Steve Lazur
Member
Got to play with an HVX200 yesterday that a friend has on loan for evaluation. He called knowing I would be interested to see how it performed.
I was interested in one thing, what does the final image look? I wanted to know how it would resolve a landscape shot. What kind of detail would the lens pick up? I came to the conclusion that this isn't the camera for me. I wasn't surprised, but disappointed. It was as I expected with a camera that has 1/3 inch sensors.
We set the camera on a tripod in the front yard and aimed it down the street. The camera was set at 1080 24P, no gain, with the exposure just under the zebras in the sky. Parked cars in the foreground, the boulevard crossing at the end of the street and mountains in the background. Well, the mountains had a ghosting effect. The stop sign at the end of the street had distracting fuzziness as did a large TIRES sign. Foreground seemed very good. The same scene zoomed in looked much better. The mountains became sharper and detail was clearer. So I quickly saw the limits of this camera.
I believe that in less demanding scenes, ones that don't require resolving smaller details, the camera performs nicely. My friend showed me some stuff he had shot at the auto show earlier in the day and it all looked very good. Sharp and colorful.
One major problem with the camera is that the swing out monitor is very hard to work with. You must look at it straight on or you lose the image. This makes it very difficult for scene judgment. I didn’t understand how difficult this would be until I tried it. A good remote monitor would solve this problem.
I believe anyone that was happy with the DVX100 will like this camera with all the new bells and whistles it has. I think it will be great for documentary work. I don’t think it is the right camera for weddings. I think for intimate story telling the image will not distract. But I think if you were hoping that this camera would compete with a Varicam for image beauty, well, those with 2/3 in chip cameras don't need fear competition from the HVX.
We shot some stuff inside the house and saw that the image could get quite noisy without enough light. In fact the HVX had more noise than some comparable shots that we had with the Sony FX-1. I thought that the Sony camera out performed the HVX, even though it was shooting on tape. We shot a music video a few weeks earlier with the Sony and I was very surprised and how well it performed. <http://www.plumwerks.com/secret/video/introduction.html>
I would recommend to anyone who was interested in the HVX200 not to jump in but to rent one and see if it meets your needs. Me, I'm going to keep dreaming about a 2/3 inch chip camera that I could afford and maybe pick up a Sony FX-1 to play around with.
I’ve been reading DVX User.com for some time now in anticipation of this Panasonic camera. Thanks to all that have kept me up to date. I hope this post helps someone.
I was interested in one thing, what does the final image look? I wanted to know how it would resolve a landscape shot. What kind of detail would the lens pick up? I came to the conclusion that this isn't the camera for me. I wasn't surprised, but disappointed. It was as I expected with a camera that has 1/3 inch sensors.
We set the camera on a tripod in the front yard and aimed it down the street. The camera was set at 1080 24P, no gain, with the exposure just under the zebras in the sky. Parked cars in the foreground, the boulevard crossing at the end of the street and mountains in the background. Well, the mountains had a ghosting effect. The stop sign at the end of the street had distracting fuzziness as did a large TIRES sign. Foreground seemed very good. The same scene zoomed in looked much better. The mountains became sharper and detail was clearer. So I quickly saw the limits of this camera.
I believe that in less demanding scenes, ones that don't require resolving smaller details, the camera performs nicely. My friend showed me some stuff he had shot at the auto show earlier in the day and it all looked very good. Sharp and colorful.
One major problem with the camera is that the swing out monitor is very hard to work with. You must look at it straight on or you lose the image. This makes it very difficult for scene judgment. I didn’t understand how difficult this would be until I tried it. A good remote monitor would solve this problem.
I believe anyone that was happy with the DVX100 will like this camera with all the new bells and whistles it has. I think it will be great for documentary work. I don’t think it is the right camera for weddings. I think for intimate story telling the image will not distract. But I think if you were hoping that this camera would compete with a Varicam for image beauty, well, those with 2/3 in chip cameras don't need fear competition from the HVX.
We shot some stuff inside the house and saw that the image could get quite noisy without enough light. In fact the HVX had more noise than some comparable shots that we had with the Sony FX-1. I thought that the Sony camera out performed the HVX, even though it was shooting on tape. We shot a music video a few weeks earlier with the Sony and I was very surprised and how well it performed. <http://www.plumwerks.com/secret/video/introduction.html>
I would recommend to anyone who was interested in the HVX200 not to jump in but to rent one and see if it meets your needs. Me, I'm going to keep dreaming about a 2/3 inch chip camera that I could afford and maybe pick up a Sony FX-1 to play around with.
I’ve been reading DVX User.com for some time now in anticipation of this Panasonic camera. Thanks to all that have kept me up to date. I hope this post helps someone.
