SDX-900 Vs. HD100

doondoon

doondoon

Well-known member
I'm getting ready to buy another camera and can't decide which way to go. I've ruled out the HVX just for now as most of my work is long form & I end up shooting sometimes five hours a day in the field. With this kind of work P2 ( at present stage) wouldn't be the easiest way to go without a bunch of P2 cards, a P2 reader and someone constantly offloading the media into a giant hard drive, DLT, LTO ect... (this translates to a lot of $$) This fact really makes me sad as I really had my heart set on the HVX. I'm just going to have to wait a year or two until the prices of P2 drops.

So after taking the HVX out of the running, I arrive at the JVC which is the only other camera that shoots "economical" 720p
I think in unison with the 6K Fujinon lens the JVC's picture will be greatly enhanced. If I went this route my total price of the HD100 is like 12K-13Kish.

The only thing with this is that all of the sudden I'm spending 13K on a 1/2" HDV camera! At this point why not spend several more thousand dollars and by a used SDX-900. Panasonic just knocked 10K off the MSRP of the SDX-900, which means that in the very near future I could probably get a used one for sub 20K with lens and some support !

720p of JVC
Or 2/3" Chip, DVCPRO of SDX-900 ?


My feeling is that the JVC might look a bit "snappier", but between the SDX-900's 2/3" chip and superior DVCPRO50 Codec I'll bet the 900 would take the prize. Ofcourse I'd have to see them side by side and even then it's totally subjective.

Any thoughts or opinions?

Thanks,
Michael
 
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Of course you are comparing NTSC 480P of the SDX-900 and 720P HD of the HD100.

The SDX900 is an amazing camera, and I've done my fair share of broadcast 24P shooting with it. Here in Canada, some broadcasters have arbitrarily put a 50megabit lower limit on any footage originated digitally for the 'A' camera. This means that no HDV format would fit the bill (including XLH1 or HD100 - but HVX200 would be OK,) even though it could be argued that the resultant HDV image, when downconverted, would broadcast just as well.
This accounts for the popularity in Canada of the SDX-900. Also, SimVideo has a bunch of them and they are now easily rentable.
The only problem with the SDX-900 (in my experience) is that it is hard to find a rental deck capable of DVCPRO50 playback. DVCPRO is quite common, but not many post houses have DVCPRO50 capability yet.

Anyway, in my opinion, if you are thinking of spending north of $25K on a camera body & lens, then you should wait until NAB and see what JVC, Panasonic, and Sony have in store for that price range in HD resolutions. Personally, I think it is a bad time to invest in a NTSC only camera. (BTW, I have a BetaSP 3-chip camera for sale!!!!)
 
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Check again, the SDX900 is $16,500 and Panasonic must be up to something to dump the price that much. The SDX900 is a 2/3" CCD.

Click here

The formats are different, the native resolution is different, the size of the camera's are different, the manufacturers are different (although cousins). I think making a decision to go HD or SD first and then make some decisions. What are you shooting with now?
 
Stephen,

Yes of course the SDX-900 is a 2/3" camera. I just mis-typed and then submitted my post hastily.
OOOPS !

So if Panasonic is now selling the SDX for 16,500 new I'm sure I could pick a used one up for less (probably about the same amount as a New JVC-HD100 in unison with the higher quality lens).

I think Dashwood might be right though. Maybe I should wait until NAB to see what else is on the horizon.

Thanks,
Michael
 
JVC's GY-HD7000 may be of interest to you and maybe there will be some surprises this year from all the manufacturers. We'll see.
 
There's a lot on the horizon at NAB, especially in the 2/3" market. Don't forget Thomson Grass Valley's Infinity, which is $20,000 and high-def 1080 & 720 and 2/3". Then there's JVC's long-awaited GY-7000, 2/3" HDV 720p on tape and 1080i on hard disk. Then there's Red. Then there's the new Panasonic HPC2000, which is P2 but five slots worth, 2/3", 720 & 1080. Then there's Sony's XDCAM HD, I think it's about $20,000 including lens, 1/2" chips. And there's the DSR450, about $15,000 including lens, 2/3" but only 4:1:1 and only SD. Then there's the SDX, 2/3" chips and DV50 and 4:2:2, which just had a massive price drop.

Things are very much in flux right now in the 2/3" and $20,000 pricetag arena. If you don't absolutely need something right away, I'd say stick it out a bit and see what gets announced, get to NAB and test 'em out and see which you prefer.
 
Barry_Green said:
Then there's the SDX, 2/3" chips and DV50 and 4:2:2, which just had a massive price drop.
Click to expand...

I think they list it at 3:3:1 for DVCPro50. Anyway, there's alot to look forward to and the price drop should be evident of that.
 
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FYI, I believe that list price of $16k is the body only, no lens. There is a "new" (probably open-box) SDX900 on Ebay that I think is going for $17k, not sure if it has the lens or not, probably does for that price.

Also, I think you have little to lose by dropping $5,200.00 on the HD100 with the included lens. If you don't like the lens, you could always buy the other lens later, but I would wait before just assuming the included lens won't be adequate. They will be releasing many more lenses over the next year. There are also photographic lens adapter for $1,000.00 or less, so you have many options.

The SDX900 is very nice, but if you targeting HD or film-out nothing can really replace resolution. Bigger CCD's, less compression, etc. might result in a "cleaner" image but it won't make the image any higher resolution. 480p from a SDX900 uprezzed to 720p will not look as good as native 720p from an HD100, people have done tests to bear that out.

The other downside of the SDX900 is I'm not sure if it can record plain vanilla DV period. That could be an issue. For example we prefer to shoot HDV 720/30p 99% of the time with our HD100 (even if they want DV we downconvert in post 'cause it looks better), but we had a shoot yesterday where the people just wanted us to come shoot and hand them the DV tapes at the end of the shoot. Thus we had to shoot in DV mode. That kind of thing would be impossible with the SDX900.

The SDX900 is probably the premier SD camera, but you would have to do a lot of convincing for me to drop even $15k on an SD camera of any kind. Heck, even $3,000.00 for a PD-170 seems like a lot to me. SD is just very limiting these days. The HD100 is a very flexible camera and performs very well in most situations, not to mention it produces beautiful images.

One last thing, one thing the SDX900 would rock for is low-light shooting. I've heard the SDX900 can practically shoot in the dark.

Ben
 
If you have the means or patience to do post-processing, 720p material from the HD100 downconverted to 10bit uncompressed in Apple's Compressor look tremendous:

http://homepage.mac.com/nweaver/.Pictures/HD100downconvert.tif

I myself feel the still above exhibits chroma res higher than DV50. I have 10bit uncompressed 35mm transferred on a Datacine that I've compared it to:

http://homepage.mac.com/nweaver/.Pictures/35mm.tif

I think you'll agree the HD100, downconverted correctly, is at least in the ballpark. Note that I had to do a LOT of messing around to get optimum software downconversion. I now have 3 presets in Compressor, one to do a center-frame extraction of 720p HDV media, one to do letterbox, and one to make anamorphic. One of my biggest lessons was that when working with downconverted material, you have to add some edge enhancement...the cameras own enhancement gets lost in the math when each frame is resized.
 
'nuff said. Jared knows what's brewing on the horizon but can't say. As for me, NAB, from what I understand from JVC due to the debacle (info prompted by my..."you owe me some straight info before I jump ship after all I've been through with this IDX/JVC debacle and knowing that I've honored my word on the first 5 JVCs but dammit I'll jump ship before the next 5 unless I know what's in the hopper" type of recent conversation) has something great on the horizon; a follow up to their wildly successful 100HD. Unless you need it NOW, I'd wait 'til NAB 06. From what I know, it'll be well worth it . Jared's and my parties should coincide with announcement. Besides, Vegas'll be fun when you join Jared and me, together if we get together on throwing these parties or separately if we don't and see what's up with the next big JVC cam. Free booze, free food, fun times, shop talk...What have you got to lose?!?!?!
 
Nate, have you got some tips for edge-enhancement on downconverting? I assume you're using a Final Cut filter?

Looking forward to meeting you all at NAB.
 
Nate, that looks very good for down rez to 480.

Is this a better option over shooting 480P HDV in the first place?
I realize the HDV seems a bit of a misnomer here, but the HD100
actually offers 480P using HDV codec.
 
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dashwood said:
Here in Canada, some broadcasters have arbitrarily put a 50megabit lower limit on any footage originated digitally for the 'A' camera. This means that no HDV format would fit the bill (including XLH1 (...)
Click to expand...
How are they handling with the uncompressed HD-SDI XL-H1 option if there isn't lower than 50megabit but higher (indeed) ? -- I would like to know!
 
Well, I mean, at a "no expenses spared" level, yes it is better. Taking a 1280x720 4:2:0 image and resizing with a software process that is not taking shortcuts and using quality math, you wind up with an image with very clean 4:2:2 color resolution, and compression artifacts that start to disappear.

The downside is that it takes time, processing power, and extra work...things that are not always available at your disposal...or your client. I wouldn't ever really suggest if you're hiring yourself out as a shooter that you tell people you can get SDX results by just handing them a HDV tape at the end of the day. Their editor would have to know how to downconvert it perfectly, really.
 
Emanuel said:
How are they handling with the uncompressed HD-SDI XL-H1 option if there isn't lower than 50megabit but higher (indeed) ? -- I would like to know!
Click to expand...
Uncompressed wouldn't really be a viable option because most production companies and broadcasters wouldn't have the budget for gear or storage, and they want tapes to archive.
However, assuming you captured live uncompressed from the XLH1 or HD100, then I suppose it would meet the criteria.
 
Really appreciate everyones input. I'm going to hold off until NAB 06' to see what's coming up. Thanks everyone! See you in Vegas.

Cheers,
Michael
 
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