How close to 35mm?
 

To those who have seen the footage:
A - In scale of 1-100 how close does the XL H1 image in 24f is to a 35mm film image?
B- How close to Cine Alta?
C- Is it already better than 16mm?
-EDWIN

Just a reminder about the quality of 16mm. "March of the Penguins" currently showing in theatres was shot in Super 16.

I have seen it; I'm probably one of the few people here who have so far (Michael Wisniewski being another). Michael can give his own input, but I'm witholding comment. As this site's administrator, I'd rather not have some nut somewhere trying to accuse me of "driving sales" or whatever due to some perceived influence I may or may not have over our readership.

I don't sell anything on this site. I'm just fascinated by the technology and the creative applications that talented people put this technology to. I don't care if the badge is Canon or Sony or Panasonic or JVC or whatever. It's all good, and it's all exponentially better than what I had back in school.

Our members are smart enough to draw their own conclusion with their own eyes, and there will be plenty of opportunites coming up for DV Info Net folks to judge for themselves the quality of the image this camera outputs.

So where's Mike hiding :)

Michael has posted plenty here... he was our DV Info Net press agent at the H1's announcement at the Canon Expo last week. Search for his name in this forum. Also he uploaded all the first H1 photos in our image gallery.

I was kidding. I guess the sideways smiley face didn't work.

A- What kind of film image?
Which cinematographer shooting the film?
Scanned at 2k? 4k? :p

If you've never shot film, your first shots with this camera are likely to look MUCH better than your first 35mm shots. (Though the wide dynamic range of film scans in Cineon or OpenEXR usually provide much more room for color corection in post than HDV format.)

If you HAVE been shooting with film, chances are your first shots with this won't look as good as what you're used to getting from film.

B- Mmmmm. it's good $90,000 less exensive than the F900 setup. :)
One the other hand, you could probably rent a CineAlta for a weekend for about 20% of the cost of buying one of these.

C- I'm sure that, in the right hands, this will shoot material that looks leaps and bounds better than 16mm in the wrong hands. ;)

I can't really comment much either, except to say the footage was absolutely gorgeous.

They had the H1s in well controlled lighting situations, ALL running HD-SDI straight to HD monitors and Canon's new SED displays. As you can imagine, the video was near perfect.

And since this was a Canon show, even when I turned the cam around, on the show, the lighting at the other booths was also very good. I couldn't take a badly lit pic with my digital cam if I had wanted to. (this wasn't your normally lighted tradeshow, it was all very heavily spot lit) Heck, the EOS stage was facing the H1 stage behind, and they had the digital still and camcorder displays in between.

BUT!
Keeping that in mind, I did do a bunch of fast pans using the 24F and 30F modes with the HD monitors and didn't see any of the artifacts that I associate with the Sony modes, just the normal video motion signatures I'm accustomed to. Whatever Canon's doing with their frame mode, it's different from Sony.

I was also able to spend some time switching the modes, while zoomed in to Canon's very detailed clockmaker display (a setup with tons of very ornate clocks, wood grains etc.) And with my face right up against the HD monitors, I couldn't detect any drops in resolution between the 24F, 30F, and 60i modes.

As it's only an eyeball test, time will have to be the judge.

Nick's post kinda says it all, but assuming your shooting via HD-SDI, it's probably close enough to the Cine Alta to make a lot of people re-arrange their budgets.

Michael or Chris -

Did either of you check out the HDV footage?

I'm sure the HDSDI stuff looks killer.... but I'm curious to know how it compares to the HDV footage you can actually record on camera.

I wonder if you could intercut it without too much trouble....
seeing as not all shoots can be done with a deck attached.

The most important kind of test in my book.

Thanks for the info. I look forward to seeing one myself.

At the Canon Global Expo, the Canon USA video division had the "Studio H1" set, with all the "Watchmaker's Shop" shooting gallery and sample video. All of that was 24F out to HD-SDI. But around the corner from this section was a Canon Inc. (Japan) display of HDV-originated material shot on the H1 at 60i in Florence, Italy.

I've already stated elsewhere that it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the quality of the H1 image, but what I can tell you is that in my opinion it would be to Canon USA's advantage if they can secure some of the Florence material to display at U.S. tradeshows. Hope this helps,

Good !

Maybe they used their "digital still camera" technology in the H1...
I can't wait to see the footage !

thanks

Heheheh--and the weaselwording award of the year goes to--Chris Hurd!!!

It is probably not remotely close to 35mm when projected but the smaller the screen, the less the resolution matters. I think most people in the prosumer world are fairly ignorant of the 2/3" CCD cameras which are a giant leap up from the best 1/3" CCD cams. To me, the limitation of getting a film look has more to do with the CCD size than the resolution. A weekend with a Varicam will make that clear to anyone...



ash =o)