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HS50 EXR North-American Availability + HS50 Video Bitrate

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Francis Carver

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As usual with them, B&H had pushed back the availability date on the HS50 EXR -- again. Not surprising, they have pushed back availability dates on some new camera 8 to 10 times without having had the thing in stock once, ha-ha-ha-ha.

Not sure if HS50 EXR is available in Asia and Europe yet, anyone knows when it will come here to North America? I am interested using it for video because of the 42x zoom range Fujinon optic on it, but since it only has the totally cheap type of video recording capability of "ALL-AUTO, ALL THE TIME," I would perhaps prefer others to do this testing before me. ;-)

Amazing thing with Fujinon is, they always dedicate a flashy paragraph about the stunning video capability of all of their new cameras -- without having done anything to their cameras' video capability since time immemorial, it seems.

X20 will be able to record video at 36Mbit/sec, allegedly, of course Fujifilm USA had made no such claim whatsoever about the video bitrate capability of the HS50 EXR. In fact, I see no mention at wall about the HS50's video recording bitrate, does anyone knows more than just this?
 
HS50 is recording 1920x1080@60fps at 36658kbps, or 36Mbits so the same as the X20!

I've just tested it on mine. I got my HS50 over a week ago, and seem to be the first or one of round these parts to get one. They had 1 in stock in my entire county, so they are only trickling in so far. I think maybe Fuji are waiting to see what we find out before they mass release them. We're unpaid Fuji beta testers...
 
Francis Carver said:
Francis Carver wrote:

As usual with them, B&H had pushed back the availability date on the HS50 EXR -- again. Not surprising, they have pushed back availability dates on some new camera 8 to 10 times without having had the thing in stock once, ha-ha-ha-ha.

Not sure if HS50 EXR is available in Asia and Europe yet, anyone knows when it will come here to North America? I am interested using it for video because of the 42x zoom range Fujinon optic on it, but since it only has the totally cheap type of video recording capability of "ALL-AUTO, ALL THE TIME," I would perhaps prefer others to do this testing before me. ;-)

Amazing thing with Fujinon is, they always dedicate a flashy paragraph about the stunning video capability of all of their new cameras -- without having done anything to their cameras' video capability since time immemorial, it seems.

X20 will be able to record video at 36Mbit/sec, allegedly, of course Fujifilm USA had made no such claim whatsoever about the video bitrate capability of the HS50 EXR. In fact, I see no mention at wall about the HS50's video recording bitrate, does anyone knows more than just this?
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I have found only one shop in the Netherlands that has two cameras in stock. The price is € 489,- I have reserved one. I will pick it up Saturday.

Peter
 
MitchyK7 said:
MitchyK7 wrote:

HS50 is recording 1920x1080@60fps at 36658kbps, or 36Mbits so the same as the X20!

I've just tested it on mine. I got my HS50 over a week ago, and seem to be the first or one of round these parts to get one. They had 1 in stock in my entire county, so they are only trickling in so far. I think maybe Fuji are waiting to see what we find out before they mass release them. We're unpaid Fuji beta testers...
Click to expand...
Excellent news indeed on the bitrate, 36Mb/sec is definitely better than 28, 24, 17, etc. Mbits.

Unfortunately, I watched the English chap's demo on You Tube on the zoom lens, particularly the zoom ring and how extremely hard it is to turn it. In fact, he seemed to have had some difficulty grabbing and turning that thing. Apparently lens components are all plastic (not metal as with the X-S1's lens), so there is tons of friction. This is good new for still photographers, 'cause the front element of the zoom lens will not creep out every time you tilt the darn camera downward, nor creep back towards the wide angle setting when yo tilt it upwards.

But it is deadly use for those videographers who were hoping to be able to zoom IN and OUT during a video take using the HS50's 42x range lens.

Now, I had never expected to just grab the zoom ring and zoom in all the way and back that way, I was about to use a follow-focus gear and whip crank assembly on the zoom ring (dual rod attached onto a 15mm rod system). However, those things are designed for smooth focus rings, and after watching the demo on the super-tight zoom ring on the HS50, now I am at the opinion that no follow-focus gear and whip crank will be able to give me that ultra smooth zooming action that I was hoping for w. the HS50. Those things have tiny, rather soft plastic wheel cogs, and will fail very soon using it on a hard friction zoom ring like what the HS50 seems to have.

If you do not zoom in/out during takes, the HS50 will work great, of course, it's just I like panning, tilting, zooming, etc. with my camera DURING an actual take. After all, it records moving images, not still in video mode.
 
dont forget that you cant get the standard 30 fps unless your videos are 640x480
 
I agree with that- the only thing I do with video on these cameras is the useful high fps video modes to freeze fast motion like the beating of a bird's or bee's wings or freezing rain drops as they fall- and you need at least 300 fps for that.
 
alexisgreat said:
alexisgreat wrote:

dont forget that you cant get the standard 30 fps unless your videos are 640x480
Click to expand...
Yeah, I just hate cameras that do that, so stupid. Same thing with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX7, by the way. Thing can do 60p, but cannot do 30p in the same resolution.

Not everyone wants to overcrank their frame rate, or insist on watching his/her stuff on a 120 Hertz or 240 Hertz refresh rate telly. Shooting at 60p and playing that out at 60p is, in my view, a total waste and totally unnecessary.

And if you shoot at 60p and put it on a 30p timeline, you are slowing down the action by 2x. And if you put it on a 24p timeline, you are slowing it down by 2.5x. Good for slow-mo, not good for anything else.

Seems that with the HS50, if you want to shoot HD video, you need to do that at the breakneck speed of 60 fps, otherwise you are only going to capture 640 x 480 old school video, which is not everyone's cup of tea these days. The high-friction zoom ring PLUS this severe frame rate/codec limitation does not bode well for those who were hoping to capture videos using a 42x range Fujinon lens on the HS50 EXR.
 
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