Hvx200 vs XH-A1 lowlight
- Thread starter magichristopher
- Start date
Stuart Hunter said:
You used one? Reason I ask is that I can pump the colours on the A1 to equal the HVX... out of the box is kind of cold yes, but hey we are in the manual camera world.
Elton
Veteran
Delaro, do you like color correction in post? If so, you actually would want a somewhat milky image captured in-camera if you want the maximum latitude in post.
That NY clip I showed was intentionally shot a bit flat in order to show that you can correct the image in post to just about any kind of look you want.
That NY clip I showed was intentionally shot a bit flat in order to show that you can correct the image in post to just about any kind of look you want.
Elton said:
well it would be ok with uncompressed footages.
with my nikon d70 i have raw material, i can push the CC a lot so i prefer to shoot flat.
but here it's 4:2:0. i'm using color finesse with my HC1, it's wrong to say that you can obtain any kind of look you want. we're not playing with 4:4:4 here. you have to know what kind of look you want before shooting to achieve it properly. that's why i'm waiting for well lite footages showing faces, close ups, with good A1 color settings (saturation, pedestal, cinegamma). anyway your footage was really good! i saw it 50 times, but even CCed, colors look very pastel. i've been playing with it for hours in AE.
xray
Well-known member
Copy that, it looks like that all the energy is going to show lowlight and 24p performance. It is important, and I'm sure you can get a better noisefree image with the A1 than you get with the HVX in low light but:
If you look at the HVX clips almost ALL are shootings in bright sunny places...
So the A1 footage needs to do the same: shoot well lit outside close up shots, people, nature, animals. The HVX gives you a saturated contrast-rich look, there is no need to create the HVX look (every cam has its own) but to 'please' people, better show up balanced footage with rich colors and nice deep blacks.
Do it in cam or in post, make a good H.264 mov and post it!
If you look at the HVX clips almost ALL are shootings in bright sunny places...
So the A1 footage needs to do the same: shoot well lit outside close up shots, people, nature, animals. The HVX gives you a saturated contrast-rich look, there is no need to create the HVX look (every cam has its own) but to 'please' people, better show up balanced footage with rich colors and nice deep blacks.
Do it in cam or in post, make a good H.264 mov and post it!
Barry_Green
Moderator
whachusay said:I would like to see Barry do a little shoot off between these two cameras.
That was the plan, and I have 'em both right now, but the weather has been most uncooperative. Yesterday was a raging storm all day, probably not hurricane strength but it was N A S T Y. Today looks better but there's no sun, just flat overcast blah. So nothing interesting to shoot...
Barry_Green
Moderator
No you cannot. The A1 is every bit as noisy as the HVX, and about the same sensitivity. They are, for all practical purposes, basically identical in low light considerations (although it does appear that the HVX can see a bit deeper into the shadows).xray said:
I'd love to but there's no sun! The weather is working against me here...
delaro said:
I think it's not as bad as you and many other folks claim. Of course, pushing image from one extreme to the other in post is not a good idea, even with RAW images from DLSR. However, if you know what you want to achieve, you really do not have to do it 100% in the camera. I agree with Elton.
Personally I prefer to shoot with wider dynamic range rather than try to achieve final results in the camera, but it does not mean shooting flat. I prefer to target the golden middle. If something goes wrong (and it does sometimes for all of us, well, maybe except for Barry
), it's so much easier to make necessary corrections in post.And btw, you can push XH-A1 as hard as you want, from very flat to deep and dark, from saturated orgy of colorful flowers in the garden to completely B&W. So, if you prefer to achieve what you want in the camera, no problem. It's all in the custom settings and it's amazing.
About low light performance, I don't agree with Barry. Canon is significantly better.
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xray
Well-known member
Barry_Green said:
Based on the camcorderinfo test and on the lowlight HVX comparision test I think you get a better noisefree image with the A1. BTW the call for sunny colorful shots is open for everyone!
(It is dark in the Netherlands too) I think this Canon A1 will rock for documentary work in the field!
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Barry_Green
Moderator
It means that I put the two side by side, framed the exact same shot, lit to the same low light level, opened up the iris to the max, set them on equivalent gain, and viewed 'em. And they look about the same. Comparable brightness, comparable noise. Then I gained 'em up to 6dB, and then 12dB, and in both cases they look about the same. The XHA1 has grainier/bittier noise, the HVX has more colorful smearier swimming chroma noise, but they're basically equally noisy. The H1 might be a tad more sensitive and a tad more noisy, but at equivalent brightness and equivalent detail/sharpness settings, they're equivalently noisy.delaro said:
If you turn up the sharpness setting on the H1 it gets alarmingly grainy, so I don't recommend doing that. The sharpness setting really, really, really accentuates the noise, and is probably the reason for people originally screaming about grain and poor low light performance. Turn the sharpness down to a reasonable level and it brings the grain under control too.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Based on using them both side by side at all manner of various settings, let me assure you that you cannot.xray said:
Barry_Green
Moderator
Have you worked with both of them? Have you tried them both yourself? How can you say this?Bogdan said:
I've got them both here right now. There is no difference. There is absolutely no truth to any claim that the Canon is "significantly better". They are basically identical in low light performance.
Barry_Green said:
I don't have both of them here, but I own XH-A1. I've seen enough footage to say what I've said and I agree with xray.
One can push HVX in post and brighten it, but still XH-A1 has the edge in low light. In addition to that, NR1 set Low works beautiful.
Bogdan said:I think it's not as bad as you and many other folks claim. Of course, pushing image from one extreme to the other in post is not a good idea, even with RAW images from DLSR. However, if you know what you want to achieve, you really do not have to do it 100% in the camera. I agree with Elton.
Personally I prefer to shoot with wider dynamic range rather than try to achieve final results in the camera, but it does not mean shooting flat. I prefer to target the golden middle. If something goes wrong (and it does sometimes for all of us, well, maybe except for Barry
that's exactly what i'm saying. i was not saying that it's bad, i was just saying that it's not magical. it's not: shoot flat and see later. it's easier to desaturate in post than to saturate. it seems that for a lot of people "flat" means milky, grey, not contrasted footages. for me flat is having good real colors, details where i want them to be in the image, good latitude. i'm not sure that all these rgb settings are very useful in the cam. but the cinegammas, pedestal, black settings, contrast, detail for example are very important. then when you have a nice picture well balanced you can CC in post to colorize, etc.
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Barry_Green said:
Again, you're saying it's a different kind of noise, right? I'm still trying to get someone to answer this.
If the A1 is just as noisey, which looks to be true, what about the noise makes it a lot smoother?
You said Chroma Noise for the HVX. I don't know what that term means. I'm guessing it refers to the tiny blocks of color compression crawling all over the HVX footage?
The A1's noise seems to be just pixel smear or something, but it's still got the color that it's supposed to be. So, when I CC an m2t, it's very friendly. I don't have to worry about a white shirt turning pink from the little red chroma bugs where I don't want it to.
Am I getting the gyst of it?
Barry_Green said:
I have shot with an H1 and the HVX200 together shooting the exact same material and the H1 was significantly brighter and less noisy. I proceeded to sell my HVX200 and purchase an H1 (despite the added cost) because of this increase in lowlight performance and less noise. I would not have shelled out an extra $2k+ if I didn't see a "significant" difference. I am not saying that you are wrong in your assesment but I find it perplexing that we see such a difference in this area.