pros and cons of the FS100?

Pelican

Pelican

Well-known member
I have an FS100 on order at B&H, and felt pretty confident that is was a good device (especially after they fixed the initial software bugs).
Then I visited a local rental house yesterday and two people had some rather negative comments about it:
  • poor reliability of the FS100
  • battery connection pins breaking
  • non-panny battery is a pain, and your really have to buy extra FS bat's
  • they felt it was bad option for hand-held.
Before I cancel my order, can the FS100 users here give me a list of the pros and cons of the FS100?
Why'd did you choose it over the P2 store?


note:. I do short films (non-issue) but during documentary shooting P2 to laptop not working for me (interrupting interviews due to workflow is NOT good)
 
I've had the FS-100 sense the software bugs. I had trouble with 2 of them and 3rd one seems to have been the lucky charm. Customer service was good. The replacements were quick and the software upgrade seems to work. As far as reliability, all the harddrive solutions are scary to me but even when I had issues with the first 2 I was able to save the footage. So as time goes by I'm slowly building up my trust in the FS100. And they do have a repair footage option which makes me feel better and the workflow seems smoother now.

Haven't had trouble with the battery connection. Sometimes I plug in the FS100 while I'm shooting and it works. I should probably try the bigger battery, but I've been getting by fine. Hand-held is subjective. You can clip it to your belt or buy an attachment to your camera. I clip it my belt. It works but you have to be concsious about the firewire connection. Adding a right angle adaptor might ease my worries. Overall it's light, but it is a harddrive loosely connected to a camera via firewire. Take precautions and be aware of that. It is a tool I use though and for good reason. Hope these ramblings helped a little.
 
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Well, let's see:

Cons:
- Fan noise
- No native mode yet
- Heat
- Extra weight of the camera
- You need an extra battery

Pros:
- 111 minutes of recording time
- Reliable so far. I have version 2.0 of the firmware. I did several short tests, walked around the house, through a parking lot, a track in the field, twice recorded more than ten minutes in a row and did not lose the makeshift FireWire connection a single time.
- Can also record RAW DV, I don't know, if you can do this with P2
- After Recording, you just connect over Firewire and get a Firewire drive, ready to edit on the disk, if you wish to work like that.
- Remember: In 3 years or so with both P2 and FireStore investments you will have lost most of your money due to innovation. But with the FireStore, you still have 111 Minutes of recording time, while with P2 cards, you are still stuck with 4 or 8 minutes...And I doubt, that those P2 cards, that you will have to rewrite _a lot_ to make up for the short recording time, will last much longer than the harddisk inside the FireStore...


If two 128 Gig P2 cards would cost 3000$, I would be sold.

By the way: I don't have a flash shoe mounting kit, but I just snap the FireStore into the flash shoe. And stabilize it with some cord and packing foam.
 
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Forgot about the fan noise. Some shoots I hear it, guess when it's hot, and sometimes not at all. But it when I did hear it, it wasn't loud enough to interfer with an interview at all.

Agree with pascal on the investment thinking. That's was a main decision maker.

Never used the Raw DV. What's it's advantages?

Reminder about Native Mode: I think it's only main advantage is that it allows more footage per gig because it doesn't record the extra frames.

Other major advantage: no need for a laptop. In certain situations carrying a laptop, or having an assistant carry one around (large, loud, hot, distracting) can just look wierd and akward to a client. IMHO.
 
so i have the FS100 and have used it for 2 music videos, a live concert shoot, and some documentry shooting that im working on. other than the battery drains way to fast if you forget to turn off the lcd light and the firewire scares me a bit when going handheld. its great.

i think i am gonna invest in a few extra batteries for it. but the FS100 once you learn all the settings its really great.

like for the music videos i shot in 1080i and for the live concert i did sync with tape shooting dv (for backup).

it works great with final cut pro. you can switch between hd and sd formats pretty quick once you set up the presets, the only thing you have to remember is once you shoot hd you need to organize your clips
 
JPproductions said:
Never used the Raw DV. What's it's advantages?
Click to expand...

Well, it does not take up more space than DVCProHD, but it is in only one file, broken in parts every two Gigabytes as usual, file ending DV. I hoped to get around the MXF workflow for quick and dirty work, to just record and then convert with ProCoder without any editing besides stitching and some cutting. ProCoder can read the files, but the output is not 16:9, more like 4:3, distorted, even though both source and target settings were set 16:9.

You can convert MXF over Edius with ProCoder, but it does take very long, about 3 hours for ten minutes of footage on a slow Dual Core notebook. Seems to be because the project is not rendered. I was hoping to record to the same AVI files, whatever they contain, that Edius does produce while recording direct to notebook. Because these files even play directly in the Windows Media Player, and it's no problem to transcode those files with ProCoder to any file format you want.

Maybe someone with the knowledge about the codecs behind this can tell me, if I can record to AVI with the FireStore?
 
Have had a Firestore for a while now. For me the biggest problems are the way Focus have ignored too many of the smaller details. The FW cable they ship are totally inappropriate, so I replaced this with right angle FW connector cables; much safer.

The mount kit is a joke, £100 for a very flimsy plastic cradle, this one supplied with FW cables with right angle adapters on the 6 pin end but not on the 4 pin end which is the really important end. Zacuto make a metal cradle for the FS-100 which is cheaper and looks much more sturdy. For using on the camera, I think a custom mount which allows the unit to sit flat on the handle bar with the operation lights facing you would be best.

The firmware updates have been great though, I hope they continue to release fixes and feature enhancements.

I have a V-Mount battery system which powers to the HVX200, my Marshall LCD and the FS-100, but agree the included Firestore battery is crap and when you try and take it off, you have to be very, very careful not to break the battery connections. These connections may have been fixed in newer units though as i think this was a major issue with early units.

It records the supported formats very well though and I've not had any issues with the latest v2.0x firmware. Im not completely conformable with the reels workflow yet and need to brush up on the manual again.
--
Mark
 
Focus is shipping the FS-100 now with right angled cables. I never had problesm with the fan noise on mine, very quiet. It's very light weight. Focus and Panasonic both recommend the JimmyBox for mounting. But I use the Foucus hot shoe mount when on a tripod. I don't have problems with mine. Love it.
 
Had a few problems that arose with my FS-100.

-- Audio is missing from the last couple of seconds of each clip. I've heard this happen with some others who reported it in other forums.

-- Start/stop didn't respond. Doesn't happen often. And the quick fix is to turn off the camera and turn it back on. Don't know what causes this but it could happen at a really bad time. In the few times I've had the chance to use the camera so far, it's happened two or three times so I'm always watching for it.

-- The FS-100 outputs enough RF interference that I can't rig it near my Audio Technica diversity wireless systems. I had it in a neat little bundle at the back of my shoulder mount but that rendered the wireless systems useless. Don' t know how far it has to be in order to get a really clean signal as I hadn't had the chance to test it yet. Just discovered this yesterday.

Other observations:

-- The extended battery is good for about five hours, at least it's been that way with what I've been doing.

-- That 6-second record-ahead cache is a great feature.

-- No serious fan noise issues yet, but my shooting is mostly outdoors.
 
BenB said:
Focus is shipping the FS-100 now with right angled cables.
Click to expand...

Right angle on the 4 Pin end? If so, about time; I suggested this to them the day they shipped and they said we'll look into it. I'm still amazed this was not something they had included from day one.
 
mark.burton said:
Right angle on the 4 Pin end? If so, about time; I suggested this to them the day they shipped and they said we'll look into it. I'm still amazed this was not something they had included from day one.
Click to expand...

I am thinking about ordering the extented battery, and I wonder, If Focus could include one of those right angle cables? :) Because mine does not work, I had to take one of mine. I never lost connection though.

Can onyone tell me, what the dimensions of the extended battery are? Much thicker than the 90 minutes battery?
 
Think about all the units like this they have sold over the past several years, it was never a problem before. And all their past devices have very solid reputations. Remember how new this whole P2 thing is to the hand held market. If it was easy, the CinePorter would have been released a long time ago.

You can find right angle adaptors, too. I've not purchased any, but I've done searches and found several companies who sell them. They're dirt cheap. Just get an adaptor on your own, problem solved.
 
Thanks all for the your experiences. I've cancelled my B&H order. I think I'll just stick to the laptop workflow(P2 genie, and/or DV Rack). Based on the comments hear and with other local users, the FS100 just seems a little too fragile/unreliable for my liking.
note: My decision is influenced by the fact that I also feel a couple 16gb P2's in the not-so-distant-future will be a much better workflow.
 
3+ hours on the larger battery, thicker slighty than the battery it comes with. The extended life battery will also not fit in the hot shoe mount.

Love my FS-100, no problems, and we beat the hell out of it in the swamps.
 
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