I spent the better part of this weekend with the HD100, the mini35, and the HDV rack. Everything is working quite nicely, and I'm impressed with the kit overall.

I also have a mega-editor from Guy Graphics - an Edius SP system, dual 3.6 with two built-in RAID cages (like (13) 400GB drives- 5.2 TB altogether). Plenty of speed and space.

The footage imports nicely into the current realtime 1440 & 1280x1080 HD timelines, as well as the 4x3 SD timelines. I don't believe they have specific realtime 720p project settings, but the word is that Edius 4 will cover everything - 24p, etc.

Either way, I can mix Z1, FX1, HD100 & SD footage together on the same HD timeline, and downcovert for SD delivery. It was a good weekend, seeing everything come together, and it should only get better once the final frame settings are there.

This was the first time I used the HD100 in more controlled lighting settings (bounced a Lowel Omni off an umbrella, and had a small chimera box on the camera). The mini 35 eats 1-1.5 stops, and I was using Canon EF lenses. My 2.8 zooms definitely eat the light, but it's still usable. Then when you throw a 1.4 50mm prime on there, you're pretty set. Didn't use much of the stock lens - will experiment later.

I didn't have to stretch the blacks or use gain (3db at the most). The images were quite pleasing, and it definitely had a movielike/selective focus feel. I recorded 30p - 1/60 & 1/30 (had to back off the back iris with 1/30), after finding that longer 24p clips were becoming problematic within Edius. It deals with shorter ones, but starts to bonk on longer ones. Bumped the gamma and color - nice looking.

Also added some footage I shot in an extremely dark reception hall from the previous week. I had to use 9db gain & 1/30th shutter with a decent amount of diffused on-cam chimera box light. It was very workable footage - especially if you tweak it back home (bump the chroma a touch, etc). I never saw the split anomaly during that shoot, but did when there wasn't enough light. I will be including some of that HD100 footage on the client's DVD.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Just a general post to let people know I think it's a cool camera so far, and I'm glad to have the little guy. Gotta spend a couple of days with it to get used to how it's going to act in various scenarios, but I feel like I know it decently now. Tempted to pick up a Z1 and/or the new Panny to play with the more 1080 hyper video look as well.

Going to Vegas on Thursday - wish me luck. Maybe I'll win enough to pay for one. Won enough at NAB to pay for this first HD100, so who knows... :)

Have fun...

Footage, footage, we want footage ;-)

Great report, Shawn, thanks -- say hello to Ashley Guy for me next time you talk to him,

Ashley has been very helpful (as always) with all this. I think he said he was going to order an HD100 because he's getting a lot of questions about the cam and how it works with editors.

If anyone has any ideas on getting 24P clips to jive, please let me know. I downloaded the DVFilm demo - only played with it momentarily, but probably had my settings off.

I tested 24p the first/second day in the Edius timeline - no probs, but they were short clips. Longer clips this weekend tended to bonk out altogether, or lose audio sync if you can get them to stay. I was also having trouble with my HDV Rack computer that day, so who knows, maybe it was that.

I wonder what would happen if I digitized 24p via analog capture/out the cam analog outputs. Might be worth a test.

Looking forward to the 'full-support' status in the very near future, but things are working well to start.

I'd upload some test footage, but my site has low download thresholds. If someone would like to house/hold the footage, I'm sure I could come up with a short .m2t you could see/play with. Not academy award winning stuff by any means - just tests with my Dad rambling.

Thanks again guys,

Shawn