Good B Camera for EX1

[HowdyDoo]

Any suggestions on what might be a decent, economical B camera for the EX1? I can't afford another EX1 and need to purchase a second camera. I need something in the 2-3k price range.

[Steve Shovlar]

Any suggestions on what might be a decent, economical B camera for the EX1? I can't afford another EX1 and need to purchase a second camera. I need something in the 2-3k price range.

What about one of these? Due out soon. Uses the same EX1 codec as well and records to sdhc cards direct.

http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL101845

Looks very interesting.

[DaFireMedic]

Interesting camera but B and H shows them at $4000 right now, although that may end up cheaper once they get them. Might be out of the B roll price range.

[GuyB]

Yea, US4K is a bit rich for:

1/4" sensor block with no publised sensor resolution
Small zoom range 10x lens which isn't particulary wide.
No apparent SD mode.
No apparent remote control option like LANC.

Other than the above, my major concern for this unit is sensitivity and noise in gain, both of which I have never really been impressed by JVC cameras...

With no tape transport to worry about the price of such little cameras should be dropping. Less parts, less warranty issues.


At least it isn't limited to shooting in a MOV wrapper, it can also shoot to standard MPG2 wrapper (probably transport stream lke m2t). It does use uncompressed audio though

[RichardVClark]

Beware it sounds like another round of useless improvements...

[chagchag]

OK, this may seem redundant, but to me The EX1 is allready a B-camera... Like it's a viable cost-effective alternative to shoulder-size cameras. The EX1 and the F-350 for instance is a good team.

If you want a b-camera you want one that resembles the quality that you get from your a-camera so you can cut between them without one sticking out like a sore thumb.

In my opinion there aren't all that many good alternatives, as the drop in quality will be somewhat substantial, so my suggestion is this:

Rent another Ex1 when you need it.

Unless you need it all the time of course. Renting when needed may very well be a good option as you may end up spending less on rent than you would buying another camera, and simultaneously increase your production value. You will also benefit from sharing euipment and know-how between the cameras. Lastly, you won't have to tweak things in post to match cameras etc

[dandobi.com]

HV30/20 ... get a wide angle lens with it and maybe a mono pod and your SET.

around 700 bucks ... you can't beat the price/image.

[frisco]

I'd say..... Suck it up and get another EX1

Advantages:

- Becomes not only a B cam..... It becomes a Main Back-up
- Same batteries
- Same workflow
- Same profiles
- Same accessories
- Same Same=Less mistakes

frisco

[brianluce]

What you should do is buy a F-900 and use the EX1 as B camera. Or just rent a Genesis and use the F-900 as your B cam and put the EX1 on E-bay.

[basspig]

I use both an HVR-V1U and an HV20 as B cams to my EX1's--the HV20 being the only camera that fits into the nooks in the orchestra shell at the concert hall, sitting on an 11" tall tripod, 12' up in the air. I use that for locked-off medium shots of the conductor and since it's a blackout background (the auditorium) and the conductor is well-lit, I get pretty good results after careful color correction.

That said, I absolutely loathe HDV tape and the a/v synch loss at every tape dropout, not to mention the lengthy capture sessions. A good 1/3" alternative to the EX1 that is compact and has good low light picture and solid state media with XDCam CODEC would be nice to have.

[Green Hornet]

I use both an HVR-V1U and an HV20 as B cams to my EX1's--the HV20 being the only camera that fits into the nooks in the orchestra shell at the concert hall, sitting on an 11" tall tripod, 12' up in the air. I use that for locked-off medium shots of the conductor and since it's a blackout background (the auditorium) and the conductor is well-lit, I get pretty good results after careful color correction.

That said, I absolutely loathe HDV tape and the a/v synch loss at every tape dropout, not to mention the lengthy capture sessions. A good 1/3" alternative to the EX1 that is compact and has good low light picture and solid state media with XDCam CODEC would be nice to have.


You loath the HDV workflow but still recomend it?
Why not recomend the Canon HF100 or newer HF S100?
It is a better sensor block, recording full raster to SD cards...in the $1,000 range.

That said, the Ex1 is hard to match color and resolution, but I would say short of another EX1, the Canon HF series will get you closer than anything else.

It will even match the rolling shutter :-) (pun intended)

[basspig]

I didn't recommend any particular equipment above, I merely stated that's what I'm using at this time. I would LIKE to have tapeless XDCam format cameras to replace the HV20 and V1U. I'll probably go with another EX1 for the V1U and await something else for the HV20. I have to test the other offerings from Canon before I can form an opinion on them.

[basspig]

Why not recomend the Canon HF100 or newer HF S100?

I searched all over for info on the HF S100 and only found info on the HF S10 on Canon's site.
Two problems hit me:

AVCHD
No true progressive (24/30P embedded in 60i), so can't edit this footage in Premiere without the dreaded "3/2 pulldown stutter".

To the good, it does appear to be a full raster HD camera. Concern however, as they pack 9 megapixels into a 1/2.6" sensor. That means each receptorsite is much smaller than on the HV20, which was quite noisy to begin with under less than optimal conditions, and tolerable for SD DVD output on good stage lighting conditions.

The ideal would be a Sony offering--a 'mini XDCam' that's under 2lbs and 6" in length. We do a lot of these 'discreet camera' setups where they have to be invisible to the audience, so we can't use full-sized cameras to get facial shots of the conductor, etc. To date, the HV20 has been the best candidate, but it's tape-based and that's costing us $$$ in the edit suite. If there were a way to get an EX1 up into the shell, I'd do it, but we lack the depth in that space and an 11" tripod can't carry much more than the HV20 weightload.

[arkay]

I use a Z1U as second camera. Mainly because I already had one when I bought the EX1. I can get them to match pretty well by tweaking the profiles and the footage cuts together OK. I plan to make the EX1 the second camera when I get an XDCam PDW-355.

[Steve Shovlar]

The more I read and hear about the new JVC camera the more I like it a a B cam. There's quite bit now online.

http://www.macvideo.tv/camera-technology/features/index.cfm?articleId=109356

and

http://www.macvideo.tv/camera-technology/interviews/index.cfm?articleId=109355

Under $4000. Possibly closer to $3300-3500 street price?

[EC Junior]

Yes the JVC GY-HM100 looks like a great companion to the EX camcorders.

weighs only 3.2 lbs, records on SDHC media, records in .mov and iso ( which is the XDCAM EX Codec, once the proper paperwork is done).
Records in Apple Quicktime on SDHC media!

Great for news and documentaries.

Should there be a new section for the New JVC products? JVC is rolling out with 2 new cameras this spring.

[basspig]

The article mentions Quicktime, which is a turn off for us in the Adobe Premiere world. But what's this ISO format you mentioned? I don't understand how that makes it XDCam format. Can you elaborate?

That's also almost as large as a Panny DVX100--won't fit in the places where we have to conceal cameras during orchestra shoots.

[Nik Manning]

XDCam PDW-355 as an A camera to the Ex1? It is to late in the game to buy that cam unless it is an unbelievable deal. Get the EX3. Better quality than the XDCam PDW-355. I am sure sony will replace the XDCam PDW-355 in the next year or so.

[EC Junior]

The article mentions Quicktime, which is a turn off for us in the Adobe Premiere world. But what's this ISO format you mentioned? I don't understand how that makes it XDCam format. Can you elaborate?

That's also almost as large as a Panny DVX100--won't fit in the places where we have to conceal cameras during orchestra shoots.


I don't know what iso format in terms of recording formats.
The iso format is supported by all major NLE systems ***taken from JVC website
http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL101845

You can remove the handle on the GY-HM100, product release date April 2009.

[basspig]

Interestingly, on that Macworld video, toward the end, he's showing a Final Cut import menu with XDCam EX settings. Does he mean to suggest that when using ISO format, one uses the XDCam import setting for this camera?

Had a closer look on the JVC site and it is quite a bit smaller than it's photo suggests. Certainly the ability to record for long periods is good for those inaccessible camera locations where we have to get out the 12' ladder during intermission and reload tapes on our current 'nook & cranny' cam.

Some concerns are the 1/4" CCDs. Pixel shifting. Lack of depth of field limiting (at 6X tele, the HV20 has barely enough differential focus that faces in the audience are still recognizeable when the conductor's face is in focus) would be a bigger issue--we want the audience to be visible, but a blur so no one's face is recognizeable.

I would probably favor a CMOS imager to best match with the images we get from the XDCams, but we're already doing extensive tweaking in post with the HV20 footage to clean it up and match the color up with the other cams.

Should be interesting to see what the street price is. Of course, JVC's consumer camcorders have not had a stellar reliability record, so I'll find myself skeptical about the reliability of this new cam until it's been at work for a while with few reported failures.

[GuyB]

I am thinking that this iso format will be one of two things:

1: M2T format (MP2 transport stream), just like the format recorded by the likes of the Sony CF solid state recorder and other 1394 firewire hard driver recorders (firestore etc)

or

2: The same format as we have with our XDCAM EX (MPG4 avi wrapped MPG2)

It would be great if it was option 2 for us, but a lot of people would probably prefer option 1.

[basspig]

Yes, the HV20 is quite noisy with its 1/3" chip, hence the fact that the JVC has 1/4" chips would raise equal concern in the noise dept.

[EIREHotspur]

EX1 is a good B Camera to an EX3 more like.

Having bought the EX3 (I was going with an EX1 when it came out but decided to wait a while and glad I did) I would almost be loathe to buy an EX1 now instead of another EX3.
Only big reason would be to use it in a good Steadycam.

[GuyB]

I'd much rather keep my EX1 than have an EX3. The EX3 is too big and that sort of on the sholder eurgonomics felt like more work on the arm than the EX1...

The only thing I would like is the option of putting on a longer lens for sports.

[Steve Shovlar]

I'd much rather keep my EX1 than have an EX3. The EX3 is too big and that sort of on the sholder eurgonomics felt like more work on the arm than the EX1...

The only thing I would like is the option of putting on a longer lens for sports.

Sorry Guy got to totally disagree. I sold my EX1 last week and picked up my EX3 two days ago. Leaps and bunds better ergonomically, nice balance compared to the pull to the right of the EX1. Also removable lens, dial for frame rates and a few other things makes the step up well worth it.

[Lucere]

Time will tell, but maybe this could be useful?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/597284-REG/Panasonic_HDC_TM300_HDC_TM300_High_Definition_Flas h.html#features

[GuyB]

Sorry Guy got to totally disagree. I sold my EX1 last week and picked up my EX3 two days ago. Leaps and bunds better ergonomically, nice balance compared to the pull to the right of the EX1. Also removable lens, dial for frame rates and a few other things makes the step up well worth it.

No problem, we all have our preferences but to me, when I put an EX3 on my shoulder it felt awful and very very front heavy.

[RCFisher]

Well I have been looking around for a crash camera to compliment my EX-3. My choice so far is the HF-11, good camera, cheap and tiny. The other thing is the 24Mb data rate so it's much better than HDV. A producer I work with bought a HF-100 on my recommendation and it is a truly awesome little camera. I was shocked the first time I used it. Pretty decent in low light, for a single chip camera. It's so much fun to play with but I think the extra money on the HF-11 will be worth it. For a pure crash camera the HF-100 is good because you don't feel too bad losing the camera. I also got it because the HF-100 and HF-10/11 all shoot 24p, although you have to remove the pull down in post but you also have to transcode the AVCHD into ProRes or something else to edit anyhow so just add that to the process.

Anyway just a few ideas.

[Joe Lawry]

I've got an SD9 as my C camera/crash cam.. amazing pictures. Shame its only 17mbps.. i love the fact its got 3ccd instead of cmos though, i've seen too many issues on small cmos censors.

[Emanuel]

Take an attentive glance on this:

http://www.collider.com/entertainment/news/article.asp/aid/7771/tcid/1

Trailer (save as):

http://s.streamingmovies.ign.com/movies/article/945/945250/crank2_nr1_trlr1_011509_wmvhd.wmv

[tonykart125]

hopefully i dont get attacked, but what about a D90? If you use a 35 adapter on your ex it might cut nicely with some color correction...

[GuyB]

I have a D90 and my impressions are that the video mode is one of the least usable features it has, the Canon 5D MKII is a much better option although it has some serious limitations of its own too. I am hopeful in a few models these DSLRs will actually have something decent and controlable.

[tonykart125]

GuyB thanks for the info. The canon is a great camera, I already have some nikon glass, which is why I brought up the nikon and the price point is great.

[Bokes]

How about the HVR Z7U.
I'm liking this camera for run and gun.
I dig the lens.
It's also nice to have the tape transport to use as a deck if you get a gig where the client has tape to digitize.

[HowdyDoo]

Anybody tried the Canon Vixia HF S10 as a second camera to the EX1?

[HowdyDoo]

Whoops. Just noticed that it hasn't been released yet.

Well... if anyone with an EX1 gets one, I'd appreciate the feedback.

[colin rowe]

I am thinking that this iso format will be one of two things:

1: M2T format (MP2 transport stream), just like the format recorded by the likes of the Sony CF solid state recorder and other 1394 firewire hard driver recorders (firestore etc)

or

2: The same format as we have with our XDCAM EX (MPG4 avi wrapped MPG2)

It would be great if it was option 2 for us, but a lot of people would probably prefer option 1.

According to the latest brochure. Recording format is MPEG-2 long GOP. And JVCs "Pro HD clip manager" looks identical to Sony's "Clip Browser" software. Check out the new brochure here. http://pro.jvc.com/pro/attributes/CA...00_kcs8409.pdf (http://pro.jvc.com/pro/attributes/CAMERA/brochure/gyhm100_kcs8409.pdf) I have arranged a demo as soon as the camera is available, looking forward to it.

[GuyB]

Yea I noticed that, probably all part of the XDCAM EX licence agreement etc

[arroway]

why not an HMC-150?

similar low-light performance...

EDIT: oh man, don't leave me hanging on this. anyone have any thoughts on an HMC150 being an EX1's little brother? i figure i could use the EX1 for static and slow shots and the 150 for faster things? would cover the rolling shutter issue in regard to event videography would it not?

anyone?