Just ordered the HMC152EN

E

edy4eva

Member
Hi everyone,
Today, after much thought and research I ordered the cam (which should arrive tomorrow morning). I can't wait for it. Thanks for everyone on the wealth of knowledge and experience that lead me to making this decision.

My first shooting (ever) will be an event at a local hotel this week. I am so excited!

I've also got Litepanels Micro, RTG-2 mike, and a Vbg6 battery, in addition to the 2x 16GB sdhc that come with the cam (Panasonic Aus has a promotion at the moment).
 
I would recommend for your first shoot (ever) to do some test footage before the event incase u do something weird w/ the camera by accident and the event footage is lost!

congrats though! enjoy teh cam. i certainly do
 
All I can tell you is don't shoot 720 50P unless you know for sure your NLE can work fully with it, otherwise you'll be looking to transcode the footage and it won't be pretty.
 
I've been using Vegas for the last 4 years and I totally love it, but it does not like the 720 50P files which either causes the system to crash or do the infamous jitter dance in my final render. I have a mate who runs Edius and we've had no problems working with the AVCHD 50P files on his platform. Dag nabit it! I wish I knew how to use Edius :(

PS: It was so nice for Panasonic Australia to give us those 2 free SDHC 16GB cards - I got two HMC so I eneded up with 4 cards... ooh wee!! :D
 
Congrats mate!

My Panasonic dealer in Oz told me they were sold out till the new year, the next shipment wouldnt be in till Jan 3rd.

You clearly didnt have this problem. I am clearly very jealous.
 
That's right, Stefan at DVT told me the same thing and I had to order two straight away... Are you in NSW? You must have been very lucky!
 
Yeah, I had to call around; only found 2 places that had them, and each had 1 as demo. Lemac had it unopened without the SD cards, and John Barry had it opened but with SD cards. I ended up going with the latter.
 
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Congrats on the cam. Before you shoot. I'd do some tests to see what scene file you like.. and how you want to set-up the parameters.. they can make a huge difference in how the footage looks. Also familiarize yourself with the focus and focus assist as those can throw you at first.. Enjoy!
 
Congrats on the camera! You'll love that this camera is SDHC! I agree with EVERYONE's suggestion that you should do some test shots first. It'll save you a lot of headache. Once you get a solid workflow going, it's very fast.

Because it's recording onto a SDHC card, I shoot everyday and I never have to worry about tape. Take great footage and load them for us to see!
 
some1shero said:
Once you get a solid workflow going, it's very fast.
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Totally agree!! I avoid shooting on the A1 now because I don't want to have to do the tape capture thing afterwards. Tape-less is such a great feeling because you know you don't have to worry about tape sitting in standby mode wearing away the same spot on the tape fouling up the heads, or, shoot on a surf beach and not worry about the moist salt air getting inside your camera and causing tape hits :crybaby:

You won't know how great tape-less is until you try it - totally liberating :D
 
Well the shoot went fine. I was bombarded by requests to 'take pictures' instead of the normal video shooting. The only camera I had with me was my old S2is that I take everywhere.

The video shoot was so good, I got plenty of pictures off the HMC's clips; they look pretty good.

Now I am struggling with the workflow. I got Edius v5, Pinnacle Studio 12, and TMPGENc Xpress; been playing with the three to get the hang of it.
Pinnacle (which brings my Q9400/4GB/RAID to its knees when working) reads the 25p files as 50fps, and so plays the clips at double the frame rate (audio plays normally though). Edius is fast as hell.

Does anyone know a fix to this?
In Xpress you could select the frame rate when adding a clip into the project.

Anyhow, few remarks about the cam:
- VG6 battery went on for hours, I was impressed: 1 full 16GB card in PH, and still enough juice for 90 minutes.
- Low light performance is amazing.
- I don't like how the cam takes its time 'thinking' when switching between record and PB modes. It's annoying how it's necessary to change the playback settings to play files from different recording resolutions.
- The connection to the PC is also annoying; having to go into PC mode (2 button clicks,1 long one) then waiting till it says check USB cable before being allowed to connect the cable.
- The on screen recording status comes on about a second or two AFTER starting the shoot instead of immediately (I thought I had missed a word from the beginning of a speech, but thank God it was there).
- Why Panasonic is giving this cheap image by NOT supplying a USB or a HDMI cable? I know you will say most cams dont come with any, but still paying a hefty price tag you would reasonably expect these particulars to come along.

Just my initial observations :)
 
edy4eva said:
Yeah, I had to call around; only found 2 places that had them, and each had 1 as demo. Lemac had it unopened without the SD cards, and John Barry had it opened but with SD cards. I ended up going with the latter.
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Hi edy4eva,

If you don't mind me asking... how much did you pay for the HMC152?

Cheers
 
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