New A1 and some footage

Kevin Dorsey

Kevin Dorsey

Veteran
So I got sucked in and bought an A1. I'm very pleased with the performance. There are a few minor gripes that have all been mentioned here already, zebras and peaking, servo zoom, no physical OIS button, but by no means are they deal breakers. All in all this is a sweet camera for the price. I'm editing with Premiere Pro 2.0 and it cuts through the HD like butter, until you start adding effects. Just have to make sure to have my edit locked, and then start cc'ing and grading.

Here's a short clip of some of the first test footage I shot. I wanted to see some different looks on my HDTV so it's a little all over the place, and a lot of it is shot through a dirty windshield, story of my life.

http://www.stickypod.com/videos/data/534/Random_24f.wmv
Right click...save target as...65MB...1280x720 wmv. Thanks to Stickypod for the hosting.

-Kevin
 
Hi, good for you, dwnloading highspeed now. I spend a lot of time to build a custom set that gives me the best. The userpresets.
 
Very nice shots for just random shooting, especially at the end.

I really like the shot at the laundry shop at 1:00 with the greenish/blueish tint!
You could use it for a movie!
This cam makes some enormous lens flares (at 1:31). Might be annoying sometimes but you could also use it creatively!

steven
 
:cheesy: Well done! This one is showing off. Nice sharp parrot. Good colors.
 
Hey, I really like the shot at the laundry shop at 1:00 with the greenish/blueish tint!
You could use it for a movie!
Click to expand...
Yeah I like that cold look myself. It seemed to fit the location. Looks pretty damn good on the big plasma.
 
Yeah it was! What were you using, Sacksnack? Is that all just 24F with a bare A1 or did you have a 35mm adaptor?
 
It's all the stock lens, no adapter. I was about 4 feet away from the parrot, and if she leaned towards me an inch, I would lose focus. Thank god for the peaking function.
 
That was pretty fun, Kevin. Great song choice too-- the whole piece had a great rhythm. The shots of the birds were incredibly detailed. Loved that one focus pull on the cage.

Any other comments about the camera? Did you export the wmv from Premiere? I keep hearing how bad it is for encoding, but that looked great.

Congrats on the cam and I look forward to more!
 
Yeah, no kidding. Can you give me an idea of how the peaking function works on the A1?

Did you do a lot of color correction? I mean, that stuff in the laundromat looks ultra-chromish. Did you augment light in any of these shots or was it all available light?
 
Thanks Elton, I did a test recently and compared Sorenson squeeze and Premiere's media encoder, and Premiere encoded wmv better than squeeze. I think Premiere really suffers trying to encode quicktime files. But I use debug to export quicktime, from the timeline, using squeeze. I'll comment more later, I have a bball game in 20mins.

-Kevin

Edit- this was all available light.
 
This cam makes some enormous lens flares (at 1:31). Might be annoying sometimes but you could also use it creatively!
Click to expand...

I forgot to mention that the light smear during the night footage was done intentionally, I wanted to see how long it would take to render that effect, then I dropped it into my new sequence and forgot to remove it.

Other thoughts...This camera is ridiculously good looking. And color coordinated for use with Bogen tripods. I like the iris ring on the lens, it seems a little vague sometimes, if I try to adjust too slowly, or quickly, but I think I'll get used to it. I used to fumble a bit with the DVX looking for the iris control. The DVX had the best zoom of any camera I've owned, so comparing it to that is tough, considering I manually zoomed 95% of the time. I set the speed to fast and use the rocker more than the ring, it's not necessarily bad, just different than I'm used to. There are several small fixes that would make this camera almost perfect in it's class, but then nobody would buy the next version of it. Ah who cares, the camera is flippin' sweet.

-Kevin
 
Sacksnack said:
Ah who cares, the camera is flippin' sweet.
Click to expand...

Exactly.
npimage22.jpg
 
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24f?

24f?

What were your settings? Did you shoot at 24f? and what did you import the
footage as?

Did you edit in a 29.97 Timeline?

I really like the look of the cam, but I'm wondering how it compares to the V1U's
trup 24p for filmlook.

Thanks,
Adrian
 
A lot of this was shot with a custom setting, that ended up being very close to the DVX preset #18 from Dvinfo. This was all shot 24f, and edited in a 23.976 timeline in Premiere. Premiere handles the HDV just like it handles SD, except for significantly longer rendering times. 24f is the same as 24p, Canon just gave it a different name, the motion is exactly the same as a "true" 24p camera. I'm very pleased with the picture this camera can produce.
-Kevin
 
Exactly the same? The more I use the A1, the more I see people pick one up for the first time and shoot nice looking stuff, from experienced to less experienced, Im starting to think Canon have put together something more pleasing than whats out there.

Nice sequence BTW.
 
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