink] (Thanks!)