HD100-A: From a Recent Shoot. Good, Bad & Ugly....

[Mark Silva]

Here's some stills and an offline jpeg from a recent outdoor shoot.
This is with our HD100-A (upgraded a few weeks ago. camera was purchased Late January 2006)

The scene setting loaded is Paolo Ciccone's version 2 with detail changed to -7)
Paolo THANK YOU SO MUCH for sharing your experience! :)


Fortunately all the footage we required had perfect
exposure with some amazingly bright but not blown out clouds.


right click save as (if you wish)


The Good:

http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/track.png
http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/lot.png

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The Bad:

A strange vertical contrast issue.
Anyone know what causes this and how to avoid it?

http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/strange1.png (below the sign)
http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/strange2.png (middle, below rafters)
http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/strange3.png (below telephone pole)


Here's a look at some vertical streaking.
How can this be avoided?

http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/vstreak.png


Here's something interesting, In the middle of the composition
you can see a reflection of our lense. Almost looks like a speaker.
You can see it more clearly if you do a bright/contrast adjustment.

Is this caused by the Tiffen UV Filter?
We do have one for lense protection. What can be done to avoid this?

http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/lense-reflect.png

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The Ugly:

Here is the SSE I talked about and in full light.

Carl or someone in the know, can you tell me what I need to do so i can
get my HD100 calibrated in cypress asap?

http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/sse.mov (1.6MB)

[Joe Bowey]

I noticed the sse when you panned into the grass but it looks like it disappeared at the end.
I wonder if you panned slower that it might not show up?

[Steven Thomas]

Hmm..
I've stared at many hours of footage and have yet to see any of this.
Having said that, I would send the camera into JVC (CA) ASAP for repair.
Send these frame grabs with it.

[Saul Martinez]

Mark, did these strange marks appear before the upgrade or until it was upgraded?

[Tim Dashwood]

Wow. There is some really weird stuff going on here. Was it humid? Did you go from cold to hot to cold etc? If so, did you climatize your lens and glass elements.

Did you clean your tiffen UV filter before putting it on the lens.


The SSE is extreme for this type of shooting. You should definitely get it calibrated.

[Mark Silva]

Originally Posted by Saul Martinez

Mark, did these strange marks appear before the upgrade or until it was upgraded?

I had not seen SSE, but we had noticed the vertical contrast lines.

Tim, It wasn't humid. It was a lovely warm day. All of these shots had been taken after the camera had been on for at least 30 minutes.

The tiffen uv filter is brand new, has never been dirtied or touched.

I love the camera (so do my shooters who use DVX100 & super16 film from time to time) so I would like to use this thread to point out and address the issues so that we can all get the best out of our equipment. It might save some of you from issues during important shooting... yeah never know. :)

All of my shooters are impressed most with the dynamic range and the focus assist. They love the camera ergonomics and liken its basic look to what somebody called a "baby Cine-Alta."

Do I just call JVC cypress and make the arrangement? I had hoped they would automatically perform a calibration when the A upgrade happened but I understand they have a large workload.

Another thing I'd like to address.

What is it that causes the camera to be showing a purplish tint to the clouds? (I religously white balance btw)

I noticed this one time (before the A-upgrade) when shooting some projected Black & White 16mm film for a friend of mine. The camera actually added some purple uneven color to the video recorded on tape. I had to go in and apply a B&W filter to get it back to the way it was. I'd like not to have to set it in a black and white preset to accomplish this since I do 8mm and 16mm film transfers as a side business and sometimes b&w is mixed in with color on the same reel.

[Tim Dashwood]

If you weren't using a matte box and there were no light leaks from behind, then I have a theory on the streaking:

Brand new filters straight from the manufacturer sometimes have a cloudy "film" of something greasy on them. They should really be cleaned before going on the lens, even if brand new.

I would also take the lens off the camera and "check the gate" and make sure the glass CCD protector doesn't have any marks or fog on it.

[Stephan Ahonen]

Looks to me like all of your problems except the SSE are caused by CCD flare. Due to the way CCDs scan, a pixel with a lot of energy can cause other pixels in the same vertical line to brighten up as well. It can be minimized, but that costs money.

In the case of the pictures where you see "dark lines," what you're seeing is all of the energy from the overexposed sky causing flare. Noticed how the parts of the picture under the clouds is somewhat washed out. It's not too bad, but because those poles are in there blocking the sky, parts of the image are not affected by flare and you're seeing those "dark lines." In the car picture, an extremely bright highlight on the fender is flaring up. That picture looks overexposed to me anyway, so the problem could go away if you run your iris a little less hot. The other images are a tradeoff between the bright sky and the much darker landscape, so I'm not sure what you can do about it... I'd say iris so the sky isn't overexposing as much and stretch the blacks.

EDIT: The purplish colors seem to be in the fringes of the overexposure areas of the clouds. My theory is that the blue is maxing out early, but the red keeps increasing, adding a purplish tinge before it maxes out itself.

[Mark Silva]

Originally Posted by Tim Dashwood

If you weren't using a matte box and there were no light leaks from behind, then I have a theory on the streaking:

Brand new filters straight from the manufacturer sometimes have a cloudy "film" of something greasy on them. They should really be cleaned before going on the lens, even if brand new.

I would also take the lens off the camera and "check the gate" and make sure the glass CCD protector doesn't have any marks or fog on it.

I have checked the glass with the lense off. crystal clear.

I'll clean the filter. why does it reflect the lense though? should I get a more expensive one?

Thanks for the comments Stephan. The shooter that day was "playing around" with the iris between takes. It does look overexposed there for sure.

One thing I found interesting and confirms that its absolutely essential to view footage and if possible shoot with a calibrated professional crt. Some of the shots he took (not shown) looked blown out on the pc monitor, but on viewing on the sony pro crt looked perfectly exposed.

EDIT: when I captured the 16mm film the iris was left on "auto" and yet the picture always had some purple characteristics.
another thing I like is how fast the auto iris responds. my GL1 is slow as molasses. The Sony 3-CCD DXC block camera I used to use for film transfers (before it crapped out) had a really fast auto iris but it was about 1/3 slower to respond than the HD100. :)

[Stephen L. Noe]

Alot of the png's are overexposed. The SSE needs recalibration. Remember, just because the "A" was applied doesn't mean it was calibrated. Your camera needs adjustment.....Badly..

[Mark Silva]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

Your camera needs adjustment.....Badly..

Amen Brother!

I'm going to make arrangements this week to send it in.

[Tim Dashwood]

Originally Posted by Stephan Ahonen

Looks to me like all of your problems except the SSE are caused by CCD flare.

I would believe it could be CCD flaring if the detail was cranked, but I've never seen anything like this in daytime on the HD100. I have pushed hi-contrast to the limits in my chromatic abberation testing and still haven't seen it.

[Steven Thomas]

Originally Posted by Tim Dashwood

I would believe it could be CCD flaring if the detail was cranked, but I've never seen anything like this in daytime on the HD100. I have pushed hi-contrast to the limits in my chromatic abberation testing and still haven't seen it.

Yes, we've all pushed these cameras. If it exists with other HD100 cameras, we would of seen it by now.

[Ken Freed JVC]

Mr. Silva, please email me at kfreed@jvc.com.

We are very much interested in your experiences and would like to take care of this.

[Jiri Bakala]

Wow! That's customer service alright...!
(A nice change since my SONY days...:-)