New E Cards: A Warning re: Life Expectancy

My company have officially dumped Panaosnic's P2 lineup of prods. we hated for what we saw in terms of cmos sensor output. Jello Vision & real crappy image ouput with FBC update ... the flash bads seem to reduce but the resulting image on moving subjetcs like in live shows/events is certainly to thrown out of the window. E series cards are a pure eye wash for unsuspecting users. The A series cards are way to expensive to get some HD footage. Sony XCAM way is the most usefull way to shoot (again the disks can be used over 10000times) amazing SONY quality what panasonic always likes to achieve. For our needs we have invested in PDW335 for good projects & jvcHM700 is waht we are planning to invest for lower docu/event shoots ... The SDHC card reusable numerous time at a fraction of cost.

We love panasonic as a camera but hate what they have evolved for recording media a COSTLY P2 card which cant fix directly into any modern day laptop except for a pana laptop (i can understand panny's plight they cant upgrade thei line pf laptops cox they would themselves prove the already dead pcmica technology). pana may be braging for not leting down their customers for many more years to come but users all across the globe have majorly invested into sony lineups thats what we see when we are out for any live shows shoots etc. its like all the panny hopefull investors will have to brag carry forward thw primitive technology cox panny cant go beyond P2 any mor ein future cox they wont wanna have a slap on their face with their own hand. i know its a crime to opine any views against panasonic on this panasonic sponsored forum but well voice have to heard...

May be who know if panasonic could use XDCAM or SDHC disks/cards in future :D to keep the name going on & on parallel to sony :D

God only may bless panny & poor souls who had invested into panny ...
 
I have been using Sony PDW-355L XDCAMs for the last couple years with another production company, but when it came time to spend my own money I bought the HPX300.
 
David S. said:
Please save these comments for some other place.

I find them to be a little condescending.

best to you
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I am sorry, i tender my sincere unconditional apologies if i hurt any feelings on personal level, it wasn't intentional to sound condescending in my reply. I was purely voicing my feeling about P2's exhorbitanting cost vs other Greater available options. HPX300 would make a good camera if it was shooting with a 1/2 CCD & on SDHC cards :( but thats not going to happen as it will hurt panny's top line of cameras business.
 
Sony blindfolds......
Sony has misled the general die hard fans of the brand using the many different formats starting with SX. I have always been a huge sony fan, maintained and service Betacam SP and DigiBeta in past. I still believe Sony make a very good range of Camera heads, nut they have come short on the format wars. If a certain format does not work for them , they create another!
DVCAM, SX, IMX, XDCAM, HDCAM, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX, HDCAM SR, i might have left a few out:) and i purposefully include DVCAM (or SP MIni DV!)
There is no competing format from Sony for AVC-INTRA,
I think it is all about the cost of the production and what you can afford to use as your tool.
C'mon Sony give as a latest generation compression scheme (something transmission is based on) recording at 100Mbp/s or more at 4:2:2 1920x1080 25/30P (NOT PsF)

I always find it soooo weird that if Sony does a format at 1440x1080 then it's ok, but let one of the other manufaturers do that then see what happens!
I also wonder who pioneered the flash media recording, but then it was passed as something that would never work......
 
Cees Mutsaers said:
NOT, you can only minize it by using slow pans (1080/24p seems to give slightly worse results than the EX1/3 the other formats are better than than EX1/3).

Buy the way where can you win a HPX302 ???????
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I won it in NZ - in New Zealand's grandest filmmaking competition, the V48hours Furious Filmmaking Competition. Hundreds of amateur and professional teams compete all over NZ in one weekend to make a short film in the space of 48hours.
http://www.48hours.co.nz/2009/

I won the National Cinematography Award for the comp, the prize being a HPX302EN kindly donated by Panasonic. Huge win for me, but yeh... I am a bit perplexed by some the issues that beset this high-end camera straight out of the box. Horribly grainy images when shooting in the highest HD AVC Intra settings (and in great lighting conditions) and jello-vision. I am wondering whether I should just sell it if these issues can't be fixed. I don't want to be restricted by my camera in this way... as these issues are crazy. However, I am certainly giving this camera a damn good chance to produce something worth broadcasting, so I am going through the motions of updating the firmware, trying different scene files etc. I am going to watch that clip on Vimeo which explains the technology to a beginner shooter like myself.

Here's a link to my 48hour film 'Frequencies' - for which we won Grand National Best Cinematography.

You need to know a couple of things before watching it though. As part of the competition, you have to include some compulsory elements. These elements change every year the competition runs. Teams are also assigned randomly chosen genres.

A Prop: A Rock
A Line of Dialogue: "It doesn't fit"
A Character: Alex Puddle - an exaggerator

My team's allocated genre: Real Time Movie

We chose to tell our story in one continuous take.

Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUPMH1K_uiU (remember to turn on HD)

This film was shot on a Canon XLH1 at 1080p HDV format. The place we filmed in had enough power for TWO lights, so 3db of gain was also pumped into the image.

-Rich
 
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I am very impressed with what you achieved in the contest !!!
I read very mixed experiences of the HPX302 from very sharp footage with very less grain and almost no skew problems till very grainy footage and only usable in shots with very very slow panns or no pans at all are used. I want to buy this camera before the end of the year but when I read such experiences like yours I don't know what to do anyymore So I am very interested to know if you manage to get the HPX302 under controll resulting in good footage and what your opinion is of this cam (you did not pay for it so you can be honest about it). You can also let me know in a pm if you rather don't want to put it here.


lordbiggus said:
I won it in NZ - in New Zealand's grandest filmmaking competition, the V48hours Furious Filmmaking Competition. Hundreds of amateur and professional teams compete all over NZ in one weekend to make a short film in the space of 48hours.
http://www.48hours.co.nz/2009/

I won the National Cinematography Award for the comp, the prize being a HPX302EN kindly donated by Panasonic. Huge win for me, but yeh... I am a bit perplexed by some the issues that beset this high-end camera straight out of the box. Horribly grainy images when shooting in the highest HD AVC Intra settings (and in great lighting conditions) and jello-vision. I am wondering whether I should just sell it if these issues can't be fixed. I don't want to be restricted by my camera in this way... as these issues are crazy. However, I am certainly giving this camera a damn good chance to produce something worth broadcasting, so I am going through the motions of updating the firmware, trying different scene files etc. I am going to watch that clip on Vimeo which explains the technology to a beginner shooter like myself.

Here's a link to my 48hour film 'Frequencies' - for which we won Grand National Best Cinematography.

You need to know a couple of things before watching it though. As part of the competition, you have to include some compulsory elements. These elements change every year the competition runs. Teams are also assigned randomly chosen genres.

A Prop: A Rock
A Line of Dialogue: "It doesn't fit"
A Character: Alex Puddle - an exaggerator

My team's allocated genre: Real Time Movie

We chose to tell our story in one continuous take.

Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUPMH1K_uiU (remember to turn on HD)

This film was shot on a Canon XLH1 at 1080p HDV format. The place we filmed in had enough power for TWO lights, so 3db of gain was also pumped into the image.

-Rich
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That's no problem. As I said, I am a total amateur with cameras like this. I will seek any help I can get to help get better pictures out of this thing. I guess I the next step if I can't resolve it is to go back to Panasonic NZ and talk to them about it. Maybe it's a factory line problem too if Panasonic are outputting cameras where the quality is so inconsistent.
 
Big Brother said:
We love panasonic as a camera but hate what they have evolved for recording media a COSTLY P2 card which cant fix directly into any modern day laptop except for a pana laptop (i can understand panny's plight they cant upgrade thei line pf laptops cox they would themselves prove the already dead pcmica technology).
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PCMCIA is only "dead" in that it's not the latest thing. But the exact same can be said for MPEG2.

Also, Panasonic only huh? http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs...ngId=-1&partNumber=VGNBZ562NAB#specifications

- Mikko
 
lordbiggus said:
That's no problem. As I said, I am a total amateur with cameras like this. I will seek any help I can get to help get better pictures out of this thing. I guess I the next step if I can't resolve it is to go back to Panasonic NZ and talk to them about it. Maybe it's a factory line problem too if Panasonic are outputting cameras where the quality is so inconsistent.
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If possible can you please contact Pete Fullerton here at PNZ. I know that Pete has given you all his contact details and advised you to call if you had any problems or questions at all. The HPX302 is a sophisticated piece of kit and it may just be that you need to take Pete up on his offer of advice and assistance. There are certainly modes of operation to take into consideration with any camera of this type and we can easily point you in the right direction. I can assure you for example that the AVC-I codec is incredibly robust and has been the codec of choice for some major New Zealand Drama series and documentaries that have been shot here recently. So please give us the opportunity to make sure that you are getting the maximum performance out of your camera. Here at PNZ we like to be the first port of call for support (not the last ray of hope) so please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.
 
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Big Brother said:
I am sorry, i tender my sincere unconditional apologies if i hurt any feelings on personal level, it wasn't intentional to sound condescending in my reply. I was purely voicing my feeling about P2's exhorbitanting cost vs other Greater available options. HPX300 would make a good camera if it was shooting with a 1/2 CCD & on SDHC cards :( but thats not going to happen as it will hurt panny's top line of cameras business.
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Am I the only one who's not all that upset about not having to buy a 5 figure tape deck? And SD cards are not going to be able to handle the throughput of a superior intra-frame codec.

That's fine Big that you have an agenda, so just use something else, it's really simple.
 
Barry_Green said:
Personally, I think Panasonic is being grossly conservative with their estimates, because the way I read MLC vs. SLC, they're only guaranteeing 2,000 rewrites when the real number should (theoretically) be closer to 10,000. I don't know why they say 2,000; maybe there's a reason. I would think they'd last longer, but that is only my guess based on the differences in general between SLC and MLC.
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Totally a guess, but if they are still arranging chips in a RAID array, perhaps that number accounts for the higher probability that one of the 4 chips goes bad, effecting the entire array (if it is RAID 0). Then they could also just be extra conservative for products in the pro line.
 
mountainmedia said:
That is interesting, Ned, thanks. I only wish it was a more independent source for the information - not a reseller that stands to make more money by selling the "A" series over the "E" series.

Perhaps we can get some commentary (and confirmation?) from the resident Panasonic folks who frequent these forums?

I just purchased a 32GB "E" series card with my HPX300. Now I'm wondering if that was a mistake in the long run?
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I have two of the E series 32 gig cards that we run on the HPX300 with some rather aggressive shooting schedules right now. So far, no problems.

I have noticed though that the heat can build up on the HPX300 in long use situations, and the card can be HOT. Anyone else notice this? I can see long heat exposures having an effect on the cards in time.
 
Has anyone been able to purchase the 64GB E series P2 card anywhere yet? I thought they were going to be available in September, but I can't seem to find any in stock.
 
My dealer "promissed" me that my 64 Gb P2 card will arrive 16 october. It will come with the second batch shipped to The Netherlands.


Sky77 said:
Has anyone been able to purchase the 64GB E series P2 card anywhere yet? I thought they were going to be available in September, but I can't seem to find any in stock.
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