HPX300 Footage and Test Material

[Shipsides]

Hey guys,

I just wanted to post some additional Test Charts from the HPX300 that I had. The camera has been in and out of here and I do a couple things with it every time I see it.

Here are a list of links to all of my material currently online. I'll keep collecting and posting.

MTF Test Charts (-7 Detail & 0 Detail - Iris Open)

CDM DSCLABS Chart & DSC Grayscale Chart

Here are my older posts as well:

Night Shots

Day Shots

Vimeo Clips from my Day & Night with the camera.

Full Res AVC-I Material from the camera.
(go down to "FileFactory Basic Service" to downlod)

I'm not sure when I'll get to see it again, but I'll keep you posted with additional test.

Andy

[MrBill]

Andy, with the full res AVC footage, do I just import it into FCP or Avid?

Thanks
Bill

[CovenantPictures]

It's really too bad premiere CS3 doesn't support AVI-Intra to my knowledge.

[Shipsides]

Hey Bill

Avid Media Composer 3.0 and up will work with AVC-I material with no conversion. Just import P2 as normal. FCP imports AVC-I using Log & Transfer, like any other P2 material, but you need a couple of things. 1-FCP 6.03 or newer on an Intel Mac. 2- The AVC-I Decoder for Mac from Panasonic ( https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro....htm#quicktime ). If you have both of these installed FCP will convert the AVC-I footage into ProRes 422 and you can start editing.

Andy

[Buck Forester]

I just saw the "day" time example you gave. I'm in no way trying to bash a camera, this is an honest statement of what I saw in the Vimeo version, but the skew factor on this 300 seems pretty bad. If I saw what I just did with my EX1, I would have returned my EX1 the same day and probably got a HVX200 (or HPX170, they didn't have those at the time though). I don't see how that's an acceptable picture. The movement wasn't even all that bad and the fence and bench went jello city. And even the simple handheld shot looking down the sidewalk with the girl walking her dog near the end, the trees looked like they were swaying or jiggling, some kind of weird wobble, just with a shoulder-held shot.

[Elton]

Gotta agree with Buck. The walking wide shot from the night footage at 01:16 pretty much says it all. Reminds me of the HV30's wobble at full wide.

10bit jello is still jello. I hope this can be radically improved before the camera ships.

Btw, was this the Canon lens with CAC?

What really sucks about this, IMO, is that to get any kind of decent subject separation with 1/3" cameras, you really need a lot of telephoto...but you wouldn't dare with this kind of cmos performance unless you were locked down on sticks and the subject's motion is fairly sedate.

[alexdias]

Just watched the Night Clip and there were quite a few very objectionable rolling shutter issues _ horizontals, verticals, flash at the end.
I was expecting some improvement on these problem over the EXs cameras, but as far as I've seen, it's worst.
I know these are not production units but they are out there and the tests are being posted.
Thankfully we'll not going to have to wait much longer to see how they do with the final product.

[Kenn Christenson]

Here's hoping they implement the same sort of fix Red did with their CMOS sensors.

[Gifford]

I demo'd the 300 last week. I had really high hopes for the camera and was on the edge of buying one. Great set of useful bells and whistles and advancements but the CMOS chips make the camera, and I really hate to say this, useless in 1080P modes. It's ok as long as you don't move the camera. Even slow lateral moves instead of pans aren't so hot. 720P modes are better. The lens port holes very badly at either end as well. I'm told the CMOS problem is "being addressed". :/ Firmware upgrades may be on the horizon but there's no guarantee they can fix the rolling shutter problem.

[DavidNJ]

Forgetting the slow scanning rate on the sensor, also known as design engineer and engineering manager asleep at the switch (old problem, known fix), I am pretty surprised at the low MTF on those charts. It is decaying by 100 lp/ph and is heavily attenuated by 200lp/ph. Theortical max is 540lp/ph. Further,there is a high frequency diagonal noise over the bars by 350lp/ph. For comparison the 5DM2 is virtually unphased horizontally until over 400lp/ph.

Something is wrong. Panasonics latest technology should show better.