HMC40 - First Look

[Barry_Green]

Okay, I'm fiddling with it now. It's adorable. It looks like a baby HMC150.

Touch screen takes a little getting used to, but it's a reasonable choice; otherwise you'd have a lot more buttons on the side and with a cam this small, there's not all that much room for buttons.

The iris appears to be precise control, but unrelated to the ND. As you close the iris down it gives you a readout from OPEN to f/1.9 to f/11, in 1/6-stop increments! The 200/170/150 all have the 1/6-stop increment feature, but they don't TELL you. The little 40 actually tells you exactly where you're at in the iris readout. Makes for some perhaps-confusing numbers (f/8.5? Really?) but I always prefer more feedback over less. And, when opening up the iris, once it hits "open" it does indeed go into gain, up to the limit you specify, in 1dB increments. Works pretty well. Having a separate manually-set gain switch is nice, but there's not really anything wrong with this method, and it gives you more precise control.

There are a lot fewer buttons, but not really that much less functionality. For example, on the 150/170/200, there's an iris wheel and an iris button... the button is for changing whether you're in auto-iris or manual-iris mode. On the HMC40, there's no button, only the iris wheel. But you get the same functionality because you can click the wheel in to swap between auto-iris and manual-iris. Still tastes great, but less filling (fewer buttons to do the same thing).

The LCD is really sharp, and really small. I totally miss the HVX/HPX/150's 4:3 system of putting all the info outside of the screen; it looks completely cluttered with the 16:9 screen and all the readouts and displays covering up the image. However, the DISP/MODE CHK button makes it all disappear, so that's fine.

Everything looks familiar; anyone who's used a DVX, HMC150, HPX170, HVX200, any of those, will feel pretty much right at home with the HMC40. I anticipate a pretty short learning curve on this little device, other than the new touchscreen functionality.

It has a waveform monitor! That alone puts it a notch above anything else in the small-handycam class, in my book. That's really cool. It takes up a good 1/3 or so of the LCD's display area, but ... dang... that's sweet to see in a little cam. You have to assign WFM to a user button, but it's there. Very nice. Also it doesn't show up on the VF, so you can have the VF for framing and the LCD for waveform monitoring, although I haven't yet figured out how to have them both on at the same time (or if you can?)

There's one setting for zebra, and then marker, and then zebras off. No two levels of zebras. But then again, there's the WFM, which is like a hundred million zebra settings, so no complaints here.

It's got EVF DTL peaking, and it's very visible and nicely done, although I don't care for it being assigned to a user button. I think it unnecessarily uses up a user button. I'd rather it be a global "on/off" setting. As it is I've tried to assign it to a user button, then turn it on, then re-assign the user button to something else, to see if the "peaking" will "stick" in the ON position. It does, which is cool, but... when you power off, it defaults to EVF DTL off again. Sigh. So I think I'm gonna have to get used to just giving up one of the user buttons. That's annoying because there are at least four functions I want immediate access to (EVF DTL, WFM, Last-Clip Delete, and Shot Mark). Oh well, pick three and do without one...

Focus ring appears to be completely repeatable -- hallelujah! Well done, Panasonic. I *hate* gummy rubbery vague servo focus rings. But man, it takes a LONG distance to traverse the focus range. Looks like about 450 degrees from minimum to maximum. Great for cinema, not so good for grab 'n' go ENG-style focus. But, then again, we're talking about 1/4" chips here, so it's not gonna be all that easy for something to get *out* of focus anyway...

Uses the same battery as my 150. Maybe a minor thing, but I'm happy -- with these two cameras I now have two interchangeable chargers, and interchangeable batteries, happy day. And the battery seems to last *way* longer; in the 150 I never get more than about 94 minutes out of the little stock battery, but it's saying about two and a half hours in the HMC40 (it wasn't 100% full when I put it on, so I don't know exactly how long it'll last, but it looks like even the little battery will be a perfectly viable solution).

Hey, the back rubber jack-protector flap is split into three pieces -- the headphone jack has its own flap! Excellent -- that was a complaint about the HPX170, all the jacks were covered by one flap, so if you wanted to plug in your headphones you had to expose every port. On the little HMC40 the headphones get their own cover, the remote controllers get their own cover, and the video output ports get their own cover. That's a better design.

And ooh, looks like my varizoom remote focus/iris/zoom controller will work with this too. That's three years and four cameras that my one controller has stayed compatible. Cool.

No XLRs (I'm cheap, and I have a 150 so I didn't get the XLR module) so I miss 'em... the HDMI and USB and Mic ports are all where I expect the XLRs to be... I'll probably break down and order the XLR module.

Focus assist -- it has the magnified focus assist, EVF DTL, and a focus bar. And yes, the focus assist works even while recording (thank heavens!)

The lack of a distinct zoom ring is a loss, but not without its compensations; the power zoom is silky smooth and with a variety of speeds, and it even has a "smooth rolloff" at the end of the zoom, if you want -- so you can stop zooming and it'll ease off gently, instead of abruptly. Certainly better power zooming than you can get on the 150/170/200. But, you give up the precision and snap-zoom potential of the 150/170/200. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs, everything's a tradeoff. I prefer having the manual zoom ring on the 150, but those who use zooming during their shots (event shooters, wedding shooters, etc) may very well find a lot to like with the HMC40's power zoom's smoothness and smooth rolloff. The fastest zoom speed isn't extremely fast however; I will miss the snap-zoom!

Okay, the rubber eyecup... this is stupid... the eyecup appears to be strictly for right-eye dominant folks. Lame. I'm a left-eye-dominant guy. You can't even mount the eyecup upside down. Looks like a pair of scissors might be in order here. Not thrilled about that.

Sensitivity -- okay, so here's the bad news. We knew it wasn't going to be nearly as sensitive as the HMC150; when you cram 4x as many pixels onto a smaller chip, you can expect a drop in sensitivity. Mathematically, I would have guessed about 3 stops' less sensitive. The pixels are 4x as many, meaning 1/4 the size, meaning 1/4 as sensitive (2 stops), but also the chips are smaller (1/4" instead of 1/3") making the pixels even smaller, so... yeah, 3 stops. When I observed the two cameras side by side, yeah, looked about 3 stops different. When I shot a grayscale chart, lighting for best response, with the HMC40 at f/2.8, the HMC150 needed to be at f/8 to deliver the same brightness level. So... yep. 3 stops. The HMC150 is about 3 stops faster than the HMC40. Which, when rating the HMC150 at 500 ISO, that puts the HMC40 at about 64 ISO. Not exactly a speed king. Plenty fine for outdoors, but indoors you're going to either need lots of light, or lots of gain. Fortunately the HMC40 provides bucketloads of gain, up to +34dB! That's nearly four stops' worth of gain. That gets you your sensitivity back, at the expense of noise. How much noise? That will be answered in future test reports.

Of course, cramming all those pixels on the chip also means that the HMC40 might be a little sharper than the HMC150, too. Or maybe a lot sharper. It won't/can't be 4x sharper, but just how much sharper is it? That, also, will be answered in future test reports.

So -- initial response is: I like it! It's very, very much like a trimmed down HMC150; it feels great in the hands, the ergonomics are nicely proportioned and spread out, the buttons and readouts all work the way you'd want them to, the displays provide as much info as you could ask (including an excellent waveform monitor, zebras, gain readout in individual dB, iris, shutter speed, focus distance, zoom distance, white balance setting, audio levels, everything you expect from a professional camcorder). It's got most of the goodness of the 150 (1080/24p, 1080/60i, 720/24p, 720/60p, HE mode for long recording times, waveform, zebras, scene files, all the same scene file menu controls, precise manual focus, customizable user buttons, 24pN recording, 720/60p for slow-mo or for live action) at a much smaller size, way smaller pricetag, and with a lot longer battery life. It even has things that the HMC150 doesn't have, such as timelapse recording. The tradeoff, so far, is some more manual control on the 150 (plus the 150 includes the XLR audio module), and then there's the biggie: three stops' more sensitivity.

Stay tuned for future tests, including resolution, image comparisons against the HMC150, and rolling shutter testing.

[Barry_Green]

Okay, first posted image test -- the resolution chart.

Dang. Wow. The HMC40 delivers a serious booty-whoopin' on the HMC150. Serious. All those pixels on the little chip may have cost you three stops of sensitivity, but what the pixels taketh, they also give back in terms of image sharpness. If you have adequate light, so that you're shooting in the "sweet spot" of OPEN to f/2.8, you can get some crisp razor sharp images.

Some notes on the chart -- my Cambook's res chart isn't high enough res to handle the HMC40 or HPX300! Time for a new chart. Until then I just printed out an ISO12223 chart and taped it together, so this is the most amateur-looking chart you'll ever see from me. In terms of true measurement, I would find this embarrassing, but in terms of comparing one against the other I think it's fair enough. (note to self: ORDER A PROPER RES CHART...)

Here's an extraction showing the HMC40 at +0/+0/+0 (DTL, V-DTL, CORING) against the HMC150 at +0/+0/+0. Note that I did have to seriously adjust the lighting between the two shots.


For those pedantic enough (like me) to want the entire chart to pixel-peep, you can find the HMC40 chart here, and the HMC150 chart here.

Now, keep in mind, this is the "good news". The "bad news" may come in when I re-test for diffraction-induced resolution losses. Stay tuned...

[Barry_Green]

Okay, I'm reviewing some charts I shot with the gain on. Now, what do you do when you're three stops slower? Sometimes you reach for the gain switch, right? I recommend that you be cautious with the gain. The camera is capable of going to +24dB (about 4 stops brighter than at 0dB) but the effect on the image ranges from minimal to terrible. And if you go to the fully maximum +34dB, your client may feel obliged to punch you in the head. High gain is very unfriendly to your image clarity!

Actually the image degradation looks a lot like what I've seen on other CMOS camcorders; the image goes to mush and the color disappears. Looks a lot like what can happen to the GH1 when it's pushed to 1600 ISO.

The HMC40 offers gain in increments of 1dB, and very mild gain is just fine; even medium levels of gain might be completely acceptable to you. But going to the extremes is simply never a good idea. Ever. On the HVX200A/HPX170/HMC150, we usually find that 6dB of gain looks just fine, and 9 is about the limit before the noise starts to call into question whether you're doing the right thing by raising the gain so high. So what happens on the HMC40? I took shots with varying levels of gain to see. By my viewing of the charts, I think 9dB is fine, and 12dB is still acceptable. I don't like +18 as it gets noticeably noisy, and I hate +24 because it starts getting muddy/splotchy, and at +34 you should expect a head-punching. ;)

Note: for these shots, I lowered the light level, and let the autoiris system pick the exposure. I lowered the light until the autoiris picked my target level of gain. That's why all these shots are at about the exact same exposure; the light level was changing for every shot.




For those who don't want to look at charts, and would rather look at pretty girls, I shot the DSC Labs CamBook chart "CamBelles" at various gain levels, at 0dB, +6dB, +24dB, and +34dB. Now you'll see why my first recommendation to any HMC40 shooter is: LEAVE THE MAXIMUM GAIN TO +12.

At 0dB:



At +6dB:


at +24dB:


And, finally, at +34dB.


Recommendation: don't go above +12 unless you really have no other choice.

[Barry_Green]

Diffraction -- what is it, and why do you care? Diffraction is something that's caused when the aperture is too small for the light to effectively squeeze through cleanly, so it gets scattered. The result is that the smaller your camera's aperture is, and the more finely focused the light has to be to render a good image, the more likely you'll run into diffraction.

On a big-chip camera with great big pixels, it's not a problem.

On a tiny-chip camera, especially a tiny-chip camera with super-tiny super-dense high-definition chips with miniscule tiny pixels, diffraction can have a noticeable impact on your image's sharpness.

We've already discussed how the HMC40's neutral density filter works, automatically, to keep the camera's iris open as wide as possible for as long as possible, to prevent diffraction from happening. And as such, my recommendation is to keep the camera at f/6.4 or more open (i.e., use the range from OPEN on down to f/6.4, and I think it looks just fine even down to f/8, but try not to go past it into the range of f/10 or f/11, etc).

So what happens if you do stop down further? You lose some sharpness. How much? Well... not as much as I was thinking would happen, actually. There's a drop, especially at f/10.5 or f/11, but it's milder than I was expecting. (obviously it's nowhere near as bad as one would think, because of the nifty ND filter trick; it means that at a stated f/11 the camera's iris is really, truly, at around f/5.6, which minimizes the potential for diffraction to happen).

[Barry_Green]

Okay, seeing as the new crop of cameras are pushing the limits of my older charts, and there's more to come (the 7D and the GH1 need proper testing), I've had to add a couple of big-bucks charts to my arsenal. I recently picked up just about the best test chart there is, the DSC Labs Chroma Du Monde "Billups VF/X". It is the stuff. I also got a 4K res chart, the MegaTrumpets 12, a chart they designed specifically to handle 4K cameras like the Red One.

Now, we all know that the 1/2" EX1 should be sharper than the 1/3" HPX300, and the 1/3" HPX300 should be sharper than the 1/4" HMC40, right? But that's the fun thing about testing -- you get to find out where things *really* lie.

So the question is: Que es mas macho?

Here's a combined shot -- look it through and see if you think the little HMC40 can stay in the ring with the big boys when it comes to resolved detail (and, yes, these shots are from different charts, but they're all DSC charts so they should be equally applicable even though not shot at the same time off the same chart.)

[badhairdude]

i look forward to more indepth reviews. thanks!

[KnoxHotch]

I can't get a hold of the manual, but can you find out whether or not the timecode can be jam sync'ed like on the 150/170?

[ATL Media Group]

Thanks Barry! I'm keeping an eye peeled for those tests!

[ATL Media Group]

Originally Posted by Barry_Green

I haven't yet figured out how to have them both on at the same time (or if you can?).

I think you can... PG 106 SW&DISP Setup
Check the LCD and EVF set.

Also on the page about the waveform monitor it tells you to "use the viewfinder as well since part of the recording screen will be hidden by the waveform"

[Cranky]

Originally Posted by Barry_Green

The iris appears to be precise control, but unrelated to the ND. As you close the iris down it gives you a readout from OPEN to f/1.9 to f/11, in 1/6-stop increments! The 200/170/150 all have the 1/6-stop increment feature, but they don't TELL you. The little 40 actually tells you exactly where you're at in the iris readout. Makes for some perhaps-confusing numbers (f/8.5? Really?) but I always prefer more feedback over less. And, when opening up the iris, once it hits "open" it does indeed go into gain, up to the limit you specify, in 1dB increments.

Are you saying that it increases f-number with every click? This is weird. Maybe Panasonic decided not to scare people by freezing one f-number for like 10 or 20 clicks, and instead it uses virtual f-numbers? Say, if you increase f-number from OPEN, at some point, say at f/3.4 the camera starts adding ND, but it shows as if it closes aperture. This is counter-intuitive and this would freak me out. What is the range of real apertures that ND filter applies to? I would want to know. Does it display any ND-related info at all?

Originally Posted by Barry_Green

Sensitivity -- okay, so here's the bad news. We knew it wasn't going to be nearly as sensitive as the HMC150; when you cram 4x as many pixels onto a smaller chip, you can expect a drop in sensitivity. Mathematically, I would have guessed about 3 stops' less sensitive. The pixels are 4x as many, meaning 1/4 the size, meaning 1/4 as sensitive (2 stops), but also the chips are smaller (1/4" instead of 1/3") making the pixels even smaller, so... yeah, 3 stops.

This is better than 4 stops that I've calculated: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showpost.p...4&postcount=16 But I did not take into account differences between CCD and xMOS, the latter is supposed to be more sensitive. Well, the HMC150 is a whole different category. Could you compare the 40's sensitivity to HC1/A1 or FX7/V1? Would be really interesting to see what's what. I would think that the FX7/V1 should be more sensitive, after all the photosites are larger, but maybe several years of technology improvement could swing the scales to the 40's side? Thanks.