Have been shooting quite a bit with this camera and it's pretty amazing. It's exceeded my expectations. I've uploaded some frame grabs here...

Flickr HV20 Frame Grabs collection (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wesvasher/sets/72157600037408740/)

Nice detail and color Wes. These cams continue to amaze me.

Thanks Wes, obviously the video side of the camera has been occupying most people's attention but it's good to see what the still capability is, definitely a far cry from the poor imagining in camcorders of the past. Beautiful cat also!

Charles, those are actually all frame grabs from video. The full motion video just blows me away. I haven't even tried the digital still camera part of it yet, actually just got a mini-SD card in the mail today so hopefully soon. My point and shoot (Canon S400) recently died for the second time so I'm thrilled at the manual controls that this camera has in still mode. Just having the manual focus is really going to be nice.

Another note on the still capabilities of the camera is that I'm going to use this for stop-motion animation for sure. I've tried stop-motion with my point and shoot and it just doesn't work, not enough manual controls. And I can't justify a DSLR just for the occasional stop-mo hobby animation. So I always go back to my DV camcorder connected to a computer, cumbersome but I have some manual control. With the HV20, you get all the nice manual controls in still mode, plus a photo button on the remote so you don't have to disturb the camera... nice.

Amazing shots Wes...

Thanks Chris! I just did some tests of the still image capture and it's really good. I did a quick stop-mo using the remote and that works nicely. The image quality is super. I'd upload video but my web hosting is pretty weak.

I added a still picture and video grab comparison so you can see what the full still mode captures. The still pictures look pretty darn good.

Still mode comparison (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=440734290&context=set-72157600037408740&size=o)

Very nice! The frame grabs appear to look slightly better than the stills.

have those images been photoshop tweaked or is that raw straight out of the camera?

image quality comparable with $3000 camera!

Thanks Glenn and Owen. Glenn, I agree, frame grabs tend to look a little nicer than digital stills but I think this is a product of the compression used. Some stills I've taken have had horrendous JPEG compression on them, and all my stills are taken in the highest quality mode so that's a little dissapointing.

Owen, I don't think I did anything to any of these in Photoshop. Everything's in camera! A lot of times in my hunt to avoid clipping I underexpose also, such as the dark shot of the cat looking directly into the camera. I'll say it again, use the Low Sharpening filter and the video just sings.

I find a frame that doesn't have pull-down added, then export it from MPEGStreamClip to 1440x1080 TIFF, then resize it in Photoshop to 1440x810 then upload it to Flickr which doesn't allow me to upload that large of an image. But Flickr's resizer seems to do a decent job.

Wes, your shots make me want to spend the 2200 less on the A1 and just go with the HV20. What is your background in video/photo to get these amazing shots from this camera? HAve you hooked it up to an HDTV, does it look remarkably well? Do you have any comparison to an A1 at all?

Hopefully I am not asking too many questions, but your post here makes me think twice about my future investment

Thanks Glenn and Owen. Glenn, I agree, frame grabs tend to look a little nicer than digital stills but I think this is a product of the compression used. Some stills I've taken have had horrendous JPEG compression on them, and all my stills are taken in the highest quality mode so that's a little dissapointing.

Owen, I don't think I did anything to any of these in Photoshop. Everything's in camera! A lot of times in my hunt to avoid clipping I underexpose also, such as the dark shot of the cat looking directly into the camera. I'll say it again, use the Low Sharpening filter and the video just sings.

I find a frame that doesn't have pull-down added, then export it from MPEGStreamClip to 1440x1080 TIFF, then resize it in Photoshop to 1440x810 then upload it to Flickr which doesn't allow me to upload that large of an image. But Flickr's resizer seems to do a decent job.

Wes, I think many people underexpose their shots when using zebra stripes. If you look at pro footage with megabuck cameras, there are many many times they have areas overexposed so as to get the main subject rendered properly. I would use zebras judiciously.

Wes, I think many people underexpose their shots when using zebra stripes. If you look at pro footage with megabuck cameras, there are many many times they have areas overexposed so as to get the main subject rendered properly. I would use zebras judiciously.

I think you at least need to set zebras at 100. The testing I have done shows this camera will blow out quickly.

Thanks Eric. I'm no pro shooter but I have shot Super 8, 16mm, and all the video flavors for my own videos and some televised shows. It's very easy to shoot really ugly video with the HV20 but with a little practice with the manual controls you can get a nice picture quickly. If you are shooting a setup where you have control over your lighting and subject matter you can get amazing video. I don't have an HDTV but I have a really nice CRT (Apple Studio 17") and the video looks absolutely stunning on it. Everything I shoot has the low sharpening filter which I think makes a world of difference.

Ken and Chris, both good points to keep in mind.

Talking of Pushing the boundary's !!!!

Beautifull shots ! / Go my man --- GO !

Herman.

Hi Wes,

compliments, very compelling shots. I liked the dirty truck tire the most, so very true in light and color and detail!

To all, I also underexpose for many shots -- and there's a mathematical reason: RGB is not capable of rendering saturated colors at high luminocity (that's actually where xvYCC color comes in, but thats another story (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=86068&p=625981)). Bright colored things like cats-in-the-sun or sunsets or other skies lose their color if you don't force the cam to close up a little more. If needed, I add a little gamma in post (at the cost of some noise in darker areas). This way the limited dynamic range isn't as destructive to the total image.

Thanks Wes,
Pieter

Pieter, good post. I've tried adjusting my underexposed shots in Shake and haven't had much success, too much noise in the darks. A curves adjustment in AE can do an okay job, I just need more experience. The resolution/PQ is there with these cams, hopefully they'll start working on the dynamic range more, they just need more... more more!

Anything close to white is just a no no. I've shot the white dog and white horse and there's no way out of blowing those types of things out and revealing how video-ish the camera really is.

Wes, don't feel badly, I see whites blown all the time on network HD feeds with megabuck HD cameras. It still is the nature of video. Yes, the megabuck cams will have greater dynamic range, but they still do blow whites out pretty easily.

Hi Wes&Ken,

theoretically, the underexpose trick should get you there as long as the noise isn't too bad. To be quite honest, I also use levels after the gamma to keep black levels where they were (studio RGB levels that is).
At the risk of going sesame street here: if black levels get too high, not only will the picture look pale, also the noise will be more visible. (I'm sorry, we may be going OT :)

Pieter, I agree, sometimes underexposing can give the overall feel of the video a richer look. As long as the overall scene isn't rendered 'too dark', you're fine.

with my HV10 I noticed that when in priority shutter mode if I manually take the exposure down the image noticably softens. Is this the case with the HV20?

with my HV10 I noticed that when in priority shutter mode if I manually take the exposure down the image noticably softens. Is this the case with the HV20?

Fergus, I haven't noticed this. I just did a test and didn't lose any detail when turning down exposure in shutter priority mode.

ok thanks Wes

I underexpose all my video, and I try not to go more than a half to a stop down...anything more is going to crush your shadows irrecoverably.

I like to do it by setting my zebras to 90 and dialing in the main subject to zebras, then one click down (iris)...I always shoot 30p with a 1/60th shutter if possible. I use ND and a Polarizer to control the amount of light coming in to keep the iris as wide as possible for DoF control.

I use the polarizer to rich up the areas that will tend to overexpose either through cutting stray light or by dialing out reflections and glings. I also get the added benefit of the color richness the C-Pol tends to provide. I generally try to get it so that I'm one click into the zebras on the highlights and light the subject to fit that exposure.

Hey Wes, incase you were wondering, it was me who just added you as a contact on Flickr. I'll hopefully be picking up my HV20 tomorrow and will make sure to grab a few shots to post up on Flickr also. Maybe you should start a HV20 group on there?

Hey Wes, incase you were wondering, it was me who just added you as a contact on Flickr. I'll hopefully be picking up my HV20 tomorrow and will make sure to grab a few shots to post up on Flickr also. Maybe you should start a HV20 group on there?

Wow Glenn, great shots! I haven't really used Flickr all that much yet. It would be interesting to have an HV20 group.

Thanks, yeah Flickr's quite good actually. They don't compress the photos anywhere near as much as most other photo websites.

I have the free account and the resolution is limited to 1024x1024 so I resize my shots to that in Photoshop and save to JPEG 100% and noticed that it doesn't appear Flickr re-compressed this file, the full resolution one. I downloaded the file from Flickr and the file size is exactly the same as the file I uploaded and I can't find any difference in the color channels. I thought that was pretty cool.

That's interesting. I never noticed that before.