choosind the right camera

helo to eveyone


i need to buy a semipro camera to work with FC. I came down to this models but have few doubts, someome help me please.

Sony Z7:

Besides the solid state recorder and the possibility of changing lens. ( I dont reaaly need those two) has this camara interestng advantages over the Z5? what about the lens? eare this better or more proffesional than the Z1 lens


Sony Z5, seems like a good option. i would like to know if the Z7 makes a diffrence in terms of image quality and lens


Canon XHA1. Is my most affordable option. I am efraid a bout the progressive mode. Is this real prpgressive or not? if is not, what are the benefits of having a real progressive camera like the Z5.

What about the possibilities of the lens compared to the Z5, what you think is a better option? the Z5 is like 1500 dollars more expensive here in europe.

By looking at samples in you tube etc. I always have the idea that canon has a kind of more pinkish overall tone in the iamages compared to sony which has like more deep colors. Do you think this could be just my imagination?


thanks a loy for your help

What about JVC HD200 compared to these cameras? the lensseems to be closer to a proffesional camer

I think before getting any advice on a camera, you need to tell us what will you be mostly shooting. Also do you want a camera that shoots 1080P, 1080i, 720P and do you need to shoot in SD.

And what's the budget?

Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
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Thanks very much for your advise.

I will be shooting documentaries basicly, interviewa urban situatios, etc. mostly day time, but with night scenes as well. It does not matter SD or HD, I just think that probably MiniDV SD format is becomieng old and is better to use HDV, at the same time I have chacked Pana DVX100 wich seems affordable and a good camera. I like to shoot with progressive mode as well, I am suspicious about the progressive mode in Canon XHA1, which seems to be not real progressive, I don´t know if this problematic or can look a little fake

Best ragards

If you don't care whether you're shooting HD or SD, stick with SD. Don't make the jump to HD until you're really ready for it.

Low-end high-definition production is in a weird, transitionary place right now. With a few exceptions, your choices are formats like HDV, AVCHD and the H.264 you get out of cameras like the 5D Mk II and 7D. These formats are all really difficult to work with compared to what you're used to.

If you really want to get into HD production today, invest in an HVX200. There are thousands of them out there, so I wouldn't be surprised if you could get your hands on a well-cared-for used one. Get say two or three P2 cards and a card reader for your laptop, and you're basically good to go. The DVCPRO HD format is incredibly easy to work with, and sufficient for the kind of work you're talking about doing.

But really, unless you know you need to be shooting HD right now, just stick with SD. The camera you use is far less important than what you choose to point it at.

The thing with P2 cards is that I need to do a lot of footage, long interviews atc. and edit all that later. I think with P2 something like that would be really expensive since I would need a few, or maybe dowload everyday to the computer and make a back uo copy as well

I'll go with what Jeff said, and if you are shooting documentaries, are you submitting them to any networks for consideration like PBS, History Channel, etc?

I'm in the same boat as you looking for the right camera for my needs. Right now I'm leaning towards the RED 2/3" Fixed lens Scarlet that has not been released yet. But that's me and what I need in a camera...

Right, that's how P2 cards work. You shoot on one while you're copying the other to your laptop, the switch.

If that workflow doesn't work for you, say because you're doing all this by yourself without even a small crew on location, just stick with DV. An expensive camera will not make you a better filmmaker, just a poorer one.

I've used the Panasonic AG-HVX200A P2HD Camcorder to shoot behind-the-scenes footage on a movie set. It's a nice camera and you can shoot in 480, 16x9 mode to a mimi DV tape. I think right now some places are giving away a free P2 card with each Panasonic purchase.

With the HVX200 you can also shoot DV to the cards and shoot for hours and hours, if you need the time more than the quality. I don't know if importing is faster than realtime with this method but even if it's 1:1 the ability to do more than one thing when transferring already makes it better than capturing.

Is the H?X170 much cheaper than the 200? It's got little improvements all over but they've taken out the tape transport. There aren't as many used ones out there as it's a much newer product.

2x32gig P2 cards is what I would consider the middle of the bell curve for most people's average use. Not enough for extremely long shots without importing and wiping but even for a BASIC documentary you can get a morning and afternoon of solid shooting.

All card based formats force you to think about how many people and how much time you have at your disposal and whether you can do all the copying and backing up when you need to without interrupting your shooting patterns.

A friend has an HVX200 that he takes into some sketchy shooting situations and he always shoots 720p24. BUT he keeps a miniDV tape in the camera in case someone wants to confiscate his footage in which case he hands them the tape after some believable minor resistance and walks away.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Quote

Right, that's how P2 cards work. You shoot on one while you're copying the other to your laptop, the switch.

That is so last-week. Welcome to the future...shooting directly to ProRes with a P2 camera (no more transcoding):

[www.aja.com]



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

To hell with that, Joey. I just drag a Mac Pro with a Kona 3 card and a Caldigit HDOne around wherever I go.

And a small gas-powered generator, obviously.

This fits on a TRIPOD under or on the back of the CAMERA.

Watch the second video:

[www.aja.com]

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Yes, it does. My only point (snarkily made) was that if you expand the definition of "camera" to include anything that could possibly plug into a camera (or be bolted/railed/gaff-taped to one) then the camera body itself is reduced to an inconvenient but necessary adapter between the lens and the recording system for the purpose of turning photons into electrons.

Come to think of it, I gather that's the philosophy Red has embraced for their new products.

NOt sure what your point is Jeff...this eliminates transcoding so...doesn't that help? Not sure where you are going with this.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Where I was going was "that is not a camera, so while it's neat, it's not really applicable here."

I was going to make a stop off at "you don't transcode DVCPRO HD footage anyway," but it seemed pretty irrelevant at the time.

...but I thought I made it pretty clear I was talking about P2 and nothing else.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

While there is some new gear out there that records AVCHD or AVC Intra footage to P2 cards, "P2" is still pretty much synonymous with DVCPRO HD. The HVX200, for example, records DVCPRO HD-format footage to P2-format cards. No transcoding required, though of course Final Cut has to dig inside the P2 file structure and copy the footage into a Quicktime container.

Don't get me wrong; the Ki Pro is a neat gadget. I personally wouldn't bet my workflow on it, but it's a neat gadget.

Err. Yea, I won't run an HVX200 off a Ki Pro. Kinda overkill, but that'll be neat for EX1s/EX3s, as you want to skip the XDCAM EX compression.



www.strypesinpost.com

the thing is I usually make a lot of footage, In the past I did a documentary witha DVCpro 50 camara, sdx 900, I think that was the model, and I dis like 40 hours to end up with a 90 minutes documentary. Then you always have the tape in case you need to review somethingm or if you wabt to keep this for the future, since it was mainly interviews, things you dont wabt to erase even if you are not using that in the final editing. With P2 you cant really do that. I have bben looking to camera test in you tube and the camara looks really good in HD and DVCpro50 though

Whay do yoi say , low end HD is in transitionary place? is really not worthit to invest in this format?

Progressive mode is also important, that´s good with the HVX 200. I am considering Z5 and canon XHA1, what about this not real native progressive in the A1? is this actually a problem? It does look bad or fake when editing?

thabks a lot for your help

The Canon XHA1 is not a 1080 progressive. It shoots 1080i (1440 x 1080). I guess you can transcode it to progressive. I not sure, someone correct me on this?

Funny, tonight I'm directing a small shoot and they are using the Canon XHA1. I guess I can tell you how well it did after tonight.

The question to answer is how much do you shoot in a day? Or, how much do you shoot before you have time to back up and copy.

With a workflow set up ahead of time. i.e. Copying to RAID 1 pairs that get split when full.
Editing ready drives (eSATA or FW800 or FC) with enough space for all your raw footage. You can do all the things you say you want to do. Naked SATA drives are running about 1TB/$100 and coming down. You can have all your footage in duplicate and ready to edit without digitizing.
Another alternate is a BluRay drive and one BluRay disk for every 36gig card.

Everyone feels a little at sea when they move away from tape and there are lots of reasons to stick with tape but there are benefits to SS media and a lot of the hassles are being worked out for you by others.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

i have a Canon XHA1

you are right, since I knw by experience tapes have its owm problems too, especally when it comes to capture and spend two days doing that. I will take a look and try to learn this technique and see if is more convenient for me. The only thing is, if I want to keep the unedited material for the anything in the future, I guess I have to keep one big hard drive, is that a safe thing?

ankawa Wrote:
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> i have a Canon XHA1


How does the progressive mode works for you , Have you compared the results to a native progressive camera?

thanks for your help

I might not be saying this correct but the Canon XHA1 has an Image Sensor of 3 - 1/3" Native 16:9 CCDs (1440 x 1080). To get full 1080 progressive, the sensor needs to be 1920 x 1080, or the camera needs to have the ability to up res. I don't see that in their specs.

You can use a hard drive to store your footage but, If that HD fails, you're dead! If you fill the HD up and put it somewhere for a year or two and then pull it out to get a clip, it might not be there. Hard drives that sit around for a long time not being use with files on it, could have some problems. You need to plug them in once in awhile and run them. There's a technical term for that madness...

Due respect, Russ, but that's pretty far off the mark.

"Progressive," as a technical term, is the opposite of "interlaced." Digital video cameras don't actually have a shutter like a film camera necessarily must, but let's imagine they do for sake of discussion. Each time an interlaced camera's notional shutter opens, it records half the scan lines in the picture: even, odd, even, odd and so on. But each time a progressive camera's notional shutter opens, it records the whole sensor, all at once.

Progressive-scan versus interlaced-scan has zero to do with resolution. It's also got zero to do with frame rate, in the abstract. In reality, these three things come together more often than one might suspect.

For instance, let's talk about the XH A1. Canon, for whatever reason, pretty carefully guards the technical details of their "24F" recording format. It's definitely not as simple as "opening" the sensor for 1/48th of a second 24 times per second and writing that out to tape in 1080i60 format with 3:2 pulldown, but exactly what the camera does is a bit of a mystery.

One thing is for sure: In 24F mode, the camera's CCD blocks really do scan at 48 Hz. It's also undeniably true that footage shot in 24F mode comes out slightly softer than the same shot recorded in 60i mode, but it's not at all clear why. My personal pet theory, and I think it's a good one, is that since the 24p footage is getting converted to 60i-with-3:2 in-camera before the footage ever hits the recorder, the already brutal HDV compression really shows its weakness on the jitter frames, degrading the vertical resolution of the footage by some small but noticeable degree.

I've run the SDI tap from an XL H1 (which is effectively the same as an XH A1 for purposes of this discussion) straight into a Kona board and captured 60i-with-3:2 without compression. In those tests, the results of removing the pulldown from that uncompressed tap were clearer and sharper than the same shot digitized off HDV tape. This should come as no surprise; HDV is really harsh compression.

But the truth is, the difference in overall image quality on a static setup (i.e., no motion or panning) between the HDV tape and the uncompressed SDI tap was insignificant enough as to make no practical difference. Both images were fine, if a bit more noisy than I like due to the pinky-nail-sized 1/3" sensor in the camera.

So is the XH A1 a "native progressive" camera? Sure, to the extent that that phrase means a damn thing. Can the CCD block be clocked to 48 Hz? Yup. So it's a "native progressive" camera, and we can all move on with our lives.

Hey Jeff, Thanks for clearing that up for me. You explained it pretty good. I'm not so much a technical geek on this stuff, still learning how all this digital stuff works.

i really dont know anything about that
I just turned it on, I shoot wither standard or HD 60i


maltess Wrote:
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> ankawa Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > i have a Canon XHA1
>
>
> How does the progressive mode works for you , Have
> you compared the results to a native progressive
> camera?
>
> thanks for your help