Panasonic AG-DVX200 Tech Brief - Volume 2 - Page 3

low depth of field, and have become extremely popular in filmmaking, music videos, and other such cinema-style productions where that shallow depth of field is so important. Lens Considerations On Large Sensor Cameras Generally the type of lenses used on large-sensor cameras are either movie camera lenses, or stills-camera lenses (such as Nikon F or Canon EF-mount lenses). While well-suited to cinema productions, movie camera lenses are not as practical to use in traditional news-gathering, sports coverage, live events or other scenarios where the benefits of a smooth power zoom, autofocus, or image stabilization would be useful. Furthermore, while the extremely shallow depth of field offered by these large sensors works to create artistic images in controlled environments and situations (such as on a movie set), it also can be challenging to maintain sharp focus in less-controlled environments (such as, for example, trying to track focus on a running player in a football game.) In those conditions, the shallowness of focus may work as a detriment towards the videographer capturing usable, quality footage. Additionally, prime lenses (by definition) don't zoom, so if you need a zoom lens, a large-sensor camera poses additional challenges. It's possible to mount genuine movie zoom lenses to these cameras, but movie lenses are (relatively) enormous, and (comparatively) extremely heavy, and (comparatively) astronomically expensive. As an example, the superb Fujinon 24-180 cinema lens offers a 7.5x zoom ratio, is 16" long, weighs nearly 20 pounds(!), and carries a list price in excess of $87,000 US (at the time of this writing). Stills camera zoom lenses are much less expensive and they can be used, but stills camera lenses are not designed for zooming during a shot; they are, after all, designed for cameras that take one picture at a time, not continuous images such as a movie or video camera would do, so stills camera lenses may lose focus during a zoom, they may "breathe" during focusing, and they typically have very short zoom ranges (usually around 2:1 to 5:1, although exceptions do exist of course). Stills camera zoom lenses generally don't offer any sort of motorized power zoom, and may or may not offer any form of autofocus or image stabilization for motion picture filming. Movie camera lenses generally never offer image stabilization or autofocus. And it is highly uncommon to achieve typical video camera lens zoom ratios with either stills camera lenses or movie camera lenses. The DVX200's 4/3" Sensor With the introduction of the fixed-lens DVX200, Panasonic is creating essentially a new category of professional camcorder: a handheld camera about the same size and weight of a traditional 1/3" camera, and that offers the benefits of a 1/3" camera's integrated power zoom lens, autofocus and image stabilization, but which also preserves the ability to create shallow depth of field similar to the Super 35 camcorder. The DVX200 uses a Four Thirds sensor, which is approximately four times larger than the 2/3" sensor, nearly 16x larger than the 1/3" sensor, and is reasonably close in size to a Super 35 sensor. 3