Making a sailing Documentary, The HMC40?

J

Jon Neely

Well-known member
Hello all, greeting from Fresno, Ca! It has been some time since posting, sorry work has been good for me. I have been using my Sony Ex1 for the last year and have been having great success with it, coming from my dvx, it has been quite a large step. Anyways, I have now switched direction and want to pursue a dream of mine long in the making, circumnavigating on a sailboat.... sooooooo, I want to make a Doc at the same time, my question is to sell the ex1, get 3 hmc40s and roll like that or save for another Ex1 and shoot all on the sony XDCAM EX format? I would like to hear al opinions, for right now what i like going for the pannys is that; I get more cameras for the buck (cameras in salt environment will break)=more footage and angles, smaller and more battery efficient, smaller for a cheaper water enclosure (we will be diving a ton!), and cheaper media! I have yet to update my ex1 to except sd cards and personally I have worked with others using them and I dont feel quite as safe as the sxs for a camera designed to work with sxs, especially if you want to overcrank any time soon.
her is a link to our idea: http://vimeo.com/6511681

thanks for any comments and ideas, I am open to other cameras, I am not a big fan of p2 so thanks but no thanks, nothing personal tho!

Jon
 
There aren't too many scenarios where I would expect a 1/4" $2,000 camera to compete well against a 1/2" $6,000 camera, but yours just might be one of them. If most of your footage is going to consist of outdoors daylight stuff, the little HMC40 is going to deliver fantastic footage.

But if you're shooting at night or indoors, the EX1 is going to have commanding advantages. It needs about 1/8 the light to deliver comparable brightness. Doesn't matter during the day, but when the sun is down you'll need a lot more light with the HMC40. So -- what's your anticipated shoot involving? If it's primarily day, your plan sounds good. If you're planning on a lot of night shooting, not so good. Unless you get a bunch of lights...
 
Jon

I'd go with the HMC150, or get a wide angle adapter for the HMC40. I've shot a lot on boats, and you need to stay wide to keep the perceived camera movement down.

Here's a link to a recent video I shot for The Moorings in the Seychelle Islands on the 150

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3qksub3BfY

Good luck with the project, it sounds exciting!

Cheers

John
 
that seychelle islands footage is pretty top notch. curious to know what format you were shooting in. as well as camera settings...

nice work!
 
I've been edging more and more to the DSLR camp for shooting on boats (I'm writing this at anchor in St Martin) and one real advantage is that an underwater housing is compact and more affordable than any of the Video housings. Sadly no one yet I'm afraid does a housing for the Lumix but some of the footage I have been getting with my Nikon D90 shooting underwater is right up there with my Varicam work.

Having sailed some 50,000 miles myself any sailing venture is really hard on gear and the fact that you can have a back up body or two (or replace them just about anywhere in the world that tourists go) is another big plus for the DSLR route.

Bob
R.L.Wise SOC
 
Great, well I find my shooting schedule mostly shooting in daytime settings, I know I will be also shooting with a canon 7d still and video, and I was going to look into a consumer camcorder from sony with "nightshot" for all night shots. They used a similar setup on the feature "Morning Light".

camera set up:
2 hmc40s
1 7D
1 sony consumer

JOn
 
if your night shots can stand standard def, look at some used panasonic ag-dvc30's. They can be had for pretty cheap and are very durable. Best of all, they have total-darkness infra-red recording.
 
Look up for Rambo guy, he is on this forum and on hv20.com. He shoots with the small HF100 and his own rig.
 
jackfate said:
that seychelle islands footage is pretty top notch. curious to know what format you were shooting in. as well as camera settings...

nice work!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the compliment, I'm not a camera guy but I've worked in post for 30 years. the Seychelles footage was all shot 720p 24 with the Spark setting (3) on the camera. It was my first major shoot with the camera and I was very happy with the way the footage turned out. There's very little colour correction going on. But I did use FCPs SmoothCam filter a lot, it's great for helping out footage shot from boats.

Cheers

John Christie
 
Jon

Speaking of salt water, I did get sprayed once or twice and had some heavy wind blown salt spray as well. I kept a dry towel around all the time and wiped the camera down with a freshwater, slightly damp cloth afterwards. No problems with the camera.

Cheers

John Christie
 
ive had an EX1 for quite awhile now. i recently bought the HMC150 for mostly sports @ night plus indoor venues. if i had to pick one to shoot in lower light i would pick the 150 over the EX1 at this point. i like the color that comes out of it over the EX1 and i really like the way it renders blacks. noise is pretty close between the two but i still lean towards the 150.

on a bumpy waters like you will be in i would pick CCD over CMOS.

the wide angle on the 150 is also a huge plus!!!

good luck to you.
david
www.davidprobst.com
 
Jon,

Let me know if you start a blog about your adventures. My aunt and uncle retired young, sold everything and bought a 56 foot sailboat. We thought thier crazy adventure would last 6 months but they are on thier 13th year and have circumnavigated the globe 3 times. Just amzing stories and adventures! We had a big family get together a couple weeks ago and they came in for it.

Thier stories over the years and my love of boats led me to buy a 49 hunter (hurricane salvage boat) out of TX 3 months ago, it'll be a year or two restoration process but I have been planning such an adventure for a long time.

Buy the canon 7D or GH1, no brainer! It'll be the best camera to put in your backpack to go hiking on a deserted island or to take into port, experience the culture with it.

The GH1's have no 12 min max record time so you can climb the mast, mount one cam, work the sails etc.

If I didn't have so many projects going on I'd pay you money to go on this adventure, bring my cameras and film away :) A couple more years for me then I'll be on the water for 90+ days a year.

Are you on the boards over at sailnet.com ???
 
Jon,

How big is your boat? What kind of power will you have? Generator, wind, solar? Your going to want to edit with all the down time.
 
I shot some stuff sailing from St. Thomas to Bonaire in may, using a HFS100. I had a water-proof bag and did okay with ducking spray and not getting anything too wet, but I also had the camera tightly tucked away for in many ways the most visually interesting part of the trip; getting hit with heavy winds and weather, even taking a rather scary knockdown after having waves sweep the cockpit.

Of course I was busy for some of that, but I would have loved to figure out a water-proofing system and some kind of rigging mount for the camera.

Next month we bring her from Bonaire down to Panama, and I've got a GH1 now too. Going to try and get an enclosure for the Canon if I can't find anything for the GH1. Does anyone know of reliable ways to mount a camera to rigging, or railings, or even some of the extra tracks on deck? It's a twenty-year old racing boat, so we've got a lot of excess tackle if there was some way to attach it...

(I don't mean to hijack the thread, but it sounds like many of us have similar interests.)
 
YOu guys should check out filmtools.com for cheese plates and mounting options, look in the car mount section. I found an internet carbon fiber wholesaler that sells 5/8 inch carbon fiber rods I'm going to use over the steel ones. You can also buy a cabon fiber sheet anysize you want and drill holes in it for a cheese plate. No rust or corrosion.

There are some threads over at sailnet.com that discuss filming / editing on a sailboat, avchd requires a lot more juice to decode than a simple lower power laptop.

I'll try to find the links for you.
 
Thank you all for your responses., I am actuall on the road currently looking at boats in the bay area, now heading over to stockten then back home to Fresno. The boat will be at maximum a 36 ooter, at minumum a 28 footer. We will probably end up in the 30-31 range when it is all said and done though. When it comes to good quality camera in a small package I think the Hmc40 will do fine with a 7d complimenting it for low light conditions. We will be running 3 diffferent kinds of energy renewal; We will have wind, solar, water generation and engine. With proababyl 6 deep cell batterys I dont think powering my MBP even editing AVCHD will be that much of a problem. I will do as much work to the image in the camera and I feel that go pretty smooth. I feel that I will then now get a underwater housing for only the 7d, and just get rain rackets and slicks for the hmc40s. when it comes to mounting around the boat, we have already handeld that I have made custom stainless mounts that can mount virtually anywhere. I will get a blog going asap, and share everything with you guys. Also thanks for the tip for the marking it to fineliving, great idea! Also if i missed anything im sorry, but please ask away and I would be more than happy to respond.


Jon
 
Make sure the underwater housing for the 7D will let you hit the propper buttons to record again after the 12 minute time limit is up, you can't do that with an underwater bag without surfacing, opening it etc.
 
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