Hi Bob,

Suppose that some one shot identical scene with the Z7
and the famous HD-900F at equal resolution..

Could you tell which one is which?

VMP

We already did this one, at Sundance Film Fest when the Z1 was first launched. Several famous DPs and camera ops were part of the "experiment" as they came through the festival.
Ran about 60-40 that "guessed" incorrectly.

Hi Spot,

Wow thats a pretty big amount of people.

Considering the 100k s of dollar price difference between the cameras.

I guess all cams have their 'own little things' that they are meant to be good at.

I remember you, or Bob (farss) telling me some years ago on this forum that beside the camera there are many factors to look at for making a good shot.

For example lighting setting etc.

It are moments like these that I realise the truth of that statement.

VMP

Lighting and exposure, IMO, are the major part of what separates everyone from each other once the camera is settled out.
I've seen stunning, knock you on your a$$ footage from a CX7 camcorder, and recently saw some very embarassing (I'd be embarassed) footage from a Varicam. Technology is great, but having the tools don't give you the talent or technique.

Lighting and exposure, IMO, are the major part of what separates everyone from each other once the camera is settled out

Exactly correct. I've been doing this since I was nine years old, and I still have yet to take a decent picture or capture any footage that looks good. Technically, I know a whole lot, but I still can't sculpt with light.

Funny you should mention that. I've pulled off the odd (very rare) great looking shot, by accident. According to all the books I've read and DVDs I've watched it shouldn't have worked and yet it looked great, well it did to me.
My best advice is don't listen to anyone, including me. Try lots of things. Try shooting against black, wow!
All the books say that's a no no, and yet it can work very, very well.
Not to say that I can't and haven't done the 3 point bog standard lighting thing but yuck, you end up looking like everyone else.
And then I read the term "motivated lighting" . Now there's a thought. And then I read one well regarded DoP say "I don't know how to light people, I light spaces and people move through them". Another thing to think about.

Bob.

This will depend upon your needs for low light shooting. In other words the sizes of the imager will play an important roll here. In general HD cameras will not give you the light gathering abilities of SD cameras particularly that of your VX2000.

That said, an equal in light gathering ability to your VX2000 would be the Sony HVR-7ZU HDV camcorder. There was a really good writeup on the camera in this month's Event DV. According to the article, it is the equal of the PD-170 in light gathering ability.

However, in a head to head comparison (that I can't locate at the moment) with the Sony PMV-EX1 the HVR-7ZU was the winner in technical light gathering ability, but in comparison shots they all preferred the sharper images of the EX1 because of the "perceived brightness" of the EX1 images. They were sharper due to the 1/2 inch imagers in the EX1 vs the 1/3 inch imagers in the 7ZU.
In other words, you know those shots with the VX2000 in a stage lit theater zoomed out where the people's faces look like incandescent blobs with little or no features? The VX2000 is gathering the light really well, but not the detail due to the smaller imagers. The Z7U will do the same. The EX1 on the other hand may not gather quite as much light, but with certain settings under those conditions will show the details thus giving a better looking image.

The other intolerable problem with the Z7U that I have read in more than just the report in Event DV is the focus. For hand held shooting the focus control will work well. For tripod shooting I don't know what kind of rocks the designers had in their heads. You have to pull the focus ring back toward you to switch from autofocus to manual focus. That could very easily cause camera shake. To make matters worse, unlike the push to focus button on the VX2000 (and most other serious cameras), the Z7U doesn't have one. So lets say you are tripod shooting a stage event where the lights go up and down. You have to use manual focus for that. If you want to quickly focus then lock manual again you have to move the focus ring forward focus really fast then quickly back again instead of just pressing a little button like you do on the VX2000. That is likely to jerk the camera or at the very least show a delayed focus. That to me is intolerable.

For the same price, I would recommend the EX1.

John

Those few times when I've shot theater stuff with a spotlit performer I've happily discovered that my FX1's "Spotlight" function actually works pretty decently most of the time (it relies on the autoexposure mechanism but drops the average light level down about 1-2 stops). Maybe I've just been lucky so far. It sure makes life simpler than constantly riding the gain or f-stop in a production where lighting changes significantly and frequently.

Those few times when I've shot theater stuff with a spotlit performer I've happily discovered that my FX1's "Spotlight" function actually works pretty decently most of the time

I wish I could say the same. I shoot 2-3 stage performances a year with my FX1 and use the spotlight mode. If I have the zebras turned on, I almost always need to provide additional gain adjustments. My "solution" was to use the spotlight function but then I also set up the PPV menus so that each one has a negative AE adjustment, with PPV1 set to AE -1, PPV2 set to AE -2, etc. I can then just scroll through these until the zebras disappear. If I do so slowly, the exposure shift isn't too jarring.

However, the spotlight function is certainly better than NOT having the spotlight function.

Now if I could somehow figure out how to get some combination of settings that will work when transferring 16mm film to video. Even with spotlight and an AE of -5, I still sometimes lose the highlights. Capturing the gamma of film to video is something that still eludes me.

Thanks for your replies.

Beside live elements I will be shooting allot of blue/ green screens as well for keying.

The current SD DV format that I am using now is actually terrible for that.

I was hoping that the 'outlines' and artifacts will be less visible by using the HDV format/ Camera due to its higher resolution.

Anyone used your HDV cameras for keying with good results?

And how about the audio recording (noise) of the cameras are you happy with that?


VMP