Correct camera for me?

E

entry

Carbonite Member
Hi,

I've used DVX100 in few projects and now I'm going to make pretty big documentary series about different "places" ;) around europe and now there's more need for "eye candy" than before so I'm going to do the series in HD. I'm looking to do more film like and colorful look for this one also. would HVX200 be the right choise for me? No 35mm adapters in this project :p travelling with those would be something :p
 
the only thing that would be an issue is low light situations - and in that case ALL small "budget HD" cameras are going to have that issue.

beyond that - youre fine.

and you'll need something to offload p2 content to
 
Yeah I read about that problem. Is there more problems in low light with HVX200 than with DVX100?

So I can just record DV 720x576 into miniDV? What would be the best way to record? Using P2 card and recording into FS-100? Then when it's full move the material into normal Hard Drive?

I read that you can record 1hour 30minutes into FS-100, so can I store 7hours 30 minutes into 500GB Hard Drive? I'm not very happy about the idea to store all stuff into normal Hard Drive. Because Hard Drive can get broken pretty easily.
 
Is there more problems in low light with HVX200 than with DVX100?
Click to expand...
ALL of the HD camcorders perform worse in low light than the DVX100 does. If you go HD, you're going to be giving up about two stops of sensitivity as compared to the SD version of that camcorder (so a Z1U is about two stops slower than a PD170, etc).
 
Barry_Green said:
ALL of the HD camcorders perform worse in low light than the DVX100 does. If you go HD, you're going to be giving up about two stops of sensitivity as compared to the SD version of that camcorder (so a Z1U is about two stops slower than a PD170, etc).
Click to expand...
Ok. Is there any comparisons about that?
 
I mean comparison where someone has filmed with DVX100 and HVX200 in same place (indoor etc) or something else so I could see how it looks. Sorry my english isn't very good...
 
not really necessary. its been WELL documented by many shooters. since day one, ive heard a lot of music video producers saying that their HVX didnt perform nearly as well as their DVX did in low light situations.

its not a matter of not working. just a matter of having to add gain sooner (and with less success) than you would have with an SD camera.

here is a decent sample of whats going to happen:
http://understandinc.com/samples/alexis2.mov

i shot that the first day i had my HVX. as you can see, whats lit well looks fantastic! in the full size source footage you can count the strands of her hair and read the serial number on the microphone - BUT, the objects in the darkest parts of the frame nearly go away.
 
Good sample, thanks. I just thought about our film locations and almost all our filming will be in a daylight. Some times we go indoors also, but in all places we can use extra lights. So I think that should not be too big problem..

Can you give some anwser for my recording question?
 
going to tape (dv) is really a pointless effort if you intend the final project to be in HD.

here is the situation:

currently available p2 cards hold approximately the following at 720pn 24 - cut these times roughly in half for 1080
4gig - 8min
8gig - 16min
16gig - 32min

what i do normally is use 2 8gig cards. shoot to one. when it fills up, stop eject and hand it off to an assistant to offload onto a laptop. then i shoot to the other card, and repeat this exchange process all day. this works for me as i pretty much NEVER have a single take thats more than a few minutes.

for documentary work, i know there are often times where you need to roll for long periods of time. in that case there are a number of options:

1. put two cards in the camera and let the footage span the two cards (i cant imagine a single take being more than 2 16gig cards could hold)
2. use a firestore. some people love them, some hate them. ive had two and they have worked just fine.
3. take a laptop with you and capture live dvcprohd to your edit software via firewire.
this process has always made me nervous, but ive done it a few times with no problems, and many people do it successfully all the time
 
I think firestore would be the best choise for me. And then when it's full, move stuff to the external HDD and fill firestore again. But then again. If I'm travelling for 6 months, I would need many HDD's with me. And then again what I said before that HDD's got broken easily.. I would need some good HDD's that wont get broken if fall on the floor etc :/ hmm....
 
keep in mind that a firestore at 100 gigs is going to take a great deal of time to transfer. so you might have 2. so you can shoot to one while the other transfers...

and ive traveled with external HDDs for years. if you pack them well, they hold up quite well
 
also if your worried about the HDD's breaking get a heavier duty case. Like the LaCie HDD's have a nice rugged enclosure, i personally find their internals junk but the shell is nice....Just make sure when you buy your HDD's case its a tough case, maybe mention you'll do lots of travelling with it. And instead of getting many many HDD's why get get 1 terabyte? or 2 for that matter? Its easier to carry around 1 unit
 
that's absolutely ludicrous advice chris! if you consider their internals (the part that matters most) junk - why would you recommend them at all?

if youre packing for travel - and pack wisely, the enclosure makes almost no difference.

also, if you get one big drive and it fails - DONE!

if you plan to travel for months on end you will be upping the odds of physical mis haps. what id suggest is get say 3 or 4 300-500 gig fw drives, every week or so fed ex a drive(s) back to your office and have them offload the content and ship it back to you. that way you know what youve got is safe.

as far as packing the drives. id suggest getting gel inserts (like they use on wrist wrests) or using auralex wedge foam (from the audio world) cut to snuggly cradle each drive. i prefer the gel/auralex approach for drives as i find that the recent foam in pelican and other such cases to be a bit stiffer than id prefer for vibration dampening - just my 2¢
 
i've never had a drive fail on my, but i take well care of my drives...and i have travelled for months on end...and the only reason i mentioned the LaCie drives was to talk about their case and recommend something similar in terms of how heavy duty the cases are. Either way the downside to hard drives is they do fail, for whatever reason and there are many....this all depends entirely on your budge...i'm a low/no budget film maker myself so if you can afford to ship back and forth go for it.
 
We are freelance, so we dont have office :p still I can send HDD's via Fed Ex to my house or so and tell my brother to copy the material into two different HDD's or so. We have ppl who produce the series so we can send those HDD's back and forth.

Do you know how much it will cost via Fed Ex from long distance and how fast they deliver?

And I've thought also to take maybe four 500GB external HDD's with me. Better than two 1TB. And also make some case for them.
 
wgzn said:
here is the situation:

currently available p2 cards hold approximately the following at 720pn 24 - cut these times roughly in half for 1080
4gig - 8min
8gig - 16min
16gig - 32min
Click to expand...

I need to fix your times a bit. It's actually longer.

4 gigs = 10 minutes.
8 gigs = 20-21 minutes.
16 gigs = 41-42 minutes.

It's two and a half minutes per gig when shooting 720p/24pn.

Later,
Jason
 
I just checked Fedex prizes and 4kg box inside europe is 90€. They delivere it in 2 days. Not cheap :p
 
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