sold my EX1 for an HVX.

S

shapeco

Member
Ok so the title of this post might be a bit misleading but i would like to share my crazy weekend with you.

for the last couple months i have been saving for the EX1 and it came down to this past sunday when i called B&H and placed my order. Sunday night i could not sleep, for some odd reason i felt that i had made a huge mistake.... It just wasnt for me... the EX1 that is. To be honest the biggest down fall was the cmos with its rolling shutter.... I knew for a fact i would dislike this and i had to make a change.

I called B&H this morning and made a quick order change from the EX1 to the HVX, all in all i feel better now and with the money left over i will be looking into the letus extreme.

Eh, i guess it was just a gut feeling, i love shooting handheld and while on "stixs" is done now and again i just feel like the HVX was a better choice for me.

I guess this is a good time to say hi to everyone, brand new to this place and i look forward to talking to all of you.

john.
 
Personally, IMHO rolling shutter issues are WAY overblown.

To the untrained eye, when the flash from a still camera goes off, it just looks like a flash. It's only people like us, who look at footage very critically (often frame by frame), who can really notice a difference between a flash in a video shot with CMOS as opposed to CCD imagers. It would be tough to find a layman that would notice or care.

As far as warping an image, you have to do a whip pan, that results in unusable footage anyway, to notice it.

About the only realistic circumstance I can think of, where the rolling shutter of a CMOS might seriously damage footage would be shooting in something like a disco, while strobe lights are in use.

Just my two cents.
 
Robert M Wright said:
About the only realistic circumstance I can think of, where the rolling shutter of a CMOS might seriously damage footage would be shooting in something like a disco, while strobe lights are in use.
Click to expand...
Rolling shutter issues that will damage footage will be areas like:

1. Discos/nightclubs/concerts/music videos with flashing lights or strobelights

2. Press conferences, fashion shows, boxing matches or other sporting events where a lot of flash photography is going off.

3. High vibration circumstances such as helicopter or car/motorcycle mounts or bicycle mounts

4. Shooting under magnetic-ballasted light sources such as HMI, fluorescent, or sodium vapor lights (perhaps the most pernicious and uncontrollable of the rolling shutter effects, and one I'm sure we'll hear more on as more of these rolling-shutter cameras get used in these environments).

5. Motion tracking shots for compositing and effects.

6. Rapid motion shots (running handheld, etc)

7. CRT televisions or computer monitors

Those are all areas where the rolling shutter will impact the footage. Whether you find the impact acceptable, negligible, or disastrous -- well, that's all up to your own particular standards. But the effect will be there.
 
Last edited:
I will tell you that out of the list that Barry gave the one area that is going to drive people nuts is lighting. Years ago I had a Philips chip camera LDK 90, at the time the camera made beautiful pictures, better than the other offerings at the time by a significant amount. This camera had a rolling shutter of sorts in the way the the chip info was clocked out . Florescent lighting , almost any kind of magnetic ballast lighting could produce exposure variations of subtle or not so subtle nature that would roll through the frame. If you waveform hooked up you you literally see the luminance in the image breathing 3, 5, 9 units over a few second period . Video displays and CRT's could be especially bad, with a dark band constantly rolling thru the image.
This one aspect of the camera was truly annoying many times. Philips fixed it with the LDK 91 and made the chip registers clock out in one chunk if I recall.

This issue is going to come up time and time again with rolling shutter cameras. the effect can be subtle or not so subtle and can affect luminance and color reproduction.

The only bright side I can see here is that modern cameras have a wider range of shutter speeds which allows the artifact to be tuned out to varying degrees. Good luck first of all realizing that you have a problem and second of all tuning it out. Its best done with a wave form and not by eye because the artifact, especially the luminance changes is like a slow moving wave that can have a frequency of a few seconds . It can be tough to see in the heat of the moment.
 
stephen_nugent said:
sorry to hijack, but concerning lighting, how is RED affected as opposed to EX1?
Click to expand...
Red's a little better, but in the same general ballpark. I've seen skew and banding on my Red already. Red is faster in its readout time, so its skew is less, and is promised to be even less in the next build of the software. But the fact is, if it's a rolling shutter camera, it's gonna have rolling shutter effects. No two ways around that.

Red's main defense against rolling shutter stuff is simply that by its very nature and its weight, it'll be used in more controlled circumstances. Nobody (with any sense) is going to use the Red to shoot weddings or press conferences or stuff like that, yet those are the exact type of circumstances an EX1 will end up in. And on a Red shoot you're likely going to have an informed DIT who will understand and catch the use of magnetic-ballast HMI's before they cause a problem, whereas on an inexpensive camera that's much less guaranteed.

But put in equal circumstances, you'll see rolling shutter effects on the Red just like you will on the EX1.
 
Mark, you reminded me about TV screens -- those can be nasty with a rolling shutter. I added 'em to the list.

Folks, forewarned is forearmed. If you want to use a rolling shutter camera, you'd better know what effect it'll have on your video. Pretending that the issues aren't there is not doing you or anyone else any favors. Learn what the issues are, and make your own decision on whether you can live with 'em or whether you need a CCD camera for your project (or for particular parts of your project).
 
thanks for the info Barry, i guess technical discipline can achieve the best out of both cameras. Has RED ever set you back?
 
stephen_nugent said:
thanks for the info Barry, i guess technical discipline can achieve the best out of both cameras. Has RED ever set you back?
Click to expand...
Not really; We did do some helicopter aerials of downtown Wilmington but I brought a CineSaddle to help control the vibration issues and it worked pretty well; the 30+ pound weight of the unit helped there as well.

It does conflict with my magnetic-ballast HMIs, but I've got high-frequency electronic-ballast fluos and the little Cool Lights 150W HMI and those both overcome the issue. So as long as I know not to use the slow-frequency lights with it, I can avoid the problems.
 
I was also tempted by the Sony, but went with the HVX largely because it was established technology and all the known issues were known. Sometimes having the latest and greatest only brings problems. The good thing about the HVX is that a well known cable network rented mine from me for $2,000 two days after I bought it! The HVX is known and requested by various networks. It can pay for itself. However, I really HATE the HVX's LCD and the hassle it takes to focus. I've also used a Sony HV1U and its viewfinder was much, much better.
 
Has anyone posted footage with the rolling shutter effect on the EX1? Did a search but no luck in finding examples.
 
Depends on *which* rolling shutter effect you want to see. There are lots. Skew, wobble, partial exposure for flashes, banding under HMI or fluorescent lights... there are lots of examples of each posted on DVInfo and FreshDV.
 
I'll have some great rollins shutter shots to make everyone laugh. I'll put them up next week and they look like Jello wiggling and having fun all over the place. Should be able to get to it by Monday...


J
 
Barry,
Is there no shutter angle that'll lose the TV artifacting (ie. shooting an NTSC screen at 24 FPS on the camera). Also, sodium vapor street lights, can that be solved with shutter angle or are they a problem at all? If sodium vapor is an unsolvable issue, there goes most urban night exteriors.

I'm on the fence for an EX 1. In either case, I do enough event/doc work that I won't be selling my HVX anytime soon. Definitely can't have rolling shutter for that work.

I played with the EX1 at Tamberelli and was quite blown away by the picture quality. Definitely achieved a quality I can't with the HVX.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top