Bob's Tests & Comments on the HMC40

BobDiaz said:
Yes, I am VERY happy with my HMC40. The camera has performed better than I first expected. While it's common for us to say, "It's not a low light camera." My first test at the different shutter speeds and gain levels showed that with a 1/30 of a second shutter and +12dB --> +18dB of gain, a reasonably good night image is possible.

I've only had a chance to shoot 2 events, The "Little Trains" and The Smart Car Rally. In both cases, features like pre-record and solid state recording make the filming of both events a pleasure. In the tape day, I'd turn off the camera while waiting to avoid excessive wear on the tape, but with solid state, who cares? When expecting something to happen with tape, I'd have to run the tape and wait, but with pre-record, just point and wait; after all I have 3 seconds to hit record and still get it.


Bob Diaz
Click to expand...

This is almost a carbon copy of my initial reaction/impression. I'd be a bit surprised if the HMC40 doesn't exceed most folks expectations more than 95% of the time. It is simply an astonishing camera at under $2k.

(I also find shooting to flash memory quite liberating.)

If I had this cam when my kids were little squirts, I'd probably have shot well over a thousand hours of footage of them growing up.
 
BobDiaz said:
To me this says that I can take the memory card out of my HMC40, pop it into the Panasonic Blu-ray player and play the video. Assume that I copy all the data off the card on to a DVD. I'm thinking that the same software that can read the card will also read the disk in the same way.
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Absolutely. BD60 and BD80 will play AVCHD from a card. They will also play AVCHD from a DVD disc, though I do back up my cards to DVDs as is, I change the directory/file naming slightly as described here: http://www.avchduser.com/articles/avchd_to_bluray.jsp This procedure is fast and relatively painless for 4GB cards, much slower for 8GB cards as DL discs are AFAIK 4x only. For my 16GB card I use MultiAVCHD to distribute files onto several DVDs, this is my least preferred backup method, as MultiAVCHD is incredibly slow, it appears to make one or two redundant copies of all files. When using MultiAVCHD you can choose target media, in particular "Panasonic AVCHD card" or "Panasonic BD player". Works fine for me.

Again, I prefer using 4GB cards because of ease of backup, I mean such a backup that allows me to watch the original content from my BD player. With my older HDC-SD1 camcorder, one 4GB card holds 40 minutes of video, good enough for me.

I've yet to create a menu for my AVCHD discs, I simply cannot comprehend how to do it with MultiAVCHD. And SDHC cards seem to not support menu at all.
 
Cranky,

Thanks for the information, as soon as I get my Blu-ray player (2 months), I'll try it out.


Bob
 
I got my HMC40 last week and was really unhappy with the low light I tries to shot some footage using my 75w on camera light and was still pushing 15-18db and the noise is to high for my taste. After shooting for under 2 hours I'm selling the camera. With the short couple of test I did I was about 1.5 stops slower than a sony fx7. I quess you get what you pay for. Don't get me known the outdoor footage is more than great. 12db is clean and I wouldn't have a problem using it but over 12db it's a little much for me. For a sub 2k camera it's great just not for me.
 
Used it for 2 hours? why not return it at that point?

1.5 stops slower than an FX7? Hmm.. Well, I guess I will find out tomorrow when mine arrives.
 
I quess the hour counter counts "on" time and b&h will only take it back with under 2hours mine is showing 7 hours now. I only recorded under 2 hours. And it wasn't a problem with the camera or b&h so why should they have to eat the cost. I have it listed for $1500 so I'll just take the hit and move on. It was a simple quick test with the fx7. zebras @ 100% on both cameras and to get the hmc to match the 7's zebras it was at 1/30 shutter 21-22db. The 7 was at 1/60th 12db. I would love to see a real test between the two.
 
DVXing said:
I quess the hour counter counts "on" time and b&h will only take it back with under 2hours mine is showing 7 hours now. I only recorded under 2 hours. And it wasn't a problem with the camera or b&h so why should they have to eat the cost. I have it listed for $1500 so I'll just take the hit and move on. It was a simple quick test with the fx7. zebras @ 100% on both cameras and to get the hmc to match the 7's zebras it was at 1/30 shutter 21-22db. The 7 was at 1/60th 12db. I would love to see a real test between the two.
Click to expand...

Did you try changing the scene file information to see if it suits your low light needs? I used the one rich r posted in the forum:

Scene File 2 (LoNoiz)
detail -4
vertical detail 0
detail coring +7
chroma level -1
master pedestal -3 (I am still playing with this)
a.iris +2
gamma b.press
knee high
matrix norm1
skin tone detail on

And it seemed to work quite a lot better in low light.
 
That kind of sucks. Wish I'd known before ordering mine. I could have saved some cash :)

Oh well.

I can deal with 1.5 stops for the loss of tape and better resolution. Besides, we get plenty of sun down here. Light isn't normally a problem.
 
DVXIng, this is the info I was looking for quite a while. Since you have both the FX7 and the HMC40 right now, could you do a quick test for the benefits of others, comparing not just just the gain at %100 zebra, but also comparing actual images? I would appreciate if you shot the same scene, matching zebras, then verifying levels in an NLE, and then posting resulting images. I just want to take a look at actual visual difference of the FX7 and HMC40 images.

I myself was thinking about the HMC40 really hard (and before the HMC40 was announced I had been thinking about the HMC150), but in the end got myself a lightly used V1U (an FX7 with pro features) for the price of a new HMC40 (but the V1U has onboard XRL block and comes with a shotgun mic). Adam Wilt haven't done a direct shootout between the two, but thinks that the HMC40 is slower than the V1 for about half a stop, he ranked the HMC40 at ISO 64, and the V1U at ISO 100. You are saying that the difference is actually more like 1.5 stops, which is huge, considering that the FX7/V1 itself is considered poor in low light.

Anyway, have you tried sending it to B&H before selling? If not, I think that $1500 is a proper price for this camera, considering that its progenitor - the TM300 - is sold for about $1100. I would buy it for $1500, I don't shoot much in low-light, but I already have got the cam.

v3rlon, do you have the FX7 too? Could you also do some more scientific, if you will, tests? And post the images? Thanks a lot, guys!
 
I did play with the settings but couldn't really get it to look much better. It does help but just doesn't cut for me. If you have plenty of light v3rlon you'll be happy but don't plan on shooting indoors with adding light and/or a lot of grain, I mean gain LOL. Really it's not bad up to 12db. I've had a couple of PM's on the camera but nothing yet so if you know anyone them know since I have to buy something else asap.
 
no... I do not still have the Sony. I sold the FX7 to get the HMC40 (could've made a trade with DVXing if he'd mentioned it a couple of weeks ago). No scientific comparisons from me.

I wanted to see exactly that comparison, but it didn't seem to exist, so I read up as much as I could and made the decision. If I have to had light or gain to make up for the loss of tape, I'll deal with it.
 
From what I found they were both iso 64 or real close. From reading people's reviews of the hmc it seemed to be better and you could push more gain. Since I wouldn't go over 9db on the 7 I thought that going 12 on the hmc would result in a brighter images but it's not true. I'd say if you weren't happy with the low light of the fx7 send the hmc back before you open it.
 
> I'd say if you weren't happy with the low light of the fx7
> send the hmc back before you open it.

Well, this is sort of obvious, as everyone says that the HMC40 is no better than the FX7/V1. At best, it is about the same. The real question is what if one IS happy with the low light of the FX7/V1?

I would really like to see images from the FX7 and the HMC40 at the same gain level, say 0, 9, 12, 18 and 24db, just to see difference in brightness, in noise, in blockiness and in mushing of the image due to noise reduction. The FX7/V1 has a very aggressive noise reduction circuit which cannot be defeated/configured, not sure about the HMC40. Also I would like to see images of the same brightness (=IRE) and compare gain values.

From what I've read, the FX7/V1 preserves about 500 lines of resolution at 9dB, but if you go higher, the resolution plummets to SD level because of noise reduction.

You probably don't want to do this now as you figured out for yourself that the HMC40 is worse than the FX7 in regards to low light, and this is all that matters to you right now :)
 
I don't own a fx7 a friend does so I can't do any test right now. I wasn't happy with the 7's low light but I could live with it. I've shot many weddings on them. I could not live with the hmc. The image is better with the hmc if you have the light. I thought $1500 was more than fair and with everyone on here I thought it would sell very fast but I quess that's no the case. I don't want people to think I'm bashing the camera. I'm just giving the info that I wanted and couldn't find. So if it cost me $500 to help other DVXusers out it was worth it. But I would still like to get this sold asap.
 
jplevinski said:
Did you try changing the scene file information to see if it suits your low light needs? I used the one rich r posted in the forum:

Scene File 2 (LoNoiz)
detail -4
vertical detail 0
detail coring +7
chroma level -1
master pedestal -3 (I am still playing with this)
a.iris +2
gamma b.press
knee high
matrix norm1
skin tone detail on

And it seemed to work quite a lot better in low light.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the settings. I've been playing with the settings to help reduce noise in low light. Using +24dB gain, I tried the following:

detail -7
vertical detail -7
detail coring +7
chroma level -5
master pedestal (untouched) I didn't get that far
a.iris (untouched) I user manual settings... :laugh:
gamma HD.Norm (I didn't get that far yet)
knee auto (I didn't get that far yet)
matrix norm1 (I didn't get that far yet)
skin tone detail off (I didn't get that far yet)

While this helps to reduce the noise level, it does NOT solve it. Not that I would expect it to, one can only do so much.

Coring_0.png

This is the factory default setting of the camera at +24dB.


Soft.png

This is my settings trying to reduce the noise level.


A still photo can not fully show the dynamic effect of the image noise, but you can see that my setting helped a little, but the image went a bit soft too.

It's important to realize that the camera will work very well at night in well lit settings, BUT it is NOT a low light camera. No setting will even change that.

I did learn something about the "High Gain" option; in auto mode it selects the higher gain setting as needed. In manual iris mode, one can dial the gain in 1 dB settings all the way up to +34dB. However, at +34dB, get ready for massive image noise.



Bob Diaz
 
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Yeah, I oculd tolerate the FX7's low light, and figured the HMC40 would be pretty close to that.

As far as the quick sale...I think it will move pretty quick atthat price. I saw one go off on ebay for 1650, used. You might try that route if you have decent feedback.
 
The still photos don't show what I want, I'll try the new settings and post the videos. That way one can see the dynamic impact of the changes.


Bob Diaz
 
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