Panasonic's Varicam line gets a new firmware upgrade, bringing 240p raw output at 2K from the LT.

We reviewed Panasonic's smallest Varicam, the LT, last month and loved it. Just a few short weeks later, there is already a fresh firmware upgrade that brings a few small improvements and one marquee upgrade. The biggest feature in the new release is 240p raw output in 2K.

Generally, going to high speed involves some sacrifices. In this case, you are limited to 2K resolution instead of the camera's native 4K, but having the full latitude of raw data recording in Cinema DNG will make your colorist happy when it comes time to make the slo-mo work with the rest of your footage. Credit: Charles Haine

This feature works with Convergent Designs Odyseey 7Q+. One nice additional feature of the firmware upgrade is a new "record check" function that will play back the first and last five seconds of a video clip. This is especially helpful to ensure that the entire clip recorded properly and also to evaluate the end of a clip for a tail slate. One final perk is that you can now restart the camera via software, without having to use the hard power switch seen in the image above.

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