HPX250: Panasonic HPX250 real life scenario's/ focus

J

JamesVibe

Member
This forum is a great resource, thanks to everyone for taking the time to conduct tests and tell us about their experiences (good or bad). I really appreciate it and know hundreds of more people must also. I think many people, including myself, are waiting to purchase it but are VERY! VERY!! hesitant, if not outright fearful, especially now --- that they made the right choice with hpx250. (You listening Panasonic reps?) Focus is CRITICAL! Past threads delve into the technical but instead of focus numbers, definitions, etc, ..... can we talk real life experiences.

Scenario 1: I'm on a red carpet rope line. Place is packed, so I AM 3 to 5 feet away from subject. "Celeb" comes over. I want to be full wide to get my interviewer in shot to ask question, then slow zoom into "celeb" only (bust shot, so seriously doubt will be zoomed 616mm in) Then zoom back out (all servo zoom). WILL I LOSE FOCUS???? (AutoF & MF) "Celeb" posing for photographers....flash bulbs going off. i like to do fast snap zooms into "celeb" and out...(no servo) WILL I LOSE FOCUS???? how long? (manual focus only)

Scenario 2: Corporate conference. I'm back of the house. Light is poor. Fully open. +6db Zooming in, full wide - into full zoom on speaker... a) with Auto Focus ON ....b) with Manual focus <assuming i set my focus on speaker prior> WILL I LOSE FOCUS? Light loss??? Average for any camera or something else???

Scenario 3: Music concert. Hand held. Singers/musicians all over the stage.... thus i rely on AUTO FOCUS alot.... Zooming in, zooming out..... Will i be screaming at my HPX250camera for not focusing quick enough?

To those who already bought it. Any regrets? If you had $1,000 extra cash floating around (God that would be nice) would you have sprung for a Sony EX1r instead???? Given the scenario's above?

looking forward to any responses. I wanted this camera to solve all my problems in life...:undecided. ha ha Oh well. Such is life.... such is freelancing. Got to go buy my lotto ticket now.
 
Scenario one: you should not lose focus. Focus issues are only in macro mode when you are less than 3 feet from subject and zoomed in.

Scenario Two: You will lose light as you zoom in. It's happened to me. Full wide your at 1.6, if you zoom in all the way you will be at 3.2 or 3.4 and the picture will be much darker. If you are shooting at Intra 100, you'll be able to push the light level in post tremendously. I was shocked at how great this very dark picture turned out. And if you have Neat video you can cleanup what little gain noise may be there. You should test this before the shoot to see how dark the room will be and how much you will have to push the light level.

Scenario three: I don't know. I don't use auto focus.

As far as the Ex1 an extra $1,000 wouldn't buy it with cards. Probably an extra $2,000.

My only issue with the 250 is the light loss through the zoom. If it ramped down to a 2.3, that you can deal with, but 3.2 in a dark room is a tough one. And if you operate
a manual iris, you have to be real gentle with your adjustments. It's easy to overshoot the proper f-stop.
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But overall picture quality, and codec wise, I am very happy with the camera.

There are no perfect cameras out there, just have to find the one you can live with.
 
thanks for reply. I guess with a 22x optical zoom in this small camera, it has to drop down to 3.2. I could live with it. The focus issue is what was freaking me out, but the more posts I read, including yours, seems its only in a certain situations when focusing on subject that is close to zoom fully in on it is when it loses focus. Right? I rarely would be doing that.

Interesting, I just heard that the NFL bought a whole bunch of HPX250's to use as Broll camera's to somewhat match their HPX3100's. This is helping to ease my mind into buying one.
 
The quality of the picture sells the camera. The focus is fine; the macro focus thing is nitpicking. NBC is going to use a bunch of these on the Summer Olympics as well.
 
Scenario 3: Music concert. Autofocus works just fine. Seems as good as or slightly better than an A1 or HMC150. I noticed that it held focus on a singers face while I changed position and a mike stand got between us.
 
A lot of people are unhappy with the autofocus. Glad to hear it's working for some people. I think, like all things, it's a matter of adjusting your camera technique to the camera.
 
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