Fustrated With Panasonic and HPX300

G

Glo

New member
Out of the box the HPX300 has looked horrible. The image looks okay in LCD but as soon as its viewed in the editor or on monitor looks soft and out of focus.

I purchased a Purtoa sharpness indicator to make sure the back focus is set correctly and performed the set up last night. The image still looks horrible. What am I doing wrong?

The HPX300 cost $7500.00 and it’s completely useless right now. I have never had a problem with my HVX200 or Sony DXC D30 DVCAM 2/3 chip out of the box. I contacted Panasonic yesterday still no return phone call. It has been 24 hrs. I contacted a Panasonic Service Center technician and without any assistance to my problem, he gave me two numbers to call instead. I left a message with the first number and will wait to see what happens today. I called the second number and was greeted with the rudest woman in the New Jersey Center. She said, “I'm just here to tell you where to ship the camera if there is a problem.”

The way I feel now, I would not purchase a single Panasonic product in the future, for example, the new AG AF100. As a customer I shouldn’t have to wait until after I purchase a product to find out the product has issues like skew or flash band, etc. Then only to find out a few months later, they released a new AG AF101 that fixes these issues after I spent my hard earned money on the first unit. Panasonic I hope you can make me change my mind.

Okay, so what do I do now?! I'm reaching out to the community to see if someone has had the same situation with their HPX300 footage looking soft/out of focus and if so, what is the best way to correct/tweak this problem? I’d be open to all types of solutions. Perhaps there is a problem with camera itself? Does it need to be sent to the service center?
 
Odd? I don't know where you are in the world, but surely you first port of call should have been the dealer you purchased it from? The warranty on these products is pretty good, and although you hear the occasional moan, most owners I'm aware of seem quite happy.

A couple of questions.

When you plug in your monitor, is it possible at any focal length or focus position to get a sharp image? If it can be found at any setting, then it's a lens problem - based on the fact that to get a sharp picture on the monitor rather rules out any problems further in than the sensor - however, it's possible that the prism assembly has a major problem - but that seems unlikely. If you can't generate a sharp focus at any setting, then I'd certainly look at electronics.

Has the dealer or panasonic actually had the camera to test?

I find it strange that they've not sorted out the problem.

How old is your camera now - and what is the history of the fault in terms of service comment?
 
I'm in Texas. I bought the camera last November to use for freelance work. The first day I brought it home took it outside to shoot for some test shots and was not pleased at what I saw. I thought it was because I didn't have a monitor to help focus. So until I purchased a monitor I continued to use the HVX200 to shoot until I was able to purchase some of the other gear I needed for the HPX300. To make a long story short I got really busy with full time job and a additional seasonal business. Not much time for freelance and here we are a year later and the camera has not been used at all until now.

The dealer I bought from is not to big on tech support and would probably just tell me to contact Panasonic. So I cut out the middle man and called Panasonic. Those where the responses I got I'm still waiting for the engineer to call me back.

After setting up the back focus. I pressed record and was zoomed in tight on purtoa chart and zoomed at slowest speed to wide. I brought this footage into Media Composer and everything was out of focus even when tight on the chart which pops when in focus.

I'm doing the firmware update in just a little bit not sure what else to do but wait for call from engineer.
 
Glo said:
I'm in Texas. I bought the camera last November to use for freelance work. The first day I brought it home took it outside to shoot for some test shots and was not pleased at what I saw. I thought it was because I didn't have a monitor to help focus. So until I purchased a monitor I continued to use the HVX200 to shoot until I was able to purchase some of the other gear I needed for the HPX300. To make a long story short I got really busy with full time job and a additional seasonal business. Not much time for freelance and here we are a year later and the camera has not been used at all until now.

The dealer I bought from is not to big on tech support and would probably just tell me to contact Panasonic. So I cut out the middle man and called Panasonic. Those where the responses I got I'm still waiting for the engineer to call me back.

After setting up the back focus. I pressed record and was zoomed in tight on purtoa chart and zoomed at slowest speed to wide. I brought this footage into Media Composer and everything was out of focus even when tight on the chart which pops when in focus.

I'm doing the firmware update in just a little bit not sure what else to do but wait for call from engineer.
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Glo,

Are you in the DFW area? We have a lot of Panasonic gear where I work (and I mean a lot...) so our equipment guru might have run into what you're seeing. And if he hasn't I have some additional contacts at a Panasonic Premier dealer. I'd also be curious which dealer you're having problems with. But that might be better in a PM.
 
Do you have a way to upload 10 seconds or so of footage to a ftp server? Just record something for 10 seconds and zip the entire contents folder and upload. I would like to see it raw compared to my camera. Here is a 720p slow motioned at half speed I shot today. It is raw footage dropped on timeline and converted to MP4 format. Does this look sharp to you?

http://www.vspworldwide.com/clientfiles/download/hpx300/cedes.mp4

Here is a link to a video I found online. This is the benchmark for me that proved the camera was capable of good things

http://www.vspworldwide.com/clientfiles/download/hpx300/hpxgreat.mp4
 
Glo,

Is everything soft, or are some things soft and some not soft? What aperture are you shooting at? Are you sure all the camera settings are set properly? How are you viewing in Avid: in the Source/Record monitors, using Full Screen Playback, or external monitoring, and what is the display resolution set to (green, green/yellow, etc.), what is the project type?

There very well may be a problem with the camera, but there also may be a gottcha somewhere in the chain that's causing this. It's somewhat rare for a camera to be consistently soft.
 
First, I would like to thank everyone who has responded with suggestions along with suggestions I found from similar post. I completed the firmware update along with extensive tweaking of the scene files. I provided a download-able zip containing raw footage AVC-I 720 59.94p http://www.dvfootagesource.com/0023VC.zip . I paid close attention to f stop and used f 4.0 with ND filter 4. This is a major improvement with focus and image quality. The Purtoa test chart really helps setting up the back focus compared to the paper star that ships with camera. Here is the scene file. Are there any suggestions for tweaking?

VFR : OFF
FRAME RATE: 60 FRAME
(SYNCHRO SCAN): 1/60
DETAIL LEVEL: +2
V DETAIL LEVEL: +2
DETAIL CORING : -3
CHROMA LEVEL: 0
CHROMA PHASE: 0
COLOR TEMP Ach: 0
COLOR TEMP Bch: 0
MASTER PED: 0
A.IRIS LEVEL: -3
DRS EFFECT: 3
GAMMA : CINELIKE D
KNEE: HIGH
MATRIX: CINE-LIKE
SKIN TONE DTL : OFF
V DETAIL FREQ : THICK

 
By the way what is the Purtoa test chart . I googled it and couldnt find anything. I'd like you to do me a favor as well. Please record another clip in 1080p 30fps but this time pan slowly then stop. I want to compare yours to mine again.
 
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I also could not find the Purtoa test chart with google. Can you give us a link ?

romy101 said:
By the way what is the Purtoa test chart . I googled it and couldnt find anything. I'd like you to do me a favor as well. Please record another clip in 1080p 30fps but this time pan slowly then stop. I want to compare yours to mine again.
Click to expand...
 
I have been busy for a couple of weeks but the same problem still persist. I thought I had everything figured out but the picture still looks murky.

I shot an interview setup with two Diva 400's and the image still looks noisy and terrible. Can someone point me in the right direction maybe a Panasonic engineer.
 
If you had 2 diva 400's for your interview anywhere near the subject, you would have been way over lit unless you had windows in the background or you had the #3 or 4 nd filter rolled in. If you were shooting in the # 1 filter position either the iris is broken on your lens or its some other stupid situation being overlooked.
 
I think it is just inexperience. I have my cam now 1 year and last week for the first time I was able to make crisp footage comparable what I saw on this site. The HPX300 is just not an out of the box and shoot cam, there is a learning curve. My two cents after having the same problems the past last year. The only thing I noticed in one shot was a small wave (not during the whole shot but at some time in a very perticular position) but I was lucky and could cut it away during editing
 
Glo said:
I'm open for anything at this point do you think you guys can help me?
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If you're near a Panasonic professional service center, I would either make an appointment
with them and take the camera there or send it to them for a check.

In my experience, the 300 with the Fujinon at 1080p is a very sharp image
with noise at or below what you would expect from the 1/3" sensor. I'm working
on a project where we're mixing 5D footage with 300 footage .. and while
the trained eye can tell the difference, I've had more than a few people
guess incorrectly which camera was being used (once color corrected).

It could be your monitoring system as well. Judging what a full 1080p image is
going to look like (given various settings) on the camera LCD can be difficult.


On one of our 300's the Fujinon lens iris blades malfunctioned and we had to
have them serviced.

It could be something as simple as that... or .. it could be that your camera has
some electronic or sensor defect. A checkup at a service center would confirm
one way or the other.


Do it while it's under warranty!

I tried to look at the card folder from your .zip file .. but for some reason,
FCP wouldn't import it.

jeff
 
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