Hi. I'm becoming more and more interested in the H1, and I'm curious if anyone has any H1 footage, using the P&S mini35 adapter?

I have two mini35's for the HD100 & the Z1, with Canon EF lenses, and a Zeiss Super Speed 50mm coming any day. I wasn't even going to look at the H1, but the field reports and initial footage is quite compelling. I'm anxiously awaiting the HVX like everyone else as well... I promised myself I wasn't going to buy 'one of every camera' this year, but it's starting to look like it could go that way.

Please let me/us know if there's any mini35/H1 footage out there (especially with Zeiss Super Speeds) to audition, both 60i, 24F, or whatever you've got.

Thanks very much as always,

Shawn Alyasiri

A guy named Nick Hiltgen (hope I spelled it right) has done a test.

You should read this thread:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=57376

In short: from what I've read (not seen the footage myself) there were some soft spots, but Nick said this was more the fault of the operator then the camera.
And I think they are still busy with uploading some footage.

tomorrow I will do some shooting with mini35 and post them. So if you have any specific request, you want me to shoot for demonstration, I would be more than glad to do so.

So take this opportunity, I can shoot whatever all you here will ask.

Thanks Levan.

Nothing specific - I'd love to see anything you decide to shoot, assuming it's the H1 with the mini35. If you have a Zeiss super speed 50mm (or whatever), even better. Would love to see rack focus with people, landscape, motion (cars, etc), and anything you wanted to try.

As far as modes, would love to see 24F, 60i, and anything else you want to throw around. Just getting a sense of how soft it is, the look overall, and comparisons to the Z1 and HD100.

Thanks for your generous offer and help - We all appreciate this very much!

Shawn

Hello everybody,

I've got a few clips of the SLC at night. Just a little more to chew on.

www.homepage.mac.com/mrbarlowelton

Barlow,

Thanks very much for the clips - very helpful and most appreciated.

Can you please tell us a bit about the settings as you shot them?

Specifically, if you were wide on the lens, mid way, zoomed in, plus any gain settings you were using.

Thanks very much again,
Shawn

wide, -3db, aperture fairly wide open on all.

Thanks Barlow.

I figured it was wide - Obviously I don't have the camera, but in reading these posts I believe that's at f/1.6?

That seems like a decent amount of picture coming in at -3db - unless for some reason it really wasn't 'that dark' out there...

My biggest concern with the camera (from the initial spec sheet) was the drop in the lens from f/1.6 - f/3.5, based on the zoom, especially when shooting darker scenes. Based on the footage from you and others, it seems to do pretty well indeed. I'd also want to use it with the mini35 adapter, so I'm trying to get a sense of the camera overall (with/without the mini).

Would love to see any future clips zoomed in, using gain (say 6, 9 even 12-15db) - just as an acid test. I figure I would want to use the H1 for special/live events as well and would like to get a sense of what it can do in challenging environments. Hate gain as much as anyone - just curious what is an acceptable setting on the H1 when you're in a pinch. The Z1 does pretty well at 9-12db.

Again - thanks very much for your post and footage. I'm really considering one now. I also have the HD100 and the Z1 - I guess I can have my own shoot outs soon enough.

Thanks,
Shawn

I'm new to video having come from a stills background.

I downloaded some of the quicktime clips posted by Michael Pappas but could not play them as I don't seem to have the correct codec or something.

Could someone please advise me how to get these clips into a format I can play and import into After Effects ?

Many thanks

Geoff

www.gtimage.com

what version of Quicktime do you have?
You may need a later version.

Yep that was it

Installed version 7 and everything is okay - thanks

Geoff

Barlow, just wanted to say a special thanks for posting the footage.
i took one clip and did a color correction, toneing down the red on carlos face.
on the second clip i toned down the brightness in the snow.
on the third clip, i changed the clip into a night time shot, added a few stars and just to top it off, i threw in a metor as it crashes into the hill side.
its been a fun weekend.
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

Thanks, Darrell. Glad the footage has been helpful.

Any chance you could post a few frames?

I had a XL H1 over the weekend and we did some shots.

Man, how I hate and love this cam at the same time. I just can confirm what a lot of people have said here. In the field without a HD monitor it is almost _impossible_ to get the focus right. And with that wet noodle of a lense it _is_ impossible to keep focus on moving objects.

But. And this is a big but: if you get the focus right, this cam delivers footage that rocks you off your socks.

And not to mention the low light capabilities. Amazing, simpy amazing.


One one day we waited till the sun was down and did some "night" shots from our dolly. As we found out later, the cam's display showed the scenes much too bright (it was -5° and our fingers were too frozen to get the laptop running to verify the setup with DVrack). So the scenes are quite dark (ND 1/6 was on), the cam could have done much, much better. And if at least one of these shots would be in focus... dam*

Anyway. Here we go.

The sun is down.
http://fabforce.net/various/ViennaSunSet.m2t
The murder of crows is nice. Notice the CA on the funnel.

One last patrol.
http://fabforce.net/various/DollyChrisClemensPatrol.m2t
I like how the last sunlight reflects on the tubes.

Dam* terrorists, take this!
http://fabforce.net/various/DollyChrisFollow2.m2t
If one would add sound effects and remove the rails in post...

Alike shot from the side.
http://fabforce.net/various/DollyChrisFollowSide.m2t
Notice that I nearly fall off the dolly at the end.

The shoot was a quicky so don't expect too much. But at least we had lots of fun.

Hi Jack, thanks for all the footage. Good for the people who're still in search of a motivation whether or not to buy the Cam.

About the focusing, I've experience with the XL 1 since 1998 and true, the focussing isn't as easy going as with a standard broadcast lens. But, again, in my experience, you can certainly get used to it. At the moment I'm shooting a TV show almost completely hand held with both the XL1 and the H1 in HD mode. after al those years focusing goes without any problems. Specially now with the handy peaking-mode on de H1, which works perfectly.

i can do that.
any chance i could upload the footage to your imac account, so everyone can coment on the footage?
its about 120mbs.
this way, everyone can see the metor as it hits the hill side.
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

Thanks Jack,

That tracking footage with the armed men is awesome. Looks like a scence from a movie. If you have more stuff like that and close ups, please post. Again thanks!!!!!!!!!!!

The great thing about a removable lens system is you can take the spinner lens off and put on the 14x or 16x manual. Focus will be exact and responsive with that option taken......

pappas



I had a XL H1 over the weekend and we did some shots.

Man, how I hate and love this cam at the same time. I just can confirm what a lot of people have said here. In the field without a HD monitor it is almost _impossible_ to get the focus right. And with that wet noodle of a lense it _is_ impossible to keep focus on moving objects.

But. And this is a big but: if you get the focus right, this cam delivers footage that rocks you off your socks.

And not to mention the low light capabilities. Amazing, simpy amazing.


One one day we waited till the sun was down and did some "night" shots from our dolly. As we found out later, the cam's display showed the scenes much too bright (it was -5° and our fingers were too frozen to get the laptop running to verify the setup with DVrack). So the scenes are quite dark (ND 1/6 was on), the cam could have done much, much better. And if at least one of these shots would be in focus... dam*

Anyway. Here we go.

The sun is down.
http://fabforce.net/various/ViennaSunSet.m2t
The murder of crows is nice. Notice the CA on the funnel.

One last patrol.
http://fabforce.net/various/DollyChrisClemensPatrol.m2t
I like how the last sunlight reflects on the tubes.

Dam* terrorists, take this!
http://fabforce.net/various/DollyChrisFollow2.m2t
If one would add sound effects and remove the rails in post...

Alike shot from the side.
http://fabforce.net/various/DollyChrisFollowSide.m2t
Notice that I nearly fall off the dolly at the end.

The shoot was a quicky so don't expect too much. But at least we had lots of fun.

Yeah, I'll email you. I've been busy again, but we'll get it done.

Hey all,

Was down in SoCal this weekend and hung out with Mike Pappas down in Laguna Beach on Sat. We both shot with our H1's--his in particular was pimped with the manual 16x lens, which btw, looks awesome in HD. Different feel, contrast and even colorimetry than the 20x, and certainly worth every penny--again, even in HD, IMHO.

Ok, so here's a "overcrank" 720p h.264 QT clip from a pick-up game at the b-ball courts by the beach. Shot HDV 1080i with a fast shutter and converted down to 720/24p by the method I've described in past postings.

Let me know what you guys think...

www.homepage.mac.com/mrbarlowelton

Barlow, anything i can do some effects on?
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

Darrell, I'll email you soon

Thanks Barlow, this look really good. I assume this originated from HDV on tape, not captured via HD-SDI? Also, do you remember what shutter speed this was at?

Hey John,

I believe I shot at 1/250 which I think was a little too fast as you might see the slightest deinterlace artifacts in the shot, but in my snow tubing shot, (1/100th) I couldn't see any artifacts. So, I think 1/100 to 1/180 might be the sweet spot for this method.

Sorry, yes HDV 1080i originated too. Captured HDV tape playback SDI-->DVCPRO HD 1080i-->converted actually to 10bit uncompressed 1280x72060p-->conformed to 720/24p Cinema Tools-->then rendered out high quality h.264 720/24p.

I did this to avoid an extra pass of DVCPRO HD compression when going down to 720/60p. It makes a very slight difference.

Hey all,

Wanted to share a few clips Michael shot with the H1/manual lens combo down at the hoops court at Laguna Beach. He was "going for an extreme look" pushing the color, but anyway, just a little desaturation in VLC (skin tones are nuclear) and the image has a nice pop. I think he was thrown off a little by the default LCD EVF settings, but he was going for a really warm look...and boy is it warm. They all look like nuclear survivors but this stuff at least shows a different look from the camera.

www.homepage.mac.com/mrbarlowelton

Barlow, did you happen to take my dvd with you when you went to LA?
would like to know what he thought if he has seen it.
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

Talk about a worm feel!
What suprised me is how well the image cleaned up.

http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/4549/image582ml.jpg

This was done in just a minute, I haven't 'fine tuned' it.

I'm impressed with the quality of the 16x lens. It's hard for me to make a full judgment because of the extreme color correction, though.

But for a standard definition lens, it resolves quite nicely.

In preparation for our rooftop sequences for a project we're shooting called THE TWENTY-THIRD LETTER, we wanted to see what the new camera's low light sensitivity was. We didn't bring any lighting equipment with us. Our goal was to shoot wide-open, +6db, 1/48th shutter and see what we got.

The weekend's rain storm was just coming in behind us. We only had about 40 minutes up there before it started precipitating. So it was difficult to get the buildings to look razor sharp as we were shooting through a lot of atmosphere.

We're now convinced that once we have our foreground talent lit appropriately, our backgrounds of Los Angeles will look phenomenal for this film-noir thriller.

http://starwaypictures.blogspot.com/

The full moon and clouds in So. Cal last night were phenomenal. So I couldn't resist the urge to grab the H1 and shoot some killer timelapse footage.

You can download some Quicktime's of the shots here:

http://starwaypictures.blogspot.com/

f-in wow! That has to be one of the best things i've seen. The moon stuff was awesome, but the LA shots, better than collateral. Great stuff, i can't wait to see your work.

I have already seen this but man do i love it. The second test with the man looking at the cam - evokes a great feeling, a feeling that every film maker aspires for. Clean and film like. The xl1h is seriously impressing me more and more.

The dam of coolness from filmmakers with this camera is beginning to burst.

Thanks Robert. I REALLY look forward to your posts!!

Nice footage! Inspires me making my own time-lapses...

Any particular reason you used AE for the speed ups instead of a NLE?

I use After Effects a lot to earn my living. So I'm really comfortable with it. Plus I like AE's frame blending. I think it does the best rendering of the bunch.

Also I prefer to color correct using curves and FCP doesn't have a native curves editor. I just started using Color Finesse which does have curves, but I think it's second nature to launch AE.

I'm looking forward to getting AE 7 and to start doing some slo-mo tests. AE 7 has that great new interpolator for blending/morphing new frames to generate really cool slo-mo effects. So I can't wait to see if it can take 60i footage and slow it down so I can get 120fps.

Please post some slow-mo results when you can Robert. I'm very interested to figure out how good "overcrank" in 1080p might look. I've had good results going down to 720p, but I'm wanting to create 1080 "overcrank" material that will look convincingly good when intercut with 24F. Does AE 7 do good vertical interpolation of 1440x540 frames so that you could convert the interlace frames into 60fps 1080 material? If it does a reasonably good job then I'll have to get AE7 along with the ever increasing amount of stuff I want to get for my camera.

Hi,

I'm new to this forum, i'm new to digital filmmaking.
But i would like to share my first footage, shot with the XL-H1 with you.

http://www.hifi.nl/shows/verslag.php?s=lente2006

I hope you enjoy it and i'm open for any suggestions, esspecialy to improve the technical image quality of the movie.

Greetings,
Jiri

Interesting stuff, Jiri! Thanks for posting it!

When watching the clip, I noticed that the location showed a variety of lightsources, often in the same scene (tungsten, FL and daylight). My impression was that the white balance was consistently good throughout the clip, and I was wondering whether you had set white balance to auto or whether you had adjusted it manually as needed.

TIA for your feedback!

Cheers,

Ron

Interesting stuff, Jiri! Thanks for posting it!

When watching the clip, I noticed that the location showed a variety of lightsources, often in the same scene (tungsten, FL and daylight). My impression was that the white balance was consistently good throughout the clip, and I was wondering whether you had set white balance to auto or whether you had adjusted it manually as needed.

TIA for your feedback!

Cheers,

Ron

There was very little time when shooting, so i only used the auto white balance.
And i did no corrections in post what soever.
What you see, is what i shot.

Greeting
Jiri

Hey everybody,

I have some raw clips on the iDisk for whoever wants a semi-challenging chroma key test.

www.homepage.mac.com/mrbarlowelton

These clips were piped in SDI direct to FCP, bypassing HDV, and compressed in DVCProHD. One is a 24F clip converted to DV100 24P, the other is a straight 1080i. There are also a couple of uncompressed 10bit frames...one 24F and one 1080i for you guys to compare.

I didn't have time to go get a better chroma key 8x8 from the studio, so I just had my wife pick up 2 yards of chroma green looking cloth from the fabric store. It was a very dim, rainy day today and this was all natural light.

I though some of you with keying chops might be interested to take a crack at this stuff.

Please post a frame of your results if you can.

Thanks,

Barlow

There's a clip up called "greenkidscomp1.mov" on the iDisk that someone who pulled the key contributed. It's an MPEG 4 QT file.

www.homepage.mac.com/mrbarlowelton

From some footage of my daughter:

http://www.pinelakefilms.com/images/taraxl.jpg

what settings did you use Steven?

Just a quick piece showing some flowers and birds...it was raining, the color is off because I didn't white balance but it shows the beauty the camera can capture. The rain in the background gives it a really nice look.

http://www.realm.cc/upload/disjecta/flowers_bird.m2t

117mb

Thanks for posting this, Steven! Nice!!

Questions: Was the cam handheld or on tripod? IS enabled or not? Fully zoomed-in? Exposure manual or automatic? And the naturalist wants to know what bird species it is... :-)

Ron, the OIS was engaged on the lens and it was fully zoomed in. No tripod. All manual, no auto. The bird is a dark-eyed junco.

Thanks for your comments.

Impressive. The OIS seems to work incredibly well and the resolution and color are outstanding. No grain, either. Wow...

The compositions are nice, too (unsurprising given your dvx work) but I love especially how the telephoto lens compresses the drops of rain (which seem large since your subject is a small bird) into kind of abstract out of focus blurs. Shot in slow motion that would look particularly beautiful, but it's pretty unbelievable as it is.

Looks like you picked the right camera. Fantastic.

I'm in the midst of developing a new Black and white setting and there are also two color shots. All from my son's baseball game:

Wow, looking great! I'm tweaking my own B&W preset, can't wait to compare notes with you.

This is why I love living here. This is from a shoot I did last night. These stills are highly compressed but the original footage is pristine and artifact free. This is just to give you an idea...

Steven, pics look good, how did you set up exposure?