Will the HMC 150 be the last CCD cam?

Barry_Green said:
I use the Panasonic golds as my primary cards and have been using them for four years, I've bought lots of them and they've been utterly reliable and rock solid. Your experience is unfortunate, but I don't think it's fair to say that it's representative of most uses as I don't think I've heard of anyone else on this forum who's said they've had a failure on the golds.
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I bought 3 Panasonic gold cards when I bought my first HMC150 three years ago. I'm still using them exclusively and have had no problems either. And I guess I'll keep using them, because I know they're realiable. Any new cards wouldn't have a known history to them.
 
firehawk said:
Thanks chris,
I'm seriously thinking about getting some 150s. I'm concerned about low light and the fact that it only records on a single card. If I use the more expensive panasonic cards, are they pretty reliable?

Are u using an on-camera light for receptions?
If so, what do u recommend?

How does the video quality of the 150 compare to the 130-160 in good light?
The footage I've seen looks pretty comparable.


I haven't seen anything really awesome on the 130/160 series that the 150 doesn't have apart from the area function. What has the 160 have that the 150 doesn't AND do you really need it??? I think the bottom line with any camera regardless of make or model is to use the camera that is most suited to the work it will be doing most so you could be looking at anything from a Handicam to a top range DSLR and everything in between.

Chris
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No issues with any of my 6 panny gold cards in 2 full years of non-stop use. Thank god. Knock on wood. I use a Bescor 96 LED dimmable light for each camera which works great and wasn't too much. As for the 150's...they've been awesome for me shooting Weddings full time year around. Nearly 70 Weddings in 2 years and no complaints. Now the 160's I have looked at and am seriously considering because of the 1080/60p and MUCH better LCD screen. I wish my HMC's had as good of an LCD. There are many more benefits of a 160 too and some drawbacks as noted here on this site, but recently I had 2 Weddings in one day so I rented an AC160 and a HPX250 to mix in. Now they won't mix perfectly but I'm confident that having prepped them before I shot, I won't have "too" many issues. But we'll see. I just hate spending money on renting cameras so I figured if I was going to do it, I'd get two cameras that I might one day consider buying to replace my 150's.

I haven't looked at the footage yet. Well, I checked that its there and that it came out okay and it did, but I haven't looked in detail. I will in a couple months when I get to it. But I also set all 3 cameras up at the end of the Reception in typical low lighting and let them roll on different settings to compare later. Then at home I did a low light and gain test on each shooting the same stuff. I also did a daytime comparison as well to see how much sharper the new cams are. Again, I haven't got to looking at my results because I had to get back to other projects, but I will and when I do, I'll post it here. Its not scientific by any means but it should be interesting.

For what I do (Weddings) I wish Panasonic made an AC160 with no auto focus issues. Toss in the badass P.A.P 1 low light setting and flash banding compensation feature of the HPX250 and it would be my ULTIMATE camera. For now, I'll be happy with my 150's. They are solid cameras, despite their shortcomings.
 
I still reckon that you are better off with the the 150's personally!! I shot 12 weddings on the 130's before I sold them and had a LOT of focus issues. However if you have one shooter per camera and shoot manual then you don't have a problem. Funny, I wasn't that impressed with the area function...if set on iris/focus it still drifted all over the place and with a slighly backlit scenario it's way easier to just apply some iris correction!! Shucks even my HMC82's have iris correction in full auto and that's mainly what I use unless the backlighting is shocking. Maybe it was just me but I put a combined 180 hours on the 130's over 3 months and I just wasn't happy with them as wedding cameras...if I was doing dance recitals I would use them in a heartbeat. I never felt they were the right tools for weddings but they still are awesome cameras. Just for interest I'm finding the power LED lights (mine have 6 x 3W LEDS) have a lot more punch and use Sony FP batteries which seem to last the entire reception and are much the same price as the multi LED ones. I started using AVCCAM's with the HMC70 and that was back in 2008 and never had a card failure !! Not Panny gold cards either ..I used to use Class 6 Transcend and now I have a batch of SanDisk Class 10 with the 45mbps rating...Ok the dual slot is comforting I guess but other things can also go wrong apart from a card fail so at worst I can quickly change cameras or shoot from the hip with the "B" camera....I only have concerns at Church weddings where it's unlikely that a priest would stop the ceremony so you can change cameras or rectify a fault but with Civil weddings they are far more lenient and it would be no problem to backtrack a bit if things went pear shaped thru no fault of your own!!!

Chris
 
Mark Williams said:
I am a big CCD camera fan. I have not heard of any of the big camera manufacturers are doing any more development along this line. The first company to implement a global shutter with CMOS will probably do very well.
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You can get a 4/3" Global shutter CMOS camera head right now if you have the money, costs something like $10k though, and all it is, is the camera head with an interface, you would need an external device, like a computer or something to actually control and record.
 
ChrisHarding said:
Hi Firehawk

These are what I'm using for 20% of the Comer price! They push out 1050 lumens and run all night on the big Sony F750 battery....they have a sturdy cold shoe mount too!!!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LED-5010A-L...128?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ab7173c08

EBay stores have tons of them..I actually have two..one for each camera and I think they are magic PLUS a good price!!

Chris
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Thank you, ChrisHarding
and everyone else.

How much light does the above light and the Comer listed previously put out in relation to being distracting? It's hard for me to gauge real world usage by the specs. I'm guessing they put out about the right amount of light to use during dim receptions and ceremonies without being too bright and causing complaints from people, but enough light to illuminate the subject so as to obtain decent image quality? It sounds like you guys are using them with good success.
 
Yes, of course they are dimmable and the idea is to hilight your subject's face without blowing out exposure and also ruining the ambient mood. Auto iris, because the background is so dark, will tend to overexpose faces as the light is used mainly for closeups so to get a reasonable balance I normally put a negative value on the HMC iris wheel ..... I think the secret with an on camera light is to start with the light dimmed right down as you start to talk to people and then genly increase it until you get zebras and then just back off a tad. On Camera Lights just appear bright because you introduce them suddenly in a dark and gloomy environment so to the person being filmed they see the difference and the light appears a lot brighter than it actually is, giving rise to "where are my sunglasses" comments. By introducing the light gradually from dimmed to recording brightness the subjects eyes get used to the light and it appears far less bright than if you zap them full on with the light on maximum....You will also find that the brighter the "house lights" at a venue, the less people will notice/complain about an on-camera light as the difference between the ambient light and the camera light is now far less!!
Before I use the light I always see if, just for the duration of my filming, the venue can raise the house lights a bit....At ceremonies ask for Church lights to be put on and open drapes and blinds. Over here Churches frown on lights!!!

Chris
 
Thanks a ton. That's exactly what I needed, recommendation from someone using it. Sure saves me fumbling around and buying the wrong lights or spending too much. There are so many choices out there and I didn't know what to get. And that's great advice about using them, too. Thank you.
 
Mark Williams said:
I am a big CCD camera fan. I have not heard of any of the big camera manufacturers are doing any more development along this line. The first company to implement a global shutter with CMOS will probably do very well.
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Is a global shutter with CMOS possible? Or is it just a pipe dream at the moment?
 
Seven11 said:
Is a global shutter with CMOS possible? Or is it just a pipe dream at the moment?
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It's possible. There are technical trade-offs however. A global shutter tends to lower a CMOS chip's signal-to-noise ratio, which results in lower dynamic range and, I presume, overall lower sensitivity compared an otherwise identical chip with a rolling shutter.
 
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Seven11 said:
Is a global shutter with CMOS possible? Or is it just a pipe dream at the moment?
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With today's technology it's a major trade-off and going for a global shutter causes more problems than we'd like to see.

However, improvements in technology are always happening. One approach is faster conversion, thus allowing the rolling shutter to move much faster; thus less issues.

Another possible approach is increased layers withing to silicon, thus allowing transistors to appear under other transistors.

Technology is filled with surprises, look up "nano vacuum tubes" on YAHOO or Google and you'll read about vacuum tubes make in silicon.

If you had asked me in 1982 what I see for the future of technology in computers and video, I would have not have even come close to guessing what might become possible today.... Stay tuned.


Bob Diaz
 
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