Wow! Finally compared my new Canon T2i (550D) to my Canon HV20 Camcorders! Holy Crap!

S

skital

Well-known member
What a HUGE HUGE difference!!! The difference compared head on was so vastly different. I was just using the kit lens and my own custom picture style I called "Film Style 1". The T2i had image fidelity that simply was not there on the HV20. The HV20 looked to lack dynamic range (it was in cinemode too!) against the T2i, looked way more videoy, the colors weren't nearly as rich and it just looked so much more noisy.

Even with the kit lens low light or semi low light just were on another level with the T2i. It blew me away...the color quality, the dynamic range, the smoothness, nowhere near the noise level. Wow. Wasn't expecting to see so much difference comparing head on. I might put a video on youtube once my Class 10 SDHC card arrives.
 
lol. these DSLR's are being compared to RED cameras, SONY ex series, etc...and you have an hv20 going...quite funny.
 
aituv said:
lol. these DSLR's are being compared to RED cameras, SONY ex series, etc...and you have an hv20 going...quite funny.
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Haha! Yeah, I know. lol. It's just that I had been quite impressed with the HV20 and didn't expect quite this much of a difference head on. My HV20 was an upgrade to the original and supposedly first progressive scan SLR style Canon Optura. The difference between the two was amazing; the hv20 annihlated it and I thought gave me close to that DVX100 quality I had been wanting for years, so between the T2i and HV20 I was expecting a difference in low light quality and maybe sharpness, but it just exceeded expectations in all areas. The T2i simply stomps it....at least indoors it does. Still can't wait to shoot some outdoors stuff.

I just thought the HV20 would hold up better against it (even though I still thought the T2i would still look noticeably better, just not to the degree that it did. lol), but I'm very happy to be wrong in this case! lol.

The HV20 does much better outdoors than indoors though. I'm gonna shoot some comparison videos for youtube and vimeo and then put the HV20 on Ebay most likely. :D
 
If you shoot a chromakey you will find it is the reverse.

The hv20 will blow the DSLR's out the water

edit:
but use an EX1 if you really are. Just illustrating a point that shallow dof and long gop macro blocking
is not always the winner
 
J Davis said:
If you shoot a chromakey you will find it is the reverse.

The hv20 will blow the DSLR's out the water
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Oh really? Well, that sucks. I was planning to do some chroma keying and was hoping to be able ot put my HV20 on Ebay to help get a lighting kit and other lenses. I have seen some good T2i/7D keys though on youtube and vimeo. Maybe it's more difficult to pull off though....why is that? Because of the line skipping of the T2i, right?

So, you would say I should keep the HV20 for green screen shots?
 
PSA1 said:
Yeah but the HV20 will be much sharper outdoor on wide shot than any DLSR.
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Not that big of a deal to me really. Cinemode on the HV20 softens the picture quite a bit on it (including what is in focus), so whatever is in supposed to be in focus on the DSLR will still be sharper than the HV20. I guess I NEED a shot like that I'll just use the HV20 or raise the aperture and use really wide glass.

I'll do some comparison videos soon. Should be fun! I'm thinking of buying some clamp lights from Wal-Mart tonight for tests and later upgrade to a real lighting kit. I'm just trying to remember what temperture my current lights are so I know what bulbs to get.
 
would you be offended if someone called the t2i "just a toy" b/c to some, for video purposes, it is...since it wasn't designed for that in the first place...

I've seen some pretty stellar footage from both cams... Sure...hv20 is pretty long in the tooth these days though, but it was the first budget 24p cam that I can think of and was pretty revolutionary to the no-budget filmmakers as the large sensor video enabled dslr's are today....

under a grand for 24p was a pretty big deal to a healthy demographic of no-budget/micro budget filmmakers, just as S35 for under a grand is today...

not trying to start anything :) just think toy is a bit of an overstatement from a historical perspective (well, if a few years is "historical" :) ) so in context, it's no more a toy than the t2i... Though, I don't think either are toys, per se....
 
not trying to start anything just think toy is a bit of an overstatement from a historical perspective (well, if a few years is "historical" ) so in context, it's no more a toy than the t2i... Though, I don't think either are toys, per se....
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Well, we are all little boys at heart and our cameras are actually our toys! They are to me. Toys that pay my rent! I never liked the way the HV20 felt. I guess some people did work with it but the camera itself never interested me. At the time I went with the HVX200 and I loved that chubby thing. It was a heavy duty toy!
 
I guess some people did work with it but the camera itself never interested me
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me neither... but, i give it its due respect for bringing 24p to such a great price point... of course, it was also the camera that exposed us to the new set of issues to be aware of when it came to shooting motion with rolling shutter cmos sensors... and, as newer cmos cams came along, also made us aware that not all rolling shutters are created equally :)
 
PerroneFord said:
Welcome to the club.
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No doubt. I never used an HV20, but I have a T2i, and I have to say I have never seen a camera with such great image quality, out of the box, at the price of a T2i. It is a great little camera. Perfect? No, but give me a break. I am prepping to shot a guerilla feature on a couple of these little f**kers in October, and if someone would have asked me two years ago if I thought I would be shooting fictional narrative films with an $800.00 camera I would have told them they are crazy. Well, times have changed, haven't they?
 
J Davis said:
If you shoot a chromakey you will find it is the reverse.

The hv20 will blow the DSLR's out the water

edit:
but use an EX1 if you really are. Just illustrating a point that shallow dof and long gop macro blocking
is not always the winner
Click to expand...

idk where this came from. if you light it up good you have no problems, at least i didn't. with good light nothing is forcing you to shoot at 1.2/f or 11/f depending on lens.
 
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