AG-AC90 Review - in the Dominican Republic

Great review Barry, I am thinking this might be a great extra camera to have as I can give it to any helper and not have to worry if they will hold it still enough or make corrections the on-fly adjustments. It is priced right and you can always nick pick any camera to death. From all I have seen it looks like a well though out camera for what it is.

Also will there be a separate forum just for the AC90 soon?
 
rzr219 said:
Also will there be a separate forum just for the AC90 soon?
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The AC90 has been out enough weeks now that one would think that it would have been added to the Panasonic camcorder list here in these forums by now.

This is becoming overdue at this point in time.
 
AlbertoT said:
What CPU/RAM/OS/Video card do you use and how would your system work with a 1-hour timeline? Can you output back to AVCHD without re-compressing? Have you ever transcoded to something else like Apple ProRes or others prior to ingest?
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Hey, its a 27' iMac, (I think the specs are) Qaud core @ i5 2.8GHZ, ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB, 8 gigs of ram and I believe that machine is still on Snow Lepard.

As for the 1 hour timeline, um depends. If there are tons of supers, effects, transitions... yeah an hours worth will start to feel choppy at parts. But a quick tap of return and a breif wait gets us rendered and ready to rock again. If its just a bunch of interviews with some simple j-edits and stuff it will be dandy, especially playing back at a 1/4 or half.

It's certainly not the fastest but its more than enough for the edits I do in AVCHD.

Yes I have done projects where I have transcoded, anytime where I am working on multiple peoples machines or when I am doing a lot of color grading in 3rd party software and sending things out to AE etc

Sorry about the delay in my response.


Now I have a question for Barry, does this camera have overlays for 2:35:1? Does undoing the screw to remove the hood void warranty?
 
I sent a request for a thread via the CONTACT information on this board.





LanceOregon said:
The AC90 has been out enough weeks now that one would think that it would have been added to the Panasonic camcorder list here in these forums by now.

This is becoming overdue at this point in time.
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Plazer said:
Now I have a question for Barry, does this camera have overlays for 2:35:1? Does undoing the screw to remove the hood void warranty?
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No 2.35 overlay. And I can't fathom how that one little screw would be involved in voiding the warranty in any way... but -- I'm not the company, so I can't speak authoritatively on that, I just wouldn't expect it to...
 
The first thing I did was to remove the silly tiny screw and put it in a small tiny ziplock bag. The second thing I did was researched for the company who makes the shotgun mikes for Panasonic and then saved 179 dollars by ordering the same shotgun microphone w/o the PANASONIC label.


http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-AG-MC200G-Unidirectional-XLR-Microphone/dp/B000UTK768




http://www.amazon.com/Azden-Profess...&qid=1354390546&sr=1-5&keywords=azden+shotgun



Barry_Green said:
No 2.35 overlay. And I can't fathom how that one little screw would be involved in voiding the warranty in any way... but -- I'm not the company, so I can't speak authoritatively on that, I just wouldn't expect it to...
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Lou Bruno said:
The first thing I did was to remove the silly tiny screw and put it in a small tiny ziplock bag. The second thing I did was researched for the company who makes the shotgun mikes for Panasonic and then saved 179 dollars by ordering the same shotgun microphone w/o the PANASONIC label.


http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-AG-MC200G-Unidirectional-XLR-Microphone/dp/B000UTK768




http://www.amazon.com/Azden-Profess...&qid=1354390546&sr=1-5&keywords=azden+shotgun
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I love your idea about the screw. That way the hood is off easy if needed.

Why are you not using the NTG1/2? http://www.rodemic.com/soundboothbroadcast It sounds better to me.
 
Thanks for the review Barry! You're writing "you can really extract a very solid 1080p 4:2:2 image out of this little camera". I was told, there is only 4:2:0 HDMI-output and no way to get 4:2:2. Who could confirm 4:2:2 HDMI output?
 
singer64 said:
I was told, there is only 4:2:0 HDMI-output and no way to get 4:2:2.
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You were told wrong. Plain & simple.
Who could confirm 4:2:2 HDMI output?
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I can absolutely confirm it. I've recorded 4:2:2 HDMI from it, and compared it to the onboard 4:2:0, and there's definitely a noticeable difference. The AC90 is true 4:2:2 output.
 
Not sure about it as the manual doesn't seem to mention it, but can anyone confirm if the ac90 has a synchro scan function?
 
NOA said:
Not sure about it as the manual doesn't seem to mention it, but can anyone confirm if the ac90 has a synchro scan function?
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It does not. You have fixed shutter speeds (1/24, 1/30, 1/60, etc) but you can't dial in a syncro-scan shutter speed.
 
Thx Barry for the confirmation, we can't have it all I guess :)
Another thing I"d like to ask, the camera has a I-zoom function that is a 25x zoom, the manual states: "This zoom function allows you to maintain high-definition picture quality. (Up to 25x)"
I just saw a user video at a basketbal game which was very sharp, only when he zoomed in 25x in that izoom modus (and that more then once) the image got noticeably soft each time and it looked out of focus, can it be that this kind of image degradation is to be considered normal, I"m guessing that it's some kind of digital zoom?
 
It is a digital zoom, and I would never say that it maintains HD picture quality! At 25x, it looks like a 2x digital zoom. In my AC90 Book I specifically say to turn it off, unless you're shooting standard-def, or you absolutely need that range and understand that it's going to get softer.
 
Will I receive your AC90 book with the camera in Germany as well - or do I have to order it separately (and where)?
 
It is only bundled in the USA version.

Ordering information for other territories hasn't been established yet. I hope to have an answer on that soon.
 
Barry, Not questioning your findings but on hdmagazine they state the camera has very poor resolution which I find very hard to believe after seeing some samples on Vimeo, and that's after a compression. I wonder if he was filming in DV mode :)

But they also claim there is quite a delay between turning the rings on the lens and the actual adjustments and that this is in particular for the zoom ring which would take seconds before something happens? Did you experience a significant delay between turning the rings and the actual changing of zoom, iris of focus?
 
NOA said:
Barry, Not questioning your findings but on hdmagazine they state the camera has very poor resolution which I find very hard to believe after seeing some samples on Vimeo, and that's after a compression. I wonder if he was filming in DV mode :)
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I don't know what hdmagazine is, I haven't seen that, but I can tell you from pointing an AC90 at a resolution chart that it is extremely high resolution. Extremely.

But they also claim there is quite a delay between turning the rings on the lens and the actual adjustments and that this is in particular for the zoom ring which would take seconds before something happens? Did you experience a significant delay between turning the rings and the actual changing of zoom, iris of focus?
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Iris and focus are instantaneous. On the early, early, first preproduction model, the zoom ring was atrocious. It was so disconnected from reality that it was, in my opinion, unusable. They fixed that, and the zoom ring is quite usable now. However, it does respond differently (which is a good thing). On the zoom rocker it responds immediately to any input, which means that when you press the rocker it starts zooming instantly, and stops zooming instantly. On the zoom ring, it's "feathered" -- as you first move the ring, it zooms slowly for a tiny fraction of a second, ramping or feathering into the zoom. And when you stop, it takes a fraction of a second to feather down to a stop. That helps avoid the jerky start/stop syndrome. It is not a zoom ring like on the prior Panasonics. On the prior Panasonics the zoom ring was a direct manual physical zoom, so you had precise control, but it was difficult to feather into and out of a zoom. On the AC90 you can have both -- feathered in/out by using the ring, or direct control through the rocker.

Even so, I find the zoom ring (while vastly improved) is not on par with their more expensive cameras. If you really crank the zoom ring around (like trying to do a minimum-to-maximum snap zoom) you'll see the zoom action speed up and slow down in noticeable increments. So the zoom ring is there, and it does work, and it does serve a purpose, but frankly I find myself using the rocker much more than the zoom ring.
 
Hi Barry, because the difference between 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 only relates to vertical chroma resolution, did you verify the difference by using specific/critical testpatterns?
 
andre said:
Hi Barry, because the difference between 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 only relates to vertical chroma resolution, did you verify the difference by using specific/critical testpatterns?
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Yes, I tested a concentric-ring color resolution chart, the DSC Labs "Wringer". The improvement was substantial.
 
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