Good riddance Z1U

W

walnutcrunch

Well-known member
Finally after months of lobbying and reports and justification I've been green lit to buy an HPX500 for our production group. Finally I can consider punting the Z1U into the sea lion habitat and letting the girls have at it (note no cameras will be given to the sea lions for that would not be in their best interest).

I'm eager to get the 500 in house in the next couple of days and put it through its paces.

I believe the time of seeing what should be beautiful shots destroyed by horrible horrible HDV compression will be at an end. This is such an amazing choice for us, and is going to take our organization in such a great direction for the future. Happy days. With the 2010 games rapidly approaching and the media exposure our little city and organization is going to get, we're going to be placed beautifully with our media resources. We've had the talent, not the equipment. Now we've got both without having to make compromises. Sweet.

I'm so freaking thrilled.
 
Sigh.... and you could've just hired me & my HPX500 instead.... Vancouver is **such** a pretty town....
 
Very cool!. I love the images I've been getting with mine, The color is really good on this camera. Save some bucks for BIG Hard Drives, you will want to shoot HD!
 
I guess the plan is to shoot 1080 30p, mostly because I don't really like dealing with interlacing. We have great support but anyone have any advice on the best approach for settling in on a setup for this camera?
 
So what about all these professionals that say that interlace is better than progressive and that the Sony ZIU outresolves the Panasonic Varicam because the Z1U is full high defintion 1080i while the Varicam is lowly 720p which is not real high definition?
 
androbot2084 said:
So what about all these professionals that say that interlace is better than progressive and that the Sony ZIU outresolves the Panasonic Varicam because the Z1U is full high defintion 1080i while the Varicam is lowly 720p which is not real high definition?
Click to expand...

No professional would say that.
 
I remember during the Texas Shootout in 2005 that someone declared the 1080i Canon XL-H1as the resolution winner and even made the bold statement that although the Panasonic Varicam produces the better quality picture nevertheless the 1080i Canon outresolves the 720p Varicam. I then tried to explain to this individual that resolution is a more complex equation and you have to consider all factors which are spatial resolution , temporal resolution and color resolution. If spatial resolution were the only considration I could show up at the Texas shootout with a monochrome 8 megapixel 4K digital camera and declare myself the resolution winner. And now that I think about it I would not have to stop at using monochrome technology but if I really wanted to artificially pump up the resolution numbers I could show up with a 32 megapixel 8K black and white camera with no gray scale capability but each pixel registers only pure black or pure white.
 
The Z1 isnt even "Full" hd... or whatever jargon Sony wants to throw around. ITs prefilered to 1440x1080. thats not the 1920x1080 that annotes "full HD". The few cameras that actually represent "FULL HD" are the Sony EX, F900, and HPX3000.
 
Sony calls all of their HDV cameras Full HD 1080 and Sony says that only the 1080 format can be considered real high definition.
 
Ehh... whatever. Their marketing department is just doing their job, and trying to replace every TV and Videocamera in the american market with an HD version.
 
As far as the 2010 Olympics are concerned if a 1080i network like NBC gets the job I would much rather see the Olympics in clean artifact free progressive scan 1080p30 than interlace 1080i even though the sampling rate for 1080i is 60 hertz. If by any chance ABC or ESPN gets the job then 720p60 is the gold standard for fast action sports.
 
NBC actually broadcasts loads of stuff as 1080/24p with regular pulldown ... the same way that you can record with the HVX. They shoot loads of stuff 24p, and of course they have a few films over at Universal that they like to air!

Rather celever actually, but 1080/60i works much better for transmitting 24p content that 720/60p! Many TV's can automatically detect and remove the pulldown too.

As a delivery format; an interlaced stream is more flexible than a progressive stream for transmission in pretty much everything but faster action sports.

- Mikko
 
TimurCivan said:
The few cameras that actually represent "FULL HD" are the Sony EX, F900, and HPX3000.
Click to expand...
Not quite; the F900 doesn't count as it uses 1440x1080 HDCAM. And if the pixel count is what denotes "full HD" you might throw in the AVC-HD cams that support 1920x1080, and I think JVC has some little hard disc camcorder that records 1920x1080.

Of course, if anyone thinks a "full HD" JVC pocketcam is going to produce a better image than a "not full HD" F900, they're nuts.
 
The whole resolution debate is such hooey. A shooter I've worked with for years recently turned his nose up at the 500 because it is "not an HD camera because of the imager is not full HD" That's it. For him it's all about pixel count.

The ole Z1U had a pretty snazzy pixel count but I challenge anyone to go out on a boat, on a sunny day, with a mild chop and shoot towards a forested shore and tell me that the camera is shooting "true HD". The codec just throws it's hands up in that situation and goes for a drink and lets the detail fend for itself. It looks like bad web video in spots.

Just got the 500 delivered today with a Kata bag that I have no idea how to properly set up so I don't snap off the viewfinder accidentally.

I have to go through the whole setup on the camera, so I'm definitely over my head. I also still have not settled on a format to shoot in. 1080 30p seemed like a good spot to go for, but it's a little juddery. I don't really want to do 60i because interlacing seems to be a pain, and the bulk of our delivery is progressive.

We've got a lot to figure out in a week, because next weekend we're off on a boat to find and document Killer Whales.
 
Walnut - its a fantastic camera - i have shot plenty with it. If you need any tips or help please let me know.
 
So what's wrong with shooting in the 720p60 mode? 720p is plenty sharp with no interlace artifacts, its 60 frames per second handle motion just fantastic and I bet that you would need at least a 50 inch television just to tell the difference between the fine detail of 720p versus 1080p.
 
Why 1080? I guess it's just thinking archival at best possible quality. We have one 24 foot 1080p screen that some footage will be making it's way towards, so it's good to have best quality for that, but the other 37 screens (16 feet to 32 inches in size) are all 720 native.

There was some talk from Barry I believe about how 1080 is kind of a sweet spot for the camera. Apparently the camera is great at all resolutions but 1080 is the best.

My original intention was to shoot 720, but this all got me thinking 1080 was a better target.

I'll be in touch Smelni, we have a lot to learn with this camera, and I'm eager for setup tips. We're migrating from the 1/3 world. We also have this super spiffy lens on it right now as a loaner while our canon 2x is on backorder. Apparently it is the canon 2x lens that is well out of our price range range. The lens even has its own display screen with about umpteen options. At the moment I prefer to leave that screen off, so I don't get scared.

I'm also trying not to think about how awesome my little commuter Yaris car is and that the camera we're hauling around could easily be traded for two of my cars brand new.
 
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