EX-1 and HVX200A Run-n-Gun Experiement: Narrativeish

nice post. what were you guys lighting with? specifically in the first courtyard scene and the hallway. it would be interesting to know what fixtures you were using, even though you mention they weren't ideal.

and i'm assuming you were shooting pretty fast lenses in the 1.2 / 1.4 range? did you ever shoot the 24mm 2.0?
 
ecking said:
I think video #6 on vimeo is Ex1 and #7 is hvx. That said both look good but #6 slightly edged out #7. Did you use an adapter for the whole thing including the opening shot? And even if we don't know which cam is which was the ultimate on the hvx or the ex1? When you said you didn't really have a chance to light it up do you mean you didn't use lights at all in that piece or not as much as you wanted, if you did use some what did you use? And or my own personal curiosity how were your handheld rigs not proper? You didn't use the redrock or zacuto setup for either? Or just pieces of one or something? I'm interested more and more in handheld, that's why I'm always asking you about your handheld rigs lol.
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I think that you're right, they both look good as an overall image (not my terrible lighting) and they both could get the job done with similar results. Especially when someone who knows what they're doing ( who is not me) gets their hands on the EX1. I'm gonna have to do more shooting with it and find some nice settings.

The Ultimate was ont he HVX200A.

As far as light I seriously only had a couple of them. There was no way we could light a street without permits and we had to really move quick to get done. Eep. So this is minimal lighting and very sloppily done on my part. The other guys helped out tremendously. My favorite part is actually when Willis is standing against the gate and in the hallway.

The handheld rigs were different. One was a fullblown Zacuto rig with battery counter-balance and one was my RR setup, shoulder-mount.

The problem was that the 200A setup was a LOT more comfortable to shoulder-mount (RR setup) than the EX-1 because the RR shoulder-pad feels a lot better. I had to take the shoulder-pad off of the EX-1/Extreme setup and pretty much hold it at my side which accounts for the horrid framing during the "running" shot in the hallway on the EX1 example. So, basically there were only pieces of the Zacuto rig on the EX-1 and it was a little difficult to deal with that camera.

Even still, the jello-cam wasn't horrendous enough for me to say I would never do janky handheld with it again. xD haha
 
alexdias said:
first: HVX200A
second: EX-1

Both looked good but the first one seems naturally more "filmic" and moody.
The second clip could have been graded to looked more moody according to the idea.
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You're right about which is which. I agree that the 200A looks a lot more "organic" if that even makes sense in a digital world. And, as much as I want to put the responsibility on the color representation it feels like there's something "more" at work.

I dunno what it is.

More than likely if both cameras had the same adapter and the EX1 was setup properly then I would think differently. That's why I need to take the EX1 and Ultimate setup out to shoot something this short again so I can really tell which one I want to end up with.

I think Willis and I are both STILL on the fence about 170 and EX1 at this point given that we understand the EX1 was handicapped by the adapter, our familiarity with it AND our lack of talent (haha) and it looks great!
 
kyledroid said:
My guess: clip A was all hvx200a baby...yayeaa! However, way too dark on my monitor to be able to discern a great difference between the 2 adapters, but my pick would be the ultimate for the first clip and the letus extreme for the second.
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Right-o about the Ultimate/Extreme.

And number one was 200A. The Scene File was a stock Scene 5: Cine V. I didn't tweak it or anything to compensate for the adapter which I usually do. Go figure.

They're both dark, though. I wish I had more light! I don't even MIND the gain though. As you can see it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be with the 200. The Gain is like the A1's now instead of Chroma Noise. I can appreciate that.
 
chagchag said:
uhm.... this is sort of moot.

The seccond one is not exposed the same way as the first. As far as look goes there are a zillion things to tweak on each camera so there is really no way to tell, at least not as long as we are supposed to judge by a vimeo-clip.

One thing a lot of people don't seem to understand with the EX1 is that it comes without preloaded scenefiles like the HVX, and thus mistake it for lacking an "organic/filmlike" look. Mostly because of people posting clips with poor scene-file and sharpening settings. And to drop a small bomb, that includes Phillip Bloom's work.... (allthough it is beutfully shot).
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Hey Chag Chag. I'm actually not asking which one is better, just which one is which. It was more of a comparison of two systems and being that it wasn't scientific at all to judge online, instead of in-person, which is better isn't ideal.

We definitely need more experience with the EX1 and it's a great camera. There are some things I dislike about it but nothing that I couldn't get over if I owned it.

All in all it's just for fun. I will say that I turned off sharpening and a few other in-camera processing selections. Still, I need more practice.
 
davetronic said:
nice post. what were you guys lighting with? specifically in the first courtyard scene and the hallway. it would be interesting to know what fixtures you were using, even though you mention they weren't ideal.

and i'm assuming you were shooting pretty fast lenses in the 1.2 / 1.4 range? did you ever shoot the 24mm 2.0?
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Mostly two 150w HMI's (Cool Lights) and some 100w Dedo's for rims in the hallway. The rest was pulling out fixtures in the ceiling since the place looked a little "drab" to begin with.

The lenses are all in the 1.4 Range. Willis has a bad-ass collection of near-mint Contax Zeiss lenses. The widest that we used was a 28/2.8 I believe, the fastest lenses are 1.4.
 
Thanks for doing this, Kholi. I've had enough of seeing footage of trees and grass and landscapes and casual panning and people sitting in front of the camera and turning their head or waving their arms.

THIS shows the two in a real life shooting situation - at least how it pertains to many of us here. I dont shoot trees and fields.

Now, while I agree that settings can be changed on the EX1 with more experience and more knowledge of the camera, but you cant change that jello-cam.

For me, between these two cams, for narrative films, it's easily the HVX. If I were to shoot landscapes, the EX1 would be my cam.


Oh, oh, oh.... you said "no worse than the Red". With all due respect, that doesnt matter. That's for the Red vs Whatever test. This is the HVX and EX1. Red doesnt factor into it.
 
Appreciate the efforts and sharing. Im still not a fan of vimeo or any other web based uploader when it comes to judging material. I always prefer the big fat 100mb+ QT downloads. Then again I have a very fast connection so maybe my opinion would differ on DSL.

Anywho, I agree that the HVX has the cine gamma edge. I'm not familiar with the EX1 much so I can't judge its capabilities here but I think panny has done a good job with their highlight treatment and gamma. I look forward to the Ult EX1 round but would love to see some convergence footage too. Can you make that happen??
 
Well, either way, the footage is amazing just for being both darkly lit and for being shot with 35mm adapters on top of that. It just shows how camera makers have come a long way when it comes to low light.

You know, it's tough to choose between each setup based on these clips. I know the EX1 can do better as far as film look goes, there's been enough footage going around to show that. The HVX still proves to be an absolutely phenomenal camera out of the box in terms of film look. I guess it could be a better match if the EX1 footage had its blacks crushed a little bit to compensate. The EX1 is naturally better in low light but for this project, it needs to be darker. The HVX footage was good but in some instances it was almost too dark. What I'm saying is that they both should be balanced overall in color correction to make a better comparison. As far as run and gun goes, both cameras did a great job as far as I could tell. Although some have mentioned it, I personally didn't notice any jello wobble in the EX1 footage.
 
I don't know what the point is of a comparison between 2 cameras set up entirely differently - different gammas , probably different black levels and matrix settings .

If you guys had spent the time to match the cameras then it would tell you a whole lot more.

The second one I'll guess is the Ex because its too flat for the show and you said you weren't familiar with it but both cameras have lots of room for changing the looks especially the Ex.

Lenny Levy
 
This was a tricky one.. at first, I thought the first clip was Panny, due to the dark halos around the light, but then I thought it was the EX1 after I watched the second clip, because the second clip was MUCH softer in the beginning.
However the second clip has more detail in the shadows. Though the first seemed a bit sharper overall and maybe a tad cleaner. Hard to tell, as I'm watching this on my internet machine, on a CRT with an single core AMD process that was having trouble keeping up with the decompression process.
Both looked very good though.
 
I watched the entire clips of both (Willis is a fine actor!) and not knowing which was witch, I mean, which, I thought the second clip was easier to watch. I watched the second one first, and then when I watched the first one it seemed rather dark... too dark imho. I'm sure things could've been done in post to give it any kind of look you wanted by either camera, but as is, I honestly prefer the second clip.

On an unrelated note, I threw up a little blood in my mouth and then went out and hugged my dog.
 
P.S. Me no see-um jello-cam. I re-watched both hallway scenes... it is noticeable to me that the hallway scene with the EX1 was shot even rougher than the HVX (probably unintentionally) but I certainly didn't see any jello-vision. Jello-vision is very noticeable, the whole picture goes whacky. I've never been able to induce it yet on my EX1 but I've seen footage of it online from a HV20 shot from a vibrating vehicle. The hallway footage here looks fine. I even paused multiple times on the scene to look for it. But I don't pretend to be the final say.
 
Kholi, did you set the EX1 to 720p or to 1080p? That's important to know because at 720p the EX1 should be 1/2 stop faster than at 1080p.
 
zergtherobot said:
I can't spot the jello vision at all. So for me I guess that would never be an issue.
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I couldn't spot it either, but if it did, it would've been way too fast to tell. Part of this test was to show that even with handheld shaky movements, jello-vision is not very apparent at all.
 
Buck Forester said:
I watched the entire clips of both (Willis is a fine actor!) and not knowing which was witch, I mean, which, I thought the second clip was easier to watch. I watched the second one first, and then when I watched the first one it seemed rather dark... too dark imho. I'm sure things could've been done in post to give it any kind of look you wanted by either camera, but as is, I honestly prefer the second clip.

On an unrelated note, I threw up a little blood in my mouth and then went out and hugged my dog.
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aww, thanks Buck, that first comment made me feel better about myself while I was undergoing through a LOT of stress. The lighting was the exact same setup, therefore part of this test is testing the camera lens' quickness @ its widest potential (resulting to a couple of soft racks) also, time was a huge constraint.
 
basspig said:
This was a tricky one.. at first, I thought the first clip was Panny, due to the dark halos around the light, but then I thought it was the EX1 after I watched the second clip, because the second clip was MUCH softer in the beginning.
However the second clip has more detail in the shadows. Though the first seemed a bit sharper overall and maybe a tad cleaner. Hard to tell, as I'm watching this on my internet machine, on a CRT with an single core AMD process that was having trouble keeping up with the decompression process.
Both looked very good though.
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I thought they both looked pretty good, if I were to only show the EX1 clip, I'm sure people wouldn't notice 1/2 the things they notice while it's put next to the 200A. Though EX-1 is obviously sharper, and I would have to agree that 200A's color and softness does somehow make it look a little more "organic"
 
Lenilenapi said:
I don't know what the point is of a comparison between 2 cameras set up entirely differently - different gammas , probably different black levels and matrix settings .

If you guys had spent the time to match the cameras then it would tell you a whole lot more.

The second one I'll guess is the Ex because its too flat for the show and you said you weren't familiar with it but both cameras have lots of room for changing the looks especially the Ex.

Lenny Levy
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I agree we should've spent a little more time with the EX, at first the EX owner was going to come tech for us, but he had other projects to shoot with his other EX. However, like I said, if we were to only post the EX's footage, it wouldn't look as bad as you might think it is. I like the EX's footage by itself, but start to notice a lot of things that could be better when put next to the 200A.

The "point" is to compare the 2 cameras' images *Roughly* shooting the same narrative short with a 35mm adapter undergoing through rough circumstances.
 
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