AG-DVX200 4K Large-Sensor Handheld Camcorder

Barry_Green said:
Except that this would be the entirely wrong philosophy. Nobody intended the DVX200 to be a Varicam. Looking at it as if it is, is entirely backwards.
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the initial sales material explicitly stated that it had the same V log and would pair well with the Varicam as a b cam. Of course it is not a Varicam but it uses the identical Varicam V Log profile without the final two stops of upper end DR.

My point that downsizing a Varicam log profile was an admirable idea but that it really required more bits per second to create an image that withstands color correction. The Canon C Log was designed for 8 bit, the Panasonic V Log is a better scheme designed for 10 bit and higher.
 
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I'm surprised at how the DVX200 seems relegated to Run & Gun, wedding & doco work by most people. I'd happily shoot a feature or a zillion TVC's on the DVX if it was delivering the same image quality I get out of my GH4. Hopefully it gets there soon.
 
Barry_Green said:
Been trying to convince them of that for 9 years now. For whatever reason, they just aren't going to implement it. Then again, there's a notable resolution loss when shooting 120 fps, so it's not necessarily something you'd want to do as a continuous default situation.
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Thanks Barry. You are always in there fighting the good fight. Panasonic should listen to you more often. What is up with the 120fps being soft anyway? There are a decent number of cameras that can handle this frame rate without much quality loss. The NX-1 body comes to mind. Just kind of seems like this camera is a soft test of the market rather than an attempt to hit one out of the park. I know they can do better but are choosing not to. But then again, the C300II is showing up with less than stellar 120fps...
 
Bassman2003 said:
Thanks Barry. You are always in there fighting the good fight. Panasonic should listen to you more often. What is up with the 120fps being soft anyway? There are a decent number of cameras that can handle this frame rate without much quality loss. The NX-1 body comes to mind. Just kind of seems like this camera is a soft test of the market rather than an attempt to hit one out of the park. I know they can do better but are choosing not to. But then again, the C300II is showing up with less than stellar 120fps...
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Wonder if the DVX200 one day would be able to shoot slo-mo in 120 fps as sharp as the NX-1? Would that be possible with a firmware-update or is it beyond the limits of what the hardware in the DVX200 can possibly do?
 
I do some quick tests today, and there is no improvement in "black dot noise". The scenes 1 and 6 are beter then before but not in all light conditions. Scene 4 the noisiest, scene 5 has minimum noise but no details in dark areas and colours. All tests indoor HD/4K. The noise is one of the biggest problem of this camera for indoor use.
 
Barry Grumpy... err... Barry Green.... hang in there brother. I'm in a similar boat. (i.e. Six months straight of shooting and editing with only 4 days off).. I'm terrible grumpy lately. You are the bomb and I am a big fan of yours. SO looking forward to your book. I have owned the DVX200 for a couple of weeks and have done a small handful of shoots with it. I absolutely love this camera, warts and all. Although I join the minions who believe that the out-of-box experience with the DVX200 should be substantially better than it is, I am guilty of needing to learn how to use the deeper image customization functions of this camera. Makes me sad that my Canon 5D MK III has a substantially more pleasing image and (in comparison) no noise whatsoever in the shadow areas.... but as you said, the DVX200 is a big boy camera and if I can get my lazy arse to spend some time learning about the crazy variety of custom settings, I might just like the image from this camera. Admittedly, I am a bit grumpy about needing to tweak the myriad of settings to make the image from this camera look good. Imagine buying a modern computer and being told it will only do what you want if you learn to write code?.... Modifying an image "by the numbers" is really difficult and time consuming since you need to use your eyes subjectively to see if you like your recent settings. Really tough to do. Luckily for you, you have a scientist brain (I think that is what you said). For those of us who are making our day-to-day using our creative brains, needing to tap into our scientific brains can be quite a challenge. No-one (not even you) is arguing that Panasonic could have done a better job giving us scene files that aren't grossly yellow, or grainy, or clip the highlights... Just one look at the footage from my 5D shows that a nice quality image can be provided out of the box. I am hoping (and maybe even praying) that Panasonic will show more love for supporting the DVX200 than it did for the PX270 by upgrading the firmware and giving us some more refined sets of scene files. As much as I want to spend the weeks (or longer) that it would take to truly understand how to "code" the image by adjusting a bizarro amount of interrelated gibberish numbers :-).... I really just want to grab the camera, go to my corporate event, properly set the exposure and white balance, and have the people not look jaundiced, have the shadows not look like an active ant colony, and have the highlights not clip at 80%.
 
I may try to mess around with my scene files a little more this weekend. I'm not sure if I can go back and forth with a color chart and try to eyeball things and see where that gets me. I was expecting to hear back from the Panasonic rep that I was corresponding with but no word since Friday afternoon. I sent him a message yesterday afternoon and still no reply.

I'm still really amazed that we're not seeing a lot of footage being posted on You Tube or Vimeo. People like to brag about buying a new piece of equipment and if the image looked very presentable right out of the gate, I have to believe that the web would be flooded with lots of footage.

I really hope that it doesn't come down to the processor and/or image sensor not being able to work well enough to produce a base image that many of us were expecting to see. I think the average consumer has a sort of range of what an acceptable image is in their mind. Of course, there range varies from person to person but probably not by that much. If the image out of the box is slightly different from what people were expecting to see, probably a word would not have been said. A simple tweak would get it to where most people would want it. In this case that base image via a scene file appears to have been way outside of the range of image that everyone was expecting. I think that's the best way to put it.

Can the DVX200 get tuned into that acceptable range, that remains to be seen? Can this noise problem that some people are seeing get resolved? I think there is a better chance of the color becoming more in the acceptable range than the noise problem going away without some kind of additional firmware upgrade. It may be possible that the fine tuning of the color may also have the ability to resolve some of the noise issues in the process.
 
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mapper65 said:
I'm still really amazed that we're not seeing a lot of footage being posted on You Tube or Vimeo. People like to brag about buying a new piece of equipment and if the image looked very presentable right out of the gate, I have to believe that the web would be flooded with lots of footage.

I really hope that it doesn't come down to the processor and/or image sensor not being able to work well enough to produce a base image that many of us were expecting to see.
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I wonder too. But it might be a coincidence? Or maybee there has not been sold that many cameras yet?

I am also concerned of the hardwares limits. When in doubt I look at the few nice youtube videos recorded external on Atomos in Vlog Prores 422, and try to convince myself, that it is more or less a question of software / firmware rather than hardware. My experiences with the HMC151 does not really help me here. I could get better quality, but eventually I did hit the limit, and I was not seriously impressed, eventhough I actually did love that camera in many ways.

I would so much want to fall in love with the DVX200 too, but I do not like the fact, that there still seems to be issues with noise and colours (as some has reported). If I knew it was all a matter of time and that every one of these issues could be solved with a firmwareupdate or two, I would gladly buy the camera tomorrow.
 
Mabou said:
Barry Grumpy... err... Barry Green.... hang in there brother. I'm in a similar boat. (i.e. Six months straight of shooting and editing with only 4 days off).. I'm terrible grumpy lately. You are the bomb and I am a big fan of yours. SO looking forward to your book. I have owned the DVX200 for a couple of weeks and have done a small handful of shoots with it. I absolutely love this camera, warts and all. Although I join the minions who believe that the out-of-box experience with the DVX200 should be substantially better than it is, I am guilty of needing to learn how to use the deeper image customization functions of this camera. Makes me sad that my Canon 5D MK III has a substantially more pleasing image and (in comparison) no noise whatsoever in the shadow areas.... but as you said, the DVX200 is a big boy camera and if I can get my lazy arse to spend some time learning about the crazy variety of custom settings, I might just like the image from this camera. Admittedly, I am a bit grumpy about needing to tweak the myriad of settings to make the image from this camera look good. Imagine buying a modern computer and being told it will only do what you want if you learn to write code?.... Modifying an image "by the numbers" is really difficult and time consuming since you need to use your eyes subjectively to see if you like your recent settings. Really tough to do. Luckily for you, you have a scientist brain (I think that is what you said). For those of us who are making our day-to-day using our creative brains, needing to tap into our scientific brains can be quite a challenge. No-one (not even you) is arguing that Panasonic could have done a better job giving us scene files that aren't grossly yellow, or grainy, or clip the highlights... Just one look at the footage from my 5D shows that a nice quality image can be provided out of the box. I am hoping (and maybe even praying) that Panasonic will show more love for supporting the DVX200 than it did for the PX270 by upgrading the firmware and giving us some more refined sets of scene files. As much as I want to spend the weeks (or longer) that it would take to truly understand how to "code" the image by adjusting a bizarro amount of interrelated gibberish numbers :-).... I really just want to grab the camera, go to my corporate event, properly set the exposure and white balance, and have the people not look jaundiced, have the shadows not look like an active ant colony, and have the highlights not clip at 80%.
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Haha...nice post with a touch of humour :-) I get your point. As you both own and love the DVX200 at the same time, I would like to ask you if you have seen any difference in noise and colour after the firmwareupdate? Have you tried Vlog as well? I am going to try the camera for the second time in a few days...I liked it too, but I am still very concerned about how it will end?
 
Uh uh, hanging around here for quite many hours in the last months waiting for a verdict (or at least for being able to make my mind up) about the DVX200. Fist excitement. Then, disappointment. Then, new hope. So when can I finally decide about this camera? Panasonic, you'll have to give me a discount for the time spent on this forum.
 
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In case it hasn't been mentioned, and for those who may be concerned about returning an item to B&H within the 30-day window, purchases made after Oct 31 are in the holiday period and can be returned until Feb 1.

I've ordered the new NX100 as a cheap way to get by for my planned large sensor run n gun needs for the time being—with no 4K. I think I can also put that into service with my sports crews (it looks like it may operate much like the AC90, but perform better in low-light). I'm just trying to find a way to wait it out in the hope Panasonic can and will fix the DVX200 (Fine Manual Focus firmware, crunchy zoom ring, and IQ issues).
 
This is the main problem for DVX200. Dropbox video shows very clear the noise problem. The Youtube or Vimeo compression reduce noise, and is hard to see it in all reviews.
 
pancam said:
All the shooting of a failure ...
today, almost sending out
it's a multi-camera recording Atem switcher, two units Sony 320, one unit DVX 200
check out:(only dvx200)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/75wviq2qi9nv9bi/noise.mp4?dl=0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-bw3hyRkA8&spfreload=10
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I see it too, but it is hard to tell if this would happen for the GH4 as well - or the Sonys? Do you have footage from the Sony as well? Maybe Barry has got an idea what to do to get rid of it? Is this due to the limits of the hardware or is it possible to do something about it in a scenefile? If you had recorded it all in Vlog and with external recorder in 422, and then edited in post, you might have been able to mKe the noise dissapear completely...?
 
The NX5 and AX2000 1/3 sensor have les noise, more light, more details in shadows in dim light. I'm gonna do a comparison soon.
 
pancam said:
All the shooting of a failure ...
today, almost sending out
it's a multi-camera recording Atem switcher, two units Sony 320, one unit DVX 200
check out:(only dvx200)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/75wviq2qi9nv9bi/noise.mp4?dl=0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-bw3hyRkA8&spfreload=10
Click to expand...

At this risk of sounding like a jerk, this might very much be user error... but a very understandable user error. Let me explain...

Panasonic, for whatever reason, has always had the screwiest way of implementing the digital sharpening scale. On the DVX200, it's -31 to +31. -31 is zero sharpening, +31 is full sharpening. Why on God's green earth Panasonic doesn't do it on a scale of 0-62 is beyond me. But that is just how they do it. They did it on my HMC150. They did it on my AF100. Which means that -30, or -21, or -14, or -8 is still *adding* digital sharpening. What this means is the "0" on the sharpening scale is adding 50% sharpening. The footage had +10 sharpening added, which is really +41 on a 0-62 scale. Confusing? Yes it is. But +10 sharpening is cranking up the sharpening 66%. When you add that much sharpening, it is going to intensify and increase the noise.

Now, I think I read somewhere that Scene file 1 is one of the noisier scene files. If you take a noisy scene file, and crank up the sharpening, you're going to get the swarm of mosquitoes you see above that table in the footage.

My solution on my HMC150 and AF100 was to use a less noisy matrix, and crank both the sharpening all the way down, and have coring almost all the way down (so as not to have a "smeared" look). Besides, a camera that is downrezzing 4k to 1080p at a higher bitrate shouldn't need any sharpening added in camera.

And Panasonic really needs to go to a 0-X type of scale for some of these features
 
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Yes. It shows you how a 4 years old camera, with a small sensor can performe better in this case. I use this cameras for weddings Full HD, and i buy the Dvx for same job and 4k for future. AX1 use a small sensor it is not an option for me. X70 has 1" sensor 4k and better in lo light but less controls.
 
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