The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread

Tom Hardwick · April 28th, 2012, 09:23 AM

Does halving the shutter speed affect the highlights once you've opened the aperture to suit? Not in my experience Luc. And what do you mean by 'its max (auto) value of F 8.0'. Agreed, don't shoot at small apertures if you can help it, but remember that an indicated f/8 is actually f/4. Those undocumented NDs are a pain sometimes.

Luc Spencer · April 28th, 2012, 10:17 AM

Well, in manual mode but with auto exposure (just with fixed shutter speed), the camera doesn't go past F8.0. If you want less light coming in and don't want to touch the shutter speed, you have to manually increase the F-value, at which point it becomes fully manual exposure. However, I remember someone here saying the camera intentionally stops at an indicated F8.0 because going further is bad for video quality.

Therefore, at 1/50 shutter speed, the iris value was F8.0 and the LCD was showing me quite a bit of blown highlights. At 1/100, the F-value was around 5.6-6.8 and highlights were alright-ish, even so I had a few shots with the sky completely white.

Claire Watson · April 30th, 2012, 08:49 AM

It may have been me that said something similar in this giant thread..

Don't ask me why but in bright sunshine, using manual mode, fixed shutter and iris "floating" (auto iris) my TM900 handles highlights better when I select 1/100th shutter than than if I leave it at 1/50th.

Leaving at 1/50th and stopping down the iris setting to some crazy amount for me provides an inferior result where highlights "white out" excessively.

Now I know the iris is not really stopping right down, it's more and more ND, or is it? In the absence of hard facts my personal belief is that something is happening in the camera's processor at 100th that is changing the image for the better, observable on Edius waveform meter, lowered mids, away from the dreadful cruched up white levels around and well over 100IRE, this backs off a bit more down to part of the curve where it should be.

BTW, a long time ago I gave up using fixed iris and fixed shutter when I found that the combination of F4 (as read of the LCD, I know it's probably not really) and a fast enough shutter to give correct exposure in sunshine, say 1/500th sec produced an image that was as soft as mud... similar to stopping down my EX1 to F16! So it seems it's impossible to really know what the camera is doing?

I stick to 1/50th shutter on dull days and switch to 1/100th in bright sun where the sky is in the shot. I still make fine adjustments to the iris setting to get the best image but I ignore completely what it's telling me the F number is, ha ha!

Tom Hardwick · April 30th, 2012, 09:11 AM

Interesting observations Claire, and backed up with some scientific probing in Edius, too.

The most basic change when going to 1/100th sec from the default 1/50th is that the camera will simply open up the iris a stop to compensate, but as you say - there may be more to the camera's set-up programming than meets the eye. It certainly appears so when you say that using 1/500th sec (and max aperture, most probably) gives you very soft pictures. I've never tried this - I must give it a go.

The ND filtration programming is the oddest I've seen, where the camera clings to maximum aperture until all the internal ND is fully in place - and only after this does it start to physically stop the iris blades down.

When the readout says f/4 on the screen then the camera is physically stopped down by nearly a stop at wide-angle and is shooting fully wide at telephoto, with half of all the available ND in place.

tom.

Alastair Traill · May 1st, 2012, 08:46 AM

TM 900 aperture control - an observation

I have an interest in close-up work and often use a Canon 250D close-up lens on my TM 900 for this purpose. Depth of field is very limited as one would expect at a working distance of about 20 cm at 20x zoom but until today I have never tried to measure it. I had always assumed that stopping down actually did something useful.

My test was to set the camera to view along a ruler and measure the depth of field at different apertures. Irrespective of the aperture shown the depth of field using the TM900 was always about 2 mm. On the other hand using an EX3 with a Micro Nikkor the depth of field was very dependent on aperture as one would expect.

Two TM 900 video frames are shown below. The depth of field of the fly feasting on the wallaby dropping is so low the wings cannot be seen.
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/images/a...attach/jpg.gif

Alastair Traill · May 1st, 2012, 05:59 PM

I meant to add to my post above that if my observation is valid it suggests that there is no iris control in the TM 900.

Tom Hardwick · May 2nd, 2012, 12:49 AM

That seems an odd thing to put in print under your name Alastair, when the operating iris blades are visible to the human eye.

Alastair Traill · May 2nd, 2012, 04:04 AM

Quote:- "If my observation is valid it suggests that there is no iris control in the TM 900".

I have repeated my experiment with very different results. In my first test the smallest aperture reading I could achieve was f11. In my most recent tests the minimum aperture reading was f16. Furthermore I was getting a very measurable increase in depth of field with decreasing aperture. Between the two sets if tests I had tried some exposure duration tests. These involved setting my TM 900 up on the bed of my lathe so that it could record the equivalent of fast turning clock hand while varying the exposure time. During the exposure duration tests the camera was subjected to some vibration and afterwards it worked as I had hoped it would. I am wondering if the vibrations have been responsible for the apparent change.

Luc Spencer · May 6th, 2012, 04:25 AM

The TM900 did it again! I received very good feedback for this one. The models didn't think much of me filming them at the time of the photo shoot (something to do with the [lack of] camera size, I bet), so they weren't expecting this :) hope you enjoy!

Bill Bruner · May 6th, 2012, 02:05 PM

Great job, Luc! Reconfirms what we all know - with a talented DP, the TM900 can produce stunning video images. Let me guess - 50p conformed to 25p for the slow mo?

Bill

Luc Spencer · May 6th, 2012, 03:37 PM

Thank you sir, glad to hear that :) yes, everything was filmed in 50p, I just set the speed to 50% in Premiere on most shots, on a few even 25% (i.e. 2:04). Exported at 25fps.

Mark Evans · May 6th, 2012, 11:37 PM

Help!

Could someone please tell me or point me in the right direction on the way to edit Panasonic SD900 files. I´ve had the SD900 1080 50P for a while now and am very impressed with the results but until now have only really watched the results on a computer.

I´d like to be able to edit and put them on a Multimedia player and DVD to give to friends.

What are you using? What program do I use? I have Edius 6 and a trial of Premiere pro 6 but am confused about inputs and outputs.

Please help!

Thanks

Mark

Guy Caplin · May 7th, 2012, 05:18 AM

I use Premier Pro CS5.5 to edit the Panasonic files. First copy the entire contents of the SD card or the camera's internal memory onto the editing computer's hard drive. Don't just try and copy across the video files. You need all of the folders and files. One of the things that is not obvious from the Adobe help files is the best way to import the files into Premier. Open the Media Browser pane and navigate to the folder where you copied the files. Select all the media files e.g. 0001.MTS etc and drag and drop them into the Project pane above. If you use any other method of importing the files you will find that a files may not be a complete 'take' and that a recording may start on one file and end on another. Using the Media Browser 'concatenates' the files - sticks the recorded segments together into one continuous file. Once you have the recorded files imported correctly, you can start editing conventionally. If you go to the editing sections on this site there is loads of stuff on editing with Adobe and Vegas.

Tom Hardwick · May 7th, 2012, 07:03 AM

Mark, if you've got Edius 6 you're up and running. You simply open the SD card and copy and paste the 'stream' files to a folder on your HDD.

Start an Edius Project (remembering that Blu-ray won't handle the 50p buts wants 50i) and simply pull the H.264/AVC files en-bloc to the timeline. After editing you click 'burn to disc' and Edius will make a DVD or BD straight off the end of the timeline. Couldn't be simpler.

tom.

Clayton Moore · May 10th, 2012, 11:21 PM

I imported 60p into Premier then made a blu ray out of it ..... I was SHOCKED AND AMAZED at how good that looked. In good light is there any doubt that image has commercial quality ... WOW!

April 28th, 2012, 09:23 AM	#661
Tom Hardwick Inner Circle Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Billericay, England UK Posts: 4,711	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread Does halving the shutter speed affect the highlights once you've opened the aperture to suit? Not in my experience Luc. And what do you mean by 'its max (auto) value of F 8.0'. Agreed, don't shoot at small apertures if you can help it, but remember that an indicated f/8 is actually f/4. Those undocumented NDs are a pain sometimes.

April 28th, 2012, 10:17 AM	#662
Luc Spencer Major Player Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Romania Posts: 201	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread Well, in manual mode but with auto exposure (just with fixed shutter speed), the camera doesn't go past F8.0. If you want less light coming in and don't want to touch the shutter speed, you have to manually increase the F-value, at which point it becomes fully manual exposure. However, I remember someone here saying the camera intentionally stops at an indicated F8.0 because going further is bad for video quality. Therefore, at 1/50 shutter speed, the iris value was F8.0 and the LCD was showing me quite a bit of blown highlights. At 1/100, the F-value was around 5.6-6.8 and highlights were alright-ish, even so I had a few shots with the sky completely white.

April 30th, 2012, 08:49 AM	#663
Claire Watson Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Stocksfield, England Posts: 86	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread It may have been me that said something similar in this giant thread.. Don't ask me why but in bright sunshine, using manual mode, fixed shutter and iris "floating" (auto iris) my TM900 handles highlights better when I select 1/100th shutter than than if I leave it at 1/50th. Leaving at 1/50th and stopping down the iris setting to some crazy amount for me provides an inferior result where highlights "white out" excessively. Now I know the iris is not really stopping right down, it's more and more ND, or is it? In the absence of hard facts my personal belief is that something is happening in the camera's processor at 100th that is changing the image for the better, observable on Edius waveform meter, lowered mids, away from the dreadful cruched up white levels around and well over 100IRE, this backs off a bit more down to part of the curve where it should be. BTW, a long time ago I gave up using fixed iris and fixed shutter when I found that the combination of F4 (as read of the LCD, I know it's probably not really) and a fast enough shutter to give correct exposure in sunshine, say 1/500th sec produced an image that was as soft as mud... similar to stopping down my EX1 to F16! So it seems it's impossible to really know what the camera is doing? I stick to 1/50th shutter on dull days and switch to 1/100th in bright sun where the sky is in the shot. I still make fine adjustments to the iris setting to get the best image but I ignore completely what it's telling me the F number is, ha ha! __________________ Claire

April 30th, 2012, 09:11 AM	#664
Tom Hardwick Inner Circle Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Billericay, England UK Posts: 4,711	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread Interesting observations Claire, and backed up with some scientific probing in Edius, too. The most basic change when going to 1/100th sec from the default 1/50th is that the camera will simply open up the iris a stop to compensate, but as you say - there may be more to the camera's set-up programming than meets the eye. It certainly appears so when you say that using 1/500th sec (and max aperture, most probably) gives you very soft pictures. I've never tried this - I must give it a go. The ND filtration programming is the oddest I've seen, where the camera clings to maximum aperture until all the internal ND is fully in place - and only after this does it start to physically stop the iris blades down. When the readout says f/4 on the screen then the camera is physically stopped down by nearly a stop at wide-angle and is shooting fully wide at telephoto, with half of all the available ND in place. tom.

May 1st, 2012, 08:46 AM	#665
Alastair Traill Major Player Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Melbourne Australia Posts: 626	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread TM 900 aperture control - an observation I have an interest in close-up work and often use a Canon 250D close-up lens on my TM 900 for this purpose. Depth of field is very limited as one would expect at a working distance of about 20 cm at 20x zoom but until today I have never tried to measure it. I had always assumed that stopping down actually did something useful. My test was to set the camera to view along a ruler and measure the depth of field at different apertures. Irrespective of the aperture shown the depth of field using the TM900 was always about 2 mm. On the other hand using an EX3 with a Micro Nikkor the depth of field was very dependent on aperture as one would expect. Two TM 900 video frames are shown below. The depth of field of the fly feasting on the wallaby dropping is so low the wings cannot be seen. http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/images/a...attach/jpg.gif Attached Thumbnails

May 1st, 2012, 05:59 PM	#666
Alastair Traill Major Player Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Melbourne Australia Posts: 626	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread I meant to add to my post above that if my observation is valid it suggests that there is no iris control in the TM 900.

May 2nd, 2012, 12:49 AM	#667
Tom Hardwick Inner Circle Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Billericay, England UK Posts: 4,711	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread That seems an odd thing to put in print under your name Alastair, when the operating iris blades are visible to the human eye.

May 2nd, 2012, 04:04 AM	#668
Alastair Traill Major Player Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Melbourne Australia Posts: 626	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread Quote:- "If my observation is valid it suggests that there is no iris control in the TM 900". I have repeated my experiment with very different results. In my first test the smallest aperture reading I could achieve was f11. In my most recent tests the minimum aperture reading was f16. Furthermore I was getting a very measurable increase in depth of field with decreasing aperture. Between the two sets if tests I had tried some exposure duration tests. These involved setting my TM 900 up on the bed of my lathe so that it could record the equivalent of fast turning clock hand while varying the exposure time. During the exposure duration tests the camera was subjected to some vibration and afterwards it worked as I had hoped it would. I am wondering if the vibrations have been responsible for the apparent change.

May 6th, 2012, 04:25 AM	#669
Luc Spencer Major Player Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Romania Posts: 201	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread The TM900 did it again! I received very good feedback for this one. The models didn't think much of me filming them at the time of the photo shoot (something to do with the [lack of] camera size, I bet), so they weren't expecting this :) hope you enjoy! Making-of Noree's 2nd photo shoot - YouTube

May 6th, 2012, 02:05 PM	#670
Bill Bruner Major Player Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Sunny California Posts: 513	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread Great job, Luc! Reconfirms what we all know - with a talented DP, the TM900 can produce stunning video images. Let me guess - 50p conformed to 25p for the slow mo? Bill

May 6th, 2012, 03:37 PM	#671
Luc Spencer Major Player Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Romania Posts: 201	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread Thank you sir, glad to hear that :) yes, everything was filmed in 50p, I just set the speed to 50% in Premiere on most shots, on a few even 25% (i.e. 2:04). Exported at 25fps.

May 6th, 2012, 11:37 PM	#672
Mark Evans New Boot Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Madrid Posts: 17	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread Help! Could someone please tell me or point me in the right direction on the way to edit Panasonic SD900 files. I´ve had the SD900 1080 50P for a while now and am very impressed with the results but until now have only really watched the results on a computer. I´d like to be able to edit and put them on a Multimedia player and DVD to give to friends. What are you using? What program do I use? I have Edius 6 and a trial of Premiere pro 6 but am confused about inputs and outputs. Please help! Thanks Mark

May 7th, 2012, 05:18 AM	#673
Guy Caplin Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Basingstoke UK Posts: 48	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread I use Premier Pro CS5.5 to edit the Panasonic files. First copy the entire contents of the SD card or the camera's internal memory onto the editing computer's hard drive. Don't just try and copy across the video files. You need all of the folders and files. One of the things that is not obvious from the Adobe help files is the best way to import the files into Premier. Open the Media Browser pane and navigate to the folder where you copied the files. Select all the media files e.g. 0001.MTS etc and drag and drop them into the Project pane above. If you use any other method of importing the files you will find that a files may not be a complete 'take' and that a recording may start on one file and end on another. Using the Media Browser 'concatenates' the files - sticks the recorded segments together into one continuous file. Once you have the recorded files imported correctly, you can start editing conventionally. If you go to the editing sections on this site there is loads of stuff on editing with Adobe and Vegas.

May 7th, 2012, 07:03 AM	#674
Tom Hardwick Inner Circle Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Billericay, England UK Posts: 4,711	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread Mark, if you've got Edius 6 you're up and running. You simply open the SD card and copy and paste the 'stream' files to a folder on your HDD. Start an Edius Project (remembering that Blu-ray won't handle the 50p buts wants 50i) and simply pull the H.264/AVC files en-bloc to the timeline. After editing you click 'burn to disc' and Edius will make a DVD or BD straight off the end of the timeline. Couldn't be simpler. tom.

May 10th, 2012, 11:21 PM	#675
Clayton Moore Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Sacramento, Ca. Posts: 70	Re: The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread I imported 60p into Premier then made a blu ray out of it ..... I was SHOCKED AND AMAZED at how good that looked. In good light is there any doubt that image has commercial quality ... WOW!