Holy frickin’ crap. Just back from Snader’s, w/ some hot hands-on reviews:
The Panasonic HVX200 has a great viewfinder, much better matched with the lens than the DVX100A. The image & quality reminds me strongly of the PD150 viewfinder. Peaking has a very tight range, so it’s clear when you’re focused. The camera has decent build-quality overall, & a pretty-great lens. Fantastic quality imagery, especially in still shots, as noted in Wilt’s DV.com article.
The JVC GY-HD100U: I had pretty-high hopes for this camera, mostly b/c of the promise of true 720/24p HDV & that Fujinon mechanical lens. Well, it does have the mechanical lens, & it is great… but there some annoying issues. First, JVC still hasn’t defeated that ‘vertical line’ problem. If you look closely, there is a faint vertical line visible in the footage (kinda like the horizontal line on old Sony Trinitrons), with the left side of the frame tinted reddish, & right side brownish. We tested an old camera (really obvious, even at 0dB gain), & then a brand-new one. The new unit had the effect much less, but still present: the ‘line’ was obvious at high gain, with the same left/right pink/brown chroma tinting. At 0dB gain, the ‘line’ was nearly invisible on a 50″ Panasonic plasma monitor, but the pink/brown left/right tinting was still distinguishable. And that’s not all– as Wilt noticed, the footage from this camera is remarkably noisy, even at 0dB gain… & this was shooting a ‘demo viewstage’ (ie, ‘beauty-shots’) setup by Snaders for the camera shootout(!!) But the manual lens is great. And the viewfinder is not bad… but the peaking has a pretty wide range, so it’s not clear where critical focus is. Overall, a miss (& we haven’t even talked about motion-footage yet).
The Canon XL H1: Bigger & better-built than the original XLx units. It’s more solid, & a bit heavier, but the ergonomics have been improved — it ‘hefts’ better. It’s the first XLx form-factor whose ergonomics ‘make sense’. Plus there’s that fantastic-quality, long lens. However, that lens has the non-mechanical ‘fly-by-wire’ action… which is somehow not as tight/solid as the HVX200’s. Also there’s notibly more ‘breathing’/drifting as you rack-focus. And the viewfinder is gawd-awful compared to the other two; it’s extra-gained, with a ‘dot-grille’ effect which just looks crude. Peaking is pretty good, however.
…& now let’s talk about HDV -vs- HD in the actual footage’s “quality of motion”. It’ll be an in-depth, technically succulent comparison. Here goes:
“HDV sucks, & HD wins.”
That’s it. There’s really no better way to demonstrate this, than to let the Manufacturer’s do it themselves:
Canon: for the Canon demo, all the HDV motion footage was captured via HD-SDI to DVCProHD 100Mbit playback. Oh really! The only HDV capture + HDV playback was a series of locked-off shots with minimal intra-frame motion, & zero camera-motion. The Canon Rep back-pedalled to the audience: “well, you really need to show ‘beauty-footage’ in Demo’s like this”. He didn’t have any HDV-captured motion footage to play-back in native HDV.
JVC showed HDV-captured footage, but of well-lighted interiors. No long or wide shots.
Panny otoh showed long, short, outside, into-the-sun… all clips have been previously posted online, but now seeing them via high-end projector, they were stunning. They also had a 3-way footage-comparison clip, showing where motion, chroma, & noise artifacts really hamper Canon, Sony, & JVC’s HDV. But the best thing? The Rep was more-than-willing for me to shoot several minutes direct to P2, & then play-back on the Panasonic production monitor. Whip-pans, difficult lighting, crash-zooms, speedy rack focuses… the HVX200 ate them for lunch, w/ beautiful flesh-tones & over/undercranked footage to boot.
Conclusion:
I’d speculated before that even if the new Panny HVX200 had good imagers & lens, they would probably attach a not-great viewfinder to it (ie, “you don’t dare shoot features w/o a production monitor”, a la DVX100A/B). Well, I’m wrong, & thank bog. Sure the P2 cards are expensive, & the FireStore 100GB drive even more expensive. Regardless, this camera, in the right shooter’s hands, is going to step all over the SDX-900, & Sony DigiBeta. The jury’s still out on footage comparisons with Varicam… but it’s increasingly hard to see the difference on a large HD production monitor, let-alone on medium-end (circa $4,000) HD projection. All I know is, the camera was absolutely mobbed by working Documentary DP’s & Directors, all putting in their orders, and/or building up their chops for upcoming gigs. Welcome to the future.
And Sony? The only conclusion from the multiple working DP’s I’ve talked to: “Sony’s HDV has made all the wrong decisions” and “Not useable for exteriors, or run-’n-gun, b/c of the codec difficulties”. The [only] good news for Sony: lots of ppl like the new A10. I saw nightclub footage at +18dB gain which looked darn good… low grain, decent latitude, & the red’s had almost nil chroma-bleed. Wow. Too bad you can’t set aperture.