TM900 Wedding

[Colin Rowe]

Our son got married last Saturday, I decided to use the TM900 for most of the day. My EX1 was used as A cam for the service and speeches, for the rest of the day I used the tiny TM900, what a joy to use, and the quality is outstanding. I hasten to add, this is not an edit, simply some shots put together to demonstrate the capabilities of the camera. We had to deal with severe, black skied thunderstorms, brilliant sunshine, and low light levels at the church and reception, The clips hopefully show how well this little camera coped. I am certainly more than happy with the results.

TM900 Wedding on Vimeo

[Travis Wheaton]

All those views and no replies - well I just wanted to say, yes, great looking footage, certainly temping me further towards the Panny side of the wall... oh, and what a lovely couple. :)

[Colin Rowe]

Kind words Travis, thank you. Our son has his mothers looks, thank goodness, and his new wife Natalie is a picture. It was a wonderful day.
Back to cameras, the Panasonic wont dissapoint, its a wonderful little camera, capable of amazing results. I find myself using mine, more and more often. You wont go far wrong with any of the 900 series.

[Anthony Schrijer]

Colin

Beautifull shots, and a nice subject ...

Smooth panning and zooming, the ois is worth it's money.
Did you use any manual settings, or was it all iA?

[Barry Sampson]

Unfortunately there is an error with the video & it won't play :(

Or is it me?

[Anthony Schrijer]

@Barry

It is you .... ;-}

[Barry Sampson]

Weird, I've tried Chrome, Firefox and Safari [WinDoze Vista], and same result, will look on my Mac later

[Colin Rowe]

Originally Posted by Anthony Schrijer

Colin

Beautifull shots, and a nice subject ...

Smooth panning and zooming, the ois is worth it's money.
Did you use any manual settings, or was it all iA?

Hi Anthony, thanks for that. It was 90% manual, you can see the few iAuto shots, they are generally overexposed. This is something this little camera does when in auto, it blows out highlighs very easily. Easily remedied by going manual and keeping an eye on the histogram and zebra display

[Henrik Reach]

Very nice footage! I'm considering the TM900, and this makes that option more attractive. :)

[Anthony Schrijer]

@ Colin

The iA mode is pretty unusable in bright weather. That is pitty because you want an automatic mode just in case of changing exposures in your scenes and that just happens in sunny weather.
But with some practice you can use the manual settings very well and this solves the over-exposure problem.
I hope they can solve this over-exposure in iA with a firmware update.

[Barry Sampson]

Very nice, (McAfee was blocking Vimeo so I can see it now)!

So is iAuto the name for it's automatic mode; I see where it overexposes on the dress and the indoors window; nice to know that this can be overcome :)

I understand the histogram, (from editing photos in Photoshop), but what is the Zebra display/what does it do?

Thanks

Barry

[Anthony Schrijer]

@Barry

Zebra stripes are white stripes over (part of) a subject that is overexposed.
The histogram shows you, to the left the dark (shadow) values and to the right the light values of your image.

With the help of both you can view your exposure values and correct them manually if needed.
At that moment you are the iA (intelligent Automatic mode ;-) ...

[Colin Rowe]

Originally Posted by Barry Sampson

Very nice, (McAfee was blocking Vimeo so I can see it now)!

So is iAuto the name for it's automatic mode; I see where it overexposes on the dress and the indoors window; nice to know that this can be overcome :)

It cant be overcome Barry. To get correct exposure on faces etc, you may have to blow out the highlight, ie, windows with the sun streaming in, or whites such as dresses etc. This is the same for all cameras.
The only way to correctly expose the whole scene would take an awful lot of lighting. Most of the time you can expose a scene pretty evenly, its mainly backlit subjects, ie, interior shots with light streaming in from a window in the background, and whites in bright sunlight that cause the problem. In these conditions its always going to be a compromise.

[Barry Sampson]

Okay guys,

Thanks for the info, I want to learn how to use it before I go on my vacation so hopefully I'll be getting my HDC-HS900 soon, [not many around at the moment], just looking for a decent price. I have seen it for £929:99 and will also buy a 3 hour battery, (best price £90:00).

Also looking to buy 15-20 SDHC cards in 16GB but can't find any for less than £15:00, that's Transcend or PNY branded.

Any pointers welcomed :0)

@ Colin, what is the embedded video resolution?

[Colin Rowe]

Stick with Transcend, They go for about £17 for a 16gb, excellent value.
On the Vimeo site its h264,1280x720 25fps