Info on HD videocameras
September 7, 2006 12:23 PM Subscribe
Looking for actual user of a personal HD videocamera. Your impressions, experience and some sample of your work would rule.
I have a Sony Z1U that is just beautiful. My only wish is that it shot both 1080i AND 720p. Most camera's are either or not both. It is easy to use, has great battery life and integrates with Final Cut 5.0 very well.
My only negatives are that the location of the external on-board microphone makes it a pain to use most affordable matte boxes so you either put up with it or spend 5 times the amount and that you cannot swap lenses like you can with the Canon HDV camera.
I still miss film but this is the first camera I have enjoyed shooting with since I shot 16mm film.
That being said at this stage I have not had any clients that have needed HD. Rather they take advantage of the 16x9 CCDs to get a true widescreen (not cropped) standard def image.
posted by UMDirector at 1:10 PM on September 7, 2006
My only negatives are that the location of the external on-board microphone makes it a pain to use most affordable matte boxes so you either put up with it or spend 5 times the amount and that you cannot swap lenses like you can with the Canon HDV camera.
I still miss film but this is the first camera I have enjoyed shooting with since I shot 16mm film.
That being said at this stage I have not had any clients that have needed HD. Rather they take advantage of the 16x9 CCDs to get a true widescreen (not cropped) standard def image.
posted by UMDirector at 1:10 PM on September 7, 2006
I reviewed the Sony HDR-HC3 for PC World here and wrote more about shooting in high def here (which I think counts as an actual user). As to examples: I posted stills from the normal and high-speed mode of the camcorder here. You'll find a few links to sample movies in this thread, but remember: unless you are downloading the raw video (which will be huge), it will have been compressed and won't look as good as the origional.
posted by baggers at 1:43 PM on September 7, 2006
posted by baggers at 1:43 PM on September 7, 2006
Response by poster: Thanks everybody ! A mention for baggers' interesting site. I am a big fan of compression , yet I understand that my source has to be as raw as possible no matter the size. I read on wiki that some broadcast level vcam do save on external HDs..while this comes at the price of carrying more weight and batteries, I can see the advantage of having a nice as-raw-as-possible stream ; which I would feed to a fine powerful PC CPU letting it do some good compression overnight.
posted by elpapacito at 3:28 PM on September 7, 2006
posted by elpapacito at 3:28 PM on September 7, 2006
I shot a music video with a buddy's Panasonic AG-HVX200—my first time using it.
The 1080p picture looked more like video than film, especially when the camera and subject weren't moving much. On our budget, we could only afford enough P2 cards for 8 minutes of continuous capture. But capturing, backing up and editing the video was a breeze with a PowerBook with a PC-Card interface.
Overall, if I didn't shoot with it again I wouldn't miss it much. And I'm not going to show you what I shot with it because the video as a whole sucks so bad.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:40 PM on September 7, 2006
The 1080p picture looked more like video than film, especially when the camera and subject weren't moving much. On our budget, we could only afford enough P2 cards for 8 minutes of continuous capture. But capturing, backing up and editing the video was a breeze with a PowerBook with a PC-Card interface.
Overall, if I didn't shoot with it again I wouldn't miss it much. And I'm not going to show you what I shot with it because the video as a whole sucks so bad.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:40 PM on September 7, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
http://hd.curtstewart.com
When I finish my current project I'm going to go back and shoot something "real" with my Andromeda.
posted by shino-boy at 12:43 PM on September 7, 2006