My humble review of the HMC150

Barry_Green said:
Vertical res is more important than horizontal res; almost all HD compression codecs (up until now) have had no qualms about pre-filtering down the horizontal, but they always stored the full vertical. HDCAM, HDV, DVCPRO-HD, early AVC-HD, and 720p AVC-Intra all pre-filter the horizontal but record the full vertical.
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I've always assumed this was because interlacing gets ugly with vertical scaling... that is, nothing inherently more important about vertical res. In Bob's hypothetical progressive-only camera, it might not be an issue...
 
Gabriel Berube said:
Well, Canon could improve the A1 by putting native-progressive CCDs into instead of interlaced CCDs. It's been proved in some shootouts that the 24f Canon uses in the XL-H1 and XH-A1 loses vertical resolution compared to other native-progressive chip cameras. It doesn't mean it becomes bad resolution, just that they could improve visual quality.

They could also improve low-light sensivity too while they're at it, since most new cameras are more light-sensitive with amazingly lower noise than before.

I personally hope they drop the HDV codec and move on to the new, much more promising AVCHD codec. Tape-based might be great for some, but for most, tapeless will be the way to go.

Just my 2 cents...
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Don't forget the A1 needs a wider angle lens. The HMC150 is significantly wider than the A1. It really makes a big difference when you need it. Of course, the A1 has a much longer lens which may be more beneficial to some users.
 
jeff9329 said:
Don't forget the A1 needs a wider angle lens. The HMC150 is significantly wider than the A1. It really makes a big difference when you need it. Of course, the A1 has a much longer lens which may be more beneficial to some users.
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This gets into some subjective judgment here, but for me wider is better. With weddings, it seems that I'm always getting into areas where I need a wider view. At the other end, the maximum telephoto is almost never needed.

I guess that someone who shoots nature films will have a different take on what a lens should have.

Bob Diaz
 
The lens is so wide that there seems to be a slight fisheye distortion effect. Anyone else seeing this? It's especially apparent when you pan.
 
I agree with Bob, I think it's better to have a wider range without having to attach a wide angle lens on the front further degrading the image because I too find myself in cramped conditions often having to share a space with a stills photographer/s at weddings.

Nobody has said anything about the digital zoom extender... what's it like, is it a useless consumer style feature that has no place on a prosumer camera (like that film grain effect on the early XL2)?
 
The digital zoom is fairly worthless; it just magnifies the central portion of the image so you have a corresponding resolution loss. Now, if you're not doing any editing and you need a punch-in and you're delivering standard-def anyway, it's not that bad at 2x, but at 5x or 10x it's pretty bad and I don't really see the point at all.
 
Evro said:
I agree with Bob, I think it's better to have a wider range without having to attach a wide angle lens on the front further degrading the image because I too find myself in cramped conditions often having to share a space with a stills photographer/s at weddings.

Nobody has said anything about the digital zoom extender... what's it like, is it a useless consumer style feature that has no place on a prosumer camera (like that film grain effect on the early XL2)?
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I posted a few stills from my digital zoom tests in one of the threads. I pretty much agree with Barry. For any DV, in good light shooting, I think the 2X zoom is very usable. The 5 & 10X are bad.

I did a lot of comparison shots with the XH-A1 at full zoom. On full zoom & 2X the HMC150 has a slightly longer lens, but is certainly not as sharp as the A1 when viewed on my 51" monitor in HD, but not too bad.

About the wide angle. The distortion you see at full wide during a pan is called perspective distortion and is not a lens fault. The HMC150 obviously uses a rectilinear lens. A fisheye lens is a wide angle curvilinear lens which gives a very wide angle at the expense of a distorted perspective.

Wide angle pans should be shot parallel to the ground and/or the target to minimize perspective distortion. The further the distance to the target, the less the perspective change is apparent.
 
About the wide angle. The distortion you see at full wide during a pan is called perspective distortion and is not a lens fault. The HMC150 obviously uses a rectilinear lens. A fisheye lens is a wide angle curvilinear lens which gives a very wide angle at the expense of a distorted perspective.
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Are you saying that with the HMC-150 lens it is possible to get the "wide effect" of a rectilinear wide angle lens ? That wide angle effect would not be possible to get with another camera plus wide angle attachment lense because it would be curvilinear lens, right ? Professional ENG or EFP broadcast wide angle lens are always rectilinear, right?

Could someone post a pan shot where we can see the type of wide distorsion of the HMC ? Thanks a lot!
 
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