HPX 170 versus HPX 500

[falves1]

Does it make sense to buy an HPX 170 versus HPX 500, mainly for short political videos for youtube?
Why would you choose one or the other one if money was no object?

[mrbrycel]

Theres no doubt that the 500 is a better camera, but the compression on youtube is so terrible it would a waste of $6,000 to take the 500 over the 170.

To be completely honest, if all your going to be using it for is youtube, just get a DVX100b.

[vavavideo]

Up until recently, even the $129 Flipcam footage looked almost as good as pro footage on YouTube. YouTube was that bad.

Now with the new high quality settings moving in (and h.264 encoded files when viewed with an ipod, iphone or AppleTV), you can finally see what footage looks like garbage and what doesn't.

You still probably wouldn't see the difference between a 500 and 170 on that service, though. Even on a good service like Vimeo which encodes also encodes in On2's VP6 codec, but at higher bitrates, the differences would likely be small.

Now if you were serving your own videos over a prvate CDN (Content Distribution Network) like Akamai or CacheFly, or providing videe on Blu-Ray or something, I'd say definitely go for the best cam your money can buy.

There's the future to deal with, too. YouTube will improve with time, and so will everything else. You might start shooting for Blu-Ray, who knows... I'd say if money is no object right now, get something great.

Saturday Night Live actually does their viral shorts for the web on a very expensive camera, an Panasonic HPX-3000. It's $48k retail (not sure what it goes for "street")... and the shots done with this one look great! (from what I was reading, they rent the camera on an as-needed basis, btw... why they don't buy a couple of 'em, with a budget like theirs, I'm not sure!)

Just google Saturday Night Live HPX, or SNL HPX, and you'll find articles about it.

Maybe there's a darn good reason to use a camera like that for the web. Hmm... let me think about this...

you know, it probably requires less post-processing. I think that's it. They have very tight schedules on that program. The better the raw footage looks, the faster they can print it and get onto the next project.

[wgzn]

two words. LARGER SENSORS.

done.

[dwells]

I agree, the 2/3" sensors give the HPX500 the edge: better in low light situations, the ability to use 2/3" lenses (to get short focus), etc. But having used the HVX200 and soon to be using the HPX170, I'm very impressed with what Panasonic is doing.

At the end of the day, it comes down to what best suits you, budget, etc. Though they're going on YouTube, you may want to put out a high quality DVD, and a cheap camera will result in a cheap image. Try renting the cameras to see which one is best for you.

David