HPX502 vs PMW350

M

MikeD

Active member
Last night I got to have a little play with the PMW350. A cameraman from channel 9 had been given it to test for the local news who are looking at replacing their SX cameras. While looking at it we had a big factory fire and the 2 of us filmed it. Me with my HPX502 and the 9 cameraman used the PMW350.
This was a test I was very interested in ever since I bought a HDR500 handycam. The exmor r chip is fantastic in low light and has been invaluable when trying to stay covert. The very thought of a 3 chip 2/3 inch version looked good to me. (I do have concerns with the viewfinder but that is another story)
We both arrived at the same time and due to it being one of the largest factory fires I have every filmed we were both kept about 100 metres from the fire. So we had no location advantages in the shots. My footage was sent to all the networks including channel 9. I expected the 9 story to be full of shots taken with the 350, so you can imaging my surprise when there was only 2 shots in it.
Turns out they were not impressed at all. They even took it to the morning surf report and used both the 350 and the SX. Not a single shot from the 350 was used.
The vision did look very flat to me and IMO the aspect ratio looked slightly out.
I know a lot of people were interested in this camera. The specs certainly look good on this camera but it would appear the pictures just don't stand up.
 
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So its you thats been shooting all those crappy gold coast shots on 9 news..... (I of course am kidding).

Mike just wondering if the 350 op was underdone? As in crap settings? To new to the unit etc?

Moving on, what else you shoot around the GC? And where was that fire?
 
Guilty as charged.
The boys had had it all day so god only knows how much fiddling of settings were done. But from the pics I saw they would have had to set it to the worse settings possible.
If it is night shots on the coast it's me. There was the High speed chase on New years eve and the guys that fell out the niteclub window. Don't you love the colour phase problem on nines vision. There is something wrong with there DVCpro player but they won't get it fixed for some reason. The vision always looks great on the other networks.
The fire was at Yatala.
 
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Hi MikeD n Noel,

One wonders at times when identical vision on one network looks geat, and another with the same vision looks C*#p. who knows maybe they want freelancers to look less than the staff vision?.
as far as settings go, most guys who don't "own" their gear i've seen, have little interest in getting the best from their equipment as they get paid anyway. "it's a culture thing".
I have network crews fly in to my area every so often, I see this over and over again.

Freelancers live and die by their pics/vsion, so it's critical to get the best from their investments.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
Tom 4 said:
Freelancers live and die by their pics/vsion, so it's critical to get the best from their investments.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
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No arguments here. I saw a network cameraman throw his camera onto the backseat of a car from 2 metres away then shrug his shoulders when it bounced and hit the floor. 2 weeks later he asked me if I had any work for him.
 
MikeD said:
No arguments here. I saw a network cameraman throw his camera onto the backseat of a car from 2 metres away then shrug his shoulders when it bounced and hit the floor. 2 weeks later he asked me if I had any work for him.
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I suppose he may soon be a freelancer too?, with that much "lack of respect" for gear he may be better to look for another occupation in say auto wrecking or computer re-cycling.
Many years ago when I worked for a regional network, we looked after our gear, as new gear was very far n few between up grades.
Since financing my own gear for now over 25years I know it must give top performance and still be saleable after a few years of service, so careful use/service is vital.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
I would think this was a settings issue. The image I've seen from an EX-1 out of the box is pretty flat and undersaturated. It is amazing that they ship these cameras that way knowing a lot of people might judge from their first impression.

Many seem to be very happy with the PMW-350.
 
I'm interested to hear from anyone that has used cmos cameras at large press conferences and lightning storms. There is a real issue with flash banding that the sony reps were not able to answer. I know the hpx500 has been classed as SD by the BBC so will be interesting to see what they say about the 350 with its 4:2:0
 
The 350 will be classified by the BBC as SD because its recording format (XDCAM-EX) is classified as SD.

I would certainly expect that lighting will cause issues with CMOS camcorders; I can't really think of how it wouldn't.
 
For News vision, it dosen't matter what camera it's shot on, the yarn content is more important that the Image quality, eg, no complaints about the "king" bashing that was shot on very crappy gear indeed, But, it got world wide air play for it's content , not it's quality...
best to get the "Exclusive" than worry about quality.. get enough "exclusive's" and you can then afford the quality....

Cheers
Tom K
 
We are just wondering how it will go with a big news conferance with flashes going all over the place. Could be rather funky really.
As for the BBC I thought the size of the chip was the main reason why the EX series was put down to SD.
 
MikeD said:
We are just wondering how it will go with a big news conferance with flashes going all over the place. Could be rather funky really.
As for the BBC I thought the size of the chip was the main reason why the EX series was put down to SD.
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No the BBC spec for Hd clearly says that 1/2 chip camera's are OK but a codec less than 50mbs is not, that is also why my 301 is not acceptable for BBC HD as the chip is too small but the AVC Intra 100 codec is OK.

Well that is the spec from 2008, but the world it is a changing:laugh:

More info here:http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/production/docs/hd_delivery.pdf

Interesting that I have been shooting with a mix of 2700 and 301's for nearly a year now and no one has questioned any of the material for HD use in broadcast.

There have also been several BBC doco's totally shot on EX-1's so it is very interesting times and the spec's need to be brought up to date.
 
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Hi Simon I spoke to Daisy Asquith recently and she did the Liz Smith Cruise doco with an EX-1 and no nanoflash, it shows that they can be used but great care needs to be had in the post workflows.
 
Just an update on this. It seems that the 350 has been dropped by channel 9. Word is that the CMOS problems are one of the main reasons from what I hear. Will be interesting what the camera manufacturers will do in the future as we all know they want us all to go to CMOS chips. But they don't seem to have answers to the hard questions.
 
I was talking to one of the SKY news guys last week and they have just started their SKY HD news service here in the UK.

They are all to be using panasonic HPX3000 camera's and 40 of them are due to re-equip soon, I also did the SKY and ITV election night coverage two weeks ago and there were two HPX3000 camera's on the platform for SKY along with out 3X sony 1500's for the pool coverage.

I asked the sky cameraman what the spec was for shooting and delivery and he said it was 1920x1080i 50i, according to my BBC reports the 3000 gives the best video quality of any of the P2 camera's.
 
MikeD said:
Will be interesting what the camera manufacturers will do in the future as we all know they want us all to go to CMOS chips.
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I don't know that it's fair to say that they "want us to all go to CMOS chips". The simple fact is that CMOS offers certain advantages, especially the smaller the chips go. Sony's Juan Martinez wrote an article that explained Sony's position: "if you want the best quality especially for digi-cine, go with CCD. But for smaller chips, go with CMOS." The reasoning for that statement wasn't really spelled out in the article, but has become pretty clear over the intervening years, which is that the heat advantages of CMOS make densely-packed small chips more practical in CMOS than in CCD. Witness that Panasonic makes a 1/3" 960x540 CCD chip, but they can make a 1920x1080 1/3" CMOS chip. Furthermore, CMOS being so much lower in power draw, means that handheld cameras with tiny batteries benefit more, proportionally, than larger cameras that have access to huge batteries.

Almost all the 2/3" chip cameras on the market today are still CCD. Very, very few are CMOS. So I don't know that it's fair to say that the manufacturers want us to go with CMOS. I think they're offering it as an alternative, and letting the market speak as to what they prefer.

But the small chips are all CMOS already; I think the HMC150/HPX170/HVX200A and the JVC 1/3" HD/HM series are the last of the 1/3" (or smaller) CCD chips we'll ever see.
 
It really is interesting how the PMW-350 is really throwing some serious weight into the introduction of 2/3" CMOS chips. I hadn't really thought about it, but you are exactly right, Barry. I haven't seen many other 2/3" CMOS offerings. I'm contemplating purchasing a 2/3" camera for my production studio in the next month or so and will be demo-ing a PMW-350 and an HPX-500 side by side within the next few weeks, as soon as my sales agent can get them in the same room for me (I choose those two models to demo due to similarity in cost, form factor and chip size with a fully kitted out package). I know the Sony will top the Pany in sharpness and resolution, but I am really curious to see how much (or how little might be another way to phrase it). I also am curious to see how color rendering differences will look. I am really going to try and push each camera with some acquisition tests. I want to do some resolution and color charting side by side and take the footage into post and push and pull and sharpen and soften, etc to see a visual representation of all the spec differences. I have a feeling that the resolution issue with the 500 will not be as soft as I am imagining, and I also have a feeling that the skew and wobble of the CMOS in the 350 won't be as bad as I am fearing.

I took a Canon t2i to a theme park a few weeks ago and shot some refresh shots for their broadcast commercial (they wanted "cheap HD" as clients often ask for...grrrr) and the skew issue was pretty awful as my shooting pans were pretty fast paced to keep up with kids running and rides wizzing by, etc. Even though the skew was pretty bad, it was, however, still workable with a little rotation adjustment in post, and I know the XDCAM EX cameras have a faster readout than the DSLRs, but after that shoot, I do have some reservations about purchasing a CMOS camera that will serve as our in-house camera for hopefully 80%-ish ofwhat we shoot. I know we will not be able to purchase a camera that will cover every foreseeable job and I know I won't run into those shooting situations all the time, but I just don't want to have to fix skew/wobble/flash bands even on a semi-regular basis in post if I can help it.

I know that we will still need to rent cameras from time to time when the job requires, but I have never had a client complain about the softness of 720p, so it seems like more of realistic prediction that we would need to rent less due to softness than we would due to skew, wobble, flash banding, etc. 720p from HDX-900 , Varicam, and even HVX200 footage has always wowed clients so I think the 500 will at least be able to do the same. From what I understand, HPX-500 1080p acquisition is at least as sharp as PMW 350 720p acquisition (At similar focal lengths, lens quality, etc). I will say that I don't know for sure about that, as I have not shot either camera yet, so if anyone can speak to that comparison, or share some res chart tests, that would be killer. Like I said, I will try and create my own chart tests soon to compare and post up the results.

I am pretty excited about the tests because I have not seen any direct comparison footage of these two cameras in similar shooting situations. I have also not been able to find any resolution chart images from the 500 at all. If anyone else has requests for the test, post them up. I will do my best to address them and post up footage. I really am going into the test with an open mind...can't wait to see what comes out!

Thanks,

Drew Money
DP/Creative Director - 7/79 Ltd.
www.779ltd.com
 
If you're comparing those two, you might also want to nag your Panasonic salesman about the Varicam 2700. They are selling it at 50% off. For $19,950 if you trade in pretty much any other pro camera, including even an EX1. Heck, for that discount it'd practically be worth buying an EX1 at $6,000 and then trading it in, so you're getting a new VariCam 2700 for $25k.

But if you can find one, you could go buy a creaky old broken 2/3" camera off ebay for $500 and use that to get the trade-in. Just make sure with your reseller that it would qualify.

Here's the trade-in description: http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webap...298737&catGroupId=112002&surfModel=AJ-HPX2700

If you're seriously considering a PMW350 or HPX500, that trade-in deal on the HPX2700 is tough to resist, and it's only good for another three weeks.
 
Hey Barry,

Thanks for the advice. Coincidentally enough, I happened to come across that deal last night after my previous post. It would raise the overall price point up a bit more than the 500 or 350 for a fully built rig, but the value of that deal makes it a serious contender. I am definitely going to add that to my list of choices to evaluate.

The HPX2700 would be much better than the HPX500 from an imaging and usability standpoint, and from a business standpoint, it seems like a really safe investment. Worst case scenario would be that if we didn't bring in enough business to cover the cost of financing a rig like that (probably unlikely...having that camera would probably bring in production and rental opportunities for us), we could still turn around and sell it after the trade-in deal is up for probably more than we bought it for. Pluses all around as I see it!

Thanks, Barry!

Drew Money
DP/Creative Director - 7/79Ltd.
www.779ltd.com
 
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