Comments on: Canon S100: best P&S for video right now

By: CRFilms

CRFilms — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:38:17 +0000

This guy has done a lot of Canon and GH vids. Hacked GH1 vs 7d, he doesn’t say the bitrate, but this was early in the hack process so I suspect it was the 75mb patch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1BMugSQl1I

STOCK GH2 720p vs 7D 1080p:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox_EzLXOSzU

A stock GH2′s 720p is as good as 7D’s 1080p. Only thing Canon has over GH’s is low light/high iso. The GH1 high iso low light is terrible, BUT for $350 body only, that’s easy to overlook/work around. The GH2 has much better low light, maybe not as good as Canon, but for $800 body only vs $1500 for a 7D body only, Panasonic wins in terms of Quality per dollar value.

By: Eugenia

Eugenia — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:33:34 +0000

The GH series have limiting color options, which is important for a pro-look. Canons have the excellent Cinestyle now while the GH have a baked image with little control. Also, the kind of encoder hack currently used to go to 100mbps makes no big difference (very little added visual clarity). What the hack does is to save the buffer at 100mbps, but the encoder itself does not work at 100mbps. This is like saving at 100% quality a previously-saved JPEG picture: since JPEG is lossy obviously the re-saved quality won’t be as good as if we were to have access to the original TIFF uncompressed image and then save a JPEG at 100%. It’s a two steps down process instead of one.

By: CRFilms

CRFilms — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 04:51:40 +0000

I love your blog, and bought my parents a A1200 based on your recommendation, but IMHO, the GH1/GH2 is the best cam for video. I bought 2 GH1s(body only) on closeout for around $350 and that was the unhackable model. The new hack came out two weeks later and I can now record 24p and up to 100mbs.

The GH2s are now hackable also and their AVERAGE bitrates are now stable at over 100mbs. You have to spend over $5k to get a better camera. Even stock they’re pretty good and if they go on sale for body only under $500, you can’t get a better cam for similar cost.

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 13:21:23 +0000

Eugenia…you`re talking about Joe Simon or other?Thanks.

By: Eugenia

Eugenia — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 01:28:09 +0000

Don’t change my words please. I never named it as the camera of choice for “any” video enthusiast. I named it the best *point and shoot* camera for video enthusiasts, which means the following: a kind of hardware that is small, fits in a pocket, it also takes great pictures along good video, and it’s “secondary” to the artist’s main camera (usually a dSLR). This is explained in my reply to Andreas above.

Besides, I (and most video artists) would NEED 24p, and 30p (for a little slow motion). The Panasonic doesn’t offer this very important bit. Frame rate is very important in the selection of a camera. For video artists, 60p is only important for slow motion, absolutely nothing else. 60p would make their masterpiece look like Joe’s wedding video.

Sure, it’s a great option for sports and travel family men (like yourself, I assume), but not for artistry (except for slow motion to 24p). And this blog is for video art, therefore my suggestions won’t be the same as in for family video — which has a different focus. I believe we have already discussed this in the past a number of times btw.

I still advocate for poor artists to buy these $100 or $150 Canon digicams btw (the ones that actually have exposure lock), not the S100. The S100 is simply the best of the current Canon P&S bunch, but not the one that people should aim for if they don’t have the funds. It doesn’t offer THAT much more than the $110 A1200 model video-wise. I go for the S100 because, well, there’s a 10th anniversary wedding gift pending, so I can go for the best P&S.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 00:05:27 +0000

Eugenia, before you advised older cheap Canon P&S’s as the best available video cameras for “poor artists” who can spend about $100, yet were able to produce high-quality videos. Now I can only wonder who would actually spend $430 on a P&S if video is the primary purpose? For $399 you can buy Panasonic HDC-SD90: a dedicated video camera with progressive 1080p 60fps 28mbps (AVCHD 2.0), full manual control, 28mm wide lens with f1.8, 40x zoom with exceptional stabilizer, and external mic plug. In my opinion, the price of S100 makes absolutely no sense to name it as the camera of choice for any video enthusiast.

By: Eugenia

Eugenia — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:57:41 +0000

Yeah, that doesn’t mean it’s a nice property. Personally, I prefer to just stabilize my camera as much as I can, than to get purple lines. Others might prefer it another way.

By: glenn

glenn — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:51:57 +0000

I don’t understand the problem with the purple lines. With real film, you get purple lines when you shoot towards the sun.

By: Ivan

Ivan — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:18:21 +0000

This camera is very promising indeed. I just want to put one aspect of it in perspective: the 1/1.7″ sized sensor. Many reviewers will refer to this as ‘bigger’ and more light sensitive than a ‘normal’ P&S camera. Potential buyers must realise that this ‘big’ sensor is still very small compared to asp-c and m4/3 sensors.
I pretty sure that the S100′s pictures at iso values above 800 will be very noisy, with loss of detail, and that background blur (isolating the object from the background) will only be possible in macro shots. For me, this is the greatest limitation of any compact (small sensor) camera. It also undermines the chances of creating the so called ‘filmlook’.
The fact that the S100 has a cmos sensor is great: no more sensor blooming (purple lines when shooting in a strong light source).

By: Eugenia

Eugenia — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:05:04 +0000

>what happened to your 5Dmk2?

I use it every now and then (I used it for a baptism recently for example). But it’s mostly JBQ that uses it, for stills. As I mentioned to Andreas above, I prefer to have a “good” camera for serious shoots (e.g. music videos that take time), and a smaller P&S one for less serious ones (e.g. a music video shot in 2 hours, or travel).