Panasonic AU-EVA1PJ Q & A Sheet

EVA1

At Cine Gear Expo 2017 in Hollywood, Panasonic previewed the
AU-EVA1 cinema camera. Equipped with a newly designed 5.7K
Super 35 sensor and positioned between the Panasonic Lumix GH5
4K mirrorless camera and the VariCam LT 4K cinema camera, the
EVA1 generated tremendous buzz since being teased at NAB 2017.
Compact and lightweight, the AU-EVA1 is tailor-made for handheld
shooting, but also well suited for documentaries, commercials, and
music videos.

We asked Panasonic Cinema Product Manager, Mitch Gross,
some general questions on the EVA1’s target audience, shooting
applications, Dual Native ISO, the 5.7K sensor, and more.

QUESTIONS ANSWERED

EVA1

QUESTIONS ANSWERED

For whom is the EVA1 designed?

MITCH GROSS: Depending on the type of work you do, EVA1

answers a lot of different needs. It is designed to be a versatile
machine that you can plug into a lot of different situations. There
are people who have been shooting on smaller cameras such as
DSLRs or all-in-one camcorders, and they have felt limitations.
At the same time, you have other people who have been shooting
on large production cameras and they sometimes have need
for a camera that is slimmed down and more portable. What
we wanted to do was build a camera that could sit in-between
those spaces where you could essentially rise up from the small
cameras where you want more versatility and you don’t have to
fight the machine sometimes. Or you could slim down from a
bigger camera for projects where a larger system may be too
difficult to deal with or simply too expensive for the production.
On the little cameras, you can get amazing work out of these tiny
machines but because they’re so small, dealing with the controls
can become a barrier and you often must devise workarounds.
Shooters put up with the workarounds because these small
cameras are so convenient to shoot with. We’ve risen the scale of
the camera so now you have these high-end features and easier
access to controls in a camera that is a more functional size for
most shooters. For users of higher level production machines,
we’ve tried to be judicious in keeping as much professional
functionality as possible into a compact form factor.

What will be the main shooting
applications for EVA1?

MITCH GROSS: I think you’re going to see a lot of people

shooting documentary style work with the EVA1 – talking head
interviews and B-roll shots in the field. It’s very convenient for
that style of shooting. You’re also going to have people who do
news shooting, as well as live event type work such as weddings
and sports videography. In addition, there will be people who
will want to rig the camera for specific types of remote work,
meaning mounting the camera out on a crane, or jib arm. You
want it fully featured yet small and lightweight because the
bigger your camera is, the bigger crane you would have to use,
just like on a Steadicam. Gimbal devices like a [Freefly Systems]
M¯oVI or a [DJI] Ronin want a fully featured camera but in a small
and lightweight package. With EVA1, you get the dual advantage
of having great capabilities while being lightweight and small.
Same goes for underwater housings, car rigs, or anytime you
need to place a camera somewhere where you want a slimmed
down unit that won’t get in the way. You still want to have a
capable camera, especially with a Super 35 sensor, and the EVA1
provides just that.

EVA1

QUESTIONS ANSWERED

What are some of the specific features
EVA1 gives you that a compact DSLR
or mirrorless camera won’t?

MITCH GROSS:

with a [Panasonic Lumix] GH5, is that they are shooting with a
Micro Four Thirds sensor and EVA1 contains a Super 35 sensor,
which gives you a different look and feel. The larger body size
of the camera, the design of the interface, and where the LCD
is located all give you better access to the controls to make
adjustments while rolling. With small DSLR cameras, you can’t
comfortably change things as you’re rolling in a run-and-gun style
and that’s a problem – you need to be able to adjust on the fly.

The first thing is that people who are shooting

For a cinematographer that has never
shot with a VariCam before, can you
explain the Dual Native ISO feature?

MITCH GROSS: Panasonic developed a process to read the

sensor’s photosites in a fundamentally different way than it’s
traditionally done. More information can be extracted without
degrading the image. That effectively gives the imager greater
sensitivity and separates the signal from the background noise.
It’s essentially a different way of reading the camera sensor
and it gives it two different native ISOs or sensitivities. In others
cameras, you just dial the gain up to get more sensitivity but
you get a lot of noise in the image. You can also do that on the
EVA1, but if you just switch between the two native ISOs, they’ll
look the same as far as the amount of noise. There are two
ways that one might likely want to use this. First, you can shoot
with zoom lenses when normally you would have to shoot with
primes because zoom lenses generally aren’t as fast. Instead of
having to switch prime lenses, you have more versatility while
still getting the right exposure. Another way of using Dual Native
ISO is the ability to lower your light levels. In shooting with lower
light levels, you will save money, time, and you can shoot with
more practical lights in your surroundings. That can be for a
high-end production or a more modest production where it can
be used for savings, or a stylistic choice. The Dual Native ISO
ratings on the EVA1 are 800 ISO and 2500 ISO, and the sensor
captures a Dynamic Range of 14 stops so you can really see far
into shadows and highlights..

In addition, we have proper connectors – real XLR audio inputs,
full-size HDMI and locking SDI connectors for video outputs. We
have a full-fledged camera that’s designed for video production.
It has a removable side hand grip with integrated controls. The
EVA1 is designed to be held up to your shoulder as opposed
to way out in front of you, or at your waist. Another example of
control you have while shooting video are the integrated ND
filters. You have a filter wheel that is built into the camera so you
can adjust exposure as you roll – you don’t have to stop and screw
on a filter in front of the lens. The overall design of the EVA1 is to
make it more comfortable for video production, as opposed to a
stills camera that is doing double duty as a video camera.

EVA1

QUESTIONS ANSWERED

The EVA1’s sensor is a 5.7K sensor.
What does 5.7K resolution do for you?

MITCH GROSS: There are three things. The EVA1 sensor has

17.25 million active photosites in Super-35. That’s almost twice
the resolution of a 4K image. When you start with one resolution
and you go to a lower resolution, it always improves the resolving
power of the final image. When you start with more and get to
less, more information comes through. The result is a more
finely detailed image. That can be true when you go from a 5.7K
sensor to 4K, UHD, 2K, HD, or 720p – all of which are going to
be available on EVA1. Second, there’s more color information. At

5.7K resolution, you have more individual examples of red, green,
and blue – all of which enrich the resulting image in whatever
resolution you choose to record. Third, in a future firmware
update, there will be an option for a RAW data output from the
camera to a separate recorder and that will be available with the
full 5.7K resolution. All that data will be made available, which
can be used in post in various ways, whether it’s reframing or
gathering extra information to manipulate the image. More is
more and it gives you greater choices in what you might do with
it in the future.

What kind of media will the EVA1 use?

MITCH GROSS: Part of the design ethos of the camera was

to not only make the camera itself affordable but it had to be
affordable to use. The EVA1 uses SD cards to record footage and
it can record in various codecs, including 4K 10-bit 422 to fast
SDXC cards. The cards are readily available everywhere in the
world so if you’re a documentary shooter in a remote location,
you can purchase more cards and stick them in the sides of
most laptop computers, or pick up an adaptor at any electronics
store. The usability of the camera is high and the expense is kept
at a minimum. Depending on the selected format we require
cards that can do certain read and write speeds. For the highest
resolution and frame rates with the mildest compression, V90
type SDXC cards are required, but for other formats one can use
cards of lesser capabilities. Panasonic will publish a detailed
breakdown of that information when the camera ships. The
EVA1 has two SD card slots and you can choose to either Span
recording – capturing continuously from one card to another
for extended record times – or Clone recording – recording
simultaneously to both cards for an instant backup. There’s
also a single frame record mode for shooting time lapse and
animation.

EVA1

QUESTIONS ANSWERED

What are the frame rate capabilities
of the EVA1?

MITCH GROSS: The EVA1 can shoot in 4K up to 60fps and in

2K up to 240fps. That’s a lot of information to process so fast,
so at some frame rate and resolution combinations the EVA1
does some clever tricks. When shooting 2K and HD, the EVA1
can sample the full sensor’s resolution in half, averaging the
information while still seeing 2.8K. Then it oversamples that 2.8K
down to 2K or HD, yielding a high resolution image while saving
processing power. By doing this EVA1 can shoot at 2K or HD and
retain the full Super-35mm field of view of the sensor up to 120
fps. To get up to 240 fps, the frame is slightly cropped to 4.5K,
sampled in half to 2.2K and then that 2.2K is oversampled to 2K
or HD. It might sound complicated, but it’s actually quite clever
math that allows EVA1 to shoot 2K and HD at high frame rates
and still capture a high quality image. And instead of cropping in
the image to a tiny rectangle in the center of the sensor, the crop
to get to the highest framerates is still about 80% that of the full
Super-35 sensor.

LEARN MORE

us.panasonic.com/EVA1

©2017 Panasonic Corporation of North America. All rights reserved. 07/17