suggestions for consumer B-cam for hmc150?

B

boo

Veteran
looking to get a consumer camera for b-cam. hmc150 will be my main camera but will need a second camera for backup. looking at the canon s10 or hdv40 or maybe one of the new panasonics? will trascode to prores. i still like tape which is why i mention hdv. any recommendations? thanks!
 
Well you mentioned you like tape but I'll say this summer Panasonic is coming out with the the HMC-40, a smaller counterpart that's cheaper but in many ways very similar to the HMC-150. It also shoots AVCHD to to SDHC cards.

If your heart's set on DV tape then, yeah - I've heard great things about the Canon HV-30 series, so check it out.
 
Footage from the HV30 seems to match up pretty well with the HMC150's as long as there is adequate light. I have no problems using the two together.

Once you start using the HMC150, I have a feeling you won't like tape quite as much anymore.
 
IM USING sONY Xr520 to do the B cam. its really great in low light and no worry on the recording medium coz it has a 240gig hard drive. what is really great on this cam is its active stabilizer. it really helps.
 
I've had the Panasonic GS400 for a while now, and it'll become our second cam. It's a great, sought out, consumer minidv cam because of its great quality footage and tons of manual controls such as the iris, focus, wb, etc. It's been out of production for a while; the lesser GS500 replaced it, but it can be found on ebay and some message boards.
 
I use the Canon HF11 and it matches VERY well with my HMC150. I would suggest getting the new Canon HFS100. Don't waste your money on buying a camera with built in memory, like the HFS10. The memory adds $200 to the price tag for 32GB, and you can get two 16GB cards for so much less. Plus, the built in memory is SSSSSLLLLLLLOOOOOOWWW. It takes 4 times longer to drag-and-drop the raw footage from the built-in memory to your hard drive than using a SDHC card in a USB2 card reader.

I love the Canon HF11, even though it struggles in low light. I plan to get a GH1 for my main cam and use the 150 for my wide cam. Then I'll be able to use the little Canons for extra camera angles.
 
I second the hf-s100. It's lowlight is no where near the HMC150, slightly worse than the Hv20, but the picture quality(resolution and color) is pure gold. I would actually say it's color is much richer than what you would get from the hv20/30/40, more akin to panny color richeness. It would make an awesome b-cam(or even A-cam) for daytime or lit shots.
 
I use an XHA1 as my 2nd cam now, with mixed results. Yes it makes great images, but the look is a bit warmer, softer than the HMC, no matter what preset is used. So matching is sometimes an issue.
Its also much slower in post, when using tape and AVCHD together on the same timeline. I use CS3 and it does it, but when the project is set up as for example, a DVCProHD file and you add HDV files to it, the HDV files need a considerable time to render before they will play back smoothly.
So I would really look at just geting a 2nd HMC150 to avoid these issues of matching and post production taking too long when mixing file types. I know I am getting a 2nd one as soon as I can. Its too much of a time waster trying to match cams and re-render significant numbers of files. A real non-starter, if you do this for a living....
 
sewolla said:
I use an XHA1 as my 2nd cam now, with mixed results. Yes it makes great images, but the look is a bit warmer, softer than the HMC, no matter what preset is used...
Click to expand...

So side by side the xha1 is softer? as in lower rez? I would think the opposite.. also, how much better in low light is it to the a1? roughly.. i'm so bouncing back and forth between these two cams...
 
I can't say it looks "lower rez", the diff is not that great between them. The HMC is better in low light. Better detail is maintained than in the A1.
 
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