New HD100 Clips 9-5-05
 

Friday night I dropped off into downtown L.A. on my way home from work...the light was getting low and nice and warm, and there was just enough atmosphere (ok ok, smog) to make things interesting but not make things ugly.

For those just tuning in, you must right click and "Save As" to your drive before you can play these. Otherwise your browser will try to open it as alphabet soup. I recommend VLC for both PC and Mac to play these correctly.

http://www.hdvinfo.net/media/nweaver/Downtown4.m2t
http://www.hdvinfo.net/media/nweaver/Downtown7.m2t
http://www.hdvinfo.net/media/nweaver/Downtown8.m2t
http://www.hdvinfo.net/media/nweaver/Downtown9.m2t

Lesson learned on this jaunt out with the camera? "Infinity" on many lenses is never quite where the focus ring stops turning...and you need to remember this doubly so when on the long end of the 16x wide open. In other words, you HAVE to take a second out and use Focus Assist even in situations where you think "Ah, just putting focus here under this circumstance will be ok". Nuh uh.

Nice...
 

Hi Nate,

I am very impressed with these bits of footage.

Is this literally out the box?

Waiting on mine at present and these images have made me even more impatient!!!

Glenn

Hey Nate,
Footage looks great. I gotta say the HVX is gonna have to produce some amazing images to top this cam from the few tests I've seen.

Thanks,
Eric James
htt://www.expertmagic.com/

Yeah. I have a few setting tweaks going on (low knee point, -2 detail, etc), but there's nothing going on that you couldn't reproduce yourself.

Somebody will note the super warm tone in the clips...I white balanced to white in the shade because the nice tones of the low sun weren't coming through, and all the numerous shadows were going blue.

Nate, this looks great. On a screen this size, it looks incredibly like 35mm film IMO. It doesn't have one single trait of video. The gamma specially looks extremely film like. Was it all shot in 24p HD?
Now that you have had the camera for a while, have you experienced any dropouts ? I'm wondering if a FS4 is really a must. I haven't seen many complaining about dropouts. The ProHD codec seems to be more reliable than the sony HDV one.
The more stuff I see from this camera, the more I want one. Yep, Eric is right. The HVX200 will have to be a really awesome camera to top this one off. The HD100 is sure a winner. It has great potential. Specially if you rent a mini35/cooke set up to REPLACE the stock lens. You just can't do that in progressive HD with anything less than a 60k Varicam.

Nate,

This was shot with the lens that comes with the camera, right?

Yup, it's 24. Note I took very special care in NOT having any large part of the frame going over 100IRE when exposing...blowouts are the surest way I know to give away DV.

So far I've shot about an hour's worth on my cam, but with LOTS of shuttling around and reviewing footage. No dropouts so far on Sony Premium DV tape.

Stock 16x.

That's very good news. The HD100 may put an end to the whole HDV dropout myth.

I deleted an email from ZGC by mistake about an upcoming show.

Nate,

I believe you did the test with Barry right.

What about the adapter that JVC says you can use other lens with it.

Do you know anything about that?

This was suppose to be part of this show.

Myth?

The very first shot I ever took on an HD100 was *riddled* with dropouts. Brand new tape, too. Unwrapped it, put it in the camera, shot, and this is what I got:

http://www.24puser.com/hd100/30p-ms-off-dropouts.m2t
http://www.24puser.com/hd100/30p-ms-on-dropouts.m2t

Now, the only things I can say are a) JVC specifically warns not to shoot anything valuable on the first 2 or 3 minutes of the tape, and b) I don't know what type of tape had been used in the camera before I got to it (it was a camera on display at WEVA).

But if you think dropouts are a "myth"... you do so at your own peril. This was enough of an experience for me to decide that I absolutely wouldn't ever shoot anything of value on HDV without using at least the DR-HD100 hard disk recorder as a backup. Others' standards may vary, others may find the risk acceptable. I sure don't.

But dropouts are no myth... Sony's even come out with an official statement acknowledging the problem.
http://www.sonydigital-link.com/dime..._tape.asp?l=en

I don't know that, Barry...

I can imagine the mixed lubricant used on a diplay model would make lots of dropouts possible....

But the MPEG2 is actually more robust against dropouts then DV - and with high quality tape, I have never experienced much (in DV - so I expect even less -second to none- in HDV with high quality new tape and always the same tape)...

Artefacts, that's no myth, although the JVC seems to do EXTREMELY well - as far as I've seen for now, and I guess that won't change anymore...

It seems that what SONY is talking about are dropouts caused by dirty heads. That would actually be in line with the fact that the camera you used was a display WEVA unit. Used, abused, different brands of tape, shuttling, etc.

Oh yeah - and always SHORT tapes. The plastic base is somewhat thicker there. Perhaps 30' tapes?

Wow
 

I have to admit, these are the kinds of clips I was expecting to see. My mind is at ease, because some of the earlier clips that I had seen pre-nate era :) were not very good at all. However in the hands of an expert....

And yes I second Michael Maier, It does look very 35mm like, if sometimes better, NO GRAIN !! super clean and crisp.

Speaking of which, I was watching Dark waters some weeks ago, and saw the trailer for Wolf Creek, and the image just blew me away, I had a hunch that it might be HD, it was! very clean