Olympus Pen camera

[VegasBud]

I just saw a commercial on the National Geographics HD channel for a Olympus Pen camera. It's a pretty well done commercial, but the really interesting part is at the end when the woman character at the center of the story says the commercial was shot using Olympus Pen cameras. I wasn't paying close attention to the quality of the video during the commercial, but it didn't seem out of place following the HD program I had been watching. I'm looking forward to the next showing of the commercial, now that I know the punchline from the start.

The commercial is available here (at YouTube) in 360p, 480p, 720p, and 1080p, but it just doesn't look the same on a computer monitor as it did on a big screen HD tv.

The way technology just keeps advancing, I can't wait to see what's next...maybe even just around the corner.

[Soopafresh]

A DLSR camera from Olympus. They're finally competing with the Canon 5D, 7D, and T2I camcorders.

More footage from the Olympus

[jagabo]

I thought you were talking about this kind of "pen camera":
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/security/c521/

[M Bruner]

The commercial may have been shot entirely with that camera, but gurus please correct me if I'm wrong, as I was After Effects "whore": Does the footage look like green screening and rotoscoping?. I mean the extra sharp main figure and the overly blurred action behind her? The raw footage may have been shot with that camera, but I bet a videographer cooked it through some video compositing software.

[jagabo]

The commercial may have been shot entirely with that camera, but gurus please correct me if I'm wrong, as I was After Effects "whore": Does the footage look like green screening and rotoscoping?. I mean the extra sharp main figure and the overly blurred action behind her?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field

[M Bruner]

I meant the out of ofocus was TOO blurred to be DOF.

[VegasBud]

The "DOF blur" in the commercial doesn't look abnormal at all to me. Even the much greater "DOF blur" in the first video which Soopafresh graciously provided (at about the 3 second mark) seems perfectly believable. Of course, the amount of time I spend looking through the viewfinder on a real dslr may be skewing my perception.

Coming at it from a different direction, since the main purpose of the commercial is to demonstrate one of the marketed benefits of the product, any amount of post-processing would probably be a bad idea...even slightly risking the perception of deceptive advertising would be counter-productive (at the very least).

On another subject, Olympus is running a contest which includes ideas for video to be shot with the Pen camera. It's not a big prize, but it could provide helpful public exposure for a videographer. If anyone is interested, the rules are located here, and the idea submission page is located here.

[Soopafresh]

They did use stabilization, whether it was dolly, a steadicam, whatever. That's another big reason why it looks so good.

[jagabo]

I meant the out of ofocus was TOO blurred to be DOF.

Big professional glass gets you much more DOF flexibility than the typical 1/2 inch objective lens in consumer cameras.