Hold on boys and girls, this one might just be fun.

2008 Mavericks surf competition (http://www.reelsense.net/index.html)

Wow. That just looked like a ton of fun. I've only filmed very little surfing (in Costa Rica, they even tried to teach me) and that put it to shame. I would have loved to have been a part of that! :)

Really good stuff Eric and Brian. Amazing shots. I guess all that money and time invested in the Zoerk/Nikkor combo really paid off.

Thanks guys. Yes it was fun. Paolo, sorry you were tied down and couldn't make it. Would have been great. The walk was a bit much, not to sound like a wimp, and the cliff was a bear to climb with the gear. But thanks to Brian's shmoozability, we were actually allowed to climb the cliff. If not for him I would have shot sand all day. I gotta get over the shy thing already.

Looking at the footage now it's easy to forget (or to simply not realize) just how far away those guys were. To put it into perspective, Brian climbed the cliff with his gear as well, but never even turned his camera on until the awards ceremony. Would have been like filming horse flies from across the street..

There was some cool gear up on that cliff as well. Some guy with a 16mm hand crank camera was rigged up right near us. Cool day for sure.

Eric deserves all the credit for this video, he did all the work--I did all the complaining. Here's a Hd100 frame grab of Eric and the 300mm Nikon shooting the competition.

The previous week California was drenched by a series of storms so the hillside, was muddy, crumbly, and 100% unsafe. I kept waiting for the whole thing to slide in to the sea which would have been horrific--just think of all the incredible camera gear that would've been lost!

Nice image for the long lense, What settings were you guys running on the JVC??? Any speciffic scene profile loaded???

Allan

Allan, the HD200 was using Paolo's Nikon settings - TrueColor HD200 V2 (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=111573)

As for the HD100 (ceremony), it was set to True Color V3 (http://www.paolociccone.com/hd100-calibration-3.html)

Good call on the distance consideration. They are not great images, but for shooting through a mile of mist filled air with crap light, I agree they're really not all that bad.

Yeah i've loaded the truecolor v3 and found it to be the most versatile. However, i did push some of the detail back in for long lense stuff and action..
I revert back to the trucolor v3 default settings for TVC's and interviews ect..

You know Allan, at first I pushed up the detail just like you did, "for the long stuff." But when I got a look at all the noise that doing this produced on Paolo's monitor, I backed it back down again. From what Paolo told me that day, there is no difference in pushing the detail up in post compared to doing it in the cam - mind the noise I saw on the vector scope.

Just more thought to share. Good luck

Cheers Eric... I don't doubt that for a second if it came from the guru's mouth. He has really put that cam through its paces...

Cheers for the advice i will just run with his default settings in future

As it is with many things, here we step in the realm of personal preferences and real-world applications :)

When I looked into camera optimization I did it with a particular point of view and workflow in mind.

I assume that I will do post work on my clips. This is a given. I will load my clips in After Effects 99% of the times and in that scenario the detail is kept at the minimum. The result of sharpening in post is a more pleasant result with less artificial shift. The "detail" settings in your camera is really an edge enhancer, no more no less.
Other people share this point of view. Tim Dashwood has posted here several times along the same lines. Adam Wilt has discussed this several times, Scott Billups documents this in "Digital Moviemaking" and Stu Maschwitz provides examples in "The DV Rebel's Guide". The consensus is to turn it off or keep it at the bare minimum. You can add it later so no point in "burning" your images with irreparable "noise".

Having said so, all those authors speak often from the point of view of making your own independent movie. If you have to provide some footage on a very short deadline and you don't have the time to "pamper" your clip in post the detail settings might need to be changed. Just remember that, like other settings, there is no absolute formula and only your esthetic sense dictates what's appropriate for a given shot. It's just that in HD there is a lot of talk about the elusive "film look" and the high detail settings are usually one of the signs of video look. As I bought the HD100 with the idea to achieve a more filmic look, I designed TC3 and TC 200 as with that goal in mind. That is just a suggestion :)