New Canon HD camera?

If these CCDs have a good dynamic range, then Canon has a winner.
...and it seems that Panasonic will have a winner too.

Dont forget, HD-SDI will soon become cheaper and lighter, like everything in the digital world.
P2 will be cheaper also.

We've got two very interesting possibilities now, ...We're very lucky !
 
I've got bad news for some of you. If you think P2 prices are going to dive in price anytime soon, you are waiting for something that will not happen. There has to be universal usage of P2 as in the same quantity as VS machines for someone to step in and propose a cheap way of mass producing. P2 is limited because the manufacturing yield is like CCDs, you don't get what you start with and end up with a small yield of usable cards. Ask Panasonic what price they expect these cards to cost in a year or two and watch how fast they change the subject.
 
Although I do think Sony left HD SDI I/O off the HDV deck purely to cripple it as a "pro" format, and off the camera for similar reasons. It's a brave move by Canon to put HD SDI on camera, but it should get them the studio market straight off!

Be interesting to see how the images from all these affordable HD cameras compare.

Graeme
 
I don't see P2 as a yield issue. The chips inside the P2 card are cheap, but the card itself is vastly over-engineered, and I think that mass production should allow the card costs to drop. Memory prices themselves drop about half every year to 18 months. But they only make up a small proportion of the P2 card cost.

Graeme
 
Graeme,

I agree, Canon IS brave, very brave.

If the H1 has the same image quality and low noise as the XL2, then i say to you:

"Go Graeme, and create an algorithm as good as G Nicer (chroma upsampler) that allows us to expand HDV in a better format to work with in post."

(he he...you can do it, i'm sure)
 
"I don't see P2 as a yield issue. The chips inside the P2 card are cheap, but the card itself is vastly over-engineered, and I think that mass production should allow the card costs to drop. Memory prices themselves drop about half every year to 18 months. But they only make up a small proportion of the P2 card cost."

Except They want 100% perfection so hence why I say the 'yield" is low. Panasonic is going to need to sell a heck of a lot of these cameras and find someone they trust for manufacture to make these P2s work. Price wise, I just don't see them dropping hugely in the next year, let alone coming out with anything more than an 8gig version. There is too much competition to Panasonic for them to be anything more than just one of the options of purchases so it limits their reach. Canon has the advantage of offering tape and tape rules today. Folks say they hate HDV but those that do usually have never used it.
 
So if 100% perfection costs x now (being the top 5% off the memory pile), it will cost x/2 in 18 months time because they're still taking the top 5% off the pile. However, I think the memory cost is a fraction of the P2 cost, and I have difficulty believing that they're having perfection issues on the magnesium shell and raid LSI itself.

Graeme
 
I don't disagree Graeme. Rather I am repeating the crap they spew. For every Sony F900 sold the seller gets a $15k check. Does the camera need to cost as much? No but Sony needs to get folks to sell them and needs to make back the money they spent designing and marketing. It sounds so logical that P2s should drop fast, but I just don't see that happening.
 
Walter, my impression, from talking to various Panasonic people in the USA and locally here in Canada is that they need a more mass market application of P2 to bring the costs down, and that's what the HVX200 is about. How accurate my impression is, is however debateable.... However it does seem reasonable, as does your comment that margin for dealers is also important. I guess time will tell. Again, what I'm excited about is now we're seeing options for low cost HD, and we're starting to see mid-range HD on the horizon, and that's all got to be good.

Graeme
 
Walter_Graff said:
This camera is more pro than prosumer so it offers what someone like me wants more than what one might want doing movies at home. I have been doing a few projects with HDV lately and I like it a lot. Having the option to record uncompressed output with this new entry is fantastic.
Click to expand...

The thing is, the major market for this camera should be high-end prosumer. By prosumer, I mean anything with 1/3" chips. Giving it HDV and HD-SDI seems a bit like offering a family car with either a 4 cylinder 1.1L or an 8L V12 engine - neither one is what is needed - they both work fine, but can't we have a nice economical 2 litre V6??

There is no doubt it can be done and I thought Sony and JVC were holding back to conserve high-end sales and Pany to conserve P2 sales... but Canon, they had the unique position to give everyone just what they wanted.

As far as the HD-SDI, it does sound great, but I can only think of one situation in the past where HD-SDI would have been helpful on THIS LEVEL of camera, and that was because a hire company didn't supply a viewfinder for one of our 2/3" cameras and we had to use an XL1 for the 3rd "handheld" camera.

HD-SDI is only really helpful in a studio or controlled tehered enviroment. If you are shooting in a studio, you tend to have the budget to afford a 2/3" camera. This is only my experience in the UK though, so is it very different in the US? You certainly have far more channels, so I guess there is more low cost studio work..?

Also, what is the cheapest HD-SDI switcher?
 
hmmm...

It seems to have new chips and new DSP, so it may behave very differently from any 1/3 CCDs we've seen so far...

...maybe, maybe not...

but having seen some killer images from the XL2, i am confident that it will produce beautifull images.
 
I think there is just a lot more media production here in general, mmm. As for "studio" work, yes there is tons, but it's not all necessarily for broadcast as you might think of it. Once you leave the "blue states" and venture into the red, you will find that many, many churches and certainly most large churches, have their own production studio - this is a huge market in the US. Also we have cable access stations. Which means that ever cable provider has to allow a channel IN EACH LOCAL for "regular joes" to put on a television show - think Wayne's World. Each small region has it's own cable access studio. Many colleges and universities here have their own small studio. Large corporations have small/portable "studios" for handling large live events and video conferencing. So yes, not all of these folks are able to, or want to, spend the coin to use 2/3 chip cameras. For all of them, this cam would be an incredible solution.

Matt
 
I agree Matt,

I dont have advanced technical knowledge, but as a small producer, i see the HD SDI output as a "link" for a stand alone portable capture device.
...and if that portable (and lightweight) capture device can "conpress" in real time that info, then just imagine the possibilities and the power...

I could be totally wrong though...
 
MattC said:
I think there is just a lot more media production here in general, mmm. As for "studio" work, yes there is tons, but it's not all necessarily for broadcast as you might think of it. Once you leave the "blue states" and venture into the red, you will find that many, many churches and certainly most large churches, have their own production studio - this is a huge market in the US. Also we have cable access stations. Which means that ever cable provider has to allow a channel IN EACH LOCAL for "regular joes" to put on a television show - think Wayne's World. Each small region has it's own cable access studio. Many colleges and universities here have their own small studio. Large corporations have small/portable "studios" for handling large live events and video conferencing. So yes, not all of these folks are able to, or want to, spend the coin to use 2/3 chip cameras. For all of them, this cam would be an incredible solution.
Click to expand...

Churches! Wow! Churches in England are where you go to get married on be burried. I think some old people go and sing in them on Sundays, but production studios - Good God, American churches are rich.

If it is as you describe, I can really see their plan for this camera, it all makes sense. Maybe they can knock HD-SDI off the UK version and save me a grand or two though.

I wonder if we will see any "Studio" lenses coming out - maybe the 20x is controllable enough for the job already.
 
MattC.. seems you fully understand my excitment over this camera.. :-)

I think you can get a decent HD-SDI switcher for about $20k
- I know you can get a GREAT SD-SDI switcher for $15k

- Mikko
 
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