OTHER: First Look: Panasonic PX270

Thank you for your help. I put a camera on high stands from time to time and it would be great to be able to level it from the monitor I look at. Even better to operate it via wireless.

I am very close to moving from my XF300 to this camera but am waiting until Monday before placing the order!
 
Scapsinger - thanks for all the kind words, and for being able and willing to help the folks here with questions and clips!

About the zoom: the op manual does still say "don't move the zoom ring when the switch is in 'servo' or it may damage something" (paraphrased of course.)
 
scapsinger said:
I've frequently shot at 6dB gain on the AC130 with very little noise that I could ever see. Darker shots in an event auditorium make it more noticeable, but it's light years beyond the HMC150. ...Just a quick-n-dirty observation there, but it was definitely an improvement over the AC130, which was a noticeable improvement over the HMC150.
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THanks for your posts here. Certainly helps. I did rent and use an AC160A and an HPX250 for an event, both of which went well. I then took the 3 cameras into a dark wedding reception during dinner and let them just roll in the same settings and I didn't see much of a difference at all between the AC160A and HMC150 with regards to sensitivity. When I put the 25o on PAP1 I did notice the jump in sensitivity. That is why I asked Barry about the PX270 being a stop faster than the 250 (still curious if that was a PAP2 or PAP1 on the HPX250??)

I was "this close" to going for two new AC160A's at the time, but financially it didn't work out and I was a bit hesitant over the focus issues which I did not encounter on my one full day shoot. But now, with just two HMC's we've been able to build our business way up so we're looking to get 2 or 3 new cameras soon. Possibly 2 PX270's and one GH4 or vice versa. We'll see. Things like 3G-SDI out do matter to us though which is another reason I held off on getting the AC160 at the time.

It appears you have an HMC150, an AC130 and a PX270. Any chance you could toss them up in a dimly lit room, put them on the same setting (eg. CINE-V or CINE-D) and go from 0db to +6db, to +12db..etc. I know that all takes a bit of time, but it sure would be great to see.
 
My 270 was shipped yesterday and I'll be at NAB when it arrives. After I fully test out the new camera, I will sell my 250 which has served me well. I'm looking forward to an upgrade from my 250. So, from Barry's post, "AVC-LongG25, which, with its full raster, 4:2:2 color and 10-bit resolution, makes footage arguably comparable in quality to AVC-Intra100" begs the question, "Why would I ever record AVC-Intra100 ever again?". And, is it 4 times "smaller"? Anybody?
 
gkantziper said:
My 270 was shipped yesterday and I'll be at NAB when it arrives. After I fully test out the new camera, I will sell my 250 which has served me well. I'm looking forward to an upgrade from my 250. So, from Barry's post, "AVC-LongG25, which, with its full raster, 4:2:2 color and 10-bit resolution, makes footage arguably comparable in quality to AVC-Intra100" begs the question, "Why would I ever record AVC-Intra100 ever again?". And, is it 4 times "smaller"? Anybody?
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Does intra footage put maybe less strain on your computer when editing vs. longGOP? Just a guess...
 
Barry_Green said:
About the zoom: the op manual does still say "don't move the zoom ring when the switch is in 'servo' or it may damage something" (paraphrased of course.)
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Copy that...of course, the PX270 not only doesn't include a book by you, but also a very brief overview of functions, not a full user manual, so I've been referencing the online PDF but didn't see that part about the servo. Thanks!
 
The Irish TRex said:
It appears you have an HMC150, an AC130 and a PX270. Any chance you could toss them up in a dimly lit room, put them on the same setting (eg. CINE-V or CINE-D) and go from 0db to +6db, to +12db..etc. I know that all takes a bit of time, but it sure would be great to see.
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I'm actually planning to do a side-by-side-by-side of the 3 cams today if the rain will go away for a moment.
 
The Irish TRex said:
Does intra footage put maybe less strain on your computer when editing vs. longGOP? Just a guess...
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Long GOP by definition will be subject to more visible compression artifacts in any given frame that is not an I frame, so that's one reason.

And Irish TRex is correct, the more compressed a piece of footage is, the more decompression has to occur both for playback as well as editing, which translates into CPU load, memory, drive speeds, etc.

That's one thing to know, is the tradeoff between disk speed and CPU speed when comparing Intra format and LongG format. 25Mbit is less taxing on your HDD but more taxing on CPU. Intra formats are the opposite.

I'm planning on shooting any event type jobs on the LongG format, and using Intra for short form stuff, or highlight videos. A wedding might be an example where I would do both, possibly using LongG on the ceremony, but using Intra on the b-roll/highlights and reception...or possibly LongG25 on ceremony, LongG50 on most everything else, and Intra on the really important beauty shot stuff.
 
I will interested to see how much (if any) difference there is between Long25,50 and AVC-Intra when pushing and image or doing secondary keys etc... It will be a beautiful thing if Long25 is pretty much equal to AVC-Intra.
 
Alright, so here's a hiccup. I thought to myself "wow, I'm completely lost in these menus!" because I could not for the life of me find the combination of settings that would give me 1080p24(23.97) at anything but full AVC -Intra100. What I want is 24p at LongG50 and LongG25, right?

Well this is the bad news (my first time as an early adopter....): not all of the formats are supported "right now" on the PX270. I went back to the brochure Panasonic posted (ftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/Panasonic/business/provideo/brochures/AJ-PX270PJ-brochure.pdf) to see if I was losing my mind, but sure enough you'll see the little asterisks and numbers in tiny type that show some formats as coming soon.

Here's a short list of currently missing formats (you can look at the brochure to see for yourself):
- AVC-Intra100: 720 30pN, 24pN, 25pN
- AVC-LongG50: 1080 30pN, 24pN, 25pN
- AVC-LongG25: 1080 30pN, 24pN, 25pN
- DVCPro HD: 1080 30pN, 24pN, 25pN; 720 30pN, 24pN, 25pN

For what it's worth, it also notes that "1080/23.98 PsF output will be supported in the near future."

The only ones that really bother me are the missing 1080 30pN and 24pN formats in AVC-LongG50 and LongG25, because A) I plan to use those frequently and B) I wanted to test those first. Oh well, gonna have to wait and see....hopefully the support for those are sooner rather than later.
 
And hey Barry, I'd totally support a Kickstarter to get that book put together. I probably wouldn't need it personally by the time it was completed, but I bet there are a lot of folks who'd go in on that, and I'd be happy to pitch in.

Think about it....keep thinking about it..... :)
 
Barry_Green said:
Dont think so, I think it is just in 60i/60p and 50i/50p.
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Arrgh. Not sure what is the big deal just adding that littler feature? Perhaps asking too much for a $5.5K cam and it would pretty much ruin the 2/3" AJ sales or simply too much additional circuits inside that may overheat the cam. They finally have all the 7 gamma modes just like its 2/3" AJ big brother.
And 1080-60p is a very nice option to have. I was hoping for DRS so I can sell my HPX-250 and upgrade right away. I do lots of natural light
docs and have come to rely on DRS more and more. It has come to a point where I set it as the fixed hard mode whenever I turn on the 2/3" AJ body vs.
having to activate it whenever it's powered on.
 
The shooting resolution format chart in the brochure is pretty odd. It appears that 1080p30 and 1080p24 will never be an option for this camera outside of DVCPro HD? Yes 1080p60 is cool but it does not directly replace 30p and 24p. Anybody make sense of this reasoning? Long GOP50 is a bust as well only supporting 60i in 1080. Almost borders on what's the point of saying it has LongGOP if hardly any resolutions are supported?
 
Bassman2003 said:
The shooting resolution format chart in the brochure is pretty odd. It appears that 1080p30 and 1080p24 will never be an option for this camera outside of DVCPro HD? Yes 1080p60 is cool but it does not directly replace 30p and 24p. Anybody make sense of this reasoning? Long GOP50 is a bust as well only supporting 60i in 1080. Almost borders on what's the point of saying it has LongGOP if hardly any resolutions are supported?
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Yeah, seems like a really odd lineup. Like I said, I was really confused looking through the menus, it almost seemed like I must have missed a setting somewhere with the lack of settings compared to what I saw listed on the chart and in various write-ups.

Thankfully some of it is on the table to be upgraded, the rest is....well, unlikely.
 
Bassman2003 said:
The shooting resolution format chart in the brochure is pretty odd. It appears that 1080p30 and 1080p24 will never be an option for this camera outside of DVCPro HD? Yes 1080p60 is cool but it does not directly replace 30p and 24p. Anybody make sense of this reasoning? Long GOP50 is a bust as well only supporting 60i in 1080. Almost borders on what's the point of saying it has LongGOP if hardly any resolutions are supported?
Click to expand...

Wow, they made it sound like Intra200 would come later, not all the 1080p24 and 30p at too. Hmmm. Well, we shoot at 1080p60 so I guess that's okay for me. Did I read this chart below right that 1080p60 is not supported with LongG50, but using LongG25 it will record at 50Mbps?
ftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/panason...itepapers/Panasonic-AVC-ULTRA-white-paper.pdf
 
The Irish TRex said:
Wow, they made it sound like Intra200 would come later, not all the 1080p24 and 30p at too. Hmmm. Well, we shoot at 1080p60 so I guess that's okay for me. Did I read this chart below right that 1080p60 is not supported with LongG50, but using LongG25 it will record at 50Mbps?
ftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/panason...itepapers/Panasonic-AVC-ULTRA-white-paper.pdf
Click to expand...
LongG25 is based around 25mbps for HD, so when going to "beyond HD" (i.e., 60P), then yes, it does double the bitrate.

That may be why LongG50 doesn't show as it's going to be able to handle 1080/60P, as that would mean a data rate of 100mbps, and maybe it can't do long-GoP at such a high data rate.
 
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