lonewolf2koc@hotmail.com
Well-known member
I totally agree with you Lonewolf, I wish Panasonic had done this a little earlier as Sony had done with their EX range of camers. It's like they were desperately trying to keep the divide between their "AJ" Shoulder mounts and the "AG" range of cameras. Finally some of their tech is filtering down to the rest of us
I'm not really sure what 12-axis colour does, but if there's more scope to tweak our images then i'll be happy.
Quite frankly, I hardly took full advantage of the 12-axis independent matrix feature for the past 7 years. Factory defaults setting match up quite well for the between the same model cameras. 12-axis: This is for serious video engineer or DIT who needs to get in and get it 100% correct to the DSC charts. However, I use a lot of white shading to match up slight variations in lens when switching between cameras in a live environment or ISO recording in post.
And there's no specific mention of DRS in ALL (not only in a single 60i) 24,30, or 60 pN modes for the PX270. 60i is too limiting for me in the current HPX-250. DRS is something that I rely on heavily in situations where lighting condition is not ideal. DRS is behaving very similar to the Film Rec 100 & 600% gamma curve. Great for shooting people face in natural lighting and it curtails harsh shadows as much as it can.
Preset 5.6K WB: This is something I'm very interested to see how well the PX270 performs. W/ 2/3", the preset 5.6 K WB is incredibly accurate throughout the sunny day. It's quite good that I got a bit lazy and no longer WB as much. Not so w/ HPX-250. It's way off most of the times. And this helps a lot when you're out in the wild. Kind of annoying having to constantly WB every 2-3 hours. Sometimes the subject has no white color and you have to literally put a white object with the actual sun shining on it to get accurate colors. And there're cases when I shoot wildlife, I can't be exposed, move too much, or even get a decent zoom in to a white object. On the other hand, the HPX-250's 3200K preset WB is quite good.
Even though the specs are quite impressive on the 1/3" PX270, there're still unbiased concerns about how well it performs in real life. In the case with Sony EX3 and their PDW-F800, the F800 literally outperforms the EX3 even though they have similar specs and features. Back to Panas: I've taken the full 2/3" cam body for proxy board upgrades (with over 30 screws) and the circuit boards are large. Just the AVC-I 100 board is a bit bigger than the size of the HPX-250 screen. ~31 vs 15 watts for 1/3". So almost double in power consumption. And there's that uncompromised picture quality and performance w/ 2/3" cam. They know that the shooter wouldn't settle for anything less and it's intended for that type of market. It simply performs very well under extreme conditions. For VIP clients and critical productions, my 1st choice has and will always be 2/3". It's a proven solid performer with virtually very few compromises. I have no idea if the PX270 has to compromise picture quality bit here and there (for the small 1/3" compact form factor) in favor of the advertised features. They literally cram every possible circuits into a tiny 1/3" body. Overheating or something has to be sacrificed. Perhaps reduction in the complexity of DSP circuit. I suspect that it won't have the fine detail as with its 2/3" flagship model, but good enough to satisfy most productions with less demands for absolute picture quality. In a post-production workflow (non-live multi cam switching) where additional color grading and footage enhancement are possible, the PX270 can deliver similar results to that of its higher end 2/3" in majority (but not all) situations. The bottom line: Selling >100,000+ (1/3") vs. <10,000 units for 2/3". Either way, Panasonic is certainly exploring all options to make $ in this highly competitive market.
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