Panasonic's new AG-CX350 camcorder

Does anybody have an experience yet , if infinity with the manual focus ring really is infinity?
I had o give back the X1 because when turnig the focus ring to infinity it wasnt.I had to go back for a millimeter to get the picture sharp OR I had to use the Push/infinity bottom everytime.This was a no go for me as a wildlife filmer , everything has to go quick and to find this bottom in the dark within seconds when you are nervous is not nice .It was not a thing of my entire X1 , tried out one more - same issue.Best regards
 
Does anyone know which picture profiles on the CX350 would be best to use when trying to match with the GH5/GH5s on a multi-camera shoot?
 
mmaller said:
Does anyone know which picture profiles on the CX350 would be best to use when trying to match with the GH5/GH5s on a multi-camera shoot?
Click to expand...

I was doing an A/B color match last night for this reason. The GH5 definitely has a more pleasing look so I was matching my CX350s to that. It's a bit more red in skintones so start by adjusting your chroma phase to like -5. I like to up my chroma sat to +10. Then play with your matrix settings a bit till you get close.
 
Jarek, thanks for the response, but what specific color profile are you using on each camera as a base? For example natural on the GH5? and what profile on the CX350? from which you could then
modify. Are there any picture profiles on the GH5 or CX350 that work better together in a multi camera shoot? Thank you
 
It should be soon. Our marketing people have to do some formating work to get it up and available for download, but they've been slammed with NAB and then CineGear. The book will be available soon.
 
Jim Feeley said:
I followed the "Register Your Product" link from this page:
https://na.panasonic.com/us/support/references/56

And that brings me to a "Standard+ Warranty Product Registration" page hosted by Survey Monkey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/standardplus

And on that page, the AG-CX350 is listed...

So maybe that'll do it for you?

(I was compelled to figure this out because I'm likely to buy a CX350 later this month)
Click to expand...


Thanks for the link, Jim. It worked. One of the fields on the form was labeled "Shirt Size". WTF?
 
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A couple of days after receiving my CX350, I took it to a local wings and wheels show to test the camera out. It was a windy day and I did not have OIS enabled, so there is some camera shake. Below is a link to some of the test video I shot. Edited in FCPX ungraded. What you see is what was captured by the camera. If I could do it over, I would have used a higher frame rate. I tried using the camera"s super slow mode, but I got a incompatible memory card error message. My memory card must not have been fast enough. Ordered V90 memory cards. Based on my limited testing, I have three Panasonic requests for future firmware upgrades to this camera.
1) Auto Focus: Improve auto focus. It is a bit slow and does not always hold focus.
2) Focus Assist: Give the option to have both Enlarge and Peaking enabled at the same time.
3) Wave For Monitor: A larger WFM display. Press the WFM button a second time for a larger WFM display.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fyMJv9_G4M

Enjoy.
 
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nutmegger said:
I tried using the camera"s super slow mode, but I got a incompatible memory card error message. My memory card must not have been fast enough. Ordered V90 memory cards. Based on my limited testing, I have three Panasonic requests for future firmware upgrades to this camera.
1) Auto Focus: Improve auto focus. It is a bit slow and does not always hold focus.
2) Focus Assist: Give the option to have both Enlarge and Peaking enabled at the same time.
3) Wave For Monitor: A larger WFM display. Press the WFM button a second time for a larger WFM display.
Click to expand...

There are actually two different 120 fps Super Slow recording modes which record at different bitrates. This isn't super obvious from the menu, but it is determined by the base (non-super slow) recording format. So the Long GOP Super Slow recording format uses 200 Mbps and only requires U3 or V30 SD cards. The All-I Super Slow recording format is at 400 Mbps and requires V60 or V90 SD cards. A bit more discussion of this from earlier in this thread:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...corder&p=1986785468&viewfull=1#post1986785468

1) The UX180 and DVX200 had autofocus speed and autofocus sensitivity settings in their menus, but this seems to be missing from the CX350. Not sure why. All you can really adjust in terms of autofocus on the CX350 is the autofocus area.

2) If you assign Peaking to one of the buttons and set the focus assist mode to Expand, then it is possible to have peaking enabled while the view is expanded (by pressing the Peaking button when in the Focus Assist mode). Or you can also do the reverse, and assign Expand to one of the buttons and use the Focus Assist button for Peaking. It would be nice if you could set the Focus Assist button to Expand + Peaking though so it wouldn't require two button presses for this though.

3) Agree 100% about the size of the waveform display, it would be great to have an option to view a larger size. The vector scope in particular is not terribly useful at that tiny size.
 
mmaller said:
Does anyone know which picture profiles on the CX350 would be best to use when trying to match with the GH5/GH5s on a multi-camera shoot?
Click to expand...

Since the CX350 has far more color and picture adjustments than the GH5/GH5s, it is probably easier to use the GH5 as the baseline and try to match the CX350 to that.

I looked briefly into this for the GH5s and it seems like probably GH5 Natural/CX350 Spark (scene file 3) or GH5 Cinelike-D/CX350 Cine (scene file 5) would be the best starting points. The Cine profile uses a different color matrix from the other scene files, so it's a better match for the Cinelike profiles on the GH5 (as you might expect). The Normal1 color matrix (used by scene file 1) and the Normal2 color matrix (used by scene file 3, Spark), seem to be a closer match to the most of the standard (non-Cine/non-Log) picture profiles on the GH5.

The GH5 has more saturation and contrast by default in most of its picture profiles than the CX350. So I would probably bump up the Chroma Level to +10 or so (as Jarek suggested). I might also bring down the Master Pedestal (most of the CX350 scene files seem to have this at +16 by default, but the GH5 seems lower in most of its profiles).

From there, if you have a color chart and external monitor with vectorscope, you can probably fine tune the color matrix to match more closely, if needed (using the Color Correction settings in the CX350 scene file menu). But hopefully that gets you in the ballpark.
 
Hi Guys,
Been awhile, Back in March I had a CX350 on backorder just waiting inline... two days before I was scheduled to work in Australia it arrived at my doorstep. Many years of experience with the other Panny cameras of this size this one was a different beast as I was wanting to shoot the HLG Gamma... so I went down worked for two weeks and shot the whole time in that Hybrid Log Gamma. Unfortunately I had to put off looking at the footage until now. (Long Story) I'm happy with what I'm seeing. I think the biggest struggle for me was getting the AF set up perfectly for fast action shots of fish that we were chasing on The Great Barrier Reef. Super strong, super fast... hard to follow, so the auto focus needs a ton of tweaking on my end as it seemed to wander a ton when trying to follow small objects in the water. I missed a few incredible shots because of this. Because I wasn't able to test before hand. The weight of the camera is unreal, handheld all day long and the image stabilization is super. When in a boat rocking in all directions you could really tell when that OIS was doing it's job.

I have a super newbie question and it's due to the this new Hybrid LOG Gamma. When shooting having to adjust in my mind to how to expose when in the HLG is one thing, now that I'm importing into Final Cut Pro, I have a few questions with that. First question when I'm creating a new Library... I'm given two options and Final Cut calls them Processing Settings. Two options are 1. "Standard" 2. "Wide Gamut HDR" Which to you guys recommend.? I'm created projects both ways and I can make the footage look good in both?

If I choose Wide Gamut HDR I am given a few options when created a new project in the library... A codec dropdown with about 5 ProRes options and one Uncompress 10bit 4:2:2 otpion. Then from there is a color space option - Standard - Rec 709, Wide Gamut-Rec. 2020, Wide Gamut HDR-Rec.2020 PQ or Wide Gamut HDR-Rec 2020 HLG. That's where I'm at now and just hoping someone can shed some light on what to choose when shooting the CX350 in the HLG scene.

If I just choose Standard I'm given the codec options above, but the color space is locked at Standard -Rec.709.
Thanks so much for any help!!!

HLG_Manual_Grade_TMoen_CX350sm.jpg
 
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You want to choose "Wide Gamut HDR".

Your footage doesn't look overexposed in the "Standard"?
 
NorBro said:
You want to choose "Wide Gamut HDR".

Your footage doesn't look overexposed in the "Standard"?
Click to expand...

Thanks very much for the reply. It does look over exposed when the library is set up in standard. Yes just bit. I can still adjust the overall image though to look pretty good.
So if going with the HLG scene in the CX350, which color space would you choose? Wide Gamut HDR-Rec 2020 HLG?
Thank you so much... this makes sense to me but then is totally confusing at the same time so I appreciate it.
 
Once I have the library set up, I'm a bit unconventional and always experiment with the rest to see what I like best.

To be completely honest, I don't know when you're supposed to choose one over another because my end-product is only for Vimeo/YouTube. I simply choose a setting based on how it affects my picture quality.

Does it look a bit too flat if I do this? Too saturated? Too much contrast? Is the dynamic range difficult in the scene? How are the colors? ETC.

I really don't listen to anyone and do what I think is best. (Not to say that I wouldn't listen to someone to learn something, but just don't need to.)

But the library setting is important (at least for me). Once I filmed - by accident - in a HLG setting on a Sony camera and I did not have the recovery flexibility in standard (everything was clipped and gone) that I had in the WDR setting.
 
It’s important to choose the color space based on how it will be viewed in the end. For instance you wouldn’t want PQ if you were using a monitor that couldn’t show PQ. The image would be all messed up. If you don’t know then you have to go with lowest common denominator, which is Rec709. And your editing monitor can be a big limitation too. If you choose to finish in wide gamut but your monitor can’t show wide gamut, you might like the look on your screen but be horrified by what you did when it gets onto a wide gamut screen. It could be very different.
 
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