Hello All,

I figure since I have made my first jump into HD video with XHA1 it's time to come out of lurking. ; ) My name is Scott Audette and an editorial photographer. I primarily shoot major news events and pro sports, all still.

As many of you know the two fields of still photography and video are eventually going to collide. So, for the last year or so I have been reading these forums looking for the right camera to get my feet wet with. After nearly buying the Panny HVX I changed my mind and decided to wait.

I am already vested into 3TB of storage for photos and the thought of needing more for just video storage was enough to put me off, for now.

And boy am I glad I waited. I am just thrilled with this camera. From the level of adjustment to the picture quality.

So, here we are today. And in the interest of other still guys who may be considering the jump I thought it might be appropriate for me to post some of my footage online. It's not great but it's a start.

One note though, I have used FCP literally three times. So, I am learning on the fly. And I realize the cuts in the space shuttle stuff are way too quick. And one is a bad jump cut. But I had limited footage.

And for a for a few notes I am also trying to figure out the balance between shooting stills, my job, and video . Everything is hand held. The camera is in total manual, agc is off. But AWB is on. Except for the shuttle stuff which was set the Daylight WB preset.

One, final technical note is have NO IDEA what I am doing with compressor. So, the colors are murkier then in FCP and well who knows what else. So, ymv!

This should be a 720p video:

I shot this literally as the first shoot out of the box: (this is about a 40 meg download)

http://www.scottaudette.com/video/fountain720.mov

This is from the space shuttle rollout to the pad last week at sunrise, (see I got to the title eventually):

http://www.scottaudette.com/video/shuttle.mov

Of note: In the latter part of the video for the CU's I am about 350 yards away from the shuttle. Literally from the same spot the wide is shot. the zoom range is unreal.

And to see what may day job is...here are photos from the same roll out...

http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news?ei=UTF-8&p=Audette&c=images&pstart=1&b=31&fr=&pstart=1&c=images&b=21

I look forward to participating in the forum.

Scott

Welcome! the first link didn't work for me, but the second one did.
We're not having very good luck with Compressor; we do much better with Sorensen. For DVD, I set the DVD Studio Pro settings up and they work much better than the same settings in Compressor, which is weird.

I was hoping to see the shuttle blast off. Cool footage.

The video of the shuttle looks good.. some pretty fast cuts;) but you seem to be on the right way.
Perhaps you should check wha'ts up with the fountain video because I can't seem to be able do dowload it...
Anyawy...very nice stills!

Bill,

I will be bringing out the XHA1 with me for launch so hopefully you'll get to see that soon! Part of my job for REUTERS every launch is to place the remote still cameras around the pad. So, this time I plan on documenting the process on video. We'll see how it all goes.

I just got a tripod and I'm wrangling up some wireless mics from a couple of TV bud's since this is a one man shoot.


I just fixed the first link. Thanks for checking things out.

Scott

Sergio,

Very quick indeed. I should have just left them out. But this was an exercise in just learning the basics of FCP.So I left them in. Thanks for the kind words on the stills.

Scott

Beautiful beautiful colors! Can you believe the dof on this babe?! This camera is what I always dreamed of. It's simply torture to keep looking at new footage when the A1 won't be in Barcelona until the end of the month :-(

Beautiful beautiful colors! Can you believe the dof on this babe?! This camera is what I always dreamed of. It's simply torture to keep looking at new footage when the A1 won't be in Barcelona until the end of the month :-(

Rafael: when you comment about how great the depth of field is, what do you mean exactly? Why is it good?

How is it better or different than, say, the depth of field one could get with other cameras, (for instance, a Sony Z1)? Just curious.

Scott: thanks for posting this ... I downloaded both clips to my desktop, and the shuttle plays fine, but the fountain, for some reason, stutters and freezes on playback ...

Dave,

I'm not sure why it is stuttering. It plays fine on my mac. But I am going to try and re-export it tonight following my assignment.

thanks,
Scott

The only reason DOF looks better is because the focal range is higher than a Z1 (although the maximum aperture at full zoom is also higher at 3.4). 1/3 chips will all attain the same DOF at the same focal range and aperture.

The H1 however, has the longest range out of the bunch.

Dave,

I'm not sure why it is stuttering. It plays fine on my mac. But I am going to try and re-export it tonight following my assignment.

thanks,
Scott

It's probably my PC, Scott. I'll try it on my Macbook Pro also.
Edit: scott, I just tried my macbook, it played fine. Looked great!!

The only reason DOF looks better is because the focal range is higher than a Z1 (although the maximum aperture at full zoom is also higher at 3.4). 1/3 chips will all attain the same DOF at the same focal range and aperture.

The H1 however, has the longest range out of the bunch.

Thanks holly ... is the longer focal range a function of the lens that Canon is using?

Welcome to the board Scott. Great first couple of posts! Nice photos and I liked the shuttle video (what nerd wouldn't??). The closeups were especially nice.

Keep it coming, and I'd LOVE to see a shuttle launch shot on the A1.

www.philipwilliams.com

Impressive, the quality IMO is comporable to what I see on discovery channel HD. Very impressive.

Hi Scott, thanks for posting. Good thing about a photography background is your already schooled on composition. Shuttle shots were nice, looking forward to seeing more.

The only reason DOF looks better is because the focal range is higher than a Z1 (although the maximum aperture at full zoom is also higher at 3.4). 1/3 chips will all attain the same DOF at the same focal range and aperture.

The H1 however, has the longest range out of the bunch.

Yes and no as to why it looks better. The reason I like the look of a shallow DOF on this cam is the bokeh is natural and very film like IMO, one of the best I have seen out of the box.

The fountain also stutters pretty badly when playing back on my PC. I can usually watch anything in real-time.

Hi Scott, thanks for posting. Good thing about a photography background is your already schooled on composition. Shuttle shots were nice, looking forward to seeing more.



Yes and no as to why it looks better. The reason I like the look of a shallow DOF on this cam is the bokeh is natural and very film like IMO, one of the best I have seen out of the box.

Exactly. If you pay attention to many of the shots that have been posted around the web you'll an hexagonal bokeh that is very film like. Also, usually when you zoom in to get dof with other cameras it looks flat and digital. With the A1 you really get an organic sense of 3d.

Beautiful shots Scott. Nice composition on the shuttle clip, but it was the fountain clip that has really sold me on this camera. The detail is incredible. I look forward to more clips until I bite the bullet and buy one myself. Time to sell the DVX.
-Kevin

Thanks for all the kind words. I really dig this camera. My wife came in one day an thought I had Discovery HD. When she tells me the stuff looked 3-d I just knew we had a winning camera.

I'm just starting to delve into the menus and explore some of the options. I'm probably going to reshoot the fountain on a set of sticks. Shooting handheld at the long end of the zoom is a little challenging. I spend a lot of my life shooting with 400 and 600mm lenses and I see that trend continuing with my video. I certainly prefer the closeup where the extra resolution of HD really shines through.

Thanks,

Scott

Scott: were you shooting the fountain in 24f?

I shot the footage at 1080 60i. I shot some at 24f but then the gardener came out with a leaf blower and the audio went to all heck. So I left.

I'm booked all weekend but if I go back Monday I will shoot in 24f.

Scott