OTHER: The great big PX270 info thread.

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crossXcheck

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Call me optimistic but there must be more then two people using this camera. Figure if I drop this here maybe it will attract others looking to share info, insights, Q&A, etc. Like one of those old time, tiny sensor, video camera that looks like a video camera, users threads.

Info-
There's now a PX270 scene file handbook available. There are currently no plans for any new scene files supplied from Panasonic.
http://eww.pass.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/support/content/guide/EN/top.html#handbook

Insight-
The LCD viewfinder looks relatively mediocre compared to the EVF, but with a little LCD menu tweaking you can get an almost exact match. Not sure why they set the default on the LCD so flat, but it's very correctable. My settings:
Brightness -12
Contrast 10
Color Level 5
Backlight -1

Question-
Anyone know the difference between "High Sensitivity" under System Mode and "Super Gain"?

Plenty of bandwidth, no waiting!
 
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So I bit the bullet and bought a PX270 - expecting it to arrive next week - in the meantime Panasonic Australia have kindly lent me a camera for a shoot I'm doing next week. I'm trying to quickly learn all the controls, figure out what recording format to use etc and do some rough tests.
Already I've had to upgrade PP CS6 to PP CC just so I can view the LongG25 files - oh well, I was going to do that sooner or later.

I've only had the camera for a couple of days and don't have much time to get all the settings right so I'm hoping the brains trust here can give me some advice on audio settings.
I'm fairly happy with the pictures I'm getting out of it from just the standard scene profile (F1) and shooting either LongG25 or AVC Intra100 - I want 50fps as I'm doing a doco on dragon boat paddlers so there's a lot of on water action.

anyway - the audio stuff - I like to keep one channel recorded by the video camera as a backup and ambient sound (level set to auto), I then also plug in an external mic to the other channel - I'm using a Rode NTG-2 (level manually set).
What I have discovered is that both mics are sensitive to the operation noise from the camera - any small bumps or zooming with the zoom ring are recorded to both audio tracks, zooming with the rocker is a little less noisey. I'm sure there's a way to reduce this pick up but buggered if I can easily work out the audio settings in the menu - I look through the manual but if anyone can shed some light quickly I'd really welcome that feedback.

thanks
 
Welcome to the thread, as you can see no waiting.

Unfortunately "audio tests" is right at the top of my to do list for the camera so I can't be much help ATM. I do know that the camera is always recording 4 tracks of audio, though how that's divided and how the volume controls interact is this weekends endeavor.

The other thing that might help you is downloading the full manual from the Pana website if you haven't already done so. At 190 pages it's better then what ships, but still leaves many questions unanswered.

Hopefully someone more audio knowledgable on the PX270 will chime in soon. Good luck.
 
It is a great camera and I've used it since it's introduction. (I previously had the 200, 200A & still have a 250 among other cameras.)

See page 131 of the manual and you'll find that you can set a low cut filter for any of the 4 channels. That may reduce handling noise of your camera mic.

"High Sensitivity" adds about a stop without much of any negative effect. I say much of any because there is a "warning" somewhere if you are shooting under certain conditions you may get artifacting of some kind. I've used it when necessary and haven't ever seen any problems, but I do think there is a bit more noise.

Super Gain is for surveillance video.
 
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I don't have this camera but am considering it for live event video. Plus, there's very nice pricing and rebate on it now. How good is the autofocus?
 
From my limited indoor tests at full zoom I found the autofocus to be quite responsive. I'm doing a couple more tests tomorrow for audio, white balance & autofocus so will let you know how that goes. I need good autofocus too :)
 
plusone said:
From my limited indoor tests at full zoom I found the autofocus to be quite responsive. I'm doing a couple more tests tomorrow for audio, white balance & autofocus so will let you know how that goes. I need good autofocus too :)
Click to expand...

Thanks! Look forward to learning what you find.
 
I've been doing the same tests as plusone, so let's compare. I'm coming from an HMC150 so keep that in mind.

Autofocus- With a decent contrast subject and reasonably bright environment, full zoom defocused beforehand, auto focus is less then 1/2 second with no apparent hunting. Drop light levels but still decent subject contrast, same test is slightly slower, guessing 1/2 second. On low contrast subject and low light levels, results varied from close to a second with a couple focus hunts to not focusing at all in extreme situations. Overall not quite high end DSLR speed but I'm pretty impressed and with reasonable conditions exceeds my expectations.

Audio- Coming from a 2 channel system this seemed initially confusing but eventually starts to make sense. Now remembering is another matter:D With all 4 channels always active, the external channel select switches basically control what device gets recorded to what channel. It's a really flexible system but well worth testing with your common devices beforehand. One thing I notice is the internal mic isn't very sensitive, at least compared to the HMC150. Not a big deal as I'd use it mostly for ambient, but a little more reach would be nice.

Image quality- Very pleased so far, but haven't had time to put it through its paces yet. I tend to do a lot of post-grading and these files being graded in Premiere is dragging my system to its knees. (My new Mac will be here Tuesday so we'll fix that:grin:) Being able to reasonably trust the EVF is a huge improvement over the 150's guess, pray and regret method.

Batteries- Jeez, anybody got a car battery strap-on adapter for this thing? Granted I'm spoiled but this is ridiculous, any hints greatly welcomed. Not only do you need 3-4 batteries for a full days shoot, you'll need a multi-battery charger just to stay even. My only disappointment so far. Battery also noticeably drains with the camera off, so disconnect the battery when finished, arrrggghh.

I needed a camera that could do pretty much everything well with minimal fuss and maximum flexibility. Great camera so far.
 
Thanks for the info! What about rolling shutter? I would be using the camera for a lot of sports. Thanks.
 
I have posted about three hour batteries made by Ikan here on the forum. They are the best you can do as the camera draws 19.5 watts. This is the price for great image processing.

The autofocus is very good in my view. Rolling shutter I very contained. I shoot a lot of sports with the camera as well.
 
Bassman2003 said:
I have posted about three hour batteries made by Ikan here on the forum. They are the best you can do as the camera draws 19.5 watts. This is the price for great image processing.

The autofocus is very good in my view. Rolling shutter I very contained. I shoot a lot of sports with the camera as well.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Looked up your post -- it's the Ikan long life 65 Watt Hour batteries, right?


 
I have been very happy with live show recording using the PX270. Seriously, there is nothing this camera is "missing". It checks all of the boxes for a workhorse video camera.
 
Still on the audio thing - managed to reduce the handling noise by turning on the low cut filter (thanks gkantziper). But now having issues with bringing in all 4 channels (or even 2) to PP CC. As I want to use LongG25 to capture my footage (will be out all day filming races and need the max capacity for recording to my 4 P2 cards) my workflow so far is: 1. ingest clips to Prelude - copy to destinations 2. check clips that are 'good' and then export that media transcoding it to MXF OP1a AVC-Intra100 50p 3. open PP CC and add the clip(s) to my project the problem I have is the audio comes in as 1 track not 4 - though the 1 track looks like it is both channels 1 &2 combined as the audio meter shows different levels. any suggestions on how I can ingest to PP keeping the channels separate? different transcoding codec perhaps? or should I just mess around with creating another audio track in PP, copying the first audio track then turning down the channel volume on left/right for both audio tracks? gah - it's all a bit fiddly with LongG25 :(
 
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