Consumer Video Cameras hit 4K for under $1000

Both Sony and Panasonic have announced consumer 4K cameras for under $1000. Sony has announced the FDR-AX33 for $999 (you can read about it at Cinescopophilia) and Panasonic has announced the $899 HC-VX870 and it’s strange double shooting HC-WX970 for $999 (You can also read about it at Cinescopophilia).
This blows my mind. This is reaching back to the DV revolution. Not that most people need 4K, but as an editor 4K seems like such an opportunity. Just shoot a little wider and to be able to push in and still have full 1080 resolution is mind-blowing to me. And the ability to have 4K footage to do image stabilization (now that Premiere Pro has such good built in Image Stabilization) will really change things.
Now of course these are consumer cameras, with consumer compression (though Sony does mention 100MB compression) and consumer lenses, but still for grabbing quick b-roll shots these would be amazing.
I don’t think 4K will take off at home any time soon. The TV’s are still too expensive, and since most content is 1080, it will actually look worse on a 4k screen than a 1080 screen. And until they figure out how to broadcast in 4K easily (and my TV already shows how bad the compression looks on many shows in 1080!) or a disc based format for 4K it will not take off! I mean Netflix’s 4K compression is around 15 mb per second, which is about half of what a blu-ray is (sure it is probably newer and better compression, but still you are losing a huge amount of data there). And a disc format would always be superior just for bandwidth considerations.
4K excited me for what it could mean for 1080.
Of course this all depends on DP’s as I have had 5K footage for a 1080 broadcast that was shot so extreme close up that it was useless to me to push in or for it to be  5K at all, but the possibilities do exist.

RedShark on Panasonic FX1000 4K Camera for $899

RedShark has a great article on the exciting new Panasonic Lumix FX1000 Camera.

Sure it is a fixed lens DSLR (though it is a Leica), but one that can record in 4K for $899! And clean output over HDMI, even better! Wow. Now the audio is supposed to be very subpar, but the picture awesome if only 30FPS at 4K (and even cooler is the 100FPS at 1080) Not the flagship GH4, but still a very impressive camera!

Honestly I want one just for shooting video. I mean 4K at that price. Wow.

This is a revolution and will push 4K better than much else would.

RedShark News on Panasonic GH4 4K Camera

RedShark News has a great review of the new Panasonic GH4 4K camera. Great article on the camera, though it is for PAL users instead of NTSC, but that is the only fault.

Also talks about an interesting program from Thomas Worth that is a Mac Command line app to convert the 4K 4:2:0 footage to 1080 4:4:4 footage using the extra picture resolution. Which sounds great, though I don’t know how it could have more color data.

This camera sounds amazing. I wish Canon would take these lessons to heart and make their lower end cameras have amazing features like this camera.

Panasonic at NAB

Studio Daily has the info on Panasonic at NAB this year. It seems Panasonic has some big plans, but not much to actually show this year at NAB. They are taking the slow route to 2K and 4K with new AVC Ultra Master Quality Codecs and an eventual AG-HPX600 camera for less than $16,000, but with no set release date.

For AVC they will be releasing a 200 class and a CCLass 444 for 2k and 4k (SOund like ProRES rivals).

They also introduced the replacement for P2 a cheaper SD card sized Micro P2, with adapters for some older cameras with paid firmware upgrades.

Sounds like some interesting stuff, and they make great cameras, but mostly vaporware this year, maybe we will see prototypes next year at NAB. It will be exciting when they have actual 4K Varicam’s out, but until then.

Honestly the Black Magic excites me more, as it is much more within my budget range!