The AX100 does have some impressive footage and features. My concern is that the 12x zoom is a bit short for doing the outdoor things that I do..

Well, if you shoot at 4k and crop to the center 1920x1080, that will get you to 48x.

Neither. They are both way overpriced.

You can have the exact same sensor that's in ax100 and a better lens at 25 to 400mm for under a $1000

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonic-lumix-dmc-fz1000

Having said that I don't recommend you buy anything until you hold it in your hand and see how it works for you.

Mike

The AX100 has clear image zoom which will get you 18x for 4K and 24x in HD. Clear Image zoom is exactly what it says, there is no noise or pixelation like digital zoom would have. There is 160x digital in addition but as on other cameras it is useless.

I recently shot a condor in flight at the Grand Canyon and I can upload a sample if you like. The 12x zoom lens is only available if you switch off image stabilization, which I tried and it doesn't work well. Even on my tripod the footage, specially 4K does look a bit shaky and you will need a very good tripod to a steady shot.

The HF G30 showed some level of lens aberration when fully zoomed in and the XA20 will do the same.

PS: be aware there is a very strong believer in GH series cameras in this forum that considers anything that looks like a AX100 a "Granny" camera which only shoots crapy video.

@ OldSmoke

A little OT

Switched to a GH2 about 12 months back when my old A1E finally died. Under controlled conditions the video from it is excellent but the onboard sound is a complete let down. An external mic is essential at all times. As a gun & run device forget it. However; it has been an interesting learning curve.
Having recently used a HF G30 (similar to XA20) I had difficulty with manual settings. There was no histogram and hence no indication of a near correct exposure (the one feature I like on the GH).
Do such camcorders exist sub £2000 UK).
As things stand my choice would probably be the AX100E.
Out of interest bearing in mind you are shooting a 1920x1080P or 4K equivalent. Iif the final output is BD do you use a 1920x1080i timeline or downscale to 1280x720P.

driver

The sound on the AX100 is acceptable but if one would shoot wild life I can only recommend Sony's ECM CG50 and also the a Multi Interface shoe to cold shoe adapter. The CG50 is a perfect fit and with the audio levels properly adjusted you get great sound.
I have not done a BD yet but I am inclined to go for a 1920x1080 60i export from my 30p 4K timeline which should be better then downsizing it to 1280x720p.
The major advantage of a handycam stile package is its run and gun capability. Sure, in a controlled environment you might get better results with a system that has exchangeable lenses and even then I say, don't count out what the AX100 can do. It doesn't have a histogram either but it does have Zebra and Peaking.

Edit: here is the link to the Condor in flight http://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz4okF1D_ux5cG9fU0Q5UDBWZmM/edit?usp=sharing

Like the Condor, nice work

Thanks, so far I've used both 1920x1080i and 1280x720P (50P Pal) to produce BD's and frankly cannot see any difference. To be fair I've not checked on any screen above 50 inch.
Also mixed timelines from HF G30 & hacked GH2. The GH2 produces 1280x720(50P) so there is a minor advantage in scaling the G30 clips down to match. The (1280x720) file sizes are half that of the 1920x1080 and makes for faster final rendering for DVDA..
Hopefully with 4K TV's being available there may well be a better BD standard in the pipeline. Then again DVD's upscale well in the players so BD's may do the same.

driverG

You are right, I didn't see much difference between 1080i and 720p with my GH30 either but 4K, in my opinion, does look better at 1080i then 720p and the AX100 only shoots 4K at 30p. I do however set it to 1080 60p for my figure skating events and then scale it to 720 60p mixed with 720 60p footage from a HXR-NX5U for BD. and looks really good. You can use the sample and give it try if you have a BD-RE; all the samples are straight from the camera but at NTSC frame rates.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the AX100 also shoots pretty good stills at 20MP http://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz4okF1D_ux5eW42RmxxcFlJM0U/edit?usp=sharing Better then any other handycam or full size video cam I ever owned.

The AX1000 doesn't by chance shoot RAW stills does it? I typically shoot family and friends stills with jpegs but I am nowhere near brave enough to shoot anything but RAW stills for anything I am hired to do.

The AX100 does not shoot RAW still images. JPEG only.

Oldsmoke talked me into the purchase of an AX100 last week and I haven’t regretted his (my?) decision. Great camera. Regarding the suggestion to look at the Panasonic Lumix, it seems to me it is like comparing apples and oranges, they are two completely different cameras IMHO. My 2 cents.

I’m leaving for Alaska in a few days to shoot nature, wildlife, and aerial video in the wildness non-professionally. This is a once in a lifetime trip. I’m still a newbie to the AX100 and don’t want to come back only to find my video could have looked better. So to the AX100 users out there, your comments are appreciated.

QUESTION: 4K or 1K?
I’m not sure if I should shoot 4K or 1K (codecs XAVC S 4K or XACX S HD). File sizes aren't significantly different. 4K will have the advantage to crop, zoom in, and stabilize for 1080P output. The downside is difficulty editing 4K, Vegas Previews display at slow frame rates on my system.

QUESTION: 24, 30, or 60 fps?
In 1K, I can shoot at 24, 30, or 60 fps, and 24 or 30 fps shooting 4K mode. Assuming my final rendered video will be 24fps is there any good reason to shoot at anything other than 24fps? A lot of my video will be pans, especially the aerial video, so if I shoot 1K maybe 60fps is best even though I will render to 24fps. And if I shoot 4K, perhaps I should shoot 30fps even though my final render will be 24fps.

Thanks in advance,
Rich in San Diego

Laurence

No, the AX100 doesn't shoot RAW but the stills are more then sufficient to be included in any video. It's not a replacement for a DSLR or high quality mirror less camera. But if you are out there in the "wild" and want to shoot some stills for your video too, it does a great job. Surprisingly MediaInfo reports the stills as 422.

Rich Parry

I would shoot 4K @24p in your case. You can use a proxy workflow to handle the more intensive 4K files, I use EX HDCAM 1920x1080 MXF as proxy.

Last week I went to the Grand Canyon and won't get there again for a long time so my idea was to rather shoot in 4K 30p and have great footage for later when I have a 4K TV then go with 1080 60p which is what I usually shoot. I am glad I did it, the footage looks great!

Panning is an issue even at 30p, just do slow ones.

Just out of curiosity; why is your final delivery 24p?

I learned a jpeg trick some time ago that I use all the time. This works if you use Adobe Camera Raw which comes with Photoshop.

What I have found is that I am going to convert the jpegs or raw to pngs anyway, because jpegs give me all sorts of trouble once I use beyond a certain number of them on the timeline, and raw really isn't practical on a Vegas timeline, no matter what the published specifications say.

Here is the tip:

I have Adobe Camera Raw set to open jpegs as well as raw files every time I load a picture into Photoshop. This, it turns out, is absolutely awesome as you can do most of your broad edits, crops, etc. as sidecar files and have multiple versions of photo treatments that take up very little space. I open up the jpeg in Camera Raw, save it as it is in case I want to go back to the original settings, then correct the white balance and exposure, color, cropping, camera lens distortion, angle offset, etc, then save this (or multiple versions of this) and save whatever edits I am going to use as png format stills.

In many cases this works as well as shooting RAW, but not always. RAW lets you redo the camera noise reduction and recover details that a jpeg would lose in the highlights and the shadows.

Another point here is that Photoshop Elements also has a version of Camera RAW that is quite good. What the Elements version is missing that I use constantly are gradient exposure adjustments. Lets say you are shooting a group photo with a flash. What you will get is too much exposure in the front middle, a really bright floor in front of the group, and tapering off light as you go to the back rows and to the sides. The Camera Raw exposure gradients can fix this so well that you don't even bother to set up multiple flashes even if you have them. It is just amazing what this can correct. This also requires RAW shooting though as the front will be overexposed, and the back not nearly exposed enough.

In choosing between a Panasonic GH4 or the Sony AX1000, the ability of the Panasonics to shoot RAW photos would be a major factor for me personally.

On my Sony RX100, there are a couple of features that I absolutely adore. One of these is the combination of optical and electronic stabilization. I am blown away by how much better this works than optical stabilization alone like I have on my GH3. I suspect that the AX1000 has this combination of optical and electronic stabilization as well, and that the AX1000 alone is probably about as good as a DSLR or GH2/3/4 on some sort of steadycam. I have seen some absolutely amazing examples of the AX1000 stabilization on Youtube videos. Is it as good as it looks?

Another feature that I really like on the RX100 is that you can point the camera so that what you want to focus on is in the middle of the frame, then push a button to lock focus on that object and reframe. The focus will follow whatever you set it to follow as you move around. (Yeah, I'm an auto-focus kind of guy whenever I can get away with it). In practice I find that to be just as easy, or sometimes even easier, than the GH3 thing where you just touch the screen where you want to focus, or look through the viewfinder with your thumb moving the point of focus around on the flip out screen which has become a black touchpad. Is there something like this on the AX1000?

Oldsmoke,

I thought you might ask why I shoot 24fps, it's a reasonable question.

The main reason is I shoot 24P is that I shoot a lot of astro and cloud time-lapse in RAW. With my Canon 5D Mark III, a minute of time-lapse video eats up 36GB. If I render my RAW time-lapse sequences at 30fps, I eat up 45GB/minute.

45GB vs. 36GB is a big difference and it doesn't take long to eat up a 1TB HD. So I render to 24fps because can't tell the difference in quality and to reduce storage. It is not about the cost of storage, it is more about file maintenance, editing, rendering, and backup that leads me to use 24P.

Seem reasonable?

Oldsmoke,

Was your video of the condor at the Grand Canyon shot "Handheld" with the "Viewfinder" up to your eye?

Rich

Rich Parry

Sounds reasonable.

Yes, I shot the Condor exactly like that and with "Active" image stabilization ON.

Thanks for the replies. It looks like I'll need to get a little more computer horsepower if I would decide to get the AX100.

You might but I would give the proxy workflow a try first. You could use 720 30p HDV as a proxy format which usually runs well even on lower spec systems.

Here is some stunning dim-light 4K footage from the AX100:

https://vimeo.com/102055939

Thanks John - I'm getting very tempted ...