AF-100 & indoor sports

A

AdamLPhotography

Member
Hi, I've been using an HMC-150 for sporting events, but was thinking about possibly getting an AF-100 instead. The low light performance sounds very attractive, and the fact that I have a lot of expensive Nikon glass that I'd be able to use with a mft adapter is also a great bonus. Some questions I have though: would shooting in 1080 60i be the way to go for something like boxing? I'd need to capture the fast movement as cleanly as I could.

Also, concerning my existing lenses, I have a crane I use to get the HMC-150 way up above the ropes. Will the existing vari-zoom I have work with Nikon lenses on the AF-100 for controlling aperture/zoom/focus? I suspect it won't which would be a deal breaker for those lenses up on the crane. I wouldn't mind picking up a mft zoom specifically for my sports footage, so if there are any fast lenses that would get the job done I'd love to hear about them.
 
Something like boxing I would stick with my HMC-150. Form factor is better and you'd miss the zoom. Also only lens you can control on a crane are slow.
 
In my experience, my AF100 w/ 14-140/f4-5.8 still outperforms my HVX200 in low light, albeit at higher ISO (800+).

That said, crane controllability won't be easy. The Varizoom controller will reportedly control the new 14-42 and 45-175 power zooms, but my Varizoom controller also has an incompatability with the iris circuitry that results in it not opening the iris completely on Lumix lenses (varies per lens, .2-.4 stop). None of your Nikons would be controllable (zoom, iris, or focus), although they do work wonderfully in full manual.
 
So does the higher ISO on the AF-100 equate to more grain than your HVX? I'd imagine that it doesn't, considering the sensor size difference. I'm assuming that the AF-100 has an auto-iris, which is what I typically use during these events on my HMC-150 anyway, so iris control isn't too much of an issue. I'm not typically zooming fast either, just enough to keep the fighters in frame with enough wiggle room in case they suddenly move. Only time I zoom in is during fighter introductions. Here's one of the fights I taped to give an idea of what the environments are like, and the performance of the HMC-150. I have a cheap B camera mounted on one of the light poles that I switch to every now and then, if you're curious about the cut-aways.


This was only the 2nd fight I recorded with the HMC-150, and I learned a lot from it (like I needed to white balance - the post-production had a lot of tweaking to get things to look natural.) Anyway, I'm also interested in doing recording outside of gigs like this that would benefit greatly from the lenses I already own for photography, which is why the AF-100 sounds so appealing. I just want to make sure that investing in it will get me results with my typical shooting gigs (fights) that exceed what I get with the HMC-150, otherwise it wouldn't make much sense to spend the money on a new camcorder. That and I *really* don't want to have to pick up one of those 35mm lens adapters when I want to get DOF for other projects. Seems silly to spend over a thousand dollars and get what I consider sub-par results.
 
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That's an interesting video. I don't think my vision is sensitive enough to pick out any noise in that footage. I'm also not sure how that would compare to the HMC-150. I'm assuming that since I didn't see any noticeable grain even at high ISO that the AF-100 performs very well in low light environments. The HMC-150 does adequately, but the dynamic range doesn't seem to be much to write home about.

There's a place selling new AF-100 with 2 lenses, a 14-42 & 45-200 O.I.S., with body for 4,575.00. That plus the gold card from Panasonic means a $4k (+tax and shipping) with a couple of (I assume) nice lenses. I'm emailing the company to see what lenses they're including, and if they're good ones, I think I'm going to take the plunge.
 
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