DEFINITION January 2018

56 USER REVIEW PANASONIC EVA1

Panasonic is as well known for its smaller cameras as its high-end ones; the new EVA1 is an independent filmmaker’s dream

WORDS ADAM GARSTONE PICTURES ADAM DUCKWORTH

anasonic has a track record for making small, high-quality, mid- priced camcorders. The DVX-100 was a classic – mine went all around the world with me, including spending half a day on a luggage carousel at Sydney Airport. I was in South Africa at the time – long story. So there was some excitement at the launch of the AU-EVA1 – a small-bodied, interchangeable lens camcorder with a 5.7k, S35 sensor, pitched to compete with Canon’s C200, Sony’s FS7 Mk II and Blackmagic’s URSA Mini Pro. The camera comes with a Canon EF lens mount, and weighs just over 2kg (without a lens, but with all the accessories attached). Behind the lens mount is a new 5.7k pixel (5720x3016) sensor with a claimed 14 stops of dynamic range. The sensor

is downsampled to 4k, UHD, 2k, HD or 720p as required, providing a little extra colour resolution over standard 4k sensors, to help with that lost by the Bayer filter. The camera records .mov files, using a 10-bit, 4:2:2 Long GOP CODEC (or 8-bit 4:2:0) at up to 150Mb/s. There is also an AVCHD option. These files are recorded to a pair of SDHC or SDXC cards, either using the two together, or ping-ponging. A future firmware update is promised that will allow the recording of intraframe encoded files at 400Mb/s, as well as the output of 5.7k RAW sensor data over the SDI, for use with an external recorder. Whilst slower SDXC cards are relatively cheap, the fastest cards, required for the high bit-rate recording, are currently several times the price of ‘expensive’ technologies, like CFast.

IMAGES The all-new EVA1 has been a long time coming

but is definitely worth the wait.

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