Created a thread for any reviews about the Spark here. Just saw a little hands on/shooting video from David Zhou. Would love to know your guys thoughts on the image quality from any of the reviews posted here. The more collective information and feedback we get, the better our decision making can be in regards to purchasing this camera. Please feel free to post any other ones you see posted in the future.
These are some screengrabs from a few of the shots in David Zhou’s Spark video. Does it look like 13 stops to you all in this shot? Looks more like 10ish stops. The highlight rolloff still kinda looks harsh. With that said, a lot of the shots in here look pretty decent with good color compared to the Chronos 2.1. The lowlight is pretty impressive at iso 1600. Neat Video Denoise seems to clean it really well.
Hard to judge, since the spark offers Dual Base ISO and Cine EI. The guy in the video said, his subjective perspective thinks there are 13 stops. He did not test technically. I think he took the camera as is and filmed stuff.
Changing Cine EI from 400 to 800 should give you one more stop in the highlights. The question: will the shadows hold up well? These things haven’t been tested. Even with an FX3 or FX6 when you lower your Cine EI and expose properly for middle gray you will end up in harsh highlights.
Since we don’t know, which camera settings (like Cine EI or over and under exposure) were set during each shot, it’s hard to judge.
To retain highlights, the question will always be, how much underexposure does the sensor holds up to? How does the spark perform at higher Cine EI? Because higher Cine EI brightens up your image digitally, your picture in the monitor gets brighter, so you close your aperture to bring back to normal exposure. In fact, you underexpose to protect the highlights in fear of getting noisy shadows. Every sensor has its sweetspot, and noise is a subjective thing, somebody is pixel peeping the other one not.
I hope that the high quantum efficiency will show its power here 
Those are good points! I hope someone will do a proper review dynamic range test. But first impressions are great!
Yes first impressions are great. I took a look at the raw files and I am very pleased. Colors feel right and rich, noise performs well so far, but:
All shots are between 240-480fps in raw and except one shot, all were taken in a controlled environment.
The most important thing to me is the sensitivity of the sensor: how may LUX do you need to get proper exposure at 1000 FPS at what aperture setting? Especially the second Base ISO of 1600 is interesting and important to me and my workflow. How far can you push the sensor / Cine EI.
I hope I can get my hands on this camera soon
Are you part of the VIP group?
No What kind of VIP?
Hold on did you pledge for the $7499? That was the VIP offer if you deposited $100 before Kickstarter began? I missed it so I can only get it for $8000 l. Right now there is like 50 left in $8000 super early bird batch.
I did not place an order before I get a chance to test the camera.
Last Wednesday the Pixboom team visited Berlin and I was promised to meet with the Pixboom team seperatly before an evening event the same day to talk about broadcast solutions. A day before they cancelled, which is fine, but I had no time for the evening event, so i missed the chance to get my first impression. I wanted to use an external recorder in 4k, a test chart and lux meter, to get my first impressions. If it would nearly match my expectations in terms of sensitivity, I would initially place the order on kickstarter.
Now I wait for demo unit to test.
When are you getting a demo unit?
I don’t know, maybe some reseller in Germany.
Btw all! David posted some DNG RAW video sequences in the description of his hands on video and it looks so much better without Youtube compression with more clarity! However, I am noticing these black colored dots spread throughout all the footage that was posted for download in David’s review. Is that fixed pattern noise? It doesn’t look like regular noise @Young and @admin. I posted a screenshot of it.
You can check pixboom’s reply in this thread; they’re seeing the same issue: https://community.pixboom.com/t/black-spots-dead-pixels/353
Thanks for pointing me towards there!
Yes, same finding. These is not noise, it’s on the sensor, since it’s not moving.
How is it usually removed?
I know how to remove noise, but these back spots ??? Young?
Agree IQ looks very promising. Hope there will be a solution for the back spots, they are very concerning.
Waiting on Phillip Bloom’s first look video!
It’s coming very soon！
