HMC40 quick Review

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dcloud

Veteran
a few weeks ago, I just bought a 2nd hand HMC40 with the wide angle lens and XLR adapter with a 2 nig batteries included. after several days of using it heres what i think of it.

Its pretty handy - I can carry it anywhere without worrying on weight. Not much there is to bring but batteries and extra accessories.

Long lasting battery - stick the cheese cube battery in there, it lasts for 3 hrs and the bigboy vbg6 lasts 7 hrs. Simply Awesome.

Bad Low light- If a place is lit just by fluorescent lights or any indoor lights, youre screwed. This cam cant do much without any additional light and gets pretty noisy when you boost the gain upwards 12db

Great video quality- it really sucks in low light but when in a well lit place, the hmc40 shines. The images are sharp and has great quality.

Dynamic range is ok - The dynamic range is acceptable though it blows up pretty quickly on highlights. i tend to expose things on the brighter side to avoid noise grain while trying to make sure the highlights dont look horrible.

UGLY UGLY LCD- worst looking piece of crap ever. maybe im used to better looking lcds but the LCD is a piece of s**t. a consumer cam has a better LCD than this crap.

i played back the footages of the hmc40 on my af100 and it looks fantastic. sharp as tac. yes, its true with 1/4" its really hard to get a shallow DOF but if you know how to take advantage of its teeny tiny sensor you can get decent results

overall my biggest gripe is low light capability & ugly LCD. I cant get that on a 1/4" sensor but for what i spent ($1700 for 2 batteries, XLR adapter & wide angle lens), its definitely worth it.

once i get a GH2, the two cams would be a great tandem.
 
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Anyone know the exact dynamic range (Barry Green, with your Stouffer chart)?

I also got the sense that it's rather weak and highlights get blown easily.
 
if youre used to the af100, this is has lower dynamic range... Im afraid of the noise in the shadow areas too so i just let the most of the highlights go out.
would love to see this cam on charts and how it fares well up to 12 db of gain
god 18db noise is horrendous
 
The low light/moderate light capabilities are why I sold mine. I do a lot of documentary interviews, and I found it hard to get adequate exposure at 180degree shutter, 0DB gain while using a 5 light kit for indoor interviews both with a LetusMini + 85mm f/1.4 wide open and without a 35mm adapter... (light kit consisted of: 2x Arri 650w Fresnels w/ softboxes, 2x 300w Arri Fresnels w/ Barndoors for background and ambient fill, 1x 150w Arri Fresnel for hair/rim lighting)

As a "B" camera, or in great-to-good light, or even as a vacation camera, it does very well.

If the camera had more light sensitivity, it would still be in my kit. That thing made some razor sharp, clean, punchy looking footage outdoors. The battery performance is stupid good, too. I really hope that Panasonic can find a way to put a more light sensitive sensor package into a camera body of this size... I'd buy the HMC40's successor in a heartbeat if it had a base ISO of 500-640ish.
 
JasonAllen127 said:
The low light/moderate light capabilities are why I sold mine. I do a lot of documentary interviews, and I found it hard to get adequate exposure at 180degree shutter, 0DB gain while using a 5 light kit for indoor interviews both with a LetusMini + 85mm f/1.4 wide open and without a 35mm adapter... (light kit consisted of: 2x Arri 650w Fresnels w/ softboxes, 2x 300w Arri Fresnels w/ Barndoors for background and ambient fill, 1x 150w Arri Fresnel for hair/rim lighting)

As a "B" camera, or in great-to-good light, or even as a vacation camera, it does very well.

If the camera had more light sensitivity, it would still be in my kit. That thing made some razor sharp, clean, punchy looking footage outdoors. The battery performance is stupid good, too. I really hope that Panasonic can find a way to put a more light sensitive sensor package into a camera body of this size... I'd buy the HMC40's successor in a heartbeat if it had a base ISO of 500-640ish.
Click to expand...

jason-

i have not used the hmc40 nor any 1/4" cam.

i have used plenty of larger chip rigs.

after reading the responses about low light usage of the hmc40, i'm surprised that with your very decent 4 light arri kit, you could not get quality footage.

be well

rob
smalltalk productions
 
Moseph said:
Anyone know the exact dynamic range (Barry Green, with your Stouffer chart)?

I also got the sense that it's rather weak and highlights get blown easily.
Click to expand...
Just ran that test. Clearly resolves 9 stops. After that, it gets a little iffy, someone who was argumentative might argue that there's another half stop down there in the shadows amongst the noise; I don't know that I could be convinced of that. But I'm confident in calling it nine stops. Which ain't bad at all. Pretty good, actually.
 
Cool, that's better than I was expecting actually. I've seen still grabs that make it look like it has pretty awful highlight rolloff if you know what I mean, maybe the different gamma settings could help with this. I know they do on my A1.
 
robfilms said:
jason-

i have not used the hmc40 nor any 1/4" cam.

i have used plenty of larger chip rigs.

after reading the responses about low light usage of the hmc40, i'm surprised that with your very decent 4 light arri kit, you could not get quality footage.

be well

rob
smalltalk productions
Click to expand...

The LetusMini would have sucked out a ton of light, and the lens probably isn't transmitting at f/1.4 either. HMC40 + Letus isn't a great combination (if your goal is no gain) unless you can unload a bunch of 1k's or higher into the scene IMO, and then things start to get warm very quickly...

I would have personally bumped the gain up to make up for the loss of light from the adapter and lens - even at 18db the footage is very usable, especially with lighting on your subjects and background.
 
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