Jason Scott
03-01-2006, 12:39 PM
Hey there. Thought I'd give back with a quick report of the first weekend of shooting my documentary with the new equipment. A more general form of this posting is also at http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000210.html
So here's the rundown, done in that fun bullet style "professionals" like.
My HVX200 arrived a week before shooting. Thank you Omega Broadcast!
I did not buy any P2 cards, because they were too expensive.
Streaming to Laptop seems dumb because I edit in Vegas...
..why pay $1200 for the ability to use a capture utility?
(If they made the capture utilities a separate product, I'd have bought.)
I ended up renting two 8gb and two 4gb cards.
$460 for 5 days made more sense than dropping $4200, right?
Bought two 300gb external seagates for the laptop for card dumps
I used smelni's suggested film-esque settings.OK, so that was setting things up. Bear in mind this means I got a whole 3 DAYS before my first shoot with the camera, and I'm the veteran of 200 interviews over the 4 years of the previous documentary. My previous camera was the Canon XL-1 (not even the S) so there was a lot to pull in after such a short time.
OK, so here's what my opinion in production is:
If I could afford it, I could live with P2 cards for shooting, even the 8gb ones. That is, if they were ~$200-$300 apiece, I'd buy a few and deal.
I got screwed a couple times with video and sound, because when I put the camera back into its case, it would knock against the switches. I would wonder why stuff was wrong the next time, and this is because on the XL-1 it's harder to knock the switches. That's a cultural issue, my fault, I'll not make that mistake again.
Images? Friggin' LOVE THEM. Totally the right choice.
When the sound wasn't messed by the aforementioned switch issue (I wouldn't double-check everything, just because there was so much I was learning on the job and getting down), it was spectacular as well. No complaints.
Camera feels good, I keep it on a tripod of course, so it's pretty easy to work with that way.
I call the LCD screen the "sweet little TV of lies". It has about as much to do with the final image in 720p as an oil painting does with a polaroid. I can live with this, but it means I'm living off the focus assist a lot.All this said, since the P2 cards are not a serious option right now (I'd have to double the investment to have the right amount of stuff for bigger interviews), I'm waiting for the hard drives to come out and will get one, then keep shooting.
So, just to avoid any hen-pecking from the usual suspects on the board:
I shot with so little time to learn the camera because a "critical" subject was leaving the country permanently, and wasn't expecting to return even for visits anytime soon. So I had to move WAY quick.
I didn't double-check every single last thing because I was so wrapped up trying not to make other blunders, again because of the short learning period. I now have a laminated checklist I run down before a shot (I wrote it out after experiencing the mistakes I had) and won't have those issues again.
I actually don't mind the P2 cards; I have good knowledge of the "flow" of interviews and can keep interviewees in 20-40 minute segments. But they're just too expensive.I'll answer any questions if people have them.
So here's the rundown, done in that fun bullet style "professionals" like.
My HVX200 arrived a week before shooting. Thank you Omega Broadcast!
I did not buy any P2 cards, because they were too expensive.
Streaming to Laptop seems dumb because I edit in Vegas...
..why pay $1200 for the ability to use a capture utility?
(If they made the capture utilities a separate product, I'd have bought.)
I ended up renting two 8gb and two 4gb cards.
$460 for 5 days made more sense than dropping $4200, right?
Bought two 300gb external seagates for the laptop for card dumps
I used smelni's suggested film-esque settings.OK, so that was setting things up. Bear in mind this means I got a whole 3 DAYS before my first shoot with the camera, and I'm the veteran of 200 interviews over the 4 years of the previous documentary. My previous camera was the Canon XL-1 (not even the S) so there was a lot to pull in after such a short time.
OK, so here's what my opinion in production is:
If I could afford it, I could live with P2 cards for shooting, even the 8gb ones. That is, if they were ~$200-$300 apiece, I'd buy a few and deal.
I got screwed a couple times with video and sound, because when I put the camera back into its case, it would knock against the switches. I would wonder why stuff was wrong the next time, and this is because on the XL-1 it's harder to knock the switches. That's a cultural issue, my fault, I'll not make that mistake again.
Images? Friggin' LOVE THEM. Totally the right choice.
When the sound wasn't messed by the aforementioned switch issue (I wouldn't double-check everything, just because there was so much I was learning on the job and getting down), it was spectacular as well. No complaints.
Camera feels good, I keep it on a tripod of course, so it's pretty easy to work with that way.
I call the LCD screen the "sweet little TV of lies". It has about as much to do with the final image in 720p as an oil painting does with a polaroid. I can live with this, but it means I'm living off the focus assist a lot.All this said, since the P2 cards are not a serious option right now (I'd have to double the investment to have the right amount of stuff for bigger interviews), I'm waiting for the hard drives to come out and will get one, then keep shooting.
So, just to avoid any hen-pecking from the usual suspects on the board:
I shot with so little time to learn the camera because a "critical" subject was leaving the country permanently, and wasn't expecting to return even for visits anytime soon. So I had to move WAY quick.
I didn't double-check every single last thing because I was so wrapped up trying not to make other blunders, again because of the short learning period. I now have a laminated checklist I run down before a shot (I wrote it out after experiencing the mistakes I had) and won't have those issues again.
I actually don't mind the P2 cards; I have good knowledge of the "flow" of interviews and can keep interviewees in 20-40 minute segments. But they're just too expensive.I'll answer any questions if people have them.