You are the new head of Product Development at...

[Tim Lewis]

Sony or Panasonic or JVC or Red or BlackMagic Design or wherever.

You can drive new product development any way you want. What would you do?

[Tim Lewis]

I love all the increase is image processing power that allows camera to shoot higher and higher resolutions, but I would like to see them get one resolution right before moving onto the next.

I would develop a 1080 50p (or 60p for our NTSC friends) camera with three CMOS sensor with global shutters. It would have 4:4:4 colour sampling and a codec and bit rate capable of recording all this information without compression.

The camera sensor size would be at least 1/2" for good low light performance and I think I would prefer a shoulder mount form factor, although that is not quite so critical. I would of course have XLR connections for sound input with line and mic level options.

What do you want in you perfect camera?

[Warren Kawamoto]

Originally Posted by Tim Lewis

Sony or Panasonic or JVC or Red or BlackMagic Design or wherever.

You can drive new product development any way you want. What would you do?

This question is very complex. If you asked 5 videographers, all ranging in different fields...

1. Vacations, family videos
2. Wedding ceremony and reception coverage
3. Wildlife documentaries
4. Team sports coverage
5. High end commercials

You would end up with 5 very different cameras, with vastly different price points. No one camera could possibly fill in every gap. I would have to research how well each camera fits the category, what the price points are to maximize the company's profits, and what the competition's prices and specs are. A very daunting and challenging task, because the playing field is changing every week.

[Dylan Couper]

Originally Posted by Tim Lewis

Sony or Panasonic or JVC or Red or BlackMagic Design or wherever.

You can drive new product development any way you want. What would you do?

I love this question as I have actually been trying to tell people at the last 2 NAB's what's missing from the market, without success.

I

[Finn Yarbrough]

For me, it's very simple: a Sony F3 housed within the body of a JVC HM-700 would be the ideal camera within my price range. Bonus would be the ability to record maximum quality straight to SSD without an external recorder, like the BMC.

[Chris DeVoe]

GoPro.

I insist that the software team working on the GoPro app not be allowed to go home until they get multiple cameras working on the same WiFi network so users can jump from camera to camera without having to change WiFi networks.

And the hardware development team has to add to the next version of the hardware an option to switch a microphone attenuator on and off. And a manual white balance control. And a manual exposure control.

[Justin Molush]

I honestly think a lot of the companies are actually doing a very good job. While it does take some time to roll things out and workaround have to be made (especially in the RAW realm ala external recorders, no internal RAW without module, etc) there are a lot of really good options rolling out now.

What is needed more? Still lens communication/mount support. Variable compression internal bitrate RAW processing much like Red's REDcode. Focus control via SDI/whatever connection on a broad support of lenses. Then refine the current line's S35 sensor as much as you can.

Camera offerings are fine in my book for the most part. Its the S35 servo zooms costing as much as a new car that bug me.

[Anthony Lelli]

since the technology has been there for years it's now very easy to produce good video cameras as good as the cell phones. What has been sold until now was cheap to produce and we made good money but now they can see how a cell phone is way better with video so it's over. the marketing need to abandon the pro-sumer segment because what has been offered (up to until a week ago) doesn't even come close to pocket cameras and cell phones and the buyers are not stupid and can see clearly that we (the marketing people) have been playing them good charging 5-7$ for junk. The secret is out now and they (the pro-sumer people) are not buying our BS anymore. Either we abandon the segment or produce serious cameras with a serious sensor. the miniscule cheap 1/3 of an inch jokes won't cut it anymore.
it's easy: we put a real sensor on the expensive video cameras or they'll start laughing at us. From now on we better start producing good stuff instead of limiting the models to make them perform bad so we could sell the better ones (with less intentional limitations). Like they do with stills: now all the still cameras take the same pictures , and that because the stills people started complaining way before the video people. Has been good money but again they are not stupid anymore.

[J. Stephen McDonald]

The first thing I'd do is develop a sensor that could be at least "1-inch" in size and have both a global shutter and a refresh rate that would allow for 60p with 4K. No more rolling-shutter artifacts, such as judder and skew. There's be no use to work on other features, until this one was solved.

On all the networks nowadays, you often see footage with terrible skew. Maybe people have gotten used to it and accept it, but I never will.

[Jeff Zimmerman]

For Sony, I would take all the best from the a7s II place it in an FS5 body, steal the canon color technology and sell it for under 5K. 4K at 24/30. HD 24/30/60/120fps - ProRes codecs - stick SDXC cards.

Blackmagic, I would stop any new product developments and get the current ones working properly and deliver on all the promises.

Canon, put 4K 24/30p on DLSRS and C100's. Add HD 24/30/60/120fps. Drop the price on the C300 Mark II to 10k. Sell a ton them and in attempts of a takeover of the film industry and commercial work.

[David Barnett]

Prosumer DSLR in a camcorder style body, with a power zoom lens to come with it. Adequately priced ($3-4K).

Something like a VX2000 or GL2 of interchangable lenses.

[Jim Michael]

This is why I would want to own one of these niches, e.g. wildlife, and develop the best camera to fill that specific niche.

Originally Posted by Warren Kawamoto

This question is very complex. If you asked 5 videographers, all ranging in different fields...

1. Vacations, family videos
2. Wedding ceremony and reception coverage
3. Wildlife documentaries
4. Team sports coverage
5. High end commercials

You would end up with 5 very different cameras, with vastly different price points. No one camera could possibly fill in every gap. I would have to research how well each camera fits the category, what the price points are to maximize the company's profits, and what the competition's prices and specs are. A very daunting and challenging task, because the playing field is changing every week.

[David Peterson]

Originally Posted by Tim Lewis

Sony or Panasonic or JVC or Red or BlackMagic Design or wherever.
You can drive new product development any way you want. What would you do?

I'd release a new "URSA Micro 4.6K", would be combining the best bits of the URSA Mini 4.6K and Micro Cinema Camera.

Would be a bit bigger than the BMMCC, but have a similar ish form factor (like RED's Epic and Kinefinity's Terra).

It would feature a KineMount and internal ND filters like the FS5.

What if Kinefinity’s KineMount became a universal cinema mount? – IronFilm

The Terra 6K is almost perfect! Just give it internal ND filters, so you've got the choice to use a mattebox or not.

Although, I wish it had less rolling shutter too. Oh, plus a bit lower price and even high FPS. But hey, let's not be greedy!