various verbiage

…ROCKS.

That’s it. Full review.

Oh, you want some more? Okay then–

I just got back from Snaders 2007, & yet another ‘heads-up’ between the top HDV cam’s. What are my comparitors?

• visual quality
• useability
• features

…in that order. Basically, I figure what’s the use of a great lens, if you can’t focus it? (*cough* Canon *cough*). Or if the chips display a ‘messy’ image, etc. We’re comparing ‘complete packages’ here, lens + viewfinder + chips + recording format. The object being, how to get the best looking image out of the camera, suitable for broadcast and/or film-out (cf Billups’ book).

Another guideline is “utility”, or if you will, “simplicity”. If in order to make a camera work at its best, one needs tons of outboard peripherals, this is not a good thing. Example: if you have a great lens, but the viewfinder’s low quality necessitates using a broadcast monitor in order to focus accurately, you’ve just eliminated ‘run & gun’ type shooting. Correspondingly, if you need an extended “DOF Adapter”, then why use a small-format camera? You might as well shoot with a shoulder-cam, & get the better chips & better recorded format, & when you tally rental fees, might cost nearly the same.

Beyond all that, here’s the brass tacks:

Despite all the FUD re. the difficulty of getting short DOF w/ the 1/4″ chips of the V1U, getting short DOF is actually quite easy… due to the length of the lens (20x vs. the normal 12x of the Z1U, HVX200, etc). From 5′ away, I was able to shoot face-size objects, & throw objects 5″ further away, significantly out of focus. This is incredible– usually, one expects needing to sit waaay back, & zoom waaay in to get this kind of short-DOF performance. Nope– instead, at 5′ away, you’re well-within the normal (read: tight) tolerances available to the indie filmmaker, shooting in a borrowed apartment. You can easily shoot a cinematic two-shot in a living-room, from 5′ away, & rack between their faces.
And the focus was a dream, due to the excellently-executed peaking circuit. Multiple levels, multiple colors (I just chose white / bright), & a very narrow ‘notch’ of range, worked flawlessly together to create a focusing experience that was far closer to the CineAlta than I’d've ever expected.

Please check out my last review re. my experience focusing the other 3 cams… from the low-res of the XL-H1, to the wide peaking ‘notch’ of the JVC, & the ’subtle’ peaking of the Z1, I was just not too impressed with the whole idea of peaking on the handicam form-factor. Well, hold the presses– peaking on the V1U reminded me strongly of the brightness, crispness, & tightness displayed by the CineAlta viewfinder standing right next to it… which cost ~3x the price of the entire V1 unit

I was actually rack-focusing a cheeto, from the front to the back, & then further back to the pretzel, & then out of the bowl to the gambling chips nearby. This is just astonishing… you just don’t get this kind of short DOF with the HVX (or PD150)… & (almost) that much w/ the JVC. This tells me that the lens-length is key here, not the chip-size.

& let’s not get started w/ CMOS… more contrast-range than CCD, & better: more ‘organic’ response. From skin-colors which are reproduced more believably, to what you can only call an ‘organic knee’ that occurs when you shoot blown-out/specular highlights (try shooting a light-bulb, or a candle, in a dark room)… the image looks smooth, organic, like one of those Kodak adverts… completely missing the ‘crunchyness’ which occurs in CCD-generated footage.

Plus 24p. Plus a pretty-good cinegama mode. Plus fantastic form-factor & button-layout.

This is the “PD150 with 24p” we’ve been waiting for all these years… but look–

• 1080/24p
• 3x CMOS chips
• fantastic lens
• truly best-in-class viewfinder
• histogram to monitor image density
• peaking -and- zebras, at the same time

…simply brilliant. An absolute winner.

Mortgage something, honey. Me gots to buy…

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.

Lots of noise is flying around about the Panasonic HVX200 “true HD” unit… from the ‘reasonable’ price ($6k) to its need for pricey P2 cards ($2k for 8min at full HD). And whereas lots of ppl are ecstatic at the thought of true 100Mbit/sec HD in a DVX100A form-factor, the thought of having to cough-up $2k for each 8min-capacity P2 card is generating a bit of ire. “Why can’t we just connect a harddrive to the unit” ppl are asking.

Actually, the technical reason for the P2 card in the HVX200 is that of bandwidth… b/c there ain’t a drive in existence which could handle ‘true HD’ (ie, 100Mbit/sec, vs. the 25Mbit/sec of HDV) on an ongoing basis… & certainly not via firewire. The way the Kinetta solves this, is via multiple drives striped in raid-3. So regardless if the costly P2 is Panny’s ’stealth markup’ for the HVX200, it also solves the issue of how to handle 4x the bandwidth DV/HDV/firewire can do.

The more interesting question is that of optics & imager of the HVX200… Who really cares if a P2 can record 4x more data than an XL2 (or DVX100A), if the resulting image just looks like an upsampled DVX100A. Considering Panny’s track-record of not really matching the viewfinder & lens well in the DVX100A (ie, don’t even try to get critical focus w/ that v/f; you need an on-set production monitor)… i’m expecting the HVX200 lens to drastically outperform its v/f.

What i’m hoping the HVX200 does well is DV50/24p. At 4:2:2 colorspace, that P2 card should hold 40min+, & [should] outperform Sony’s Z1… if not the SDX-900.

But don’t count-out a good v/f & solid manual lens… repeatable rack-focus is a pearl of great price, creative-shooting wise. Ie, that JVC camera (even using 25Mbit HDV) could beat them all…