HPX300 Africa footage

It looks fifty times better when you see it on a 1920x1080 monitor, played back from the deck, in the original 10-bit codec. Absolutely jaw-dropping. I'm not embarrassed to say that I sat a foot away from the monitor, staring at every pixel, and I literally clapped at a few of the shots because they looked so good!

Kevin Railsback rules the wildlife-filming universe.
 
What I did with that footage is as I shot I threw a few clips together then exported it as a stand alone QuickTime. Then I'd move the MXF files off to a external hard drive.

Then the next day, I'd import the stand alone QuickTime file back into FCP and add a few more clips then export it again and do it all over again day after day.

So the video that's posted has been exported each day that we were gone so I think it held up pretty good for all that.

Also, it was exported as DVCProHD so not as good as AVC-Intra to begin with.

The only shot from the 170 is the opening driving down the road looking at the trees shot.
 
What was fun was watching Barry sit like 6 inches from the monitor when this stuff played back. Kid at Christmas. I said "Dude, you'll hurt your eyes!" He said "Shush, this is the first time I have seen this on a good monitor."

The stuff is really really good. Especially on the new 2550 Panasonic monitors.
 
Very impressive footage even on my low res notebook !!!!
To my eyes it looks that the first minute of the footage (standard lens) is less sharp than the rest of the footage. Am I right or is it just me?
The footage is also very static, did you shoot some footage with panning, fast moving animals ?
 
Last edited:
These are all nice portraits of African wild life, lush looking and very rich. I don't mean to complain, but there are no shots of the wild life in motion... Which I think should be included. I have no Panasonic, Red, Sony SI 2K, rolling shutter axe to grind here. Matter or fact I just saw Slumdog- SI 2K and with all the action in that film,didn't feel abused in any way by rolling shutter issues, so why hold back here?
 
I don't think anyone is holding back. It was more of an issue that we had to turn the van to point the camera. I could only move the camera a couple inches inside the van to shoot out the little window.

If I could have shot outside the van I would have been panning like a mother.

Most of the time by the time we got the van turned around then tilted in the road to get the angle, the animal moved and we'd have to move the van again.

So look at the picture in the article Barry did and you can see there's no room at all to move that camera in the van.

So, it wasn't like someone said "Don't pan in any of these shots." We just couldn't do it in the shooting situation we were in.
 
Yeah I noticed the sharpness too. The color rendition is also very different between the lenses.
Unless it was modified in post.
But then the 21x Canon is about 23,000 dollars if it's the lens I think it is.
I swear the early footage almost had that same cast that the 500 did before they fixed the look up table on the preset.

Yes I'd like to see some quick motion stuff too. Just got off a Red shoot and we had some probs with rolling shutter. Like dollying across a plank floor shooting down. Just what flavor of Jell-o do you like?

Still for 11 grand it looks like a good compromise to me.
 
Lesson #2 in your dvd, when in Africa get the freakin' land rover that you can set the tripod up on back like a gun turret for panning 360 degree shots. :)
 
Last edited:
ChipG,

In Kruger you can't shoot out of the sunroof on the roof or stick anything out of the vehicle.

So yeah, my first thought was to go up on the roof and set up there but no can do.
Barry even tried to dismantle the van to see if we could take out the side window to give me a larger area to shoot out of.

But that's why I was near nuclear meltdown. I was supposed to "do my thing" with shooting wildlife but had to use a van as my tripod. :) Ever try to pan with one of those on a dirt road?

"Ok, angle in just a little farther, now back about two feet. Can you turn a little sharper to the left? Nope, up another foot. Whoops, they moved, back five feet. Can you turn right about ten degrees? Hang on let that car go by. You're off the road, can you come up about a foot. OK STOP! Nobody breathe!! Is someone checking the pictures on their digital camera? Every time you hit the button to look at a picture I can see the camera move."

So, no, we didn't really get any panning shots. :) Sorry.
 
davhud said:
Yeah I noticed the sharpness too. The color rendition is also very different between the lenses.
Unless it was modified in post.
Click to expand...
Not modified in post, but it was modified in camera. Kevin shot two days before I got out there. When I got there we changed a lot of the camera settings. Then a few days later we changed them again to tackle some noise-related issues. So there was a significant amount of fiddling with the settings going on.

But then the 21x Canon is about 23,000 dollars if it's the lens I think it is.
Click to expand...
Sounds about right.


Still for 11 grand it looks like a good compromise to me.
Click to expand...
That's MSRP. Street price is $8500.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top