HV10 in the Desert

[Meryem Ersoz]

a bit of footage from a recent trip where i was shooting footage for a camper commercial. the HV10 goes anywhere. i didn't have any filters for its 37mm mount, and certainly a polarizer is essential. but for raw out-of-camera footage, it's not bad. it's a great landscape camera, i wish you could all see it larger and uncompressed....

best accessory for a backpacking-sized camera is this new manfrotto monopod, the 560B. i highly recommend it. it can't quite handle the weight of my FX-1 (though it's not terrible), but it is fabulous for a smaller camera.

i took a still photo of my minimalist gear. it's at the end of the reel...

http://ia331338.us.archive.org/3/ite...ntheDesert.mov

[Per Johan Naesje]

Meryem, impressive footage of a landscape very different from what I'm used to! Your choice of music substantiate the footage well.

Did you use a car in some of the "dolly"-shots? Nice effect I think.

Keep up your good work!

[Meryem Ersoz]

thanks, per. the shots from my camper were especially hazardous because i propped the camera on a tripod in the window, zoomed in, and operated the camera while driving, since i was by myself. fun times, that!

one thing about HDV and motion--it handles it okay under 5 mph but de-interlaces if you go faster than that. the HV10 performs the same as any other HDV camera when you add motion, no better but no worse either. slow looks better anyway, like a real dolly shot.

i bought this camera as a deck, but i have to say, for the money, the image is pretty nice. even better if i had a set a filters to fit it, but since it's a deck, i don't really have a reason to buy them, i don't think.

[Brendan Marnell]

Minus the sound this was very enjoyable Meryem ... gorgeous spectacular vistas and intriguing signs of former human occupation. The editing made it very easy on the eye but (for commercial reasons I guess) the really interesting images and messages were trivialised by the soundtrack. Any chance of voice over briefly describing the geology, the archaeology and the wall-art; even a roll of descriptive titles along the bottom could have taught me a lot; for that I'd have hoped for a slower pace at times as well. Watching 60mb version for 5th time I kept on asking myself ... What was that? And that? In the absence of a script I'd have liked the cathedral sound on its own without the boring punctuation. When you bring out the full-length (non-commercial) edition with script or sub-titles I'll buy it for sure and enjoy it for certain.

I assume the monopod was the tall one that looked a bit like a hat stand ... Does its base require an even or flattish surface? Or can it be adapted for rough ground? Is there any flexibility along the leg itself? Or does all manouvering have to happen at the head? Have you tried it on birds in flight?

[Aaron Frick]

Nice Shots. I recognize Chaco Canyon and Hovenweep Monument from the footage but where were the opening canyon shots taken? Also how was the battery life on the HV10?

[Meryem Ersoz]

hi brendan: thanks for the feedback. this is just "for fun" footage...the commercial stuff that i collected was shot with the FX-1 and includes images of the product that i was shooting while in the desert. these shots are going into stock footage...i was just experimenting with the HV10 a bit while i was out there....to actually use this in a project, i'd have to color correct it and add some gradients to the blown-out skies. i wanted to see what this camera is capable of out-of-the-box, for the outdoor shooter. so there's no educational version forthcoming! but i'm happy to answer inquiries, to the extent that i can. these are remote environments for the average traveler, though not quite that remote to the average wilderness shooter. there are improved roads into these sites, after all.....

the baseline image quality in both the HV10 and the FX-1 is comparable, but image control with the FX-1 is far more flexible, and for me, that's important. but if weight is the primary consideration, as it so often is in these settings, then this ultralight set-up is tough to beat.

aaron, the third site is fischer towers, in the castle valley region near moab. i highly recommend a visit. one of my favorite short hikes. it's fun to get in among those gargantuan towers and feel like a puny insignificant midget....

battery power on the HV10 is one of the tough issues about using it. it is a battery sucker. i took 3 other third party batteries to keep it powered up. they are very small and light, even though it takes a lot of them. but considering how light the stabilizers are, it doesn't result in a huge weight increase.

[Dale Guthormsen]

Meryem,

How long does it take to download that footage?? not sure if the computer is hanging up or not.

Also not far from Moab, a great place that over 300 western movies were filmed at, is lake powel. it is spectacular at dawn and sunset. Also for the wildlife videographer ther are Anatum Peregrines nesting there in March to may. What a wonderful place to visit!!!

Oh yea, just up the road is Marble canyon a specticle to be sure.
folow the highway around to the south and look back over your right shoulder (n.w.) you will see the "canyon of the cresent moon" from indiana Jones, the last crusade.

[Meryem Ersoz]

hi dale: the file size is a bit large, i think it's 60MB, which is one of the perils of using HDV for web delivery. you need to load it up and go do laundry or something....

lake powell is definitely a great trip, especially in the autumn when there are far fewer people present. i wonder how many ancient ruins sites are underneath all the water, however. the recreation industry has been tough on that fragile environment....

[Ken Diewert]

Meryem,

That was worth the d/load. Besides after d/loading some of Steve Dempsey's files, that seemed kinda small. :)

That's an incredible area. I probably should know this, but can you create presets on the HV10? The out-of-the-box look is a little less vivid. But even the H1 stock stuff is like that before you start tweaking it. I actually keep mine on Disjecta's Panalook. Sometimes it's a little too vivid (reds and yellows), but I love the greens, browns and blues.

Anyways, that's great stuff from that little cam. I see now why people want to use it for much more than a playback deck.

BTW. Smooth moves - love the tracking shots

[Meryem Ersoz]

there's no pre-sets on the HV10, ken. that's one of the limits--that's why i think out-of-the-box, it is as good as the FX-1, but it lacks image control. it has full manual controls but not image controls (like saturation). easily adjusted in post-production....

there are so many things i could have done with this footage in terms of pumping up the saturation, putting the sky back, etc., but i thought it would be instructive to post it as is....along with the image of the tools used, which are remarkably minimal....i can imagine taking this set-up up big peaks, instead of the FX-1, in image-only situations.

the audio *is* a weak point, as others have mentioned. i did have occasional bits of mechanical noise in the original footage, but i can't say under what conditions it showed up. sometimes it was there, sometimes the audio was pretty clean. mostly, it was pretty windy that week!

thanks, ken, for looking....

[Ken Diewert]

Well, speaking as an H1 owner... we don't want the HV10 to be toooo good.

I could have bought at least 6 of them for the cost of the H1.

[Dale Guthormsen]

Meryem,

I let the clip down load and was not dissappointed. A lot of great footage to be had there. It was interesting that some of the footage that had great depth of field looked like a deep 3d picture you stare at before the image comes out (Kinda). It is good to see it without post incolved. It was great but I don't know if all the big hype is warrented over high quality sd. I would like to have one for a few weeks sometime, preferably an h1.
thanks for the posting the clip.

[Ken Diewert]

Dale,

Meryem's footage was shot in HDV but there's no way that was anything close to uncompressed.

Barlow Elton posted a 10-second clip of 'nearly' uncompressed footage out of his H1 and it was 100MB.

I'm assuming that was downconverted somewhere. Meryem?

[Meryem Ersoz]

yes, this is highly compressed to h.264. i know that not everyone can play h.264 (needs Quicktime 7 or higher to run it on either mac or PC)...but it's really the only codec in FCP that does justice to HDV out of the timeline. in my opinion. when you're already compressing the data this severely, to keep the download time somewhat reasonable, i think it is important to use the best codec possible, even if not everyone can read it.

*soapbox mode on* after all, i had to pay money to buy flip4mac to play .wmv files, and Apple is giving away QT 7 for free...*soapbox mode off*

it's definitely a lot better-looking on my monitor and even looks better down-rezzed and output to SD-DVD...i was actually a little disappointed in the quality of this compression, frankly...i would say that the colors are a bit dull and the chromatic aberration (especially in the opening shot) is accentuated. i'm way more of a shooter than a web guru....but it still shows off the moves that this camera can do....

[Dale Guthormsen]

Meryem, Ken,

Daaa! I forgot totally about the clip not being full resolution. One of those days, busy at work and nobody at home. I need to rent one!!! see for myself.

One thought that keeps coming back to me, is people trying to emulate flim with cam corders moving to high definition when in fact they are trying to soften things. what am I missing there?