Indie/Student Film and HPX2000

C

cmb_1455

Active member
Hello all. Recently, a colleague of mine and I had started talking ideas to make an hour-long film which took place at a prison. We wanted to shoot the project with a very high contrast, low light style of cinematography in mind.

Both of us will be Seniors at our film school: College of Santa Fe. We will be allowed to rent a camera and other gear for our film. One camera that is available is the HPX2000. This colleague and I are familiar with the HVX200, and have had some pretty good luck shooting little movies with that camera. However, we are aware of the low-light problems with this camera, and talked about stepping it up for this project. However, we still wanted to use the P2 format.

For those of you who have had experience with the HPX2000, what are its low light and high contrast capabilities? Are there any specific settings that help with this? We know we want to shoot either 720/24p or 1080/24p. We may shoot PN. We're looking at situations where there's decent amoutns of toplight, backlight, and/or 3/4 backlight, with lots of dark areas to camera. We would like to keep as much detail in the dark as possible.

Luckily, I can get this camera before we shoot (a few months away) and test it out with different lighting styles. I was just hoping to get someone's experience on the cam and maybe they can give me a couple of pointers.

Thanks you all!
 
I can't really speak for the extreme contrast, but the low-light capabilities are drop-dead gorgeous on the 2000. In comparison, it makes my HPX500 look like a point-n-shoot.
 
Tomas,
I was being a little facetious with that comment. The 500 is a great camera, but in comparison to the 2000 in low light situations, the 500 falls short.
 
i guess i will just have to see for myself.. as i can't afford immediately buy hpx2000, will have to stick with hpx500...
 
Alrighty. well thank you guys for your input. I will start playing around with this camera. If anyone can still give pointers on cam settings, let me know. THanks!
 
I shoot with 500 all the time in low light and have no complaints. I am sure the 2000 more sensitive but it also lacks a lot of other options that the 500 has that I wouldn't trade for.
 
Strange. I remember Barry Green quoting the 2000 and the 3000 being slower than the 500. The 500 has less and therefore bigger pixels on the sensors - that's why it should be the faster one. It is also said to have one stop more of dynamic range. But that's all 2nd hand information. Hopefully the ones who had the chance to compare the cams will jump in.
 
Tomas Riuka said:
alright, but 610 is SD camera... i'm talking HD
Click to expand...
I was just using it as a comparison. The 500 is better in low light than a z1 but if low light is a real issue you need to look at the 2100.

Andrew the 610 is the 25mbit version of the DVCpro 910.
 
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