HV10 Footage: Dusk/Evening

[Tim Le]

Evening footage at a mall and a local college.

720/30P - 49 MB - WMV 9 - Right Click and Save As

http://www.mydatabus.com/public/tle/z/HV10evening.wmv

Camera Settings:

- Mode: Tv, shutter 1/60
- Exposure: Press the EXP button and dial 1-3 clicks down from 100% zebras as required
- Image Effects: all off/default
- OIS: off
- Focus: mostly IAF, sometimes IAF to set focus then to MF to prevent hunting
- No post CC
- Some shots used an old Raynox .3x semi-fisheye

[Brad Vaughan]

Wow, simply beautiful.

Really nice footage. The colors look fantastic and the panning is really smooth! What kind of Tripod do you use?

This is some nice sample footage. I will keep this one on my Hard Drive!

Thanks for the footage and more importantly, the info behind the footage. It really helps!!

Two Thumbs Up!

[Luis A. Diaz]

Originally Posted by Tim Le

Evening footage at a mall and a local college.

720/30P - 49 MB - WMV 9 - Right Click and Save As

http://www.mydatabus.com/public/tle/z/HV10evening.wmv

Camera Settings:

- Mode: Tv, shutter 1/60
- Exposure: Press the EXP button and dial 1-3 clicks down from 100% zebras as required
- Image Effects: all off/default
- OIS: off
- Focus: mostly IAF, sometimes IAF to set focus then to MF to prevent hunting
- No post CC
- Some shots used an old Raynox .3x semi-fisheye

Very nice indeed!!
Very good use of Tele/Wide angle in croos dissolve and simple cuts and choice of music.... simple and to the point.

I still can't understand what they mean by the HV-10 doing poorly in low light situations under normal conditions. They probably want the camera to perform flawlessly in an enclosed bathroom with no lights.

What editing program? I'm currently doing FCExpress on the Mac.(on the learning curve but getting there)

Nice,
Luis

[Mike Horrigan]

WOW! That looks fantastic!

Very nicely shot.
Low-light shots look amazing...

Mike

[Pieter Jongerius]

Great content, great shots! Inspires me to try some of that one day, thanks.

About the low light: you so see some vertical patterns in the blacks or almost blacks, that catch the eye somewhat more than regular noise... but it's nowhere near as hindering (is that English?) than I thought it would be. The fact that it's downsampled to 720p must help a lot, but still, great.

Question: why did you disable the OIS? Does it have some unwanted effect?

Thanks,
Pieter

[Kristin Stewart]

Thanks Tim, that's great ! The picture is a little bit soft, is it due to the 720P compression ?

[Ben Lynn]

That footage was really impressive Tim. You did a great job of shooting it and making the camera look it's best. I'm impressed with the picture quality. Nice.

Ben

[Thomas Smet]

This is some great footage. Those who think this camera is bad in low light need to check this stuff out. Any situation darker then this in my opinion really needs to add some light anyway so I do not see the camera as bad in low light. Heck I even use on camera lights with my 2/3" chip DSR-500 just because the footage always looks better when well lit. I think if you even stick on small low watt light on this puppy that you would be able to do a lot with the camera. Just seeing what it can do with street lighting at night I can say I am very impessed. I shot some nighttime stuff of a nighttime carnival in Cape Town, South Africa last year with my HC1 and it didn't look anywhere near as nice as this.

[Wes Vasher]

Thanks for posting these clips Tim. Great footage. The HV10 just has such a nice picture. It doesn't have that overly video-ish feeling that most HDV cams have.

[Jung Kyu]

have u deinterlaced the footage...it's much better..

here's hc1 footage.

http://www.dvuser.co.kr/zboard/data/...2112051579.wmv

http://www.dvuser.co.kr/zboard/data/pds/Untitled99.wmv

[Rich Dykmans]

Originally Posted by Jung Kyu

have u deinterlaced the footage...it's much better..

Your first file is hard to evaluate because between the de-interlace and waving the cam around it's hard to watch. The second file is also stuttering badly (at least on my MacBook Pro - even when I play it back at reduced size) The individual frames look clean however.

I like the softer, less video-ish look of Tim's footage myself. De-interlacing HDV doesn't automatically improve one's video.

[Tim Le]

Thanks for the comments and compliments everyone. I'm glad y'all enjoyed the footage.

Answers to some of the questions:

- Tripod was an OConnor Ultimate DV on Gitzo legs. That's probably overkill for the little HV10 but I really enjoy operating on a tripod and the OConnor being so smooth, is a real pleasure to use.

- As for the low-light issue, I think the camera is adequate if you're okay with film style shooting where you want the scene to look like it does to the human eye, i.e. naturally dark areas look dark and naturally bright areas look bright. But in really low-light scenes, like the opening shot in my footage (which was pretty dark in real life) there will be noise as you bump up the exposure and add gain. However, you probably don't want to be shooting at that light level anyway because the quality of light won't be very appealing. These things are cameras so feed it light! Having said that, I do wish the camera was 1-2 stops more sensitive so I could achieve the same look in certain scenes without having to add gain. The HV20's improved noise reduction and 1/48 shutter just might get you there.

- The OIS was disabled because the camera was on a tripod. If you don't turn it off while on a tripod, the OIS will cause small movements in the framing during or at the end of a camera move because of the change in acceleration.

- The softness is due to a combination of things. The main thing is the WMV compression and the deinterlace to 30P during the encoding. Also, because of the low light levels, the aperture is opened to the max and that's not the sweet spot of the lens for sharpness. Finally, it could be operator error since I often depended on IAF to hit the focus and the system has a harder time doing that accurately in low light. The original footage is definitely sharper and I have the sharpness set to the default.

- I agree, the camera has a wonderful un-video like feel to it, even when viewed in 60i. I don't know if it's the CMOS sensor, the native progressive nature of the sensor or the DIGIC II processor doing its magic, but 60i on this camera does not look like reality TV to me. Now imagine what 24P and the cine preset would look like on the HV20. All you guys are in for a treat!

The only problem with these little but very capable cameras is, like Charles Papert mentioned in his HV20 thread, they are not a camera operator's camera. It's not easy to manipulate critical things like focus, exposure and white balance quickly and without shaking the camera. So although these are fun little cameras with a lot of potential, they definitely don't replace larger cameras with normal controls.

But the promising thing is the sensor and the DIGIC processor. Can you imagine if Canon made a single 2/3" CMOS version of this camera and put it into a larger body with a fixed mount, constant aperture wide angle zoom lens? You'd get even wider latitude, even more sensitivity, DOF similar to 16mm film and it'd be fairly affordable with a single sensor and fixed lens. Now that would be a killer camera. In fact, I'd say that's what the independent/low-budget film community needs rather than the RED camera.

[Ed Khang]

Bumping this thread a bit.

Tim, your footage is fantastic.

Does your HV10 ever show vertical banding in very low light? I'm wondering if your settings help to prevent vertical banding due to preventing too much gain.

-Ed

[Ed Khang]

Originally Posted by Tim Le

Evening footage at a mall and a local college.

720/30P - 49 MB - WMV 9 - Right Click and Save As

http://www.mydatabus.com/public/tle/z/HV10evening.wmv

Camera Settings:

- Mode: Tv, shutter 1/60
- Exposure: Press the EXP button and dial 1-3 clicks down from 100% zebras as required
- Image Effects: all off/default
- OIS: off
- Focus: mostly IAF, sometimes IAF to set focus then to MF to prevent hunting
- No post CC
- Some shots used an old Raynox .3x semi-fisheye

I tried those same settings, shooting at around 12pm indoors with only light from the window. It's not that dark, but I get Vertical Banding City. Take a look at the pics below.





Are you sure you shot 1/60th? Because no matter what, even with the exposure all the way down (really dark looking) I get veritcal banding like crazy. Only if I switch to 1/30th, does it not get banding, and that's if I turn down the exposure.

Do I have a defective HV10? Do they all do this? Or does Tim have a rare, magical HV10?

-Ed