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Where are all the good camera sites?

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Wayne Morellini

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Does anybody know of any really good camera sites for consumer and prosumer video cameras?

I went over to camcorder info and they have one shopping feature article since ces, no news since then I think, the forum has disappeared, and 3 recent reviews with no review sub section link. There, is top camera shopping rubbish on the front page instead. Stevesdigicam has gone a bit quite. Even Dvinfo forum activity went funny years ago and I left. There are a number of still blogs but half of them have no real forum and the news can be too consumed with rubbish and little video.

The last good camcorder website left I am familiar with is slashcam, but it is German. There was another Japanese sub-site, zuma zoo or something, that had extensive reviews and previews.

Looks like the good English sites got vacuumed away, the lowest common denominator is a shopping site, and ad men who make a good living with so little return for the web sites hosting the ads that they cant afford to exist, while you spend 90% of a google search wading through pseudo shopping sites. If this is the web, why bother anymore, go to amazon and wade through there external linked listings?
 
 
Thanks guys. Peter, I'm a google.fiend, and have come across most of those, good list. Forgot about that dslrnewsshooter, great site from memory.

But what I'm really looking for is something that does what camcorderuser used to, review and news all consumer camcorders, and one that does prosumer camcorders, not really pro outlook. dvxuser is probably the closest mentioned. I just lack sites to keep an eye on the bottom end for personal use and to recommend camcorders.

I've been keeping an eye out for the first sub $700 ultrahd camcorders for a number of months, the chip sets were announced previously, but nobody seems to be churning the rumor mills or manufacturers to find out, so a lot of downtime on google when I look. In this mixed up world we might see full framerate uhd on gopro sports cams before a cheap camcorder. I'm hoping that somebody is rational and does a micro43rds with 4k/uhd in China this year or early next.
 
Thanks Peter.
 
You are welcome, Wayne.
Your post really got me thinking:
Don´t we all want a tiny camera for grab shots, at least 1080p (though we know it stinks compared to our REDs) , if possible 50mbps, 4:2:2 without external recorders etc etc ... ?
Won´t happen at this year´s NAB though: EX3 class 4k camcorders are in the works with all major manufacturers, I´m sure. Lots of black painted wood models under glass cubes and advert blurb to go with them. I hope for 2014 for Canon Legrias & Panny 4xxxCs et al to come out, but even now I can only shiver when I think about their upcoming 4k codecs.
 
I really like the Duclos blog...
 
Thanks Graeme
 
peter roehsler said:
You are welcome, Wayne.
Your post really got me thinking:
Don´t we all want a tiny camera for grab shots, at least 1080p (though we know it stinks compared to our REDs) , if possible 50mbps, 4:2:2 without external recorders etc etc ... ?
Won´t happen at this year´s NAB though: EX3 class 4k camcorders are in the works with all major manufacturers, I´m sure. Lots of black painted wood models under glass cubes and advert blurb to go with them. I hope for 2014 for Canon Legrias & Panny 4xxxCs et al to come out, but even now I can only shiver when I think about their upcoming 4k codecs.
Click to expand...

Actually years ago I approached Jim with an idea for a pocket pro camcorder as you describe, my directors viewfinder project. There was talk of a pocket camera for a while but never heard back from Jim about it, or the job he mentioned. The idea was dropped or transformed into the fixed scarlet, which is another concept that I put forward in 2004 alongside a more serious upmarket 4k camera business model. At least some good ideas survive.

I continue to move on with development of new formats, technologies and techniques, but can not afford the millions needed to put it to practice to my satisfaction. I have figured that I could cheaply produce a low volume run based on a generic ambarella chip set, or andriod or unbuntu phone chipset, design with modifications to record uncompressed (or low compressed such as differential compression on gpu) to card, or interface output like clean pre compression deep color hdmi or thunderbolt/displayport or usb3 or sata, to external recorder. Ambarella only suports hdmi I think. Then modify the software to have a pro control mode with push button snap auto setup features and configurable manual control. Get a good sensor, like gopro has. The cheap lens mechanism can be put on a regular mount. This is the key, in low volume you might swing $1000 prices, but by making a general high performance ambarella based camera through a regular Chinese manufacture it can be sold to a hundred times more people and reduce the price down to $300-$500. It is basically a $300 camera with better software and interface. Even with a cheap aptina sensor you are going to get acceptable results for the price. With 4k things are a bit complex to record to card or recorder as the data rates are so high, but for fullhd you can use the blackmagic portable recorder (remember emailing them about portable recording years ago). I have a few new manual control techniques that can be used.

The other option is mini PC recording. Using a thunderbolt camera you could get direct pci dma recording to memory. Unfortunately they are only just getting to usb3 camera heads and maybe there is hdmi around in 4k. In our old group there were a number of open source camera software projects. This linux software could transfer over to the arm android and future unbuntu systems, not to forget that ambarella has its own Android chipset.

However, I aim to sell a few of my ideas for new form factors and mechanisms. One is a pro pocket camera form factor with many new improvements, manual controls and pro stabilisation, suitable against all prosumer camcorders with a better pro codec I think possible in 4k. You could film and photograph weddings, documentaries tv series, cheap movies with such a beast. A rather fancy design I have to prototype to validate a few crucial parts of the design. But the reality is that you would probably be lens limited with conventional lens design, meaning 1/2 inch quality, maybe 2/3rds. I had planned a software system to correct images. The Sanyo HD2000 was an example, a way big pocket camera and lens.

I have a few better things that I'm keeping in reserve. But another design form factor I am interested in passing on in for a pro camera phone like form factor. I came up with ways to improve it.
 
Looks like there is no replacement for csmcorderinfo. Is there any good camcorder magazines left that have an online community?

Ironic if magazines outlast their website competitors.
 
Wayne, you do have some fascinating ideas. Pity that I am neither rich nor tech-savvy enough to fully appreciate your projects. I just wonder, how everybody (esp RED) would feel about the rebirth of the pocket-cam with pro specs. if it could be done, it would sell like hotcake. I also wonder, where the reluctance to follow this up stems from. Could it be that they (whoever) have found obstacles to big to circumvent without taking shortcuts and lower overall product quality to what is known as a `very good´ prosumer product? Which would be unworthy of an industry leader who does not want to offer dozens of different cameras for every kind of budget, so to speak, just to make that extra buck for their shareholders ...
 
Nah, its ok. Gives me something to do while my head recovers from accidentally poisoning it a few days ago from off lemon juice. I've got some of the greatest stuff going on but don't talk about it. Sometimes I mention stuff to spark interest. Maybe somebody will read it and be inspired to make their own.

I agree with you about selling like hotcakes, but would advocate selling it also as a consumer version I mentioned above, to keep the price down . There are a few issues with Red doing a pocket. Redcode would kill the pocket, just too much processing power, though I am in a leading processor community, and working on advanced processing hardware techniques, planning simplified optical. The reality is maybe cineform raw is a far as you could maybe go. I am coming up with new type of compression scheme. I have discovered a graceful way to break apart images, it is not as good as my scheme of the 90's, which is the bees knees, but is easier. I also came up with an simple alternative to do 8k in 40mb/s very high quality, but might be a challenge in a small size. High bitrate H264 or h265 would do for this sort anyway.

Another issue is its not their market focus. They are more interested in competing with Arri and other traditional digital cinema camera makers for customers. Eventually Arri and others may go broke, with Red becoming the new Arri replacement. Then competitors could come out with cheaper pro cameras. A Red 40 thousand dollar camera could becomes the equivalent of a two hundred thousand dollar camera, as it becomes the most expensive left on the market. So, Red does not want to produce low end rubbish. But they would want greater profit, and it might compete with scarlet. Which brings to mind youtube scarlet pocket camera jokes people suggested, about, is that a scarlet in your pocket :) .

Then there is the issue that they wont want to make it on a cheap h264 ambarella chipset. They would want to do it raw, high quality, $2-3k, but it might take years for the tech to do it to become available.

The reality, is they have the wrong focus to do this at this point in time. But such a camera can be done, to be competitive with prosumer camcorders, in h264.
 
Quite interesting what you are planning, I must say.
Ready to beta-test any time!
(I will be happy to throw away all DSLR stuff :)
All the best!
 
Keeping out of cameras for a while Peter. Once I get my consumer electronics platform developed for the third world computer, I am thinking of throwing open an open source camera reference design for it using a leading low end processing to energy ratio solution from a crowd I know. Immense amounts of processing power is possible with the solution. This would give every competitor a run. My advanced processing solutions, I can get upgrades to the processing solution, but a lot of the really interesting stuff will have to wait until somebody can afford it. But I hope for many times improvement in both the upgrades and the new technologies over today's leading solutions. Back on subject, I could have possibly released a visually lossless 40MByte/s (larger size simpler circuit etc) 8k pocket camera if I had backing and parts access to develop it. But money and access is what stops many people, nothing unusual.

I have been interested in getting people interested in an alternative open source camera platform to mine anyway, based on opencl and linux, just to give the industry a bit of a boost. Mine would be a while away. I am currently preparing to do a simpler computer surface display that I could make money on towards bigger ventures. I have first class radical products I would like to do, but money is the issue. So there wont be much to beta for a while, just to get funding to produce the computer table projector is going to be difficult.
 
Thanks Peter. Very interesting resources.
 
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