Hi guys, i am on the market to buy a second camera. I have the canon A1 which i love. But i don't want to buy second A1. I really like the hmc 150 and sony ax2000 but worried about their format. I have adobe cs4, is it possible to use footage from hmc 150 and the sony on the same project or do i have to convert them. Thx

Hi Kiflom

Seriously I do believe that it's better to have matched cameras ..I've seen some horrific wedding footage where the cameras were different!! Panasonic and Sony produce a vastly difference image so IMHO it would be better to either get another A1 or sell it and grab 2 x HMC150's

Others will have different opinions but I like the fact that my A and B roll footage integrates with no need for huge adjustments and matching!!!

Chris

A fair number of people use an HV-40 (or the previous HV 20/30 models) with a Canon XH-A1. Still tape, which may or may not be an advantage for you. There's a thread about colour matching by Taky Cheung linked here http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-xh-series-hdv-camcorders/404788-xha1-hv30.html#post1379340.

I was able to trade away my DVX100 for a HV40... I've been happy so far with it.
It's not hard to match up with my a cam (JVC200U). I just have to add in some gamma, bump the saturation a bit, and it looks pretty darn close.
For the price I think it works great.

Steve

I got two HV30s right when the HV40s came out, and I love using them. I was in the same situation as you. I would also suggest getting some accessories as these cameras are very small. Since you are doing weddings, a lot of people will be checking out your gear and it would help to add a little 'wow' factor to these little guys. I got a lends hood, and a add-on mic ($14.00 for the hood, $150.00 for the mic). I've seen a lot of different combos out there to improve this cam-not to mention make it look a little meaner.

My third little cam has come in handy so many times, so if you can get one cheap enough I would go for too.

I have an A1s, and my other cams are a 7D with a few lenses and an HF20. Both of those blend well with the A1s footage, especially if you shoot all of the cameras with the flattest profile you can and then color match in post. The HF20 and A1s look remarkably similar in daylight - not so much in low light (the HF20 sucks in low light!)

Good luck, let us know what you end up with!

Thank you guys. i am ok with color because i will do it on post but i am worried about the format. The A1 is HDV and the other AVCHD. Would i be able to edit the avchd footage with canon on the same project on adobe cs4. thx

Grab a copy of VAAST's Upshift and it will transcode your AVCHD into 50mbs HDV effortlessly!!

Works a treat and the software is a mere $49.00!!

Chris

Thx chris, do you how long will it take to transcode?

I only used it on my first wedding and then I discovered that Panasonics MainConcept Transcoder would zap the footage direct to AVI for me.

As far as I can remember I had around 70 minutes of raw footage on each card and Upshift did it in less than 20 minutes per card on my DuoCore 2.2GHz machine which isn't too bad!! I did use the highest quality preset with a bitrate of 50mps and a GOP of just 1 ..I suspect if would be a lot quicker if you tweaked the settings.

They do have a trial version too so if you can get hold of some AVCHD files ..test it out for yourself???

Chris

Sorry i am asking a lot of questions cuz i have several weddings coming up, so do you mean SD AVI. HOw is the quality compared to the row footage. thx (*___________*)

Hi Kiflom

OK, we have a situation here where virtually no-one owns a BD player but everyone seems to have a LCD big screen TV hooked up to a normal DVD player. Since I supply all my brides SD DVD's it made sense to transcode to SD-AVI and let the Transcoder do all the work than let my little DuoCore machine battle with AVCHD editing. Unless you are using a camera with a practical line resolution of over 900 and at least an AVCHD bitrate of 26mbs you are unlikely to spot any resolution difference between HDV to SD and AVCHD to SD or SD to SD. I ran many test disks and on practical footage you can't see any difference even if you look hard....certainly a bride wouldn't spot any difference!! In your case, I would still convert the AVCHD to HDV as the A1 already is HDV and the format renders pretty quickly compared to AVCHD. Just remember that if you shoot interlaced, you will need to get your NLE to de-interlace the source footage before you render to SD as HDV has Upper Field first interlacing and SD has Lower Field first!! If you don't, you will get nasty jaggies when you downsize from 1440 to 720!!!

The Mainconcept Transcoder is of no use to you BTW!! It only works with Panasonic AVCHD files!! so definately stick with dropping your second cam's AVCHD to HDV to match the A1

Chris

Yeah I also use XH-A1 as main cam and HV30 as second cam. And I agreed you really need to gear up the HV30 so it won't look like amatuer in weddings. Lots of guest and bride's uncles will be shooting video at the same time. You do need to have something stand out.

What I do is to

- Add a Raynox 6600 or Canon WD-H43 wide angle lens
- Mount the Xh-A1 lens hood to the wide angle lens
- Add a flash bracket that has 3 shoes Flash Bracket with 3 Accessory Shoes | L.A. Color Shop (http://lacolorshop.com/products/item.asp?id=fb3)
- Add video lights to the rig
- Add shot gun mic to the rig

Here's some photos
My Even Newer Twin Lights (http://www.hv20.com/showthread.php?t=25014)

- Mount the remote control of HV30 to the tripod handle, then wire the signal using an optical (TOSLink) cable so you can use the remote control as LANC controller.

Cheap solution to missing LANC | L.A. Color Blog (http://lacolorshop.com/blog/view.asp?id=10)

Not to sidetrack the thread, but I don't quite agree with throwing attachments on a camera just to stand out. I checked out that link with the HV30 all decked out with two lights and a mic, etc. It's impressive for sure, but it's also going to 'stand out' and be a bit of an eyesore in my humble opinion. I just think you should add accessories to your camera to improve your product, not to improve your image .. pun intended. d;-)

how about buying sony ax2000 or the panasonic hmc150 to go along my canon xha1. I want to buy for the future but iam worried about hdv vs Acvhd. How is hv30 in low light. Thx a bunch guys, summer is comming up and i want to be ready

well, it's not for standing out. it's making sure other guests not using a camera looking more "pro" than yours. I got a lots of new business through people finding me at weddings. If they see me using bare tiny consumer camcorder, they will have second thought. Besides, the wide angle lens, lens hood, shotgun mic, video lights, all are necessary when shooitng wedding and receptions.

Taky, I understood why you're loading the camera out, and if it genuinely generates business for you then by all means keep it up. I just felt like that setup looked ... well ... somewhat obnoxious and obtrusive I guess, and I wouldn't take that approach myself just to make sure guests thought I was a professional.

For the record, we actually use an HV30 in addition to our XHA1's but don't feel the need to put all of that extra equipment on it. But again, if your approach is working, keep it up. I just wanted to provide a different opinion on that. Sorry to take the thread off topic.

Yeah it worked well for me. I was once at a corporate event conference with local TV station coverage. I was hesitated to setup my the second cam because of the nature of the HV30. I decide to have it up just for the sake of easy editing. Later on, I found the TV crew from that TV station gathered around it and commented how smart it is to put things together.

For now, I am using two XH-A1. My HV30 is as a third cam mounted on Merlin Steadicam.

The very real and somewhat scary fact is that "consumer" price/level gear is rapidly coming quite close to "pro" gear in image/output quality, especially to the untrained eye. An experienced operator can squeeze a lot out of a pocket size camera...

While I appreciate that "image" is sometimes "size related", the simple truth is that ultimately it's the shooter not the gear - it's the experience/professional skill/talent (not to mention the CONTENT) that will make or break the "output".

With the new Canon T2i, the journey continues... smaller, less expensive cameras that can produce simply stunning output quality HD video... I myself am shocked by how good the new little Sony P&S cameras are when shooting HD. This year's new toys, both big and small are pushing the envelope on both quality and price (that's technology for you).

One has to appreciate that you can buy/use a small camera for "second/third/fourth cam", it's just hard to sort out when the latest little monster "looks" better when you compare the output to something much larger from a couple years ago!

I've noticed more and more when watching video on TV that the "press pool" will have one or more "consumer" size cameras in use... so perceptions are likely changing, and I think we're seeing that more and more "news" or "event" type footage is being broadcast that was shot with small cameras, because the camera was THERE (cell phone video that's so horrible and pixellated it's "unwatchable", but it's making the news because it "caught" something newsworthy for instance).

I agreed very much consumer products nowadays are very capable. Also I know that the content and the professionalism is what it counts when the final product is delivered to the client. However, at location, that's how everybody perceive the image of the companby.

I am firm beliver of let your work speak for you, i am not too concern what the camera look like but what i like to know is how good is the hv30 or is it better to buy the hv40 or by pass both of them and go for hmc 150 or ax2000. It will be nice if ya can put your .2cent into this. thx (*_________*)

The HV30 has pretty good image quality, and actually fairs okay in low light situations as well. Personally, I would never use one as a primary camera, but they are awesome to have as back-up wide angle cameras (and great as a tape deck as well).

You've got a good "big" camera, a couple small ones for B/C cams are probably a handy thing. If you wanted to go tapeless, maybe look at Canon HF-S21 just released or the current HF-S10, 11, & 100?

A lot really depends on your budget, and you may find if you get a small cam of the latest generation, it starts to make your "older" camera look a bit dated, resulting in a more expensive "upgrade". You also may find when you go tapeless, you want to go 100%... just some things to think about.

I'm going to guess that the HV series (20, 30, 40) are going to be a better "match" simply because they are of approximately the same generation as your A1. You may not be thrilled with the low light performance - supposedly later cams have improved in that respect. I know Sony now makes cams that almost see in the dark, even in the small consumer packages.

Much depends on how you like to work, and whether you would find the additional cams (and how many) helpful to your workflow.

One other consideration is when you add a "different" camera to the mix, you have an entirely different menu/button/control set, which may not be a good thing when shooting under pressure... you really should try to get "hands on" ANY camera you're considering and see if you are comfortable with it.