Tag Archives: Panasonic Corporation

Fujifilm W3, Lumix 3D1 and Toshiba Z100 3D cameras all appear to be “discontinued” but…

In the last two weeks, many 3D cameras have been marked as discontinued or their price has been slashed, suggesting they are being discontinued, or their availability has been sharply curtailed.

It is likely that vendors are clearing out inventory the week before Christmas in anticipation of announcing new 3D cameras at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show during the 2nd week of January.

B&H Photo has marked the Fujifilm Finepix 3D W3 camera as “discontinued”; Walmart.com says the same thing. I own this camera and find it a lot of fun for shooting quick 3D stills. A lot easier than my dual camera setups!

Amazon has marked the dual lens, dual camera 3D Toshiba video camera down to $159.95; B&H was at $149.95Toshiba Camileo Z100 3D Digital Camcorder Camileo Z100

That is a remarkable price for a stereoscopic 3D video camera recording dual video channels (at 960×1080) – and amazingly, the Z100 includes an external mic input too. Main drawback is lack of image stabilization to control for shaky handheld shots.

The Panasonic Lumix 3D1, which was carried by Amazon itself until a few weeks ago, is now only carried by resellers: Panasonic digital cameras Lumix 3D shooting black DMC-3D1-K. And B&H Photo lists this camera as “discontinued”.

My guess: We will see many new 3D cameras at the 2013 CES!

I plan to be at CES and will be filing reports on cameras, especially micro-four thirds systems, 3D photo and video cameras, and tablet computing devices. Some of my camera items will appear here and at least one other web site. More info as we get closer to CES!

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Panasonic Lumix GH-2 Firmware 1.1 update just released

Joint update service for Four Thirds lenses | Digital Camera | Digital AV | Consumer Products | Support | Panasonic Global.

Notably, the new firmware adds

  • Improved noise reduction for low light usage
  • Powered zoom lens features to work with the new X-Series lenses
  • 25p mode for PAL cameras
  • 30p mode for NTSC cameras
  • Improvements to auto focus
  • Improvements to burst mode

The better online discussion as to what the new firmware provides is likely to be here.

Noise reduction – I shot a test clip before and after, using 1080/24p video mode at ISO 2500. There is a noticeable improvement but noise is certainly visible – just guessing but it seems it could be as much as 40% to 50% less noise. It is possible that the noise improvement is better at ISO 3200; I believe 2500 is the highest the native image sensor goes to in video mode and 3200 is done through software signal processing. I think. I have not looked at the noise in terms of still images.

HBR – I previously wrote that I wasn’t sure what was happening here. My mistake. On PAL cameras, this is a new 25p mode and on NTSC cameras this is a new 30p mode. My mistake was that I had inadvertently rendered my new 30p video as a 24p mp4 file, which meant some frame blending had occurred. To correct what I wrote previously, the new HBR/1080/30p looks great!

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Power zoom lenses for DSLR cameras

Panasonic launches Lumix G X Vario PZ 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 OIS pancake: Digital Photography Review.

The new Lumix “X” series lenses is an important development for shooting video on DSLRs.

DSLRs have had 3 limitations on their use for many types of video photography:

  1. lack of power zooms
  2. lack of audio controls
  3. limits on video recording time

The new lenses feature built-in zoom motors and controls. Panasonic has also announced a firmware update to several of its micro-four thirds cameras that will presumably add more zoom feature support to the cameras.

At this time, the demo video I saw showed a fixed zoom speed. I presume the firmware update will add a speed control to the cameras.  The zoom motor was audible in the camera’s built-in mic. This is yet another reason why we need to remember that audio is half the video experience – and should be using an external mic when sound is important.

Regarding audio, the lack of sound controls on DSLRs still demands use of BeachTek or other external audio mixers to get the sound right.

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