I'm producing a shoot coming up of a 24 hour car race. It's a corporate project for the sponsor of one of the cars--some of their workers are on the pit crew as a team building thing. Final destination is Blu-ray shown in house on a large 1080p TV.

It's being covered by two crews with HVX200's. I will be roaming with my new EX1, doing some time lapse, interviews, and interesting angles of the race not covered by the main crews. I'm also mounting my HV20 in the car.

I plan to shoot 1080/30p on the HVX's and EX1, with some occasional 720/60p shots of the cars going fast. The HV20 will be at 1080i, converted to 30p in post.

Does anyone have any suggestions about getting these cameras, especially the EX1 and HVX, to match as best they can?

Thanks,
Rob

Does anyone have any suggestions about getting these cameras, especially the EX1 and HVX, to match as best they can.

I suggest getting a grayscale chip chart (http://www.dsclabs.com/colorbar_grayscales.htm) and shooting it at the head. It would be helpful as a reference to whoever is doing the editing to colour correct to get them as close as they can.

I do this this anytime I shoot with two or more cameras. No exception, even if they are the same make/model.

Great suggestion, thanks from the editor (me).

Hi Rob, Here is some footage shot with the HV20 during a race....

The footage is by Mikon Haaksman from Houston... might give you some Idea's...

http://gibopictures.com/video/Grandprix1.avi
http://gibopictures.com/video/Grandprix1.mpeg

I have never been able to shoot footage with the HV20 mounted in any of my cars... I think it maybe due to the image stabilization motors on the cam not being able to handle that much movement/torque...

The footage from the three camera's should work well

Nice! Thanks for sending Ray.

Regarding the HV20 in car, I assume you had on 1080i (not 24p)? What about the wide converter? I've got that and have found that it adds weight of course but also that the "zoom out" helps with stability. What about turning OIS off--might that help?

I've got a pro rigging it in the car, so I'll be sure to let you know how it goes!

Rob as a test you could just take the camera out in your personal car, hold the camera down to the dash and take some experimental footage to see
what settings if any you could live with....

Not the same as a race car but remember, your personal car doesn't have the same stiff suspension and the hard cornering/brakeing that the race car
is going to put on the cam...

In my cars I have dedicated cam mounting and I just could not get the HV20 to work...

The EX1 though has been shown to work quite well under these circumstances... at least with high performance airplanes......

I shot some footage in a car with an hv20 griped to the cars window frame.
the car vibration + the hv20's cmos sensors rolling shutter resulted in totally useless material
do some testing before!

Can anyone suggest another HD camera that size that won't have the rolling shutter issues?

I took the HV20 out on the interstate and here's the result:

http://robcollins.net/shutter.mov

Is this the rolling shutter? I forgot to turn off auto-focus, but I think it's more than that.

Assuming so, I need to get a different small HD camera to mount in the race car. Since this is a CMOS thing, I assume a 3-CCD cam will be OK?

In the sub-$1K price range (where I need to stay) I see the JVC GZ-HD7 Everio and Panasonic HDC-SD5. I'm editing in Final Cut 6. Any suggestions?

Thanks very much.

Is this the rolling shutter?
Yes, the rubbery bouncy issues are caused by a rolling shutter interacting with the vibration of the camera bouncing around.

Since this is a CMOS thing, I assume a 3-CCD cam will be OK?
Yes, a CCD cam would be immune to rolling shutter issues.