HD100 & Motocross **CLIPS**

[Daniel Patton]

I shot a lot of races last year, all in SD, this year it's HD and it looks very nice! I just got around to digitizing some of the race footage shot with our HD100 at the Muddy Creek motocross. We had track passes to roam free (nearly got nailed by a bike more than once, we for sure got our share of roostings), it was good to be in the middle of the action once again. Of course, we used Paolo's DSC scene file (with the Black set back to 0) and set the shutter to 250 to catch every particle of flying mud and dirt. As well as posting a few of the raw M2T files, I also added those files plus a couple more into a WMV-HD version. This is non-edited, simply cuts but at least they are all together. I did not get a chance to try nearly everything I intended to try at this race, including over-cranking in SD, (I just didn't want any "mode" issues to I stayed in 720/30p). It's a little shakey at times, but a fair amount is shot near the end of the telephoto and I was not about to drag our sticks all of that track.

The next race is a road series race, a lot different action than straight moto, I'll try and share some of that as well.

Let me know what you think.
http://www.danielpatton.com/jvc/

[Joel Aaron]

Originally Posted by Daniel Patton

I shot a lot of races last year, all in SD, this year it's HD and it looks very nice!

Nice stuff! Were you pulling focus as the guys went by?

Have you seen any HDV artifacting? Sure seems like this type of shooting would be a good candidate if it was going to happen. I didn't notice it in these clips.

Nice colors and latitude (I'm on a constrasty monitor at the moment so it maybe have punched it up a bit). I like the black level around zero as opposed to -2 also. There seems to be a really big jump between -2 and -1.

[Stephen L. Noe]

I really like it! High action and exciting subject. It looks like you were right there up close and personal on the turn (where the dirt is flying). Overtly bright colors suit this type of action. Great work Daniel.

PS I could have a field day mixing the cycle's rumble in surround to some hard driving music.

[Mark Bournes]

Excellent, It makes me want to go buy one.

Mark

[Daniel Patton]

Originally Posted by Mark Bournes

Excellent, It makes me want to go buy one.

Mark

Hehe, I hope you mean a camera and not a bike. Or do I need to post all of the crash footage from this race and last year combined? ;)


@ Joel,

I pulled focus when I could, but most of the time I would just zoom, set focus and follow them through to zooming wide. It worked well most of the time, but it could go soft real easy shooting with the JVC for this type of action. I still need more time on the track with this camera/lens combo.

As for HDV artifacting, I got far more from an easter egg hunt I shot recently than I did from the motocross. It was so odd in fact I'm tempted to post some here and see if anyone can figure out why I had so much HDV artifacting. Can tape stock effect this?

@ Stephen,

Thanks! And I have a lot of moto edited to hard driving music, Linkin Park works for me every time.

[Tim Brown]

Quick question Daniel; were you using Sony tape stock? I've seen artifacting using the wet Sony stock when doing quick pans and/or tilts with cameras. I've not seen this happen with dry brands such as Panasonic. I've surmised that it's the "wet-lube" that causes the tape to shift on the heads but have have no scientific evidence to back this up, so take it with a grain of salt.

Tim

[Daniel Patton]

Hey Tim,

No, I was not using the Sony Tapes, in fact I was using the rather expensive Panasonic DVM63MQ Master Quality tapes. I have been using them since our first shoot with this camera, with no other tape brand mixing.

It's real strange in fact, the easter egg hunt footage looks super nice in regards to color and overall latitude, it's just noisy as hell with compression artifacts, like an army of small ants swarming the edges of everything, and in all of the fine detail areas it has an insane amount. Never before has it done this.

Hey Paolo! Have you seen any additional odd compression noise with those DSC settings? I'm wondering if maybe I was getting more artifacting due to pushing the color more, just a crazy thought.

[Joel Aaron]

Originally Posted by Daniel Patton

It's real strange in fact, the video looks super nice in regards to color and overall latitude, it's just noisy as hell with compression artifacts, like an army of small ants swarming the edges of everything, and in all of the fine detail areas. Never before has it done this.

Has it been doing the same thing since? I once bumped up the gain accidentally and got more noise etc. Have your detail settings changed? I'm also assuming you weren't shooting at a high F-Stop like F8 through F16.

If you can replicate the problem it might help find the solution.

[Daniel Patton]

No, I'm sure I was not adding any gain, although you are right that it's easy to bump the switch. Added gain noise is very different than compression noise, and this is without a doubt compression noise.

Now it was very bright out that day and even with my ND on it would hit F8 - F11 at times. I was not aware that this would cause crazy noise on HDV. Does it?

I have not shot anything since last Sunday, so I'm not sure if the camera is still doing it or not. I do a majority of our editing as well, and with a full plate right now I have had little time to shoot anything.

[Joel Aaron]

Originally Posted by Daniel Patton

Now it was very bright out that day and even with my ND on it would hit F8 - F11 at times. I was not aware that this would cause crazy noise on HDV. Does it?

I'm not clear on exactly why this is, but all of the little HD cameras have real problems shooting F8 and especially if you get higher. Even the HVX will give some scary results.

I bet raising your shutter speed at the motocross event got you down to F5.6 or F4.... but at 24FPS you probably got up to F11. Here is Phoenix you can hit F16 even with max ND on. That'll give bad results. We have to buy an ND9 just to walk outside. Sometimes I'd like a ND1.2.

You really want to live around F4 - F5.6 if you can. If you need that shallow DOF you can go wider, but CA is likely to increase.

[Gary Morris McBeath]

Joel and Daniel:

When you get into the smaller f stops, a defraction of the image occurs where parts of the image are projected on the ccd that become larger than each individual pixel, thus blurring the image. This overwhelms the codec, and thus your compression artifacts. This phenominin is called the "Airy Disc". The smaller the f-stop, the greater the effect, and is further complicated by the different wavelengths of the different colors of light. You might Google it, and you'll come up with many scientific papers describing the effect.

In tests I've done, f4 is the ideal f stop, and while 5.6 is acceptable, although even there some degradation begins to occur. I always use f 4, and only occasionally kiss the lower end of 5.6. I use additional ND filters or faster shutter speeds to deal with the light level.

This also occurs on a 2/3 chip (HD) camera, but doesn't begin to show until around f-8. SD cameras have much bigger pixels on the ccd's, and the effect isn't as noticable. Unique to HD, and especially to 1/3 inch chips.

Hope this helps.

Gary Morris McBeath

[Gary Morris McBeath]

I might add, I wish JVC had given us an additional built-in ND filter, or, perhaps even better, the ability to select a lower gain setting to achieve exposure without screwing on the additional ND. Depending on the type of scene, you can't always use shutter speed to get the lower exposure setting.

Third party ND filters are never the same color as the camera's built in ones, which are very color neutral I might add. The use of the additional ND therefore requires additional color correcting in poston the scenes where they are used.

Gary

[Steven Thomas]

Daniel,
Gary is probably right about this issue.

The JVC does seem to be noisier when closing down past F8.
I was wondering this same thing a while ago. Since then, I bought
an external Heliopan .9 ND filter and stay wider than F5.6.

I've noticed this same issue on other cameras, so Gary
is probably right why there appears to be more noise.

This is really a non issue as long as we understand it and
keep the f-stop wider than F8. I'm sure most of us are trying to stay
F2.8 - F4 anyways...

The HD100 is reasonable on noise levels. Actually it's better than a lot of other
cameras it competes with.

[Daniel Patton]

Thank you Gary, Joel and everyone.

Although I have always understood it best to shoot in the 4 - 5.6 range, I had never seen with my own eyes the reason for doing so in HDV. Now I have!

I was going to post a couple images to show my result of doing so, but I fear it will only give some jack-*** a poor excuse to trash the JVC unjustly. I was shooting outside of a safe range for HDV and received the results expected. I can live with that. Everything else we have shot with this camera looks so damn good!

Thanks again for the feedback.

[Steven Thomas]

I'd say more like f2.8 - f5.6