a Hv20 with an SGPro

[Jon Neely]

Hello all, I know there are many topics on the HV20, but I have yet to find one that hits this subject. I have as of right now my trusty Dvx100b, but working with clients and their HD footage, I really am getting to like HD, but after dropping in some of my saved cash for my SGpro, I cant really go out and buy a EX1 anymore. Because of the HV20's drop in price, you can pick one up from B&H at about $600 now, and with the new release with the HV30 im thinking that price might go down even farther with New old stock Hv20s. Now after listing to Bruce Allens podcast off of freshDv.com and reading Berry cheats with the HV20 Im thinking it might not be a bad idea to go with it now. Now with the lens cap cheat I would get a 24p, 1/48th, 0db of gain, and it would be locked at F/1.8(wide open) and after thinking, If I am using the Sgpro with it at all times, and one of the nice things with spinners is that I can stop down with the 35mm lens without grain showing, so the problem of it being wide open would be solved with the ability to stop down with the nikkor lens. So now what I see now is a 1080(probably down rezzed to 720p) camera with 24p, Shallow DOF(with the Sgpro), 1/48th shutter speed, 0 gain at all times, and very cheap cinema camera in a very compact size, tell me what you guys think.


Jon

[Michael Friedman]

on of the nice things with spinners is that I can stop down with the 35mm lens without grain showing, so the problem of it being wide open would be solved with the ability to stop down with the nikkor lens.

The only (minor) hitch I could foresee is that, if you are outside on a sunny day using your 35mm aperture ring to stop down, you might close it so much (F16) that your DOF is very deep, bringing it back near video range. Not sure how drastic it would be, probably workable.

[Jon Neely]

Well in the case of an extremely bright day I guess you could let it auto exposure and set the Shutter speed your self so you could use the shot, also on a very bright day I dont think Grain would be very noticeable... another solution would be using a matte box and put a few ND filter in the trays correct?


Jon

[Christopher Barry]

An ND or a number of them stacked, that will allow you to not stop down your Nikon's so much, hence, a shallow DOF remains when composition requires it.

Perhaps look at getting a 0.6 and/or a 0.9 and a 1.2 ND. An ND Grad is handy. Quality glass is important, even more so when stacking.

[Jon Neely]

So Christopher, your saying this might not be a bad Idea?


Jon

[Christopher Barry]

I am not familiar with the functionality of the HV20. If you can stop down via the HV20 using it's aperture (if you can control it and then lock it) or internal ND (if any), failing which, you could use external ND filter/filter combinations if you can lock the HV20 aperture, say, wide open. Perhaps someone more familiar the the cam can chime in.

[Jon Neely]

Could Mr.Bllom, or some one else with a lot of HV20 experience, could you coment on this and how your experiences with the HV20 differ from like the jvchd110 and 200 and the canon A1, and how the images compare, light is not an issue to the point of not having enough, I can all ways add light. How much does the gain show up say if I wanted to Shoot at a higher shutter speed like 500th or 1000th? Like I said before, this I would be using with the DVx, Im not planning for this to replace the DVX but instead to be shot with it.

Jon

Jon

[jenningsp]

thought i'd comment on the HV20
once you get the hv20 in your hands, controlling the aperture and shutter becomes simple. you can get anything you want in a matter of seconds... you just need to know how to do it...

here is a little famous tutorial i made ages ago when i had my hv20. http://hv20.info/yopu/hv20aperturecontrol.mov
the one thing it doesn't say is that you need a miniSD card for this to work. they're only like 5 dollars.

using this method you can get any setting you want. any shutter, any aperture and you can ad gain if needed in 1.5db increments.

it's pretty simple once you've done it for the first time :D


now as for my experience with the hv20 compared to other cameras.

i used to own the hv20 but it kept on dropping frames, i got it replace after a lot of testing and cleaning, the second one did the same thing and then started to chew tapes and then died completely so i gave up and got my money back. 90% of people didn't have this problem.

i've used the sony A1P - it's basically the same as the hv20 except it's got XLR inputs. it's a nice camera. the hv20 at high gain levels has what i'd call horizontal striping. this only shows up at high gain levels.. the max gain on the A1p is 18dB. but the max on the HV20 is something like 48db (i cant remember the exact number)
the hv20 vs the A1p... the hv20 wins. it's slightly better in low-light. and it's got a sharper picture. but when you start to push the hv20 past about 15dB of gain you get these horizontal lines in the picture.

the best thing about the A1p is that you can get large batteries. last i checked you cant get large batteries for the hv20. and it's got XLR inputs... you can get a balance box for the hv20 though...

hv20 vs sony PD170 (it's the sony version of the DVX but without 24p)
the biggest difference is low-light capabilities (beside from the fact that the PD is a full manual camera - the same as the dvx)
i was able to shoot in the same room with a 35mm adapter on the PD with some F2.8 lenses at F5.6 where the hv20 (with no adapter) would struggle at 1/48 wide open no gain.

HV20 vs Z1
Z1 has large batteries, XLR inputs, better manual control and better low-light.

the hv20 has a nice picture. really nice. it's beautiful. but with an adapter in anything other than full sun outdoors, it just get's pushed a bit too much. you'd need to ad a crap load of gain.
the low light thing is a HUGE problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

if you don't mind a grainy picture and i mean really grainy then it's all good :D

[Jon Neely]

well how much additive light are we talking about in low light with no gain and at f/1.8? 1k? 2k? 3k watts of light? I dont like adding too much light because it give the video look, so I dont ever want to light the whole scene.. BTW this is all just talk, I like my DVX and I have yet to even get my SGpro yet so this is all talk as of right now, not as I couldnt buy the HV20 if I wanted to, but These are just friendly questions.

Thanks,

Jon

[jenningsp]

at 1/48 wide open at F1.8 with no gain. lighting a small scene with two people on a couch. a 100w light 5ft away should be fine. and that's with diffusion. but as soon as you ad an adapter into the equasion........ say the SGpro with a 50mm F1.4 lens.
you'd lose about 2 stops... 1 stop from the adapter and 1 stop from the lens.
you need 400-500 watts to light the same sceen. with the DVX+sgpro you'd probobly only need about 100-150 watts

[Jon Neely]

Thanks for the reply jennings, Lighting should and will not be a problem in my case just because I own an arsenal of lights and I have a really good dp that is accustomed to lighting for edgy cameras that dont pick up a lot of light. How does the HV20 compare to a 3ccd camera, I was looking at some footage from philip Bloom and it looked quite nice with the Letus mini, I just wish people would post some more footage of the HV20 that I could download, Im thinking of going to Bestbuy and buying one, testing it out with the SG, the returning it and get my money back, if i like the results, Ill get one from B&H.

[jenningsp]

sounds like a good idea. just make sure they'll give you your money back and not store credit :D

the hv20/cmos vs 3ccd camera is a tough one... in terms of colour fidelity i think they're about the same, i've never been able to see much difference.. but there are problems with ccd and cmos sensors.

ccd's have something wrong with them that makes really bright spots blow out a full bar of your ccd and not just the spot. i can't remember the name of this... so when you point your camera at a bright light, you wont just get a nice circle, you get a huge line across your entire image.

cmos don't have that but they do have something called "rolling shutter artifact". this can ruin some shots.... basically it makes the image "wobble" when you move it... it really becomes apparent when you bounce the camera up and down... like when you run. this is a huge problem if you do a lot of handheld work.
standing in one spot and doing handheld is fine. but it's when you start walking and running that it becomes a HUGE HUGE problem....

[Jack_Felis]

I can honestly recommend the HV20 to anyone. As far as the manual control goes, I've had no problem with the cell phone trick to get a good range of exposure. I haven't used the camera on an adapter so I can't comment on that but if you aren't going to be moving around a whole lot in a low light shot, I find that going to 1/24 shutter at 1.8 gives you a little extra punch of brightness without bringing in gain, assuming you do the trick right of course. The motion, as you probably know already, can get a little smooth at 1/24 so I try to avoid that when I can but hey, when you don't have enough light what can you do? But as you've said, lighting won't be a problem, but I thought I'd let you know that the image is acceptable at 1/24.

Compared to other cameras, the HV20 competes nicely image quality wise. I wouldn't say it's as sharp as some of the EX1 stuff I've seen around but it is on par with the higher end Canon models (A1, G1, XLH1). It's a really killer deal.

I've had my camera for a while now and I haven't experienced any sort of dropouts or anything like that but, being a busy college student, I haven't used it as often as a lot of other people have. So far the only problem I've had was a recent malfunction on it where the firewire port, or the entire PCB of the camera it seems, had some sort of short and had to be sent in for repair. I got it back last week good as new but haven't used it sense besides downloading my footage that has been sitting around since I sent the camera in.

I've been thinking about investing in a 35mm adapter for it as well because it really is such a great camera and I know I can get a lot more out of it. Best of luck with your decision!

[Jon Neely]

Thanks guys, well what I'll probably end up doing is waiting until my SG get here, Use it with the DVX, see the results, and then try to see someone I know to buy the HV20, the steal it from them to test it for a few days. I'm not quite sure if Im sold on the whole HDV route yet especially with the release of canons new solid state cameras, Im thinking this might be a good investment because Im planning on going to New Zealand and Australia this summer and Im thinking this would be a good video camera so have on my side while touring, a lot better then my Panasonic GS320, though the 320 has for a consumer camera very good low light sensitivity(plus its a 3 chip) Im thinking the Hv20 will be much better. Berry Green was saying the hv20 with no gain has an ISO rating of 80, and then with an adapter Im thinking that would drop to like 60 or lower, now I am thinking you will new 2k+ watts of light to light a scene.... Oh dear, maybe the EX1 is worth the wait lol...
ps, We need something new from Panny and Canon with solid state true 1080p recording soon so all of the people that aren't completely sold on the EX1(me) can get something that is more appealing.

Jon

[Kholi]

We need something new from Panny and Canon with solid state true 1080p recording soon so all of the people that aren't completely sold on the EX1(me) can get something that is more appealing.

Jon

Definitely.

A friend of mines has an HV20 + LEtus Mini and he loves it. I saw some SD footage from a short film he helped shoot and it looks really good.

[Jon Neely]

I just wish I could see some one with an hv20 and an SGpro post some footage, it would make this soo much easier. I watched the series with the HV20 and the M2, and the m2 looses more light than the SGpro, and they turned out pretty well, all indoor, all lit. Tho i dont know how much gain they used.

Jon