My First Day Out With The Hvx200

Robert M Wright · February 21st, 2006, 08:58 PM

You might try putting some clips up at video.google.com.

As far as I know, it's free, and basically without any limitations.

Jay Morris · February 22nd, 2006, 04:08 PM

I took your advice and uploaded video to google. I have no idea how long it will take for them to make the video available on the web. I will let you guys know when the video is posted.

I did a 2 minute clip made up of several shots edited to music. It is a compressed clip, but still very high quality.

I also uploaded about a 1/2 dozen short clips at full resolution.

All of the clips will take a long time to download, but if you can download while working on other things, it may be worth it.

Robert M Wright · February 22nd, 2006, 05:59 PM

That's great Jay. Glad to hear it worked (apparently). I'll look forward to downloading the clips when they are available from Google's server.

David Heath · February 22nd, 2006, 06:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jay Morris

The noise is in the mid-dark areas. It's hard to explain. Looking at it closely, things that fall off in the dark blacks are clean and things that are properly exposed look good, but somewhere in the low middle is extra noise. I've shown the footage to friends in the industry and they are very impressed with this camera.

That sounds very odd, and I don't think I've ever heard of a similar effect. It certainly doesn't sound like camera 'noise' in the normal sense, which would affect the whole picture equally. (Though be more visible in some places than others.) If I understand you correctly, then if you were to point the camera at a plain surface, and gradually increase exposure up from fully black, there would come a threshold when the picture would suddenly become noisy, then go quiet again as the level increased further? Is that right?

Is it possible you just have a faulty camera? Have you access to another to do a comparison?

Jay Morris · February 22nd, 2006, 09:31 PM

David,
I think that my camera is fine. It's something other HVX200 owners have noticed, too. I'm not sure how to describe it. I've downloaded some compressed files from the web and the compression attacks certain areas of the image (not the entire thing). The noise from the HVX200 is similar, but of course, it does not look that bad. Most will be fine with the noise, but it did bother me a little. I know what you are talking about as far as what gain noise looks like. Gain adds noise to the entire image. This is a different kind of noise. Perhaps gradient mid areas are harder for this camera to capture. There is no noise in the fully exposed and fully underexposed (black) areas. It's just in between (closer to dark than white). As I may have mentioned before, someone thought that shooting in 1080 mode will clean up the image (my early tests were all in the 720 24pn mode). I will test this out this weekend and post my findings.
All being said, I am very impressed with this camera. It looks a lot like film and that's the look I'm going for.

Jay Morris · February 22nd, 2006, 09:32 PM

It would be great if others with the camera who have seen this noise would comment on it. I don't want to come across as being the crazy noise guy!

February 22nd, 2006, 11:11 PM

You aren't Jay! You just have eagle scout eyes. And your tests are welcome and so much appreciated. You are serving this community and not a biased one. The noise that you are seeing it's not a nouvelle despite our disappointment. And it's true that the noisy midtones (1/3" CCD limits with so film-like gamma) are killing that camera for low lighting purposes, specially to 35mm.

Nevertheless, are you trying the most noiseless settings? Or even a noise reduction filter at post? Maybe it works!

February 21st, 2006, 08:58 PM	#16
Robert M Wright Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Minnesota (USA) Posts: 2,171	You might try putting some clips up at video.google.com. As far as I know, it's free, and basically without any limitations.

February 22nd, 2006, 04:08 PM	#17
Jay Morris Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 48	I took your advice and uploaded video to google. I have no idea how long it will take for them to make the video available on the web. I will let you guys know when the video is posted. I did a 2 minute clip made up of several shots edited to music. It is a compressed clip, but still very high quality. I also uploaded about a 1/2 dozen short clips at full resolution. All of the clips will take a long time to download, but if you can download while working on other things, it may be worth it.

February 22nd, 2006, 05:59 PM	#18
Robert M Wright Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Minnesota (USA) Posts: 2,171	That's great Jay. Glad to hear it worked (apparently). I'll look forward to downloading the clips when they are available from Google's server.

February 22nd, 2006, 09:31 PM	#20
Jay Morris Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 48	David, I think that my camera is fine. It's something other HVX200 owners have noticed, too. I'm not sure how to describe it. I've downloaded some compressed files from the web and the compression attacks certain areas of the image (not the entire thing). The noise from the HVX200 is similar, but of course, it does not look that bad. Most will be fine with the noise, but it did bother me a little. I know what you are talking about as far as what gain noise looks like. Gain adds noise to the entire image. This is a different kind of noise. Perhaps gradient mid areas are harder for this camera to capture. There is no noise in the fully exposed and fully underexposed (black) areas. It's just in between (closer to dark than white). As I may have mentioned before, someone thought that shooting in 1080 mode will clean up the image (my early tests were all in the 720 24pn mode). I will test this out this weekend and post my findings. All being said, I am very impressed with this camera. It looks a lot like film and that's the look I'm going for.

February 22nd, 2006, 09:32 PM	#21
Jay Morris Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 48	It would be great if others with the camera who have seen this noise would comment on it. I don't want to come across as being the crazy noise guy!

February 22nd, 2006, 11:11 PM	#22
Guest Posts: n/a	You aren't Jay! You just have eagle scout eyes. And your tests are welcome and so much appreciated. You are serving this community and not a biased one. The noise that you are seeing it's not a nouvelle despite our disappointment. And it's true that the noisy midtones (1/3" CCD limits with so film-like gamma) are killing that camera for low lighting purposes, specially to 35mm. Nevertheless, are you trying the most noiseless settings? Or even a noise reduction filter at post? Maybe it works!