Hpx500 ???

When I picked up the HPX500 at NAB and played with it, I REALLY dug it.

It had a GREAT feel, and the lens they had on it went from full wide to full tele in about 1/4 of a second....I mean it was FAST!
 
Decked out with four 16GB cards, you've got 160-180 minutes of 24pN in-camera -- more than enough to sate any appetite. You could shoot a 90-minute feature at 4:1 and only have to offload once.

Four 16GB cards will priobably street at around $3000, meaning you can get a full HPX500 system for under $25K. That's a screaming deal on a great camera.
 
You can already order a full HPX500 system (lens/vf/tripod plate/body/four 16gb cards) for under $20,000 from B&H or Samy's.
 
So what (paying) market does this camera fill? is it limited because it uses P2 instead of tape? I mean... can you market yourself as a run and gun cameraman, ENG, etc. Would it not depend on your producer and their ability/willingness to work with P2? But I guess if you are the Producer then it all makes sense regardless of the type of project. Anyone care to elaborate?

Case Example: I was hired by a producer who came in from NY last week. He was familiar with P2 but didn't want to deal with it. So we rented a SDX900 and I handed off the tapes at the end of the 2 day shoot. He goes back to NY and edits wherever at most any post facility.
 
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So what (paying) market does this camera fill? is it limited because it uses P2 instead of tape?
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I think (and hope) that will change in a couple more years as more producers get accustom to the absence of tape. Especially as tape begins to trend towards extinction.
 
It's not done, but it is changing. We did a studio shoot last month where the client brought in his own firestore. We recorded directly to that and he posted it on his FCP.

We've done freelance for so many of the network shows and they've always wanted Beta. I guess we'll just have to get used to charging them for hard drive rental until they return it, or they will have to wait for DVD dubs. The latter doesn't work so well for the network news shows flying out that same day.
The process is still involving and we'll have to adapt.
 
Sorry to rant on about the workflow of P2 on this thread - but this camera at this price point brings into question it's economic viability for a cameraman. And, yes, it seems like it's agreat price and a great solution for a producer. However, for a cameraman? What are we suppose to do? Hand off a couple $900 P2 cards and the end of a shoot? Request the producer to bring a hard drive? Bring a laptop an download 64GB of data while everyone waits for an hour? So if you can't hand off anything then is it still considered an ENG solution?

OK I'll stop now.
 
jonnyh1968 said:
Sorry to rant on about the workflow of P2 on this thread - but this camera at this price point brings into question it's economic viability for a cameraman. And, yes, it seems like it's agreat price and a great solution for a producer. However, for a cameraman? What are we suppose to do? Hand off a couple $900 P2 cards and the end of a shoot? Request the producer to bring a hard drive? Bring a laptop an download 64GB of data while everyone waits for an hour? So if you can't hand off anything then is it still considered an ENG solution?

OK I'll stop now.
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Well, I wouldn't say an hour, but if you have a decent laptop and a Firewire 800 case, you can dumpt the 64 gb of data in half an hour. Is 30 minutes too long? If you are doing ENG for broadcast, you can actually do an immediate edit and send the file to the network. If you were using any other type of media, you either had to capture everything, select and edit, or send a tape by mail. In ENG, if you need fast, nothing beats immediate edit, compression and online delivery.

Now if you want to deliver tape... And you want viable, you can do something else: copy everything from camera to a dvcprohd tape deck. it will take 64 minutes, but you have your tape master for delivery there.

Anyway, 30 minutes for a phisicall full delivery doesn't seem too much time, at least for me. Not as immediate as handling a tape to the producer or client next to me, but still fast.
 
My .02 on the P2 issue is just plan on/build in a hard drive to the shoot. What do you pay for 60+ minutes of DVCPROHD tape? $60-$80 (depending on if you want it split over a couple of tapes)? You can pick up a 80 gig hard drive for what...$40-$50? Which the 80gig hard drive will hold more than an hour and is more cost effective, not by much..but hey I will save wherever I can without a loss in quality. The client also has the added benefit of not having to capture the footage real time off of a tape. So the 30 minutes it takes to dump it to a hard drive will save them an hour in editing. Like most things, some people are slower to accept change or new workflows but if you lay it out like that I don't see a whole lot of downside for the client. Again...just my .02
 
There were many in the booth at different stations. The only lens I've worked with is the Canon 16x7.7 with optical doubler. They also had one with a huge cine-style lens on it at the camera comparison booth.
 
[ lens I've worked with is the Canon 16x7.7 with optical doubler. uote]

Barry;
What is your impression of the Canon lens?
Mule
 
Noise is not your friend

Noise is not your friend

Still thought I saw a lot of noise in the new 500. Is this a bias I inherited from the HVX
200? Is this a product of DVCPROHD compression? The 2000 seems to have much less noise, superior viewfinder. Pixel shifting seems kind of old at this point.
The 3000 looked fantastic. But then again, 50,000 for a body without a lens? How much Red can you buy for 50,000? Starting with a huge sen---sor results in much lower noise, No?
 
jameswmulryan said:
Still thought I saw a lot of noise in the new 500. Is this a bias I inherited from the HVX
200? Is this a product of DVCPROHD compression? The 2000 seems to have much less noise, superior viewfinder. Pixel shifting seems kind of old at this point.
The 3000 looked fantastic. But then again, 50,000 for a body without a lens? How much Red can you buy for 50,000? Starting with a huge sen---sor results in much lower noise, No?
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That surprises me, I would have thought the 500 to be quite a bit cleaner than the 200. Of course I haven't had any hands on and I haven't seen any footage on an HD or even the internet from a 500. I guess those are going to be the deciding factors for most.
 
The 2000 also uses DVCPRO-HD compression though.

The 500 does still have noise in its signal. Not a lot, but it's there if you look for it.
 
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