Help with new camera to replace dvx-100

I moved from dvx100 to hmc150 before i could learn much about the dvx100, still i was not able to get the best out of hmc150. Later when i moved to AC130, i could get the clear clips i wanted but i cannot still match the two cameras during editing. My dilema is that i like the AC130, but it cannot be used with a jib which means i have to use the Hmc150 with the AC130.
I can say that apart from the additional functions (if any) and ease of working with a functionally improved camera (if any) it all boils to creativity and knowhow, imagewise i think they are at par.
I watched the HMC150 in able hands and i was blown, to my eyes this looks great:
https://vimeo.com/groups/HMC150/videos/43807544
 
So, it's hard to match footage using an ac130 and hmc150?
I guess matching an hpx250 and hmc150 would be even worse?
I was actually thinking of getting two 150s for much of my fast moving live work that needed reliable auto focus and one of the newer cameras for the other stuff like single camera corporate stuff and keying. But was hoping the footage could intercut if I used the newer camera as a wide shot For dance and weddings.
Bad idea??
 
I just shot 4 concerts and a theatrical production with a pair of HMC150's and the AC160.

True their color curves for the same scene file are not identical. ButI have found that in my work, they can generally be cut together successfully. It is not so much a matter of color but of exposure. The HMC--in low light situations, anyways--seems to produce a brighter image by a stop or two. It is not as clean an image but it does look brighter. After dark, and with the lighting guys having enough coffee, and actually having the lights on at a decent level, things seemed to improve and footage cuts together very well.

I should also note that the AC160 seemed to be more adversly effected by mixed lighting conditions. At sunset the lighting team started using spot lights that did not mix well with the daylight. Made the footage on both cams turn orange. The 160 was more impacted by this than the 150. Now this made matching the cams really really hard. Seems the lighting crew had the ligts turned down lower than what they were supposed to be. After some contrast and color correction, the footage was saved.

I must confess that surprised me. I thought the low light advantage would go to the AC160. It doesn't, or at least not consistently.

Another litle thing that came up was with the audio. I have been shooting all my stuff on the 160 using the LPCM mode. Sounds great when it works. I experienced a few dropouts, or cases where the audio seems to shift from left to right and back again. It wasa a real pain trying to repair that audio footage by attermpting to blend in audio from the 150 which records audio in dolby digital. In the end you can sure tell a repair was made but it sounds better than just letting it go.

Despite all this my resulting production came out looking very nice. In the end mine did cut well together
 
The 130 also surprised me with mixed light...it didn't handle it at all well. I only kept the two 130's for 3 months and then gave up on them. At weddings that are very low light I actually found that my old 1/4 chip cameras had less video noise than the 130's when both had been used with an on camera light !! True enough, the HMC80's tiny chips had the iris wide open and 12db of gain but the darker areas beyond the range of the light were clean...the 130 tended to over-expose in auto with the light (so it was manual) and despite being at F3.0 the background beyond the light was a lot noisier. I guess I had too many expectations with the 1/3rd chips ??? Seems like the dynamic range of the 130 is not that good...the 150 range is way better with CCD's

Chris
 
Well....in my experience yes, Chris that is correct, the 150's do seem to handle mixed light situations better than the 130/160. Hate to admit it, but that is definately true! Saw that happen in two of the last five shoots. Maybe its my fault for running in auto exposure mode all the time. Those low light situations require care be taken with the white balance settings. But that is something that is true with both of these cams.

If not you can get like a deep orange cast that is all but impossible to get out in post! Found that one out the hard way.
The HMC150 did spoil me with its reliability there, although in fairness the 150 exhibits some of the same problem, just not to the same extent.

But man, when the 160 is on, it is really on! Beautiful image, looks a bit richer, more detailed than the HMC150. They're just different cams. I will be keeping the 150's for a while along with the 160.
 
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firehawk said:
So, it's hard to match footage using an ac130 and hmc150?
Click to expand...
Well, it's not hard, it's just not automatic. You have to take a little effort to refine the settings between them to make them look as close as possible.

I guess matching an hpx250 and hmc150 would be even worse?
Click to expand...
Depends on the settings, there are some things that will match up pretty well, but definitely the HPX250 is more different from an HMC150 than an AC130 is from an HMC150. Especially the way DRS works, and the chroma levels, the HPX250 is just a little different in that way.

I've been working on some new scene files for the AC130/AC160, AF100, and HPX250, and the HPX250 has been the hardest one to match to the other cameras. Sometimes it looks really close, but sometimes you just can't get there from here. Same with going the other way obviously, there are things the HPX250 can do that you just can't match with an AC130/AC160 or AF100.

I was actually thinking of getting two 150s for much of my fast moving live work that needed reliable auto focus and one of the newer cameras for the other stuff like single camera corporate stuff and keying. But was hoping the footage could intercut if I used the newer camera as a wide shot For dance and weddings.
Bad idea??
Click to expand...
You could certainly do that. You'd just have to choose settings on both cameras that meet in the middle so that both of them can look like each other. Avoid the extremes and it's not difficult to do.
 
>> I guess matching an hpx250 and hmc150 would be even worse?

I shoot live music (black background, stage lighting) with an hpx250, hmc150, hmc040 and others. I shoot with the default scene files, but color balance each camera to a grey card on the stage before the show. To my surprise, I no longer have to color match in post,... at least for the Panny cameras. The only way to tell the difference between the hpx250 and hmc150 is that the 250 is slightly sharper.
 
For those interested, it became a hmc-150...
Still getting into the camera. Seems great, but I dont understand why my 108050I footage show up with the skewed lines on my monitor. Never happened with sd interlaced, or the other footage I shot with ac-160... Weird.
 
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