Thoughts after shooting 35 Hours

[Boomerang]

So we shot roughly 35 hours of footage over the weekend for some events. Total run and gun

So in comparison with my Beloved DVX and HVX in the field live.

Dislikes
1. I found the 150 to have trouble auto focusing in a bust shot and would find the background more often.

2. The white balance just never seemed to feel right. Maybe its the LCD but my DVX would hit the white balance and it would look spot on.

3. Turning it on takes a second longer than I am used to.

4. Wish it was dual slot SD like the HVX.

Loved
1. The battery indicator. Happy to have the feature finally. Not fun buying them.

2. The feel of he camera, weight etc. Just felt right in my hands much more than the HVX.
All the buttons feel in the right place.

3. Love the wider angle.

4. Low light really held its own for an HD camera... even at gain of 9 I was so impressed with the low noise.

5. Like the HVX having Playback on the fly.

6. Extra ND filter...... much needed.


I am super impressed and look forward to finding the sweet spots on this camera.
I will give some input once I see the footage on the outcome.

[Thomas Lew]

The 5 seconds or so it takes to turn on really bothers you that much? lol

[Mike Harvey]

I think the fact that one of his four gripes is the extra second it takes to power on really says something about the camera.

I've never used auto focus on my DVX, so that's sort of a non-issue for me.

I think a duel slot SD would have been great.

Boomerang, have you had a chance to look at the white balance of the footage on something other than the LCD yet? By "feel right", what do you mean? Did it look a little cool? Warm?

[Barry_Green]

The 5 seconds or so it takes to turn on really bothers you that much? lol
Actually there's a feature designed to totally eliminate that. It's called "standby" mode. Try it. It makes turning on the camera take like 1 second instead of 5 or 6. Drawback is that it's still drawing power while it's in standby so your overall battery will run down sooner than when truly "off" but yeah, it's a huge improvement if you're constantly needing to turn it on & off.

[mcsmooth]

^ This weekend I was doing some random shooting and fun shots kept coming up right as I turned the camera off. Also getting annoyed from the start up time, I tried standby and it really solves the problem. We've all read our manuals, right? This feature is way up in the beginning, I may have forgotten otherwise.

The other option is to get another battery, not turn it off and use pre-record to never miss a shot ;)

[johnnyha]

And you don't have the extra time loading/unloading the tape.

[jeff9329]

2. The white balance just never seemed to feel right. Maybe its the LCD but my DVX would hit the white balance and it would look spot on.

I tend to agree on this one if you are talking about the AWB. A manual WB often produces a significantly different result. Shooting under a white tent with rose colored filters on the lights didn't help much either on my last shoot.

I used the XLR inputs for the first time on this last shoot and I can report the camera sound quality is very good with low noise on the pre-amps.

[mitteg]

used the XLR inputs for the first time on this last shoot and I can report the camera sound quality is very good with low noise on the pre-amps.

The audio with the AVCHD codec gets compressed too (16bits, 48kHz at 384 kbps if I am not wrong). Are you sure the quality is similar to the PCM uncompressed audio from the DVX100, which, by the way, was extremely good for a prosumer camera.

Thanks for your thoughts.

[Boomerang]

Even using manual WB I just felt like it was not seeing the mix of colors and light as well as the DVX does and finding that right mix. Maybe some in camera tweaks would help.

I do love the color temp adjust for A & B separated that is a great feature for run and gun work when I am constantly white balancing manually on the fly.

[jeff9329]

The audio with the AVCHD codec gets compressed too (16bits, 48kHz at 384 kbps if I am not wrong). Are you sure the quality is similar to the PCM uncompressed audio from the DVX100, which, by the way, was extremely good for a prosumer camera.

Thanks for your thoughts.

My only camera comparison is to the Canon XH-A1 which uses MPG1 sound compression as part of the HDV codec. To clarify, I think the HMC150 sound is very good for onboard camera recording. I don't know about the DVX100 sound quality, but LPCM 16/48 is bound to be better than a compressed format if the pre-amps are clean.

Of course, there is an order of magnitude higher quality when using a 24 bit digital audio recorder than any cameras onboard sound and that is what I normally use for the main soundtrack.

[ullanta]

The audio with the AVCHD codec gets compressed too (16bits, 48kHz at 384 kbps if I am not wrong). Are you sure the quality is similar to the PCM uncompressed audio from the DVX100, which, by the way, was extremely good for a prosumer camera.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Just wanted to say that we're in the process of wiring up our concert hall to get sound to the camera location (and testing the cam, too) - but soon I'll have a lot of comparison material to compare the HMC150's sound (especially compression) to what ProTools gets from the same line-level signal...

384kbps AAC should be better than HDV's 384kbps MPEG audio... but only testing will tell!