HMC40 for Weddings?

A

accelv

Active member
How does it do in low light? How much space does 2.5 hours of footage take up in ProRes? Is the lens wide enough? How does the stabilizer, auto-focus, and general handling work?
 
I'll know soon... I got mine for a B camera to the Sony NX5. Mainly for steadycam use before, during and after the ceremonies. Dunno about Prorez... I use a PC with CS4 and Neo2 Booster on a laptop in RT. Stabilizer works well, AF works well also. Generally a joy to handle. Easy and small with a beautiful sharp image in good light. It's not bad in lowlight either actually. Better than I imagined it would be. I'll toss on a led lightpanel for receptions though just to be safe.
 
The HMC40 does well in low light, for a camcorder with three 1/4" imaging chips, especially because the gain is so remarkably clean, but most pros who shoot weddings for a living certainly would not consider the low light performance adequate for general use in shooting weddings professionally.

I have no idea what size files to expect with ProRes, but I'm sure there are a lot of folks here who would know.

In my opinion, the HMC40 handles beautifully and is very comfortable to shoot with.
 
I've been stalking this site ever since I bought my HMC40. I've shot two weddings with the HMC40 since I bought it last month. They aren't as bad as people say it is in low light but it's certainly not the best. During the open dancing at the reception I had to adjust my shutter to 1/30 because 1/60 just wasn't cutting it. I was using a 35 Watt Switronix LED camera light. Granted if I bought the higher Watt light it would have been better but I couldn't afford it at the time. I probably could have used my 75 Watt Smith Victor light and kept the shutter at 1/60 but I didn't want to lug around my battery belt. So I guess what I'm saying if the room is very dark you'll need a very bright camera light and possibly adjust the shutter or you can get away with a lower watt light but you will definitely need to adjust the shutter. It helps to ask the DJ to not turn the light all the way down. Oh yeah and my gain hovered around 17-18 and the image wasn't at all grainy. Hope this helps. Maybe I'll post some of the footage from the two weddings I've shot to help convey what I'm saying.
 
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