AF-100 or HMC-40 with Atomos Ninja

S

Sean Emslie

New member
I have $5000 to spend on a new camera, I really want to get the AF-100 but it will take my full budget. My backup is to get a HMC-40 with Atomos Ninja and record from the HMC-40 in Prores 422 HQ, plus I can buy the XLR box, shotgun mic, extra battery, case and a new Mac mini server for a quad core Mac to process the footage.
The question is great camera or a lesser camera system...
Any help?
 
As always, depends on what you want. If you want film-style shooting and low light sensitivity, the AF100 will deliver that in spades. The AF100 is comfortable at 1600 ISO, and 3200 ISO still looks very good. The HMC40 is a 50-ISO camera with deep DOF. Excellent for outdoors, for sports coverage, for anything where there's enough light and deep focus is what you want.

So what type of things do you shoot?
 
I shoot lectures and educational videos, so it looks like the af100 would be a better fit. I am also looking to do documentaries so I would like the film look that the af100 is made for.
 
I have an AF100 and an HMC80 (close cousin to the HMC40, but shoulder mount). I would by no means say either one is the "lesser" camera -- they are different tools for different types of jobs, and it is usually fairly easy to pick which one will work best for a particular shoot. If you need to handhold, or the situations you shoot in are often spontaneous and call for a wide range, servo zoom lens, then the HMC is going to be the more satisfactory camera. On the other hand, if you work at a slower pace in more controlled settings and want ultimate control of the image through the use of different lenses and optical accessories, the AF100 will better suit that style. Both produce fine pictures and have a wide range of looks that you can set up through the various processing settings, but they are designed for different styles of shooting. (Which is why I wanted both -- they complement each other nicely.) The only really serious deficit on the HMC40/80 is that it's not super sensitive in low light levels, but it is actually quite a bit more usable than the numbers alone would imply.

One general piece of advice, though, is not to spend your entire available budget on the camera alone. The AF100 really shines brightest if you use it with a variety of lenses, and you're going to need a decent tripod, some microphones and cables, possibly lighting equipment and cases as well. If you don't have all that already, you'd be better off to put together a more rounded kit based around the HMC40 or another less expensive camera, and make sure you have all the other bits and pieces to allow it to perform to its best potential. Overall, this will be better for the quality of your productions than having a great camera but no way to make stable images with good lighting and sound. (As a business writer I admire once said, "to optimize the whole, you have to sub-optimize the parts.")

Are you really sure you need the Ninja? I mean, the codec in the HMC40 is essentially the same as in the AF100; if you do so much green-screen work or complex action that you'd need the external recorder for one camera, you'd need it for the other as well. And you have to push really darned hard to get in a situation where the difference from using the Ninja would really be visible in the final distributed product.

- Greg
 
Sean Emslie said:
I shoot lectures and educational videos, so it looks like the af100 would be a better fit. I am also looking to do documentaries so I would like the film look that the af100 is made for.
Click to expand...

Funny. I would have written that sentence exactly the opposite way: "I shoot lectures and educational videos, so it looks like the HMC40 would be a better fit." (And that does, in fact, describe a lot of what I do.)

You wanna be changing lenses in the middle of a lecture you're trying to record?

- Greg
 
Thanks Barry and Greg for your advice. I was able to find a like new AF-100 that a production company is selling (they bought camera for a film shoot) and now no longer using it. I got it for $3300, so I have $1700 to put toward lens' and supplies, already have manfrotto tripod and various xlr microphones. Will be getting lexar 128gb sdxc card for recording. may look to get a samurai when it is available to speed up workflow of transferring from avchd to prores.
 
Wow, that's a steal :-O

...and I really wouldn't get a 128GB card, even if they were 1/4 their price. Way too much footage to lose if it gets corrupted, damaged, lost, etc.
 
The Ninja appeals to me for the better color depth, but mainly how frightening SDHC cards are... a lot of eggs in a tiny basket. Lately I've been getting "Check card" a lot when I stick a reliable SanDisk in; my son borrowed the camera and lost hours of shooting to a Patriot card. For a grand, the Ninja seems like a good investment that may be useful well after my 150 has moved on.
 
mkfotos.com said:
Wow, that's a steal :-O

...and I really wouldn't get a 128GB card, even if they were 1/4 their price. Way too much footage to lose if it gets corrupted, damaged, lost, etc.
Click to expand...

I completely agree (with both statements).

One 128GB card is an awful lot of eggs in one basket. I won't use anything bigger than 16GB. On my HMC150, in PH mode (the highest resolution), that's nearly 100 minutes of footage. A 128GB card is 13 hours of footage. I would be very leary of putting that much footage on one card. Break it up into a bunch of 8GB and 16GB cards.
 
Agreed here as well. I have mainly 16GB cards -- it's a convenient size for when I need to record an hour long lecture. I have a couple of 32GB cards that I use mainly when I do ENG style stuff and will be shooting all day with the camera on my shoulder, moving quickly from place to place. I've never yet filled one up completely in a day of shooting. I don't really need, or want, to go bigger than that. (For somebody who grew up shooting 11-minute, 400-foot 16mm film reels, then later the 20-minute mini-U-Matic tapes, three hours on a tiny card seems like almost infinite space!)

Sean, you're absolutely right about the Ninja as a backup recorder, and distrusting SD cards for critical stuff -- it makes a lot of sense for that, and I was only thinking about the video quality angle in my original response.

- Greg
 
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