By Al Jazeera’s Matthew Allard

There has been a lot of hype online recently over the impending release of Panasonic’s new AG-AF100 micro 4/3 camcorder. From my perspective as a broadcast cameraman Panasonic calling it a professional camera is a bit of a stretch. It is hardly in the same class as proper professional cameras like the RED One and the Arri Alexa. I have used just about every camera you can think of through out my career (BVU, Betacam, Betacam SP, SX, Digibeta, P2, XDCAM, EX, Z1 and so on) and i’m always interested to try out anything that is new. Almost every camera no matter how cheap or expensive it is has good and bad points. In the end its the user who frames the picture, chooses the settings and hits record, not the camera. Knowing the limitations and how to use your camera is the key to capturing great footage.

So what about the Panasonic AG-AF100. The image quality is recorded at 24Mb/s, it has two XLR inputs featuring 48-kHz/16-bit two-channel digital audio recording and supports LPCM/Dolby-AC3, it also has USB 2.0, HD-SDI and HDMI outputs, a built-in stereo mic and time code recording. To someone who has been shooting with the new generation of DSLR’s these all sound like the features everybody has been calling for. What you have to remember is this is a video camera, it’s not a stills camera that can shoot video, nor is it a video camera that can take photos…..it is a VIDEO camera. For those expecting an image quality that is on par with a 7D or 5D think again. A 4/3″ sensor is a lot smaller than that of a 7D or 5DmkII. The reason a 7D looks better than a 550D and the reason a 5DmkII looks better than 7D is due to the size of the sensor.  What this boils down to is the bigger the sensor the more information the camera is looking at regardless of the compression. As we all know the larger the sensor the shallow the depth of field. To get lovely shallow DOF you will need incredibly fast glass on the AG-AF100. It will certainly have its own unique look.  Having said that the AG-AF100 seems to have lower noise levels at higher ISO’s (better than a 7D but probably not as good as a 5DmkII or 1DmkIV). Even with this all said it is an exciting time in the industry with a lot of new cameras and different companies joining the mix which can only be good for the end user.

While the AG-AF100 seems capable of capturing very nice pictures, the 24Mb/s AVCHD codec is still about the same as Sony’s recently launched NEX-VG10 consumer camcorder which actually has a larger sensor than the Panasonic (about the same as the 7D). What you also have to remember is the 4/3 system has a 2x crop factor. There are a few 4/3 inch wide lenses but if you throw on a Canon 16-35mm f2.8 it will quickly become 32-70mm, just something to keep in mind.

I have had a chance to play with the Sony and to be honest it didn’t impress me that much. The lack of progressive recording (although it is actually recording 1080p wrapped it into a 1080i container), poor audio imputs and rather cheap build quality were a let down. On the positive side it was rather easy to use and the image quality wasn’t too bad.

Of course the Sony camera is only $2000US while the Panasonic AG-AF100 is $5000US. Why the big difference in price? Well the Panasonic is fully Progressive, has variable frame rates, proper XLR inputs and full HDMI out and HDSDI out. For those who may not know what HDSDI is; SDI stands for Serial Digital Interface. It is basically the professional TV industry standard for transfer of HD material. It is normally only found in professional equipment. So why is this a good thing on a $5000 camcorder? Well it enables you to take the very best image available from your camera by sending an uncompressed output to be recorded by a HDSDI recorder like the Convergent Design Nanoflash or Aja KiPro at much higher bitrates. Instead of recording internally on the camera at 24Mb/s you can record it as high as 280Mb/s on the Nano Flash. In plain English this means you can record the vision at more than 10 times the bit rate that the internal codec does in the camera. This makes a huge difference to the image quality but it comes at a cost. Your $5000 camera just became a $8000 camera with the addition of a Nano flash. This is an interesting camera and is capable of producing very nice images at a high bit rate (with addition on a 3rd party recorder). With proper audio, viewfinder, no record time limits and far less rolling shutter and moire there are a lot of things to like. There is a reasonable selection of pretty good lenses and lots of adaptors to enable you to run Leica, Nikon and Zeiss lenses. There are also adapters for Canon EF mount but they don’t have an electronic connection to the Panasonic mount so you would be stuck with a fixed aperture (eg. a Canon 16-35mm f2.8 lens when used on this camera would be locked at f2.8). There are to my knowledge a couple of manufacturers working on an electronic adaptor mount that will fix this problem.

Who can I see buying this camera? This is an interesting question. I have no doubt they will sell like hotcakes. For people who are not getting paid to shoot, $5000US is a lot of money to spend on a camera and if you want to record at the higher bit rates you will be forking out more like $8000US. This camera I imagine will become very popular with indie film makers who maybe once used a EX-1 or Sony Z1 with 35mm adapters like the Letus Ultimate. There will also be a lot of people who will run out and buy this camera just because they can and because its the first camera to come out with all the features that HDDSLR owners are craving. This camera is certainly not the death of the HDDSLR and I’m sure there will be plenty of similar products coming out in the next 12 months. The question as to whether you buy this camera comes down to what you need your camera to do and what your budget is. It is very important to remember this is a video camera not a DSLR and you should look at it in this way.

Be very careful watching videos that have been put up on the web from this camera as you don’t know in some cases whether the vision was reordered at 24Mb/s a second or 280Mb/s. Some videos will tell you what bit rate they used but others won’t. Doing your research online is a good start when buying anything but the only way to judge a camera is to physically go and look at it, play with it and make your own conclusions. Would I buy one? The jury is still out. I’m holding out at the moment for something more high end.

About Matthew Allard, Aljazeera Senior Field Cameraman, Kuala Lumpur:
Matt has been a Camera/Editor in TV news for 20 years, previously working for both Channel 9 and Channel 10 in Australia. Twice Network Ten Australia’s cameraman of the year as well as being a Walkley Finalist for outstanding camerawork in 2006 (for coverage of the Cronulla Race Riots) and a Logie Finalist for outstanding news coverage 2006 (Bali 9). He has covered news events in more than 30 countries, from major sporting events to terrorist bombings. Based out of the Kuala Lumpur broadcast centre in Malaysia he is an avid user and follower of new technology, shooting stories on HD broadcast cameras as well as new Canon DSLR’s.

Following the launch of my training DVD, DSLR Video on Assignment, I’m back on the road again for the next couple of weeks, this time in the UK. I’ll be talking about HDDSLR shooting and how to create cinematic imagery in the real world. This past twelve months have been really hectic – I’ve been to the USA twice for events and held workshops in the Philippines, Singapore, Australia and China, but it’s really good to get back to the UK and speak to a home audience.

First up I’ll be speaking at the Canon Pro Solutions show at the Business Design Centre in Islington. It’s on the 26th and 27th of October and entry is free if you register in advance or eight pounds on the door.

I spoke at the Canon show last year and it was great to meet up with so many other HDDSLR shooters. I expect this year to be just as good so register now and pop down for my talk as well as the other speakers including the legendary Philip Bloom. I’ll be talking both days about my latest work from North Korea, Mongolia and South America and showing how I did the assignments.

Also, there are still a handful of tickets available for the HDDSLR workshop I’m holding with Den Lennie of the F-Stop academy. It’s going to be the first event of its kind I’ve ever done in the UK. Steadicam and Tiffen are supporting the all day event on the 29th of October (the day after the Canon show) at The London Filter Company. I’ll demonstrate the way I work and how the kit is set up for going into live events. It’s limited to a small group so there will be plenty of time for hands-on tuition. More details of how to sign up are here.

Here are just some of the happy students I’ve had the pleasure of teaching this year:

Leading a workshop at Beijing Foreign Studies University (Photo by Ping Liu)

Teaching video to newspaper photographers from New Zealand and Australia at the PANPA Future Forum in Sydney. (Photo by Lucy Tan)

The Chinese Alligator: Species On The Brink from Sean Gallagher on Vimeo.

In April of 2010, I was awarded a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, to cover the issue of China’s disappearing wetlands. This provided me with the first opportunity to seriously shoot video on assignment with a Canon 7D. As I am primarily a stills photographer, I was keen to embrace video and start to use it to tell stories better.

Having interned at Magnum Photos during 2004-2005, I took workshops under photographers such as David Alan Harvey and Alex Webb, serious proponents of the “one body, one lens” mantra. I adhered to this fairly strictly in my still photography and always kept my gear to a minimum. I knew that by embracing video, it would force me to use a lot more equipment.

I spent six weeks this summer on the road for the Pulitzer Center, travelling mostly on my own across China through urban and rural areas. I had to keep my equipment to the bare minimum as it would be only me and I needed to be able to pack everything into one backpack, including clothes and other essential items. I took on the concept of ‘Backpack Journalism’, coined by Bill Gentile of American University, whom I met in Washington DC last year when giving talks about my environmental work. His philosophy was key in aiding my transition to becoming a video-shooter.

Canon 7D with Zacuto Z-Finder and 70-200mm lens

My basic travelling kit consisted of one Canon 7D body, back-up 50D body with 16-35 F2.8, 50mm F1.8 , 70-200 F4.0 lenses. I also took with me a Zacuto Z-Finder, M-Audio Microtrack II, Slik tripod, TC-80N3 time remote controller for time-lapses and a LED light (generic Chinese brand). Storage-wise I travelled with my MacBook and 500GB Buffalo Portable USB 2.0 hard drive. Shooting was done onto six 8GB cards.

The 7D has been great to use and I am constantly amazed by the visuals it produces. There have been a lot of limitations I have found that need to be overcome.

Audio is a challenge. I use the M-Audio Microtrack II which is a great little recorder producing very good sound. I tend to assess the situation before I shoot it to determine whether or not I will need high-quality audio from it. I use voiceovers from experts a lot, so I separately record audio by using a lavalier mike and syncing sound later in post. I’ve found noise-reducing earbuds to be essential when recording.

Shooting with the Slik tripod

I quickly learned that handheld shooting wasn’t really much of an option.To get the visuals I want my tripod has become my new best friend and I’d say I now use it for 95% of my video. In the Chinese alligator piece, I was using my 70-200 F4.0 lens a lot which meant using a tripod all the time. Hand-held would have been out of the question.

Overheating was a little bit of a problem too. I was shooting a lot in the height of summer in sub-tropical southern China and I occasionally got the overheating warning sign. Stopping for a few moments, ejecting the memory card and letting things cool down usually worked okay.

My goal for my work for the Pulitzer Center is to produce stills and video and combine them together in a series of multimedia pieces, rather than just straight video.

The biggest challenge of embracing video has been to learn when to know when is the right time to shoot either stills or video. It is inevitable that when you are shooting video, you will miss some great stills and vice versa. If you are able to accept this, you learn to quickly assess the action as it unfolds in front of you and determine what each situation requires. I’ve learnt to change the setting on my camera almost blindfolded, so I can change them as quickly as possible when shooting and adjust to what’s happening in front of me.

Before I began my travels I read many books on documentary video shooting, to give myself a foundation from which to build. Having a great camera was all well and good but if I had no idea how to shoot good video, then I knew I’d run into problems quickly. I highly recommend Directing the Documentary by Michael Rabiger and Shot by Shot by Steven D. Katz as reference books for those just starting out.

About Sean Gallagher, Freelance Photographer and Videographer, Beijing:
Sean has been based out of Beijing for four years, shooting for editorial and commercial clients. His work focuses mainly on environmental issues and has been featured in National Geographic China, TIME Europe and with the New York Times. He is a two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting travel grant (2009+2010) and was the first recipient of the David Alan Harvey Fund for Emerging Photographers, in 2008.

UK shooters now have a competition of their own to enter, thanks to the BJP in association with Canon. The new award is open to all kinds of HD-DSLR films from any genre, from documentary through to commercial promos. On the judging panel are commercial director Nicholas Barker; Dominique Green, managing director of the charity PhotoVoice; and portrait photographer Brian Griffin.

According to the BJP website:

The judges will be looking in particular for films that make creative use of the new technology, or use it to tell stories that otherwise would have been too costly, or in which the camera would have been too intrusive, to deliver professional standard films.
Entrants should also demonstrate a good understanding of some or all of the following attributes: structure and narrative development, professional requirements for sound and editing, and evident technical ability. But above all, they are looking for credible and engaging films that can hold an audience for the length of the film.

The grand prize is a Canon 1DmkIV which will be awarded at a ceremony in London this December.

For full details on how to enter hop over to the BJP website.