I'm a new owner of my Z7 and I've been playing around with the slow motion feature.

Here's a raw clip of my daughter's crazy hair.

http://www.hullfreedomtrail.com/downloads/z7_footage/Z7_Slow_Motion_Crazy_Hair.mov

This has been captured in HDV mode and when placed on a FCP timeline and played out through my G5's BlackMagic SP card, looks like very useable SD footage.

I've tried down converting in the camera and the footage is pretty similar. However, when I tried in DVCAM mode, there seemed to be a degradation.

Any similar experiences people?

How come thats HDV, when the camera only shoots DV slow mo?

Not sure. The camera was in HDV mode and I selected Slow Rec.

So it must up-res it to HD...

Jonathan, yeah my mistake, HDV does work in slow mo, neither mode seem to work in progressive tho with is annoying,

Yes - that is a bit annoying.

I'd love to be able to under and over crank like the EX1.... grrr....

I haven't been able to play this clip and I'm very interested to see it as I might well be hiring this cam for the function. Any special co-dec I should know about?

Cheers
Mat

Its not great, you can record 3 seconds which equal 12 seconds played back, which is usable as SD footage. but more time ie. 12 seconds = 48 seconds has really back artifacts. .m2t or hdv or dvcam formats

The production I'm working on is shot in 720p but to be honest there isn't many options for super-slo mo without massive hire costs of top end kit.

Do you know of any other good options that will deliver at least 4xslow mo in dv res?

oh and 3sec actual time will be enough for my purposes.

Well it might do you then. 3 second bursts to tape in HDV is pretty simple, and looks fresh. its also limits you to 215 shutter speed, so you'd need lots of light

Thats interesting to hear and good news. The light shouldn't be a problem as I can set it up at any time of day and its outside....just need some reasonable weather for more than 1day :-o !

Just below SD I think, but useable none the less.