Worth selling my HMC for the new NXCAM?

Cranky said:
I can see comments + test data + actual shots on different sites showing that the Z5/Z7 is noisy at 6dB and noise goes away at -6dB, meaning that these cams may be one stop slower than they are advertised. Some people who shoot HDV say that the A1/G1 is still unsurpassed in terms of lowlight/clarity/codec, and that the Sonys only have the edge in native progressive in good light.
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I haven't really looked all that hard at comparing the cams as far as low light performance, just read comments from folks that have compared side to side. It doesn't sound like there's any real night and day difference. I assume they are actually reasonably close enough that low light shooting should (at most) be a relatively minor consideration in choosing between an HMC150 and NX5U. Much bigger differences will be in resolving image detail and perhaps CMOS vs CCD issues, although I do think most folks just blow CMOS vs CCD issues way, way out of proportion. There are very real differences in CMOS and CCD imagers, but CMOS imagers don't exactly instantly turn everything that gets anywhere near them into quivering jello, like you might think from reading a lot of comments here.
 
I've never handled a Z5 or Z7, but I have shot with both an A1 and an FX1 and do know an A1 shows noticeable noise at +6dB, and notably more so than an FX1 at +6dB, although the A1 image will be a slightly brighter at the same level of gain - basically very close, on the whole, for low light shooting.
 
Robert M Wright said:
I've never handled a Z5 or Z7, but I have shot with both an A1 and an FX1 and do know an A1 shows noticeable noise at +6dB, and notably more so than an FX1 at +6dB, although the A1 image will be a slightly brighter at the same level of gain - basically very close, on the whole, for low light shooting.
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The Canons have 3 levels of noise reduction, and by default they are turned off. I am not sure one can turn on or off NR on the Sonys manually.
 
The A1 is just a whale of a lot more tweakable with custom presets and a bit sharper than an FX1 (and can also shoot decent progressive footage, unlike the FX1's worthless Cineframe modes), but both cameras can certainly shoot very viewable images, especially for cams that have been around for half a decade!
 
Robert M Wright said:
You were saying the HMC150 will outperform the NX5U in low light conditions. The Z5U uses the same imaging block as the NX5U, thus low light performance of the Z5U and NX5U should be quite comparable. The NX5U is about $700 more than an HMC150 too, for that matter. Price difference between the Z5U (or NX5U) and HMC150 is utterly irrelevant to the point, as to which camera will perform better in low light.
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that's not what I meant to say, but true- my earlier comment implied that- so let me be clearer re: my opinion.... when you have two comparitively priced 1/3" 3 chip HD cameras, the one whos chips have larger pixels generally perform better in low light than the one whos chips use smaller pixels (even if they have more of them). Generally that is :). If this is not the case- please someone point me to relevant shootout type testing where the footage shows otherwise.

And the price difference does matter in this respect: your budget determines what cams you line up for comparison. Start comparing footage from cams you can afford.
 
HAS0586 said:
Still, if I was thinking about upgrading, I would wait until more people have used it and all it's strengths and weaknesses are well documented.
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Unless there's an urgent reason to make a purchase right now, it also seems prudent to me to wait until Canon offers up at least some detail about their new cam.
 
HAS0586 said:
From that clip, it looks like it edges out the hmc slightly.
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That clip does make it appear that the Z5 edges out the 150 in low light, but that's a considerably downsized and highly re-compressed clip. You can't really draw definitive conclusions from that. What's probably somewhat safe to conclude is that there isn't likely to be a gargantuan difference in real-world low light performance between the two cams.
 
Robert M Wright said:
Here's a comparison you might find interesting:

http://www.trainingvideographers.com/tipsandtricks.html
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your'e right the raw files should be viewed on a 1080 display to judge correctly- but from this compressed clip video noise is close. What would be nice to see if its a fine "grain like" noise or is it the not so pretty "chroma" noise. I find what noise the 150 has is very fine. My opinion of course :). And I'm slightly biased as I love my 150.
 
I think it's just a matter of what you are trying to shoot and the look you want. You can spend a lot of money chasing a specific look, and if you need it, and you have the money, go for it. But I don't really know what you are trying to achieve with the need for the Canon or Sony 'look'. I mean, the 150 seems to shoot a very high quality picture. There's always a different camera out there, there are a whole lot of them, and I would only make sure that this new camera is really what you need, and not just a new set of ideas....I just shot a side by side comparison with a friend of mine, he has a JVC and it's really nice, but about $2000 more than the 150. I'd die for the JVC viewfinder, but his 35mm lens seems to stymie his auto-exposure. so there's always something. I tend to trust the HMC auto-exposure in a pinch, shooting news/events, as relying on the viewfinder seems to lead to underexposure. Our side by side tests seemed to prove this issue of underexposure. But the Canon seems like a sweet camera.

As to the Sony, it seems like the sony specs are awfully similar. But features that seem 'better' in the Sony are the idea of shooting in dual SD cards at once. That would be worth something to me in a new camera. Also, it seems like the demo video shows an LCD which is more like the JVC than the Panasonic. That also is an improvement I think is worth it, even if the camera video quality is the same. I do think that the GPS will be something that people will find useful. Those changes would be worth me looking elsewhere if I needed a second camera. But the lack of .mov files as the standard, per JVC, would be more vastly more useful on a day to day basis, as I use FCP and transcoding is just a bit of a pain, especially when I am not at my Mac Pro, and need to do some raw editing in the field. But to be truthful, the .mov files are huge, compared to my AVCHD compressed files. There's always trade offs.
 
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I don't think the OP was talking about achieving a particular look. He said his issue with the HMC150 was resolution (or lack thereof - which is clearly a major weakness with the 150).
 
I'm a big believer that you should shoot with whatever makes you the most happy....

Personally, I love the way the HMC handles color. And, I've never had a problem with sharpness. Plus, I love me some 60p.

Though, the Sony Cam will undoubtedly be sharper. Sonys always are. The question is, at the end of the day will the average client/viewer/audience member even know the difference?
 
ikander said:
Though, the Sony Cam will undoubtedly be sharper. Sonys always are. The question is, at the end of the day will the average client/viewer/audience member even know the difference?
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That's a question that seems to get overlooked often. When these prosumer HD cams are used for professional purposes, delivery is still usually in SD. When you get right down to it, in the right hands, pretty much any of the cams in this class can yield utterly outstanding SD images when (properly) downscaled.

That is gradually changing though. It seems that there is starting to be a trickle of interest in Blu-Ray delivery, but I think what is more likely to be the big game changer over the next few years is internet video delivery moving more and more to HD. HD content on the web seems to be growing at a much faster pace than Blu-Ray players are being adopted in typical living rooms.

We now have a capable player installed on most desktop computers (Adobe's Flash Player) - setting a fairly universal standard, with more and more computers being capable of full HD playback (CPU/GPU power), almost all new computer monitors being sold are capable of at least 720 line resolution (on bigger and bigger size screens too), and broadband connections continuing to get faster and faster. Basically, all the fundamentals are now established for delivering HD over the net, and should mature pretty nicely (becoming very reliable) over the next few years.

As HD delivery continues to grow, truly high resolution images will (more and more) become something that indeed make a noticeable difference to the typical viewer.
 
Well, I agree that you have to take into consideration your delivery. When you shoot for internet delivery, or SD, I just have a hard time believing that the lens sharpness or resolution of the 150 is that much different to the naked eye than the Canon, or Sony for that matter. Well lit scenes are going to look spectacular for either. Low light is obviously going to be different but that's not the lens fault here, is it? Just saw the Von Lanken comparison, and I think that there was not a whole lot of difference in the two (other than Rolling Shutter) for delivery for the web, and the low light comparison seems to be something that could easily be cleaned up in post, which is what I end up doing anyway, since I like a brighter contrasty look to my work in low light. Sharpness? I didn't seem to see a difference in that clip. Would have liked them to do split screen though.

As mentioned, I just did a camera comparison with my buddy's JVC, and while I have features I liked better on this more expensive camera, I did not think that the 150 gave me a 'rough' look. Quality was outstanding on both. Guess I just haven't seen the type of problem you two (Robert and OP) are describing. I would probably change for DVCPro HD, better viewfinder, (the things I describe in my post above) etc. But not for image quality...
 
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whoa, crazy number of responses...quite honestly in addition to the resolution another thing that bothers me is the very "inorganic" look (IMO) the HMC produces out of the box...on its own it seems fine but when I shoot side by side with other cameras the edges seem very rough (like somebody went nuts with post-sharpening) Now, I have been able to counteract this problem with detail settings and coring but in doing this my resolution suffers considerably. This is my one and only problem with the HMC as I love everything else about it (size, light-weight, color repro.).
 
8string said:
...I just have a hard time believing that the lens sharpness or resolution of the 150 is that much different to the naked eye than the Canon, or Sony for that matter...
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I've never handled an HMC150, but I can see (with naked eye) a difference in sharpness between images shot with an HMC40 and a Canon XH-A1. The detail from the HMC40 is stunning.
 
I think (but may be wrong) that the HMC40 is using the same guts as the 150, just stripped down features. It's a nice camera. As to edges being rough, I'll try and post the stuff we shot last week between the JVC and 150 as an example. I did not notice any rough edges (could this be a defective lens or sensors on yours?). Have you tried going side by side with a second 150 to make sure yours is not somehow defective? (your local dealer or some other shooter might be able to offer up an afternoon to do this). I've been trying to do a split screen on these two, but have other projects tying me up... more if I can. I'll try and just post the raw footage on both. The 150 needed the most color "tuning" (scene tuning). You can see what I mean in Barry Greens' book, The HMC 150 Book, Page 200/201 shows the "default" settings, and the scene seems somewhat underexposed. The JVC seemed to shoot more of a "cafe" color balance (pg. 204 top left) by just turning it on and white balancing, which Barry says is "a bright saturated colorful filmlike setting." Is this personal POV? Probably so...well as car talk says, "you've squandered another 10 minutes on this web site", back to work...(G). And as to changing cameras, wait to see the whites of its' I's (Iris) and maybe rent one first.
 
The HMC40 uses 3 full raster 1/4" CMOS chips, that easily resolve over 800 lines of detail cleanly - much higher resolution imaging than the 150. The H254 encoder is the same, but it is encoding a considerably more detailed image coming from the imaging block of the 40.
 
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