HPX250: Wide shots, soft image

Maybe you have a lucky HPX-250 w/ better quality control on the lens. The remaining HPX250s are hit or miss. Even w/ new Canon dslr lens, there're sometimes not so great lens. I have to bring it to them for factory tweaking. After pressuring them & hours wasted, I finally have a decent lens.
 
Lonewolf,
Clearly you are experienced and have a critical eye, how much do you think the picture profile could play in this. Your lake picture is shot in Cine D, is it the same with standard HD (1) or other profiles?
 
Cine D has a low contrast and a bit washed out look. But the sharpness still retains on the HPX-250. In the case of the previous creek image sample, the KG lens' just can't capture the fine detail when at wide. The detail on the mountain and water is just not there. It's fuzzy. If I shot w/ regular HD gamma, the footage may have greater contrast, but the sharpness & detail on the water & distant mountain will not be there.

Enclosed is another similar sunset-dusk lighting conditiion. Notice how the sharpness and clarity are still there. The clothing on the soldiers are still defined despite the low light. It was shot w/ Film Rec gamma @ 500% setting. Film Rec is similar to Cine D. But w/ Film Rec, you can leave as-is to have a low contrast film like look or grade it further. It's a favorite for most wildlife cinematographers that choose Panasonic over Sony. You can check out quite a few Film Rec examples on Animal Planet HD & Nat Geo Wild HD programming. Although I shot few scenes w/ sunset lighting w/ HPX250 at this location, I don't have it handy now for immediate posting. I'm editing the footage now and this low light frame grab happens to be a good reference example of how any pro grade camera should perform during low light condition@wide open f/stop and widest zoom range.
 

Attachments

  • CivilWar_Twilight_FilmRec500%.jpg
    CivilWar_Twilight_FilmRec500%.jpg
    60 KB · Views: 0
Last edited:
Ah, happen to find a clip shot w/ the HPX-250 back couple months ago when the new STYLIN scene file was released. I was testing to see how STYLIN perform under various scenarios. All of the 1st three detail parameters were boosted to 7 (max) to compensate for the not so sharp KG lens. The f/stop was around 1.9-2.4. Unfortunately there is no metadata on f/stop like w/ still photography. It was shot intentionally at open-f/2.8 to curtail diffraction problem. All I can say is that when the HPX-250 is zoom'd in a bit more, the quality improves. Even though this shot is a bit closer, the clarity of the people's clothing is somewhat fuzzy vs the widest shot of the soldier of the previous jpg attachment. There are still sharpness issues during low light on the HPX-250 nevertheless.
 

Attachments

  • DVXUser_Beach-Sunset_STYLIN.jpg
    DVXUser_Beach-Sunset_STYLIN.jpg
    56 KB · Views: 0
Last edited:
rzr219 said:
Well I can give you my experence with the wide shots. I shot 95% on stage productions and I have found no issue as long as I run the correct PAP setting first then color balance with Y get at 70-80% and watch my focus. I also must run with Zebras and Waveform on. On my portable display I run for brightness so I keep it in the pink to yellow and flip between focus and brightness. Since I have followed these steps each time I have almost no issues in low light. So question to you is have you done your own tests before you shot in a special envirominte? I ask because for me it helps to make sure I will have no issue before the production starts. Does the lens have issue, could but I first must address my own issue before I look elsewhere.
All cameras have limits and you have 2 choices either figure out what you can do with what you have, or purchase another camera. The choice is up to you, no point in getting frustrated as it will not solve the issue.
Just giving you a different viewpoint :-)
Click to expand...


Did you have more luck with one pap filter setting in particularly?
 
>>I was wondering if buying a wide angle converter (let's say .8) would solve my problem...? I<<

I'm willing to bet this will exacerbate the problem further. You will see straight lines becoming curved on the cheaper wide angle adaptor. Any add on optics such as wide angle adaptor or 2x teleconverter from the original lens design will impair the image. Not only that, you'll loose some much needed light. This means +3-6 dB gain on the HPX-250. Put 2x extender w/ Canon or Nikon dslr to your favorite lens (70-200/2.8 or 24-70/2.8). It has a softness look to it whenever a 2x extender is added. Furthermore, 2x extender on the most expensive 2/3" lens ($35-120K+) also has a slight loss of sharpness and about 1.5-2 stops of light loss . I rarely use it even when the lighting condition is super bright.
 
Last edited:
The lens is unfortunately the weakness of an otherwise excellent camera - it's just too ambitious and reflects marketing rather than practicality. I've always wished I could cut the Leica lens off my old HVX and stick it on the 250...

However, as I look at these, and my own, images, it seems that the softness isn't optical - optical softness can sometimes be desirable for "romantic" images, and this isn't desirable - it looks edgy, electronic.. I wonder if it could be caused by the built in CAC.. I wish there was a way to turn it off to find out.
 
I think Panasonic could have produced a better lens for the HPX250 if it were in the 16-18x range. At 22x it really pushes the design limitations at their price point.
 
I would have to agree that the 22x lens seems rather ambitious given 22x lenses for 2/3" cameras cost $30,000. 18x seems plenty to have the reach and not compromise as much.

I do not know when it became an attribute of a 1/3" chip camera to have a 22x lens. This size of camera has never had that much zoom range for pro use. I say pro, but prosumer is probably a better word just because these cameras are in the range where "flaws" are expected, not because of who uses them. In the end, you gotta have the ability to open up the iris on the wide end if you ever want to shoot a live event. This is supposed to be the role of this type and size of camera, not shooting movies...
 
Last edited:
For most of the history of handholdable cameras everyone was very happy with 10:1 (Angenieux 12-120) and even 5:1 (Angenieux 9.5-57 and Cooke 12.4-52). So I would have been very pleased with that Leica lens.

But, fact is, we got what we got - we can only hope that in the future the technicians show some cajones and stand up to the marketing people, because those are the ones at the root of all the turmoil here and over in the AF100 forum.
 
Last edited:
Conducted a small test. Used an HPX250 at 100% wide angle (3.9mm), at varying f-stops from full-wide to f/2.8, and then zoomed in a bit to 4.4mm and shot the same f-stops, shooting a DSC 4K resolution chart.

Results are on a multi-layer photoshop document. Download, open in photoshop, and then click on/off layers to see the difference between, say, 3.9mm @ f2.4 against 4.4mm @ f/2.0, or whatever.
http://www.mediafire.com/?b6gfokzmkdhbzrp
 
Thanks for posting the results Barry. It is nothing new that a lens might not be at it's best with a wide open aperature. I guess the important point is how much resolution is lost. One question, why would the white balance change between aperatures?
 
Thanks Barry for doing the test. It's quite visible the difference between 3,9mm wide open vs let's F3. But it's not dramatic. Though I would like to hear from you Barry...what are your conclusions?

I have done some test me too since the play, and I have to say that in normal lighting scenarios the image is not too soft...it's soft, but managable. But, and yes, there is a but...the night of the play, depending on the lighting set-up (not necessarily low light) the image was not just soft, there were blurred. At first I thought I was in macro mode (yes, it was that bad), then I zoomed in on the subject, focused and zoom back again (3.9mm)...so I knew then I was not in macro mode. The results were not better. Is it possible that the sensor as trouble handling some types of artificial lighting? Barry?
 
It could be the colour and/or saturation that the chip does not like. I was shooting with PMW-500 CCD HD a while ago and that did not like a combination of LED lighting, the picture was not good. As soon as white light was introduced all was well.
 
Bassman2003 said:
This size of camera has never had that much zoom range for pro use. I say pro, but prosumer is probably a better word just because these cameras are in the range where "flaws" are expected, not because of who uses them. In the end, you gotta have the ability to open up the iris on the wide end if you ever want to shoot a live event. This is supposed to be the role of this type and size of camera, not shooting movies...
Click to expand...

In 2004 Nancy Schreiber shot THURSDAY with a DVX100... admittedly, it is not her favorite cinema experience... but she did it, and since then many national TV spots and documentaries, and some features, have been shot with HVX200, Canon XLs and Sone EXs... By designing a small chip camera with a high quality lens, these camera makers "democratized" filmmaking (along with, of course, Adobe and Apple).

It seems that now people mostly pick apart the shortcomings - but it's not unwarrented - because many of the recent designs have asked for it, and because technology is in such a state of flux that nothing stays state-of-the-art for long.

But I hope these "flaws" don't enter us into another era where only the big boys with the best toys get to play.
 
It is tough because folks have a ceiling that they will pay for a camera these days due to the replacement around the corner. Not an easy time to be a camera maker as cell phones are becoming the competition...
 
Not a good time to be a camera user either, we're trying to make a living here too... The shot from the 3100 above makes me wish I'd opted for that camera, but after my experience with the HPX500 I won't spend over 10 grand on a camera again until things settle down (for example, Panasonic began touting AVC-Ultra soon after announcing the 3100).

To be fair & honest, the image from the HPX250 is generally very good. It comes apart slightly in certain situations, but since I like diffusion anyway, I can use a 1/4 ProMist - or something similar - to enhance the softness and make it acceptable. I still wonder if the issue is more to do with CAC than optics, because it seems to show up more in situations when chromatic aberration could be a problem.
 
>>I won't spend over 10 grand on a camera again until things settle down (for example, Panasonic began touting AVC-Ultra soon after announcing the 3100).<<
I wouldn't be too excited w/ the HPX600 or be persuaded w/ AVC Ultra 200 on it. Several years ago I had at my disposal the SDX900, HDX900, HPX2000 and the HPX500. Shot over a 9-18 months period w/ those cams and I can see the results first hand. With the exact same premium 2/3" HD lens swapped fr. the HPX2000, the HPX500 looks very similar to the HVX200. I called the HPX500 a HVX200 on 2/3" steroid. Its DSP is muddy, and has a muted color. The HPX500's stock viewfinder is not really rated for HD. It's no where close to the SDX900-HPX2000. Quality camera costs and there's no way out of it.

It appears that to get a level up in quality fr the rest of their product line, the minimum cost is $27K for a camera. This is based from 2003-2012 market observation. Again, Panasonic is doing very clever marketing to remove the hi-res viewfinder ($4K for B&W or $8.5K for color), stereo mic to keep the MSRP as low as possible. I don't mind the $4K for a hi res HD crt VF. It is indispensable when focus tracking and in focus has to be always dead on. The stereo mic is a whopping $1.5K alone! Holy moly. This is pushing it. I can get a used Sony ECM mic on the DSR series for $100. Unfortunately they make it stereo w/ 4-pin XLR on the front connector. An 3 to 4 pin XLR adaptor is very cumbersome to fit. The actual final cost is about $27K for a new functional body.


 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top