ReyeR
Guest
I hope so. I like the feature and have filled a 512CF with about 1500secs of video too.
Start drooling...C5060 coming!
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640x480 requires four times the bandwidth of 320x240.
It is entirely possible that some cards cannot keep up, in which case you are limited to the camera's buffer memory. Its also possible that you could have problems with the bandwidth of the camera - one hopes that's not the case.
The "cheap way" out for buffering is to provide more buffer RAM. The expensive way is to improve the performance of the storage system (bandwidth), and that also requires that the card(s) you stick in there are fast enough to take advantage of it too.
The problem of course is that for movie mode the buffer memory will eventually run out. You have to be able to drain the buffer fast enough to keep that from happening, or the length of clip it will record is limited. Until we can get our hands on one, shove a big, fast card in there, and stick it in movie mode for a bit to find out, it's all speculation.
XD cards are relatively slow. Some CF cards, like the Ridatas, are god-awful fast - at persent, at least, MUCH faster than the 5050 is.
It is entirely possible that some cards cannot keep up, in which case you are limited to the camera's buffer memory. Its also possible that you could have problems with the bandwidth of the camera - one hopes that's not the case.
The "cheap way" out for buffering is to provide more buffer RAM. The expensive way is to improve the performance of the storage system (bandwidth), and that also requires that the card(s) you stick in there are fast enough to take advantage of it too.
The problem of course is that for movie mode the buffer memory will eventually run out. You have to be able to drain the buffer fast enough to keep that from happening, or the length of clip it will record is limited. Until we can get our hands on one, shove a big, fast card in there, and stick it in movie mode for a bit to find out, it's all speculation.
XD cards are relatively slow. Some CF cards, like the Ridatas, are god-awful fast - at persent, at least, MUCH faster than the 5050 is.
After reading the comments from those who understand the specs better than I.....I have no desire to return my 5050! Someone would have to pry my wet, wrinkled fingers off the shutter first!
This new release reminds me of the release of the C-4000. Talk about winning some and losing alot.
This new release reminds me of the release of the C-4000. Talk about winning some and losing alot.
What I've heard so far does not make me happy.
The loss of 1.5 F-stops is a BIG DEAL, more so for movie mode than for stills, but definitely so for still photog as well. This is not a major issue above water, but underwater, a big piece of glass to gather light is a very real advantage.
The loss of 1.5 F-stops is a BIG DEAL, more so for movie mode than for stills, but definitely so for still photog as well. This is not a major issue above water, but underwater, a big piece of glass to gather light is a very real advantage.
A preliminary review is available at:
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/c5060.html
For your viewing pleasure!
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/c5060.html
For your viewing pleasure!
Gensis
i have been following the news since the 5060 release and from what im seeing of the review/previews is that is a step back not a step forward. the lense is still fast but its still slower. and the fact that the clips are shorter is a big bummer. Personally i hate propritery packs for digital cameras because there energy is almost always less then a good set of nimh rechargeables( i cant wait till the tech behind LiIon AA is much better with capacities and the prices are a little more reasonable.)
sorry for being slightly out of the loop on oly items but i haven used a oly dig since the one my dad got 3 years ago, but what is the max video res on the 5050?
FWIW
i have been following the news since the 5060 release and from what im seeing of the review/previews is that is a step back not a step forward. the lense is still fast but its still slower. and the fact that the clips are shorter is a big bummer. Personally i hate propritery packs for digital cameras because there energy is almost always less then a good set of nimh rechargeables( i cant wait till the tech behind LiIon AA is much better with capacities and the prices are a little more reasonable.)
sorry for being slightly out of the loop on oly items but i haven used a oly dig since the one my dad got 3 years ago, but what is the max video res on the 5050?
FWIW
TedJ
Contributor
Dee once bubbled...
That's a thought! I might consider it if it uses the same housing. But I think I'll wait and see what the reviews are on it. Newest isn't always best!
It definitely will not use the PT-015 housing as the camera is quite a different size and the controls are not all in the same place. No word yet from my friend in Japan about the announcement of a housing.
The 5060 appears to have card-limited size video clips, at least according to Steve's review, as does the 5050. This is good.
The bad news is that at 640x480, which, by the way, is damn close to DVD resolution and roughly the equal of a DV camcorder (!), a 1GB CF card will only provide about 12 minutes of storage. Now with the higher-capacity CF cards starting to show up (2 & 3GB) video capacity may end up back in the "useful" range, but at present the price of those cards is in the "nosebleed" category. 1GB Ridata (fast!) cards can be had for just over $200, which makes them reasonably affordable (that's what I shoot.)
The 5050 shoots video at 320x240, which is roughly VHS res. In practice its at least as good as my Hi-8 camcorder and much better than a VHS tape, since there is no dot crawl (Hi-8 and other analog camcorders have dot crawl issues along with quite a bit of chroma smearing), so darn close to an honest 320 lines of resolution is obtained. On the vertical side with a regular TV you're limited to roughly 260 lines of resolution anyway due to interlacing, which is a good match for the camera, so on a "regular" (not HD) TV the resulting video is quite impressive.
A 1GB CF card has roughly 3000 seconds, or 50 minutes, of total storage. That's enough for me to shoot video on two consecutive dives and not run out of room, assuming I'm reasonably conservative and don't just leave the camera on all the time. You don't want to do that anyway, as you have to come out of shooting mode to adjust the white balance, and that is highly recommended if you'd actually like some color in your video. I've got about 40 minutes of footage (that which is actually decent) from around here in the last month or so, and will put copies of it on VCDs for roughly the cost of the disk + postage if anyone's interested. Its all wrecks of one description or another; I expect to get some reef dives in this weekend if the weather holds, and may get some footage there too. (Reef video is at a premium with me, since on reefs I like to lobster, and you can't do that and video at the same time)
I would put the entire thing up on the 'Net, but I've yet to find a free hosting solution that would be happy with a 400MB video file (which is about what this comes out to as an MPEG-1 movie!) and the traffic that it could easily generate for them. I've also put some nice music to it, but I can't distribute that copy, as the music isn't mine and so while that's legal for my own personal use, its not if I hand out copies. I hope to fix that problem in the future.
Compressing the video for WMV (which I can do) does enough ugly things to the quality that that I wouldn't consider it in any way representative of what the camera can do. There is a SMALL clip (an extract of video) in WMV format on my web site at http://www.denninger.net/dive-pics/Jewfish-export.avi
If you look at the directory (http://www.denninger.net/dive-pics) you'll see two JPG files in there too; those are fairly decent still shots with the same camera on recent dives.
Beware, that video file is 4MB and PLEASE download (right click and "save" it) rather than play it directly - and be prepared to wait a few minutes, as the line my web host is on is not very fast. That clip is SOMEWHAT degraded due to the AVI compression, but not too horrible. It looks considerably better on the VCD; there's a lot of edge noise (noticable around the edges of the fish) on the AVI file that is caused by the codec's compression artifacts.
The biggest issue with the camera in this mode underwater is that lighting conditions have to be pretty decent, or quality suffers as the ISO shifts up and so does the pixel noise. The wide aperature of the lens helps. The 5060's slower lens will HURT, perhaps a lot. Using video lighting underwater is possible, but its far from ideal; the best video shots are all natural light down there.
The bad news is that at 640x480, which, by the way, is damn close to DVD resolution and roughly the equal of a DV camcorder (!), a 1GB CF card will only provide about 12 minutes of storage. Now with the higher-capacity CF cards starting to show up (2 & 3GB) video capacity may end up back in the "useful" range, but at present the price of those cards is in the "nosebleed" category. 1GB Ridata (fast!) cards can be had for just over $200, which makes them reasonably affordable (that's what I shoot.)
The 5050 shoots video at 320x240, which is roughly VHS res. In practice its at least as good as my Hi-8 camcorder and much better than a VHS tape, since there is no dot crawl (Hi-8 and other analog camcorders have dot crawl issues along with quite a bit of chroma smearing), so darn close to an honest 320 lines of resolution is obtained. On the vertical side with a regular TV you're limited to roughly 260 lines of resolution anyway due to interlacing, which is a good match for the camera, so on a "regular" (not HD) TV the resulting video is quite impressive.
A 1GB CF card has roughly 3000 seconds, or 50 minutes, of total storage. That's enough for me to shoot video on two consecutive dives and not run out of room, assuming I'm reasonably conservative and don't just leave the camera on all the time. You don't want to do that anyway, as you have to come out of shooting mode to adjust the white balance, and that is highly recommended if you'd actually like some color in your video. I've got about 40 minutes of footage (that which is actually decent) from around here in the last month or so, and will put copies of it on VCDs for roughly the cost of the disk + postage if anyone's interested. Its all wrecks of one description or another; I expect to get some reef dives in this weekend if the weather holds, and may get some footage there too. (Reef video is at a premium with me, since on reefs I like to lobster, and you can't do that and video at the same time
)I would put the entire thing up on the 'Net, but I've yet to find a free hosting solution that would be happy with a 400MB video file (which is about what this comes out to as an MPEG-1 movie!) and the traffic that it could easily generate for them. I've also put some nice music to it, but I can't distribute that copy, as the music isn't mine and so while that's legal for my own personal use, its not if I hand out copies. I hope to fix that problem in the future.
Compressing the video for WMV (which I can do) does enough ugly things to the quality that that I wouldn't consider it in any way representative of what the camera can do. There is a SMALL clip (an extract of video) in WMV format on my web site at http://www.denninger.net/dive-pics/Jewfish-export.avi
If you look at the directory (http://www.denninger.net/dive-pics) you'll see two JPG files in there too; those are fairly decent still shots with the same camera on recent dives.
Beware, that video file is 4MB and PLEASE download (right click and "save" it) rather than play it directly - and be prepared to wait a few minutes, as the line my web host is on is not very fast. That clip is SOMEWHAT degraded due to the AVI compression, but not too horrible. It looks considerably better on the VCD; there's a lot of edge noise (noticable around the edges of the fish) on the AVI file that is caused by the codec's compression artifacts.
The biggest issue with the camera in this mode underwater is that lighting conditions have to be pretty decent, or quality suffers as the ISO shifts up and so does the pixel noise. The wide aperature of the lens helps. The 5060's slower lens will HURT, perhaps a lot. Using video lighting underwater is possible, but its far from ideal; the best video shots are all natural light down there.
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