XL-H1 and P+S test

[Shawn Alyasiri]

Levan,

Do you have the ability to upload the original .m2t file by chance?

Thanks,
Shawn

[Nick Hiltgen]

To redeem myself (a little at least) I want to clarify that when I say "fast shutter speed" I'm talking about 1/90 typically. And to be honest, I didn't notice the groundglass when shooting at a SUPER fast shutter speed like 1/3000. So while I agree that it definitely effects what happens on the ground glass and in fron of the lens, I don't think that in my case it was the problem. The majority problem that Dan and I noticed was there was some non moving grain, which could be digital noise in dark scenes but there is also something there in the highlights as well.

in the p+s forum people were talking about perhaps the relay lens could be at fault, I'm not sure I really understand this but hey these are people who would know better then I.

[Levan Bakhia]

Well, I don't have the mt2 files at all. I captured directly in FCP. I don't have web space, or I have bunch of clips I could share.

Dennis has gave me some ftp adress, (thanks Dennis) but I have some problems with uploading.

But I promise by the end of tomorrow I will have some space on idisk.mac.com

[Chuck Hatcher]

OK.. so I just tested my XL-h1 against the Sony, the JVC and a Panasonic Varicam.

I am not going to go in to a bunch of detail here.. but

Varicam beats them all, on all fronts....but not by a lot. Certainly not $90,000 better.

JVC had better color rendition than Canon and Sony... a lot better than Sony, not all that much better than Canon.

Canon was the sharpest, followed by JVC and Sony a distant 3rd.

The guy who owned the JVC couldn't stop talking about how awesome the Canon XL-h1 was.

then... we put P+S Technic Mini 35 on the Canon XL-h1.

I have shot with this adapter before, so I know what to do... unless someone else has a trick for me that I don't know... I could not get the spinning center of the ground glass to disappear. Just for grins, I switched over to SD and guess what???? It disappeared. I suppose I could try to soften the image coming out of the camera, but that would be defeating the purpose. I think I'll stick with the 20x lens for now.

I was extremely happy with the results of the test head to head with all the cameras we had there. It was a rather unfair test though... We decided to use the best possible "out" on all cameras... so the Canon image was HD-SDI out.. the others, were composite. Doh!

Chüc

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Nick Hiltgen

I think that's my issue with the groundglass on the mini 35, there was NO gain at all on this, it's just thick grain, I think P+S needs to come out with HDV ground glass to keep it from being too big. We were shooting at around 1/120th in 24F on the mini 35 with an 85mm zeiss superspeed set at 1.3T.

Shannon, you're somewhat right in your guess. But it's not my job to promote the movie, however it definitely has a 28 days' later feel. (I hope the distribution is guaranteed as well!)

I'll post my full opinions on this shortly, but right now I need sleep.

I had this problem too on my HD100/Mini35 shoots.

I've decided I'm probably NOT going to use the Mini35 again with HDV. Too much grain, in addition to the fact that if you use any sort of Cinegamma that depresses the mids, you wind up with something like 50ASA!

[edit: actually, the gaffer on the last shoot I did with it rated it at 32 ASA]

[Nick Hiltgen]

Nate, yeah our gaffer put the adapter et. all at around 50 asa which seems about right as the f900 is about 320-400 asa, and this is 1 1/2 stops slower with the regular lens, and then another 1 1/2 stops or so with the adapter. I should check my math but that puts it at around 50 asa.

I'm still not completely convinced that there isn't a way to get the excessive grain out. Right now it seems like the trick is to-

stop down to -3 gain.
drop sharpness to -9
raise coring to 9
turn NR2 on (as needed)

light for 50asa
use some fast lenses
and have the ground glass spinning at 8 and the iris of the unit open to 1

Anyone else have suggestions?

[Shannon Rawls]

Originally Posted by Chuck Hatcher

JVC had better color rendition than Canon and Sony... a lot better than Sony, not all that much better than Canon.

Did you guys tweak the settings on the Canon or just leave it in the center? Remember, there are 12 color adjustments that you can make to enhance the colors, not including the skin detail which has another 4. But you gotta give it up to JVC....it makes a nice picture out the box.

THanks for that Mini35 comparison of SD & HD. To see it in HD and to not see it in SD means allot. THis proves Graeme & Barrys theory on how a 1/3" lens needs almost double the resolving power of a larger 2/3" or film lens needs.

Anybody have a 3x wide "AND" a 16x manual to sell?

- ShannonRawls.com

[Chuck Hatcher]

[QUOTE=Shannon Rawls]Did you guys tweak the settings on the Canon or just leave it in the center?

Hi Shannon,

Both the Canon and the JVC were at their default settings. The look was really close and I think even I could tweak both cameras to match each other... BTW... 30F looks better than 24f... we did the comparison with the Canon H1 on 30F.

We also figured out that 130 min. of uncompressed video would take a terabyte. Whew! That's a lot, but it looks awesome.

Chüc

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

I had this problem too on my HD100/Mini35 shoots.

I've decided I'm probably NOT going to use the Mini35 again with HDV. Too much grain

From HDV?

Or from the 720p resolution?

Or from the HD100's noise? (other noiseless cam will it present better results?)

Or even from the combo: lens + 35mm adapter itself?

[Tony Davies-Patrick]

A terabyte for just 130mins? - And there was me thinking my little desktop PC with 580GB had just enough memory to work with the 50-hours of MiniDv tapes that I'm trying to edit at the moment...! It's a good job that I didn't film the project using the H1, or I'd be searching for a mega 25 Terabyte hard drive...

[Chuck Hatcher]

130 mins. of uncompressed

Originally Posted by Tony Davies-Patrick

A terabyte for just 130mins? - And there was me thinking my little desktop PC with 580GB had just enough memory to work with the 50-hours of MiniDv tapes that I'm trying to edit at the moment...! It's a good job that I didn't film the project using the H1, or I'd be searching for a mega 25 Terabyte hard drive...

[Shannon Rawls]

Originally Posted by Tony Davies-Patrick

It's a good job that I didn't film the project using the H1, or I'd be searching for a mega 25 Terabyte hard drive...

HDV is smaller then DV. So your 580 megs would be fine.

- ShannonRawls.com

[Tony Davies-Patrick]

"...580 megs would be fine..."

Don't you mean that my 580 Gigabytes will be fine...not megs?

I obviously need to read up more on the editing needs of the H1. I was under the impression that the H1 needed more Hard Drive memory space for editing the raw files, than is needed for editing and working on raw (XL1s/Xl2) DV Avi files (prior to final compression to mpeg for DVD burn).

So, Shannon, are you saying that my home PC with Pentium 4 CPU 3.00Ghz, 1GB Ram, with combined 280GB internal hard drive & 300GB external connected hard drive, will be enough to cope with editing many hours of footage taken with the H1?
If the answer is yes, then that will be good news.

[Shannon Rawls]

yes, I meant GigaBytes
and
yes, your 280GB & 300GB drive would handle roughly fifty(50) hours of HDV from any HDV camera (including the XL-H1), easily.

- ShannonRawls.com

[Tony Davies-Patrick]

Thanks Shannon.