My 150 recordings when viewed on a full screen are soft and lacking in sharpness!
- Thread starter eric geurts lakin
- Start date
I don't find the T2i to be sharper than an HMC150 at all. Not as noisy at ISO800 and below for sure, though. And I can pretty reliably sharpen T2i footage in post, whereas it seems to be impossible to do on 150 footage.
When I shoot with the 150 I usually have detail coring set at +7 and then crush the blacks a little in post, that helps with the noise.
When I shoot with the 150 I usually have detail coring set at +7 and then crush the blacks a little in post, that helps with the noise.
Odd, I don't usually have a noise problem with the 150....what are you shooting, and in what kind of light? It may well be the 55D has less noise than the 150 in same setting.
But whatthe 150 also has is a rather nice fast zoom, the ability to run with auto exposure/focus/white balance if you choose or go manual if you choose, the ability to record more than 12 minutes at a time, etc. So what is it that is important to you? What fits your needs the best? The ability to obtain some improvement in overall picture quality, or the tools to help you take that footage without investing in a lot of extra gear?
eric geurts lakin
Active member
Yes ...I found that the t2i is great up to ISO400, but any more then that then its awful. I'll try out the detail coring at +7 then. Thanks.
eric geurts lakin
Active member
Yes.. I quite agree with you. The 150 fits my needs very well indeed (except for the noise problem rearing its ugly head every now and then) and the 550d is like an assistant who helps out a bit with the occasional noise-free scene and some amazing d.o.f. So I think that the two can work together without one having to invest in more expensive gear to get the same job done.
eric geurts lakin
Active member
Hi
What kind of noise do you see?
The HMC 150 is capable of producing quite a lot of noise, but that is almost everytime because of too low light and too much gain. If I record in studio enviroment I use plenty of light - i allways uses 1 x 1200 W for front light and 2 x 500 W for backlight and then 2 x 1200 for front side lights. That gives me the abillity to go to LOW gain and only use ND filters and iris to get the best light/colour. I use the waveform monitor to make sure light is right and the picture is well exposed: the waves should be filling up the waveform and npot have too much in top og bottom. I also use Zebras to be sure the light will not burn through - just keeping it at 100% at keep an eye on it - I like the picture with no zebras at all - others like a bit of zebras and maybee sets it to 110%.
Use the ND filters - if the light is too low, try to get some more light (using lamps or wait for the sun to get up ;-) or use the ND filters and the Iris at start - first use the gain if ND and iris is not enough to get the picture well exposed. But if you use the gain expect some noise. You can also get rid of some of the noise by using Barrys low noise scenefile. But I do not experience so much noise anymore after following the rules I´ve just mentioned. Try it out and see for your self. And try 720 50/60P instead of 1080 25P - it looks more clean to me - at least in some cases. And still looks great on a 42" if you have folllowed some basic rules and made it look the best in post.
I know there are a lot of new cameras with better specs in many ways - and SLRs with great DOF etc. but they lack other features that the HMC 150 has onboard - like vectorscope, XLR inputs, waveform monitor etc. And remember - the corny, noisy, film-look is still quite popular as well. If the GH2 was able to film 1080 50P I would by one - its vheap and the video looks great - but I would still keep my HMC 151 for more seriuos stuff. If you don´t like the HMC 150/151 after all - wait for the new Pannys in the fall - they look like HMC 150 without noise and better res to me! I ´ll sure be checking them out when they come soon.
I´m not an expert, but I bet you will be happy witht he HMC 150 when you learn to use it. It just takes some time and practice as so many other things in life. The more you try and practice - trying different settings, scenefiles, light-situations etc. the better you will get. Write your settings down or say it loud and record it as you go, so you can see for your self afterwards. Comparing wich settings that works for you and wich does not. By the way - you can do a lot of things in post as well - using Looks for fancy coloureffects, vignettes etc. and neat video noise reduction for eliminating noise etc.
Happy filming!
Morten
Thank you for that Morten. Yes...I do infact make extensive use of the 150's excellent features. I have also discovered that it really needs to have sufficient light (hence the noise) then the video clips are very good. I recently did some filming down some old mines (with only some small torches) using the hd norm gamma with all settings at 0 except for master ped at -2 and no gain, and strangely enough, I did not have a problem with noise! but then again, I have filmed on very bright sunny days and found noise in the shadows! The 150 is not the sort of camera that one simply picks-up and masters in a day. It takes months (1 year in my case) to learn how to operate, and yes...I'm still learning.
8string
Well-known member
There should be nothing normally wrong with your camera that would create soft focus if properly shot. I shot for a year with a 150, and the footage was razor sharp even at large room size on a projector. I would also suspect something wrong with your camera, like back focus.It should be easy to test for it. I never had any noise problems with it either. It was a quiet, sharp camera. Almost too sharp if that's possible.
One year down the line, i'm still to get a clear picture from this camera, i've just bought a Marshall LCD 50 to help me in my quest to know this camera. Last weekend when everything looked positive, i take the camera to shoot a soccer match, oh dear me! aliasing all over, no single white line on the pitch has a straight lines. Most of the time i have taken this camera out as the main camera, i have been rescued by my GH1 and GH2 in the end, i just don't know what i'm doing wrong, at one time the DVX100 rescued the occasion. I have even tried the scene files in Barry's DVD. For the soccer match shooting i tried some BBC HMC 151 sport test settings i found somewhere in the internet. Admir, are you in Göteborg or Stockholm?
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I notice that artifacting on a lot of HD sports footage. Detail cranked causing artifacting to be more "outlined" maybe? Though I would think that would have to be detail added post compression.
Ever take your footage into an NLE and crank the detail way to high. You'll see what I mean. Bit of a counter argument for adding detail in post.
Ever take your footage into an NLE and crank the detail way to high. You'll see what I mean. Bit of a counter argument for adding detail in post.
I have noticed that as well. If you zoom or pan too fast you might get artifacts in fx the upper corners of the sky. It might not be visual in the the original take, but when you add some kind of effect like vignette or sarien the sky, you might see artifacts. Besides - if you compress too much at export you mane things worse. Any one having a solution for that issue - besides trying to avoid panning and zooming too quick/much?
Michael Carter
Veteran
Keep in mind that the 150 (As far as I understand) is only adding sharpening via the scene controls - if you keep sharpening low, it's not purposefully softening the image. Keeping scene-file sharpening down (if this is indeed the case) means you have much more control of sharpness in post. Unsharp mask for instance lets you choose the threshold, amount and actual size of added sharpening. And you can use masks and adjustment layers to sharpen specific areas, or even keying software to not sharpen skies or flat areas. For an hour of talking heads that's obviously a lot of work, but for key scenes it could be very useful.
While true, and I usually do just that if I am not mistaken, the detail in camera is added pre-compression. So if, you want added detail you might be better off doing so in camera as adding it in post also adds detail to compression artifacts. Although you have to add a significant amount of detail in post to notice this.
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