New reports from early adopters of the FZ1000 claim that the super slow motion mode in the camera is limited to 120fps at 1080p and the modes that offered higher frame rates are gone from final shipping units.
Slow motion modes announced in June:
- 1920 x 1080/30p (Sensor Output is 120 fps) In Final Firmware
- 1280 x 720/30p (Sensor Output is 240 fps) Gone in final Firmware
- 640 x 480/30p (Sensor Output is 360 fps) Gone in final Firmware
If this is indeed true the early promotion material which touted this feature either was erroneous or the hardware had problems with these high speed modes and it was scrapped. Another theory is that it was crippled by Panasonic intentionally because it would offer too much too soon or affect sales of higher end cameras.
The Panasonic Manuals from the FZ1000 barely touch the Hi Speed Video feature and there is no mention of other modes. You can get the manuals here:
Whatever the case may be, we need some clarification from Panasonic. It seems rather suspicious to have this modes in detail on the promo material and then all but vanish in final firmware on shipping cameras. It could all be that the features are there but users can’t find them by being buried in menus and modes.
More info:
- B&H Press release on the camera showing the hi speed video modes
- Dpreview discussion on the topic from early adopters.
Thanks to our reader Dave for alerting us of this development.
Thanks for putting this out. I talked to a Panasonic rep again, they are “not able to comment” on a possible firmware update adding this, and wouldn’t acknowledge that the feature ever existed.
What’s a bad news to remove the 240 and 360fps, Now my 2nd option will be an iphone 6 with 35mm lens converter instead. No joke, I am still using EX FH100 for 5 years, still not enough motivate for me upgrade to zr1500, I hope Casio will come out better slow motion camera with Mediatek MT6795 chip that able to shoot 480fps@1080, don’t forget the manual shutter control as well…
Yes it was a bad call to limit the camera. Our guess is that they will bring it in future models. Take a look at the Hero 4 Black and the fps1000 as options. The iPhone 6 image quality is ok but very compressed and with aliasing artifacts.
I strongly advice everyone,
to read the last post from this XDA-Thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/general/general/slow-motion-phones-device-how-to-imo-t2998500/post60489653#post60489653
Here is a page written by me on Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:S536870912/SlMO
It’s still not translated, but it tells, what the FZ1000 lacks of.
Well they omitted the 240fps mode on purpose as early firmware had it. Thanks for the link.
Sprichst du Deutsch?
I haven’t translated it yet.
You can use Google translate and get a good approximation.