Wedding & Event Evaluation
- Thread starter Evro
- Start date
Evro: The HMC frame looks horrible! Is there something wrong in your workflow? It looks like SD video uprezzed to HD. The boy in the white shirt by the door, look at him and you can make out much more detail in the A1 grab. The silver ice bucket on the table, in the A1, you can make out some details where in the 150, it looks like a blob.
Yes! the the top one is the HMC & the bottom one the A1
You can tell that the optics of the HMC aren't as crisp as Canon's especially in blown highlights because you can see the purple fringing around the lights in the ceiling. One of the great things with the XH-A1 is that it keeps nice sharp edges with blown highlights whereas the HMC exhibits that classic purple fringing.
But here's the clincher!! When the footage is actually playing back in motion the HMC actually looks SHARPER than the A1 which seems to suggest that AVCHD had better motion rendering than HDV. I'm not looking to use my video cameras to shoot stills so at the end of the day the HMC wins in this case
Oh and hey John, thanks for acknowledging that the SDHC door on the HMC is easier to flip open when you're used to handling the XH-A1The HMC is dificult to hold in that same way because it actually has a nice big EVF - that one on the Canon is a bit of a joke
As he stated, these are stills grabbed from video. In the video footage, the HMC150 looks sharper that the A1 a/t Evro.
Justyn
Veteran
for the lens shade that falls off on the 150.. make sure that it is locked in. I had the same thing when I thought it was on.. but it wasn't.. it pops into place... unlike the HVX one that has that little screw on it...
I think that pretty much all panny stuff doesn't look as good in still form.. it has to be moving to get it to look decent... I did like the look of the A1 footage that I shot before, but I hated the cam in terms of operation.. just like I hated the GL2 when I shot with that. I was a longtime XL1 user and I did love that cam.. but not the smaller canons. The longer lens and the mike is something that the canons have always done well... as well as building solid "tanks" that last and last and last..
I think that pretty much all panny stuff doesn't look as good in still form.. it has to be moving to get it to look decent... I did like the look of the A1 footage that I shot before, but I hated the cam in terms of operation.. just like I hated the GL2 when I shot with that. I was a longtime XL1 user and I did love that cam.. but not the smaller canons. The longer lens and the mike is something that the canons have always done well... as well as building solid "tanks" that last and last and last..
I know he said that but what I don't understand is how can worse looking frame result in sharper looking video when played back?
Since both cameras were shooting interlaced video, if he did interpolated the field on the HMC150, surely he would have interpolated it on the A1's as well?
Our still captures from our HVX200a and HPX170 look absolutely terrible.
Still grabs from video footage do not usually look like the actual video footage in our experience.
Still grabs from video footage do not usually look like the actual video footage in our experience.
Do you mean still frames from HVX200 interlaced video looks bad?
My experience with HVX video frames is that it looks very good, albeit I wasn't looking at the frames from the comparative perspective.
I am a HMC-150 and XH-A1 user too and I agree with all the comparison comments in this thread. It was a tough call for me to switch to the HMC-150, but I did, and Im very happy.
Everything from the way the images look to the controls layout is very different on these two cameras.
What I learned while matching the A1 and HMC-150 is summarized in your test photos.
1. The A1 knee is naturally lower, but on the HMC-150 you have to set knee to low or use the DRS 2 or 3 (depending on capture mode) to prevent the blown highlights. This alone makes the images a lot better IMO. I don't see that the auto mode even works. It totally blows highlights.
2. The master pedestal needs to be set to a positive number to get even close to the A1. IMO, I like the flatter, less contrasty look of a higher master pedestal. Could be me just used to looking at A1 footage.
If you tweak the above and the chroma and detail settings, you will get a very nice IQ.
Everything from the way the images look to the controls layout is very different on these two cameras.
What I learned while matching the A1 and HMC-150 is summarized in your test photos.
1. The A1 knee is naturally lower, but on the HMC-150 you have to set knee to low or use the DRS 2 or 3 (depending on capture mode) to prevent the blown highlights. This alone makes the images a lot better IMO. I don't see that the auto mode even works. It totally blows highlights.
2. The master pedestal needs to be set to a positive number to get even close to the A1. IMO, I like the flatter, less contrasty look of a higher master pedestal. Could be me just used to looking at A1 footage.
If you tweak the above and the chroma and detail settings, you will get a very nice IQ.
Guys, both frame grabs were taken from Vegas at the "Best - Full" resolution setting and merely interpolated in Photoshop to get rid of the interlaced jaggies.
Yes the HMC frame grab looks crap compared to the A1, but then the A1 makes much nicer stills because it has a 1440x1080 imaging block, where Panasonic traditionally uses low res blocks with bigger pixels. I can't explain why the Pannasonic footage looks better in motion, it just does. I had this same dillema when I was mixing footage between the JVC's 720P & the A1's 1080i, where the A1 frame grabs looked sharper & more defined than JVC's but when in motion the JVC looked much sweeter than the A1.
I'm certain however that if I hadn't been shooting in 1080 50i on the HMC I would have much clearer frame grabs. This weekend I'll be shooting 720 25P so I should see a marked difference in the frame grabs.
Yes the HMC frame grab looks crap compared to the A1, but then the A1 makes much nicer stills because it has a 1440x1080 imaging block, where Panasonic traditionally uses low res blocks with bigger pixels. I can't explain why the Pannasonic footage looks better in motion, it just does. I had this same dillema when I was mixing footage between the JVC's 720P & the A1's 1080i, where the A1 frame grabs looked sharper & more defined than JVC's but when in motion the JVC looked much sweeter than the A1.
I'm certain however that if I hadn't been shooting in 1080 50i on the HMC I would have much clearer frame grabs. This weekend I'll be shooting 720 25P so I should see a marked difference in the frame grabs.
studio1972
Well-known member
To my eyes, it looks like the HMC frame was focussed on the floor in front of the performers, but the Canon frame was focussed on the performer nearest the camera. Maybe the cameras were on autofocus?
Stuart, I've looked at other frame grabs from the HMC & A1 and the A1 stills just look sharper.
I'm a big fan of Panasonic cameras, but sometimes we have to face the facts, there's no real way around this... Canon simply makes a superior lens and no Leica branding on Panasonic cameras is going to change that. After all, the Panasonic & Sony broadcast cameras all have either Canon or Fujinon lens on them.
Everything is a compromise and in this case, people who choose the HMC over the sharper Sony & Canon HDV cameras do so because they are happy to sacrifice a little image sharpness for a sweeter looking overal image and AVCHD's improved motion rendering
I'm a big fan of Panasonic cameras, but sometimes we have to face the facts, there's no real way around this... Canon simply makes a superior lens and no Leica branding on Panasonic cameras is going to change that. After all, the Panasonic & Sony broadcast cameras all have either Canon or Fujinon lens on them.
Everything is a compromise and in this case, people who choose the HMC over the sharper Sony & Canon HDV cameras do so because they are happy to sacrifice a little image sharpness for a sweeter looking overal image and AVCHD's improved motion rendering
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