Nothing elaberate, but I use my TM900 a lot while storm chasing. Here is a video I shot a couple weeks ago.

Not an easy subject to capture.
I see too much zooming in this video. If you are putting so much effort into storm chasing why not shoot with two TM900s mounted in a camera cage? One camera set for a wide angle shot, and another zoomed-in; that way you'll have two shots of the same event ready for editing. You could even show them using P-I-P (picture in picture) technique so the viewer won't miss details and have the look at the overall situation at the same time. Frequent zoom-ins and zoom-outs don't add drama, they are just sloppy camera work.

David, I found the video fascinating. Never saw a tornado in real life before, so to see one in full HD and filmed so close was awesome!

I was surprised to see the TM900 having some tiny focus issues in daylight, it must have been confused (or scared) by the large grey ominous moving object. Also, I agree with Adrian, the frequent zoom play just makes it harder to watch, especially since the image was shaking a lot - didn't you have the stabilizer on? I find this camera has excellent image stabilization, there is very little shaking even at 20x zoom.

Thanks for sharing this!

Bringing you more footage shot entirely with the TM900! This time you get to see some lovely ladies! This little camera is amazing, absolutely everyone is impressed with the quality it delivers. Would have loved a button for instant access to the backlight exposure function, and perhaps one for manual focus. I'm probably getting a bit greedy now.

Enjoy, let me know what you think!


Floral Photo Shoot - Noree Anne Celine - YouTube

While chasing, time is very limited on setting up multiple cameras and such, especially when you have to set up and operate them all by yourself.. You have to be ready to move at a moments notice. I'm working on a solution for having multiple cameras though, one for wide and one for a close shot. I'll have one mounted to the vehicle for my wide......and attempt to tripod the other for my close shot if there is time. Storm chasing requires "run and gun" style shooting for the most part, its not in a controled setting after all. Getting 60+ mph wind also doesnt help with some of the shakiness......even mounted on a heavy tripod you will get a lot of vibration in strong wind. This is Raw video, I could have edited it where you dont actually see the zoom in or out.

Luc: I notice the blacks have a purple hue to them. Is it that way right out of the camera?

Les, no, I used the three-way color corrector in Premiere, shifted the shadows towards purple and the midtones towards orange. The original colors that came out of the camera were good, but considering this was a fashion photo shoot I decided to make everything a bit more interesting and play around :)

Luc - loved it. Brave staccato editing built on jump cuts, and it works very well indeed. Hand held - and using the little 'hand' OIS for extra stability? Only tiny downer is the oft infinite dof, but what's one to do with less than ¼'' chips? Even so - your selective focus is beautifully used. Congrats - bet the girls loved it more than the stills.

tom.

Tom, thank you very much! I always forget to use the little hand icon for extra stability, fortunately the TM900 is great even without it. I tried to use a lot of zoom to create some DOF, on some shots it worked. A ND filter might help there, the F-value was almost always somewhere around 6 - 8.0 so that didn't help (used 1/100 shutter outside, as I learned I should from this topic). And, you are right, one of the girls said she can't stop admiring herself! Tiny wonder this camera :)

If you're shooting at 1/100th sec then I wouldn't think extra ND would be needed unless it was very bright indeed. Remember in the movie mode an f/5.6 readout means the lens is actually shooting at f/2.8, which is max aperture on full tele anyway.

tom.

I was using 1/100 because 1/50 caused blown highlights, the camera was shooting at its max (auto) value of F 8.0. You guys said not to exceed F 8.0 because I lose resolution beyond that.

Does halving the shutter speed affect the highlights once you've opened the aperture to suit? Not in my experience Luc. And what do you mean by 'its max (auto) value of F 8.0'. Agreed, don't shoot at small apertures if you can help it, but remember that an indicated f/8 is actually f/4. Those undocumented NDs are a pain sometimes.

Well, in manual mode but with auto exposure (just with fixed shutter speed), the camera doesn't go past F8.0. If you want less light coming in and don't want to touch the shutter speed, you have to manually increase the F-value, at which point it becomes fully manual exposure. However, I remember someone here saying the camera intentionally stops at an indicated F8.0 because going further is bad for video quality.

Therefore, at 1/50 shutter speed, the iris value was F8.0 and the LCD was showing me quite a bit of blown highlights. At 1/100, the F-value was around 5.6-6.8 and highlights were alright-ish, even so I had a few shots with the sky completely white.

It may have been me that said something similar in this giant thread..

Don't ask me why but in bright sunshine, using manual mode, fixed shutter and iris "floating" (auto iris) my TM900 handles highlights better when I select 1/100th shutter than than if I leave it at 1/50th.

Leaving at 1/50th and stopping down the iris setting to some crazy amount for me provides an inferior result where highlights "white out" excessively.

Now I know the iris is not really stopping right down, it's more and more ND, or is it? In the absence of hard facts my personal belief is that something is happening in the camera's processor at 100th that is changing the image for the better, observable on Edius waveform meter, lowered mids, away from the dreadful cruched up white levels around and well over 100IRE, this backs off a bit more down to part of the curve where it should be.

BTW, a long time ago I gave up using fixed iris and fixed shutter when I found that the combination of F4 (as read of the LCD, I know it's probably not really) and a fast enough shutter to give correct exposure in sunshine, say 1/500th sec produced an image that was as soft as mud... similar to stopping down my EX1 to F16! So it seems it's impossible to really know what the camera is doing?

I stick to 1/50th shutter on dull days and switch to 1/100th in bright sun where the sky is in the shot. I still make fine adjustments to the iris setting to get the best image but I ignore completely what it's telling me the F number is, ha ha!

Interesting observations Claire, and backed up with some scientific probing in Edius, too.

The most basic change when going to 1/100th sec from the default 1/50th is that the camera will simply open up the iris a stop to compensate, but as you say - there may be more to the camera's set-up programming than meets the eye. It certainly appears so when you say that using 1/500th sec (and max aperture, most probably) gives you very soft pictures. I've never tried this - I must give it a go.

The ND filtration programming is the oddest I've seen, where the camera clings to maximum aperture until all the internal ND is fully in place - and only after this does it start to physically stop the iris blades down.

When the readout says f/4 on the screen then the camera is physically stopped down by nearly a stop at wide-angle and is shooting fully wide at telephoto, with half of all the available ND in place.

tom.

TM 900 aperture control - an observation

I have an interest in close-up work and often use a Canon 250D close-up lens on my TM 900 for this purpose. Depth of field is very limited as one would expect at a working distance of about 20 cm at 20x zoom but until today I have never tried to measure it. I had always assumed that stopping down actually did something useful.

My test was to set the camera to view along a ruler and measure the depth of field at different apertures. Irrespective of the aperture shown the depth of field using the TM900 was always about 2 mm. On the other hand using an EX3 with a Micro Nikkor the depth of field was very dependent on aperture as one would expect.

Two TM 900 video frames are shown below. The depth of field of the fly feasting on the wallaby dropping is so low the wings cannot be seen.
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/images/attach/jpg.gifhttp://www.dvinfo.net/forum/images/attach/jpg.gif

I meant to add to my post above that if my observation is valid it suggests that there is no iris control in the TM 900.

That seems an odd thing to put in print under your name Alastair, when the operating iris blades are visible to the human eye.

Quote:- "If my observation is valid it suggests that there is no iris control in the TM 900".

I have repeated my experiment with very different results. In my first test the smallest aperture reading I could achieve was f11. In my most recent tests the minimum aperture reading was f16. Furthermore I was getting a very measurable increase in depth of field with decreasing aperture. Between the two sets if tests I had tried some exposure duration tests. These involved setting my TM 900 up on the bed of my lathe so that it could record the equivalent of fast turning clock hand while varying the exposure time. During the exposure duration tests the camera was subjected to some vibration and afterwards it worked as I had hoped it would. I am wondering if the vibrations have been responsible for the apparent change.

The TM900 did it again! I received very good feedback for this one. The models didn't think much of me filming them at the time of the photo shoot (something to do with the [lack of] camera size, I bet), so they weren't expecting this :) hope you enjoy!

Making-of Noree's 2nd photo shoot - YouTube

Great job, Luc! Reconfirms what we all know - with a talented DP, the TM900 can produce stunning video images. Let me guess - 50p conformed to 25p for the slow mo?

Bill

Thank you sir, glad to hear that :) yes, everything was filmed in 50p, I just set the speed to 50% in Premiere on most shots, on a few even 25% (i.e. 2:04). Exported at 25fps.

Help!

Could someone please tell me or point me in the right direction on the way to edit Panasonic SD900 files. I´ve had the SD900 1080 50P for a while now and am very impressed with the results but until now have only really watched the results on a computer.

I´d like to be able to edit and put them on a Multimedia player and DVD to give to friends.

What are you using? What program do I use? I have Edius 6 and a trial of Premiere pro 6 but am confused about inputs and outputs.

Please help!

Thanks

Mark

I use Premier Pro CS5.5 to edit the Panasonic files. First copy the entire contents of the SD card or the camera's internal memory onto the editing computer's hard drive. Don't just try and copy across the video files. You need all of the folders and files. One of the things that is not obvious from the Adobe help files is the best way to import the files into Premier. Open the Media Browser pane and navigate to the folder where you copied the files. Select all the media files e.g. 0001.MTS etc and drag and drop them into the Project pane above. If you use any other method of importing the files you will find that a files may not be a complete 'take' and that a recording may start on one file and end on another. Using the Media Browser 'concatenates' the files - sticks the recorded segments together into one continuous file. Once you have the recorded files imported correctly, you can start editing conventionally. If you go to the editing sections on this site there is loads of stuff on editing with Adobe and Vegas.

Mark, if you've got Edius 6 you're up and running. You simply open the SD card and copy and paste the 'stream' files to a folder on your HDD.

Start an Edius Project (remembering that Blu-ray won't handle the 50p buts wants 50i) and simply pull the H.264/AVC files en-bloc to the timeline. After editing you click 'burn to disc' and Edius will make a DVD or BD straight off the end of the timeline. Couldn't be simpler.

tom.

I imported 60p into Premier then made a blu ray out of it ..... I was SHOCKED AND AMAZED at how good that looked. In good light is there any doubt that image has commercial quality ... WOW!

Mark, if you've got Edius 6 you're up and running. You simply open the SD card and copy and paste the 'stream' files to a folder on your HDD.

Start an Edius Project (remembering that Blu-ray won't handle the 50p buts wants 50i) and simply pull the H.264/AVC files en-bloc to the timeline. After editing you click 'burn to disc' and Edius will make a DVD or BD straight off the end of the timeline. Couldn't be simpler.

tom.

Hi Tom

Sorry for not replying earlier - I have been trying things out. I don´t have the option to burn DVDs straight from the timeline as you say. It is greyed out. Do I have to choose a DVD compatible format (and if so which one?) before importing into Eduis?

I did however convert to an avi. format and reimported into Edius and then burnt a DVD but the quality was very bad!

I´lI keep trying

Thanks

Mark

I use Premier Pro CS5.5 to edit the Panasonic files. First copy the entire contents of the SD card or the camera's internal memory onto the editing computer's hard drive. Don't just try and copy across the video files. You need all of the folders and files. One of the things that is not obvious from the Adobe help files is the best way to import the files into Premier. Open the Media Browser pane and navigate to the folder where you copied the files. Select all the media files e.g. 0001.MTS etc and drag and drop them into the Project pane above. If you use any other method of importing the files you will find that a files may not be a complete 'take' and that a recording may start on one file and end on another. Using the Media Browser 'concatenates' the files - sticks the recorded segments together into one continuous file. Once you have the recorded files imported correctly, you can start editing conventionally. If you go to the editing sections on this site there is loads of stuff on editing with Adobe and Vegas.

Hi Guy

I will give it a go when I get a better handle on Premiere. Re: Importing into premiere what settings should I use as it doen´s seem to have 1080 50P available?

Thanks

Mark

Mark - Edius (as it says on the box) will edit anything, so go ahead. If the burn2disc is greyed out it means your project settings are incompatible with DVD or BD, so simply export the timeline as a Canopus HQ avi file, open a fresh new project (1080i for BD or DVD), pull in this new avi and you'll find the burn 2disc is now ok.

You can use any sort of disc you like, DVD-R, DVD+R, RW, double layer, 25 or 50 gig BD.

The disc authoring software looks simple but in fact it allows you to have moving menu backgrounds with music, hidden chapters, have the menu completely invisible unless the DVD's remote calls it up and so on.

tom.

Tom

I found this edius tips website and followed the instructions:

Easy Editing With Edius 6.0: Making a DVD from your HD Project (http://ediustips.com/index.php/video-tutorials/free-tutorials-edius-6x/75-easy-editing-with-edius-60-making-a-dvd-from-your-hd-project)

I used 720x576 50i as suggested on edius tips but on burning to a DVD the quality was very bad.

Are you saying that I should open a 1920x1080 50i project, insert the Canopus HQ .avi file and then burn the DVD? I´ll try it tonight.

Mark

Yes Mark - do that (your last sentence) The Edius6 MPEG2 converter works excellently as so it should - way back in 2005-ish the Canopus Storm II's MPEG encoder was the biz when used with Premiere 6.5.

When you make a DVD straight from the timeline it oddly defaults to mpeg audio, so untick the 'auto' box in settings and make it AC3. Leave the rest on auto as it'll choose (quite rightly) a CBR of 8 mbps single pass for any film under an hour to DVD-R.

The resulting DVDs are most excellent, and when upscalled by a BD player in a big modern TV, look grand.

Sounds like what you've been doing is down-converting the 1080 timeline to SD (720 x 576) and then doing a second conversion to MPEG2 for the DVD. This double conversion process is a no-no and is giving you the so-so results you describe.

tom.

Tom. OK I´m using 1920x1080i in project settings (which automatically uses upperfield), but I cannot find where you set the auto box to AC3. (I also don´t understand what CBR is but as you say its automatic I guess I don´t really need to!). Also I gather you are saying it is best not to exceed one hour for a DVD?

Mark

OK, project settings are good, so 'burn to disc' won't be greyed out. Click burn to disc and choose if you want to make a DVD or BD. In 'settings' in this authoring program you'll see the audio and video is set to auto. Untick that to enable you to change the audio to AC3. I'd leave video on auto as Edius will encode at the highest possible bit-rate for however long your film is.

One hour on a DVD will give you the best image quality the medium's capable of, but 90 mins on a DVD looks excellent too.

tom.

Hi Guy

I will give it a go when I get a better handle on Premiere. Re: Importing into premiere what settings should I use as it doen´s seem to have 1080 50P available?

Thanks

Mark

In premier I would right click (control click on a mac) and choose "new sequence from clip" and let premier create your sequence settings. My guess is it will create what you want. Working in the NTSC environment, 5.5.2 has an AVCHD 1080-60p setting, Id guess in PAL it would have, or create a 50p setting as well.

I can edit in premier with my (NTSC) 60fps just fine. The file I export from premier using "match sequence settings" I can use in either Adobe's or Apple's software to create a really fine looking blu ray.

Its true weather I burn a standard DVD or Blu Ray that THOSE standards will always rachet down the frame rate as they don't support a 60p standard. Still the results are really beautiful and sharp and clean.

Once I get my file out of Premier I really just create a DVD the way I create any DVD but with footage thats much cleaner to start out with.

Tom

I just did a clip to the hard disk and it looks OK. It isn´t 50P but if I had never seen it in 50P I would probably be happy! My default for the saound is AC3 so I did not need to change it. By the way, do you know the best format for exporting to a Multimedia drive (Western digital) would be? Would 50i be the best it can reproduce?

Thanks a lot for the help. It is easy with some help! I´m from Southend originally by the way. Not far from Billericay!

Mark

'I just did a clip to the hard disk and it looks OK' doesn't mean much to me.
If you're exporting to a HDD there's no point in downgrading the image at all, so keep it 50p.

Playing back full 1080 50P at full res and full frame rate, depending on the codec you use and your computer hardware will yield varying results. What I mean by that is, some computer systems are not fast enough to decode (playback) a file like that and play perfectly smoothly. Playing at a full 50 frames per sec progressively takes some computer muscle. Right now the standard appears to be H264 files, similar to what you get from the iTunes store ((except those are not 50 or 60p files)).

I have used this software ( only for mac ) Pavtube Video Converter-best software to convert WMV, AVI, TiVo, MKV, AVCHD MTS files. (http://www.pavtube.com/video_converter/)
That software supports AC3 btw.
and it seems to work fine with 60p. Im able to get expectable playback even on just a two core machine.

'I just did a clip to the hard disk and it looks OK' doesn't mean much to me.
If you're exporting to a HDD there's no point in downgrading the image at all, so keep it 50p.

Tom

I mean that it doesn´t look like 50P quality. It looks like DVD and therefore OK. Probably it is the best that can be got in DVD format. Its just thst if you have seen the 50P version you become spoilt and nothing else compares!

Unfortunately I cannot yet get 50P to play on my MM Hard disk outputting to a television.

Mark

Mark, as you have a Western digital disk for "outputting to a television" you can keep the full frame rate 50P output from Edius for this, thus enjoying it's fabulous full quality! That's what I do with my personal stuff, I make a 1080P/50 project in Edius 6, edit the film and export to mpeg2 to put on my WD TV® Live Hub™ for viewing on my HDTV or taking to friends and showing on theirs.

You can make a 50P project in Edius quite easily, here's my project settings..

Video
Frame Size : 1920 x 1080
Frame Rate : 50.00
Aspect Ratio : 1.0000
Field order : Progressive
Quantization Bit Rate : 8Bit
Audio
Sampling Rate : 48000Hz
Quantization Bit Rate : 24 Bit
Channel : 2
Setup
Render format : Canopus HQ Standard
Over Scan Size : 0 %
Audio Reference Level : -12.0dB

When you have completed the edit go to "Print to File" and in the left pane of this screen highlight "MPEG", then in the r/h pane double click "MPEG2 Program Stream". The MPEG settings window will open.

For the Basic settings tab leave Size at "Current Setting", Quality/Speed choose "SuperFine", Bitrate use CBR 35000000 and for Audio choose AC3. In the Extended settings tab, Field order should be "Progressive", Chroma Format 4:2:0, Profile MP@HL, GOP IBBP, Picture count 15 (for PAL) and put a tick in the Closed GOP checkbox.

This will produce a single file, video and audio combined, just what you need for the media box and the quality is amazing because you have not thrown out half the pixel information by converting to 25P (50i actually I believe which is what you would need to put on Blu ray or DVD).

Roll on the day when we might be able to put 1080P/50 or 60 on Blu ray...

Hi Claire

Did everthing you said - works perfectly! Quality superb!

Thanks a lot for the help (and in so much detail).

Mark

Hi Mark, pleased to have helped.

Since I got the TM900 over a year ago it's taken me a while to get to this stage where I can archive and replay recordings from it fairly easily while retaining the original 50P quality. Yes 35Mbps MPEG2 from Edius is normally sufficient for the TM900 in 50P mode... plus Edius rocks exporting it, 8 cores of my i7 processor pegged at 100%, all the way through!

50Mbps is better still, I do a lot of fine detail work so sometimes have used this data rate and never found any playback difficulties from either the media box to telly or on the computer, I can recommend a great free player for the computer if you have stuttering problems with others, it's called "Splash Lite" and is freeware.

The disadvantage of using 50Mbps is that file sizes gets bigger, one can always connect an external drive to the WD media player box of course, but for ultimate quality together with smaller file sizes I find x264 format absolutely the best. Edius 6 cannot export in this format so I export a temporary Canopus Lossless AVI file to feed to my x264 encoder.

The quality of x264 is astonishing.. I have often put the result above the original in the Edius timeline and can discern no difference toggling between the two which is very reassuring. BTW I am not looking at computer screens here but on my large screen HDTV connected via Edius/Storm 3G hardware running at proper full 50P, not interlaced or converted in some way.

The only disadvantage I find in producing x264 is that takes much more time than simply churning out MPEG2 direct from Edius timeline but I do find it's worth the effort for really important stuff.

I am wondering if anyone has used the Lexar 128 gig SDXC card for recording video on the TM900, and if so, what your experience was, Pro or Con?
Thanks,
Denny

Has anyone done a hands on comparison between the TM900 and the new X900? I bought my first TM900 when they first came out. I bought my second TM900 when they were on sale at B&H for $699. I am now thinking about getting a third cam to match the other two. For many of the performances that I shoot it is best to have at least 3 primary cameras. I am currently shooting with the two TM900's and a Canon HV30. I sometimes add two PD-170's (shooting in 16x9 mode) on more complicated environments. The TM900's shoot far better video than any of the other cams. The intelligent contrast on the TM900s is a godsend. When filming groups of people onstage under various lighting conditions it is usually difficult to properly expose the darker faces while keeping the brighter faces from turning into lightbulbs. The HV-30 and PD's don't deal with this situation well at all. The TM-900s almost completely eliminate this as an issue. You can zoom in and out on unevenly lit groups of people and maintain a pretty good exposure on all the faces. Hooray for the TM900's!

I am now finding that I don't want to use any more of the HV-30 footage than I have to because the TM900 footage is so much nicer. And of course the PD footage is a step lower yet. So now I'm considering another TM-900 to match my other two. This would give me 3 cams of identical color and quality. Of course the TM900's are pretty scarce these days, and the few places that still have them are pretty expensive. So I'm trying to decide whether to go with an HS900 (the hard disk model that is still available), or go with one of the new X900's.

I'm a little concerned with the 20% shorter battery life with the HS unit as some of the performances run for 90 minutes. I'm also intrigued that the X900 might produce even better video in some circumstances (less outdoor overexposure?). But I have only seen a few customer reviews on the new model and they weren't from folks who appeared to have experience with the earlier models. I did see one review that suggested that the LCD was blurry. I'm wondering if anyone on this forum has any experience comparing the two. Anyone have any information to share in this regard?

Allen,
Go to camcorderinfo.com. There is a full review of the new 900 as well as comparisons to the older models.

Hope this helps,
Denny

I've been busy with work so have not contributed to this thread for a while. However, yesterday I used the TM900 to capture the amazing Diamond Jubilee River Pageant in central London.

Filmed from a spectacular, elevated position in St George's Wharf high above Vauxhall Bridge with commanding views from Battersea Power Station upstream to The London Eye downstream. Although a dull and damp day, the atmosphere was truly electric. Luckily, the rain held off until most of the 1000 boats had passed this point of the Thames. I got a few fabulous shots!

Shot in Full HD in 1080p50 on my TM900 as I needed a highly portable but capable cam to get through the crowds into/out of central London with. Camera was on 1/50th second, auto focus and auto exposure most of the time. Picture adjust was set at -2 for exposure, everything else at -1. All hand held and a Rode VMP was used for sound. Then it was a quick edit today in Adobe CS 5.5 Production Premium on a Mac Pro into a <10 minute highlights type film before suitable encoding for YouTube uploading tonight (it's still encoding some of the resolutions). When I get time I'll do more work on selected shots, warp stabilise some and a more slick edit.

Jubilee River Pageant - St George's Wharf - YouTube

Andy,
It is a shame that the event couldn't have happened on a sunny day. It would have looked even more spectacular than it does.
Nice work,
Denny

I was doing some testing with the 24p setting using the cinema color and was pretty amazed at how that looked. This camera keeps amazing me.

Loved the Jubilee River Pageant. Personally I think overcast does pretty well to diffuse the light it looked great!

Alan, I also have two TM900's but the footage does not exactly match with regard to auto white balance so I would not assume that you would achieve matching footage if you were to add a third. This was tested using identical shooting conditions both inside and outside with both cams attached to a bar on a tripod. I also added a TM700 :- )

Not a direct match but not far out. Usable most of the time without colour correction when cutting between cams in Vegas Pro multicam mode.

I would now avoid the use of internal hard drives as they are going to be a pain if data recovery is required. I now have 32gb SD cards in each of my 3 cams. I bought these Sandisk 45mb/s ones on Amazon:

SanDisk 32GB 45MB/s Extreme HD Video SDHC Card: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

The length of your shoots wouldn't be an issue if you use the larger batteries. I have the Panny high capacity batteries for one TM900 and one TM700 but baulked at the cost of getting more. However recently I bougght this aftermarket battery for the TM900 on amazon for a fraction of the Panny price and its duration is only slightly lower than the real thing. It also gives an accurate capacity readout on the cam:

Ex-Pro® Panasonic VW-VBN260E-K, VW VBN260E, VBN260E: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

I also got one of their chargers and that works fine as well:

Ex-Pro® Panasonic VW-VBN130, VW-VBN260, VW-BC20: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

The charger works for both the aftermarket and the Panny batteries.

There doesn't seem to be much point in paying over the odds for the X900. Unlike with the TM700 where I found that the newer TM900 is far easier to operate partly by virtue of its larger touch screen.

Pete

Thanks for the nice comments on my Jubilee River Pageant film. There were a couple of shots where the YouTube encoding fell apart a bit (e.g. on a couple of panning shots) but on the whole I was pretty pleased with what I managed to capture in poor weather conditions and how it came out. The 20x digital zoom got used a lot - I never go above that - and the excellent image stabilisation on the TM900 worked well, even on that long a reach (most of the time). Sure, in ideal situations I would have taken the EX3/Rode NTG3 and my new, excellent Vinten Vision 3AS Tripod for the main shots and had the TM900 locked down on a little Gorilla pod tripod for some of the wide shots - but that just was not possible on Sunday. As well as taking my older daughter to the flat I also had to carry quite a lot of booze(!), food and several birthday presents for family. My wife had to stay home and miss it all too, in order to care for my younger daughter who currently has chicken pox - so that was 4 pairs of gear carrying hands I lost for the shoot!

When I get more time I'll definitely try and edit a much more polished film using the hour or so of recorded footage and excellent sounds that I now have.

As an aside, I've had two friends tell me that they got more of the atmosphere, sounds and saw more of the scale of the event from my little 10 minute film than from watching 3 hours of the live BBC coverage on the day! I did n't see the live BBC TV coverage (obviously) but I gather there has been some moanings in the press about just how poor it was.

Back on topic, I agonised for a few minutes about what Exposure adjustment to make in the Picture Settings menu. For those that don't know, when in Manual it's accessed via Menu>Record Setup>Picture Adjust (Page 8 of 9). As other owners of the TM900 will know, and as discussed in this thread some time ago, the TM900 will blow out/clip bright parts of the image very easily.

In strong sunlight I find -3 or even at times -4 adjustment on Exposure is needed (and I always use 1/100th sec shutter in good light too as the cam handles things much better that way). We had no strong sunlight on Sunday! This was all shot at -2. I toyed with the idea of -1 but you can't really tell from the just the LCD image - other than the excellent Histogram (which I have on screen all the time and watch like a hawk). I thought that shooting wet boats on a river (i.e. reflective surface, potential boat wash situations etc.) might risk clipping on the whites - and once things are blown you can't get them back in post. Anyway, with this set within the Picture Adjust, I then run it in Manual but with Auto Exposure. Then, if needed for a particular shot, I manually adjust the exposure (using the quick menu options, taking care to keep the shutter speed under control by how this is done). I find that the TM900 does a pretty good job 95% of the time with exposure when set up and operated like this. It all came out fine as you've seen. Auto focus nails it most of the time too, but again, can be quickly put into manual focus when needed via the quick menu (and when in manual focus I have it set to show the blue peaking by default). I'm so familar with this little cam that capturing good images can be done almost by instinct - and very quickly! Just the way it needs to be with any cam used in event recording, especially one off events like this where so much was going on in front of us and you have to work fast to try and capture a good range of both wide shots for scale and detail shots for interest.

If I was doing it again I might have been tempted to put the Colour adjustment within the Picture Adjust settings at 0 or maybe even +1 (rather than the -1 that I usually have it at) just to lift the colours a little more in such dull conditions - especially for the last few shots when it was raining.

Now some comments about the X900 versus older TM900. I think the main thing that would tempt me would be the ability to shoot wider. Often I find the 35mm widest setting on the TM900 is a bit limiting (especially indoors). The iris having more blades would also be a nice feature - OOF areas can look a bit ugly with the diamond/criss-cross pattern that the TM900 displays.

Guys, I hate to be off-topic, but I would really need your words of wisdom for a gig tomorrow. It's about setting up the VideoMic Pro on the TM900. I filmed a concert last night with the mic on the 0db setting and the TM900 on auto microphone volume setting (AGC off). The display showed me that most of the time the level reached the first red bar, which I thought was fine (the 2nd red bar I thought to be the problem).

After a few hours of filming when I got home and reviewed my footage... utter disaster, the sound was heavily distorted :( I was filming right near the stage, a few meters from the subwoofers, maybe I should have lowered the bass volume? Or kept the camera on auto mic volume but set the VMP on -10db? Or just set a value for input in the TM900's menu that would be close-ish to the first red bar in the level meter and stick to that throughout the entire gig? Not sure which would have been the best way to go. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, thank you very much!

Has anyone done a hands on comparison between the TM900 and the new X900? I bought my first TM900 when they first came out. I bought my second TM900 when they were on sale at B&H for $699. I am now thinking about getting a third cam to match the other two. For many of the performances that I shoot it is best to have at least 3 primary cameras. I am currently shooting with the two TM900's and a Canon HV30. I sometimes add two PD-170's (shooting in 16x9 mode) on more complicated environments. The TM900's shoot far better video than any of the other cams. The intelligent contrast on the TM900s is a godsend. When filming groups of people onstage under various lighting conditions it is usually difficult to properly expose the darker faces while keeping the brighter faces from turning into lightbulbs. The HV-30 and PD's don't deal with this situation well at all. The TM-900s almost completely eliminate this as an issue. You can zoom in and out on unevenly lit groups of people and maintain a pretty good exposure on all the faces. Hooray for the TM900's!

I am now finding that I don't want to use any more of the HV-30 footage than I have to because the TM900 footage is so much nicer. And of course the PD footage is a step lower yet. So now I'm considering another TM-900 to match my other two. This would give me 3 cams of identical color and quality. Of course the TM900's are pretty scarce these days, and the few places that still have them are pretty expensive. So I'm trying to decide whether to go with an HS900 (the hard disk model that is still available), or go with one of the new X900's.

I'm a little concerned with the 20% shorter battery life with the HS unit as some of the performances run for 90 minutes. I'm also intrigued that the X900 might produce even better video in some circumstances (less outdoor overexposure?). But I have only seen a few customer reviews on the new model and they weren't from folks who appeared to have experience with the earlier models. I did see one review that suggested that the LCD was blurry. I'm wondering if anyone on this forum has any experience comparing the two. Anyone have any information to share in this regard?

The physical stop/start recording and zoom buttons on the bezel of the TM900's LCD screen are absent on the X900. I use these while rotating the lens with my right hand to manually focus, the TM900 is in manual mode and I display the standard icon set that allows quick selection of manual/auto focus and manual/auto iris. The X900 doesn't have these real buttons, they are replaced with more on screen icons, unfortunately they can't be displayed at the same time as the icon set I use, it's one or the other, so no way to make a scene adjustment without changing the whole menu display, a real slow down, this was a MAJOR problem for me while doing close up filming work. I hated it...

The wider angle lens was nice to have but both X900's I tried (and gave up on) did not give me the same image quality as my 1 year plus TM900. Had the image been as good then this wider lens and addition of very nice roll correction to the OIS would have swayed me on their own since these two features were the reasons I desired this model. I am still wondering if both the X900's I tried had faulty lenses, they were rather early models.

BTW the claimed higher resolution LCD screen on the X900 was not something I noticed, perhaps the screen is not large enough to benefit from all those extra pixels but I did find it a bit weird to view, occasional artifacts when fine detail was in the scene, like a badly downscaled image with cross hatching, I have never see that on my TM900 screen but then it's not a 3D display and I wonder if that has something to do with it.

So I am in two minds about this newer model, some strong points but then.... ???