Res Fest-LA Comparison of HVX, Canon, JVC, and Sony!

esperman said:
I'm curious why canon didnt shoot in HDV for it's demo. Most users of the H1 will go to tape HDV...its not fair to the average consumer who cant afford a HDCAM deck..as most of the potential customers won't be able to afford anything but dv tapes with HDV.
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They probably showed it from DVCPRO-HD because they can't play it back from HDV. No HDV deck can play back the 24F footage from the Canon; it uses its own, incompatible recording format.

I hope when panasonic releases its DVX footage..it will be P2 footage instead of going out uncompressed to an edit system, or HDCAM SR deck. We want to see what the camera systems will do.
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The footage Panasonic showed was P2 footage. It was available to be seen on the 17" LCD monitor connected to the camera.

If I'm not mistaken, the footage from the projector was dubbed to DVCPRO-HD tape from the camera -- which means it was actually slightly *lower* quality than the P2 footage would have been; it's gone through a digital-to-analog-to-digital conversion.
 
leofish said:
also, I liked the fact the the HVX had the widest angle lens of them all.
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Yeah, that's actually a change from the initial design -- originally it was going to be 4.5mm, but they've updated it so it's even wider, the HVX is now 4.2mm in its widest.
 
sorry for asking, but what would be the translation of 4,2mm in 35mm?
how do you calculate the conversion, BTW?
 
Barry_Green said:
Yeah, that's actually a change from the initial design -- originally it was going to be 4.5mm, but they've updated it so it's even wider, the HVX is now 4.2mm in its widest.
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Thanks Barry. Jan said this was a pleasant surprise for her as well when Japan came back this update from 4.5 to 4.2--which is great esp for a fixed lens--less/no need for any wide-angle adapter.
 
Yeah... maybe... I was actually disappointed by it. I think the stock lens on the DVX was plenty wide, but the telephoto reach was missing. I liked the idea of 60mm... 55mm isn't much smaller, but -- I'd rather have 5 extra mm on the long end than .3 mm on the wide end. Oh well. It's still significantly longer than the DVX lens was, so it's still a good step in the right direction.
 
Here's a pretty random and possibly stupid question. At what focal distance are you technically out of wide? Where does the fish eye distortion technically go away?
 
Maybe the change in focal length was done to compensate for the widescreen CCD's used in the 200 in order to maintain the same angle of view as the 100 at the widest angle. Haven't thought this one through. Maybe it's nonsense...

To quote Barry, "having 4.2 would be exquisitely cool and most unexpected" and I agree. I like the idea.
 
evinsky said:
The DOF will seem a little better than the DVX because of the COC (Circle of Confusion) being of necessity much smaller. But it won't look like 2/3" HD. Probably closer to 1/2" SD.
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1/2" SD? With lighting, which can add more DOF in countless ways, my guess would be that 1080P at 24 through 1/3" CCDs would cross that line. At least, I hope I'm right, based on what I've seen from such SD cams like DVCams at a 1/2". If it's not better than 1/2" SD . . .
 
Some thoughts regarding Resfest HDV/HD presentation.

I thought it was strange that Canon showed footage that was captured via the HD-SDI?

My guess is that not many people will use the HD-SDI... why would they when it's so EXPENSIVE to rent a deck IN ORDER TO CAPTURE IT. If you're going to spend the money to rent an expensive HD deck to use with your Canon H1 then why wouldn't you just rent a Varicam or a CineAlta.
 
Barry_Green said:
They probably showed it from DVCPRO-HD because they can't play it back from HDV. No HDV deck can play back the 24F footage from the Canon; it uses its own, incompatible recording format.


The footage Panasonic showed was P2 footage. It was available to be seen on the 17" LCD monitor connected to the camera.

If I'm not mistaken, the footage from the projector was dubbed to DVCPRO-HD tape from the camera -- which means it was actually slightly *lower* quality than the P2 footage would have been; it's gone through a digital-to-analog-to-digital conversion.
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Well, nobody who wants to shoot a feature will use the camera as a deck as well...its just too much wear and tear. Also...alot of people rent XL1's for secondary cameras for corporate shoots. What good is a HDV Tape that can only be played back on the camera that shot it? Most editors will really complain about this.

I want to like the canon....but its too much money to be totally incompatible with everything else HDV....and I'm not sold on HDV as a format anyways...especially now. :angry: :angry:
 
Normal starts at the diagonal of the format

Normal starts at the diagonal of the format

braw said:
Here's a pretty random and possibly stupid question. At what focal distance are you technically out of wide? Where does the fish eye distortion technically go away?
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That means that normal for the HVX/XL/DVX is 8.66mm. Anything shorter than that is technically wide angle. Which does not mean there is no distortion at this focal length.
That has more to do with the design of the optical formula.
 
Thanks evinsky! What are the widest some of these other cameras go? Like the XL H1 and HD100.
 
Barry_Green said:
I think the stock lens on the DVX was plenty wide, but the telephoto reach was missing.
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Yeah, but add-on lenses for the HVX are going to be really expensive! Better to maximize the possibilities on both ends rather than later on. That said, I'm not really a fan of using longer lenses just to blur the background. Faces look dull and lifeless with longer lenses, so I try to avoid using them. I'm actually happier to separate the person from the background using other methods (scenic, colors) than depth of field. It was a fad, I guess. Still the "holy grail" for littlecam moviemakers of course...
 
NBCshooter said:
I heard the Canon guy saying this . . . that the HD-SDI output was "ahead of its time" and is ready for "other things in the future to connect it to." This is utter marketing bullshit. The HD-SDI output is useless to anyone without a $50K HD deck or a multi-camera HD studio.
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I don't know, something may be closer than we all think. :happy:
 
Yea, I was at Birns today and they were all about the Canon there. I think they have a very tight relationship with them. There will undoubtedly br a firestore SDI a some point soon. But at what price? An SDI converter alone costs $700 then you need the firestore it's self and a chip to do a format conversion. This is a $2500 device minimum.
 
A correction.
After some more math I realized that the "normal" equation I used was based on a 4:3 sensor.
After some more calculations I figured that for the 16:9 aspect ratio 1/3" chip, normal would actually be 6mm.
 
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