dvc30 F-stop readings?

[Reid Bailey]

Yeah, the 100A is just too rich for my blood at this stage in the game.

It is a great camera camera with gorgeous pictures and sound. You won't be disappointed and it won't be too much camera. The way it's set up is you can use as little or as much of the fine tuning you want. The basic scene files really doa great job of tweaking the adjustments.
Tho of course some purists would freak at not tweaking each control yourself ;-)

I think the frame-by-frame that the dvc30 references is the frame mode as opposed to interlaced. But I'm probably mistaken

I think I'm going to take the dart board method and see what happens...

[Reid Bailey]

Okay,
I went with the dvc30. There were plusses and minuses on both sides of the fence but I liked the structure of the camera and it's similarity with the dvx.

I also couldn't help but looking at the pdx cause of it's 16x9 but there were a fair number of user comments about some of the cameras quirkiness and what they were listing was stuff that would have driven me crazy.

I held off on the wide angle and other filters until I get the camera and start playing with it.

Here's what I bought, all at B&H:

The dvc30 (without the xlr adapter- in three months I'll have enough to get a nice mike and don't need it until then)

manfrotto 755mdeve tripod with 501 head. (yes I know I'm paying for that ball design but trying to level by adjsuting legs drives me nuts)

a pelican 1500 case

and a B&W uv filter.

I also ordered a kodak grey/white card. Save the comments about how I don't need it. I grown accustomed to using it to center the exposure and I've noticed a visible difference using a standardized white for balancing as opposed to what ever whitish thing happens to be laying around when I need it.

Additional batteries, filters, lenses, doodads will all come along shortly. My primary goal was to get the camera and learn the hell out of it and then by add ons piecemeal. I've purchased filter sets in the past and there is always the one or two that never get used.

Now lets hope enuf people got the dvc30 route so that someone makes a reasonably priced anamorphic adapter...
(fingers crossed)

[Tom Hardwick]

Congratulations on your new toy. I hope the B & W UV is a super multi-coated design. Remember that when it's in place it's the front element of your multi-element zoom.

My guess is Panasonic will push the anamorphic made for the DVX100, using it with a step-down adaptor - though 72 > 43 is rather a long way to go.

tom.

[Tommy Haupfear]

Reid you were my inspiration today! I just ordered the DVX100A.

Look forward to hearing about your DVC30!

[Frank Granovski]

Sorry to hear that. You'll now have to be bumped over to the DVX forum. Are you going with the 16:9 adaptor?

[Tommy Haupfear]

I'll probably see how I like the DVX100A in-camera anamorphic mode first. I've seen great things so far.

[Frank Granovski]

Let us know how the DVX holds up with Mamba footage. :-))

[Dave Croft]

Congrats on your purchase Reid (you too Tommy ;)

Hope to hear both your thoughts on your new cams over the coming months.

[Frank Granovski]

Re: "Yeah, the 100A is just too rich for my blood at this stage in the game."

Too rich for my blood too, but maybe it's the right cam for the right job. I assume Tommy wants to shoot the twins with the film look or in 24P, so when video is dead he can get the footage transferred to film.

[Tom Hardwick]

If long term storage and decoding retrieval is important to you, shooting 18 Kodachrome transparencies per second is still the way to go. It's called Super-8 film. Stuff I shot in the 70s looks like I shot it yesterday. Video I shot in 1998 looks dire, and when my Video8 camera expires it'll be pretty difficult to decode.

tom.

[Reid Bailey]

Congrats Tommy!

I'll fill you all in when I get the goods...

[Joe Carney]

Kinda funny, all this talk about the dvc30 reminded me about the
JVC DV GY300U.
It has 2 built in XLR connectors, excellent cinema like color settings, larger lense than the dvc30 and 12bitDA/24bitdsp processing. 1/3 inch chips and better low light performance than any camera with 1/4 inch ccds.
And for less money than the dvc30 similarly equipped (at B&H). No progressive option, but I could get the Century Optics Anamorpic lense to get my 16x9 look. It's a true pro camera (Meaning the auto stuff sucks and you need to use manual for everything to get the best look).

Then again, my MX500 already has 16x9 and manual controls.

Tough choices.

Just messing with you Reid, hehehe

[Reid Bailey]

I did get the camera Friday and there was so much to do around the house that I've barely held the thing in my hand.

Overall impressions are favorable so far. I did shoot some in the backyard and was impressed with the quality of several of the shots.

This weekend will be the full blown test and playing with all the settings etc.

I did get the garage cleaned out this weekend though so now I have a place to work on building floros and other equipment.

[Peter Jefferson]

mines coming this week :)

now to get rid of the MX500.... hmmmm........

[Tommy Haupfear]

I did get the camera Friday and there was so much to do around the house that I've barely held the thing in my hand.

I remember the days when I got a new toy and the world stopped until I knew every inch. Now I have three kids all under the age of three and I held formula bottles more than cams this weekend.

I would like to see some low light frames from the DVC30 and hopefully I'll have some from the DVX100A to share. I also have the VX2000 for comparison.