PRUSZKO
12-28-2006, 02:38 PM
OK, this is the very first time I've posted my footage, so be gentle on me (also, English is not my main language) ;-)
I just saw some noisy lowlight footage in another post, so I've decided to share my experience in the same shooting conditions. The verdict - the camera is amazing!
When I first got it out the box and walked around my apartment I was frustrated with the amount of noise. Fiddling with the gain switch didn't help a notch. I started thinking I got a faulty unit when a revelation came upon me - the AGC switch!
All new XHA1 buyers - MAKE SURE THE AGC (Auto Gain Control) IS OFF!!!
OK, back to the footage. I have had no experience in event videography (to be honest I haven't really shot anything much in my life), so I was really like a child walking in the fog. I plan to do music videos and indie shorts, where I can have control over lighting. Here I had to work with the available light (mainly Christmas lights and candles) and I did everything intuitively.
The gain was set to -3, no NR. As you can see, the motion in the "moody" parts is a bit videoish - 25 shutter speed (PAL). But I thought my family wouldn't care less about "film-likeness"...
The daytime footage was shot with 100 shutter. You'll clearly see the difference. It's "the look" for me. I prefer the faster shutter motion rendering and 100 provides that look, without getting too strobey.
Don't mind the not-so-perfect editing (I'm not a big fan of transitions, but I just had to use them this time). I was fooling around with the camera, so not all the shots are as they should be - for example the focusing out is too quick the couple of times, etc. I just had a bunch of clips I had to "glue together" somehow to make my family happy (by the way - you're gonna see the clip before they do). There is no CC whatsoever. A shot everything in SD (straight, no downconverting), as I need a new PC to handle HD stuff, but still - the SD out of A1 is soooo much better then my DVX (which I sold 2 months after I got it :-] ) All CC is done inside the camera - I just copied the settings from the 9th preset, leaving sharpening to 0.
OK, here's the footy: http://www.pruszko.com/xmas.wmv
I just saw some noisy lowlight footage in another post, so I've decided to share my experience in the same shooting conditions. The verdict - the camera is amazing!
When I first got it out the box and walked around my apartment I was frustrated with the amount of noise. Fiddling with the gain switch didn't help a notch. I started thinking I got a faulty unit when a revelation came upon me - the AGC switch!
All new XHA1 buyers - MAKE SURE THE AGC (Auto Gain Control) IS OFF!!!
OK, back to the footage. I have had no experience in event videography (to be honest I haven't really shot anything much in my life), so I was really like a child walking in the fog. I plan to do music videos and indie shorts, where I can have control over lighting. Here I had to work with the available light (mainly Christmas lights and candles) and I did everything intuitively.
The gain was set to -3, no NR. As you can see, the motion in the "moody" parts is a bit videoish - 25 shutter speed (PAL). But I thought my family wouldn't care less about "film-likeness"...
The daytime footage was shot with 100 shutter. You'll clearly see the difference. It's "the look" for me. I prefer the faster shutter motion rendering and 100 provides that look, without getting too strobey.
Don't mind the not-so-perfect editing (I'm not a big fan of transitions, but I just had to use them this time). I was fooling around with the camera, so not all the shots are as they should be - for example the focusing out is too quick the couple of times, etc. I just had a bunch of clips I had to "glue together" somehow to make my family happy (by the way - you're gonna see the clip before they do). There is no CC whatsoever. A shot everything in SD (straight, no downconverting), as I need a new PC to handle HD stuff, but still - the SD out of A1 is soooo much better then my DVX (which I sold 2 months after I got it :-] ) All CC is done inside the camera - I just copied the settings from the 9th preset, leaving sharpening to 0.
OK, here's the footy: http://www.pruszko.com/xmas.wmv