I've been looking off and on for 2 days now and can't seem to find anything in the way of demo photos from the image function on the camera.. I thought part of what the camera boasted was 10.6mp stills.. Maybe I've just been looking under the wrong rocks, but I can't seem to find anything.. can any owners of this camera help me out with this? seems like a better solution to my needs than he 7D.. since I'm far more video oriented..
Looking for Stills from the HMC40
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Robert M Wright
Well-known member
Maybe the reason you can't find any, is they aren't worth shooting, much less worth saving or showing to anyone. I tried shooting a couple of stills with the HMC40 and quickly concluded that my 5 or 6 year old 4 megapixel Sony pocket-point-and-shoot delivers better quality stills (and far easier). The HMC40 may literally record 10 million dots, but the results aren't 10 megapixel stills, at least from any practical perspective. The HMC40 can shoot stunning HD video with adequate lighting, but a still camera it just plain ain't.
Martin Koch
Well-known member
I don't understand why Panasonic didn't include an interpolation-free 1920 x 1280 stills mode. For me this is a missed opportunity since that size with RGB information for each and every pixel should theoretically give quite good photo quality and that size would be more than sufficient for any web use.
Robert M Wright
Well-known member
It wouldn't hurt my feelings if the HMC40 could produce nice stills, but I wouldn't want to pay more just to have the ability to shoot good 2 megapixel stills, when it's easy to just grab a cheap camera from eBay that can do a nice job of it, for way under a hundred bucks nowadays. Heck, spend a little over a hundred, and you can get a pretty decent cam for shooting 8 megapixels stills. I noticed that Olympus C-8080s are selling for about $150 there nowadays, and while it's not a DSLR, it's not exactly a shabby camera either.
Thanks for the response Robert, I was up in the air over this and the 7D, and just wasn't pleased with how the 7D felt in hand.. I just sold my 20D as well, which would have been a perfect mate for this camera.. oh well.. build it all back up. I might just shoot my stills on film now anyways, far more rewarding for me!
Robert M Wright
Well-known member
Realistically, you can grab frames from 1080p footage out of the HMC40 that will look just fine on a web page.
I'm looking at helping a physician friend with his website, and seriously considering the idea of shooting portrait stills of the docs at the clinic for the site, by cranking up the shutter speed on the HMC40 over 1/100 (with some good lighting), shooting 1080p24 (slightly better quality image compression than 1080p30 - which is really pretty dang good with AVCHD, shooting almost no-motion video), and cherry picking from the frames to get the best "pose" (subtly best facial expression). The images on the page won't be all that big (perhaps 400x300 or so max), so after downsizing (properly) should look just fine (essentially eliminating any artifacting at all, as a practical matter, and getting fairly close to 4:4:4 color). I'm not looking for shallow DOF or anything artsy-fartsy, just decent relatively low-res portraits for a web page, with the best facial expression I can get. Shooting even just 30 seconds of footage of each of the docs, while joking around with them, would give me slightly more than 700 two-megapixel "stills" of each of them to cherry pick from. I can't really do that with my Rebel XTi.
I'm looking at helping a physician friend with his website, and seriously considering the idea of shooting portrait stills of the docs at the clinic for the site, by cranking up the shutter speed on the HMC40 over 1/100 (with some good lighting), shooting 1080p24 (slightly better quality image compression than 1080p30 - which is really pretty dang good with AVCHD, shooting almost no-motion video), and cherry picking from the frames to get the best "pose" (subtly best facial expression). The images on the page won't be all that big (perhaps 400x300 or so max), so after downsizing (properly) should look just fine (essentially eliminating any artifacting at all, as a practical matter, and getting fairly close to 4:4:4 color). I'm not looking for shallow DOF or anything artsy-fartsy, just decent relatively low-res portraits for a web page, with the best facial expression I can get. Shooting even just 30 seconds of footage of each of the docs, while joking around with them, would give me slightly more than 700 two-megapixel "stills" of each of them to cherry pick from. I can't really do that with my Rebel XTi.
Very true, the main focus of any still work I'm doing is for an online magazine, so I think it could work doing just what you had said. It will be action sports based with almost everything shot outside.. I assume I could do frame grabs from that type of footage fairly easily as well.. It is nice to think that with any 5 second trick I could have 120 shots to chose from.
Robert M Wright
Well-known member
If you've got the light to work with (and don't really need the images as video), crank up the shutter speed and get yourself just a whole bunch of "stills" to cherry pick from, for your online mag!
jripleypm@gmail.com 5mp? I thought they were 10.8? Anything you could show me with a decent amount of motion.. I shoot skiing, surfing, and motocross, so motion is something I deal with on 9/10 shoots. thanks for the help! more curious than anything now..
shphotovideo
Well-known member
My experience so far is that the stills are about the same as a basic P&S. One thing that I was disappointed in was that it will not take a still while recording video (my Canon HV20 and Sanyo HD1000 both do that). BUT I do find that still grabs from 720 60P are pretty good and fine for web pages.
Here is a pic that I do not think I could have even gotten with a DSLR.
Here is a pic that I do not think I could have even gotten with a DSLR.
ShugPro Digital Studio
Active member
nice!
No, I said 5 MB, not MP. I don't have anything with motion, but I'm email you a couple.
True, but the only advantage of the HMC40 as opposed to a pocket still camera is the zoom. I got a Canon PowerShot A1100 at the same time and the stills are much better, but I like knowing I can get a distant shot with the HMC40 if I need to and then maybe play with the colors in Photoshop or even Picasa to enhance it.
shphotovideo
Well-known member
You are right. After trying a few stills with the HMC40 is it a pain. The focus is slow and there seems to be a delay. I love the video part of it, but I am really disappointed in the photo part especially since Panasonic seems to highlighting that part of it.
Also wish you could do stills while taking video. Doing a bunch of frame grabs take to much time. With my HV20 I use to use the photo function while recording quite often. The quality is not perfect but fine for web pages. Here is an example, all taken with the HV20 while doing video http://www.speedandmotion.com/pictures/artcenter2007/index.html
BobDiaz
The Professor
I plan on testing the still photo ability, just to see what it's like. However, if the camera never had the still photo ability, I'd never miss it. The HMC-40's strong point is the video.
While the still photo feature is only firmware, I'd rather see the firmware be used to capture a still image from a clip, not that it's that important to me.
Bob Diaz
While the still photo feature is only firmware, I'd rather see the firmware be used to capture a still image from a clip, not that it's that important to me.
Bob Diaz
Bic Parker
Active member
I have been using the still camera feature from time to time. If I am planning on taking a lot of stills and will need to use the features of a DSLR, that is what I bring. But for some nice quality pictures in a snap with a huge and available zoom feature... you really can't beat it.
Robert M Wright
Well-known member
VirtualDub is great for pulling stills out of clips. It's super easy to scrub the timeline for the best one, and you can also use VDub filters on the stills, allowing the use of temporal denoising filters, rather than being limited to spatial denoising only (as you are more conventionally with true stills). Essentially, you can do something akin to slowing down shutter speed, after-the-fact in post. Try doing that with a genuine still photo.