Sell GL-2 to buy HD10?
 

After seeing the great job Kevin Wong did on “The House” (link below), I’m beginning to think I should’ve gone with the HD10 instead of the Canon GL-2, which I bought about a year ago. At that time the HD10 was about $1500 more and people were anticipating Sony or Canon would be coming out with their own HiDef camera, so I thought I'd wait before going HD. But Kevin shows what a capable DP can do with good lighting.

Now I’m thinking of selling the GL-2 to get the HD10. Although I did a couple of shorts with the GL-2, I’ve been using it primarily to videotape bands playing live in small clubs. I’ve been pretty happy with the results under these less than ideal lighting conditions. Any idea how the HD10 would respond under club/stage lighting? Should I wait the 6-12 months before we see a 3 chip HiDef camera?

Thanks in advance,
Aldo.

"The House" link:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?threadid=30705

Here's what everyone tells those with questions like, should I buy now or wait? Can you afford to hold onto your GL2 and make money and buy the 3 chip HDV cameras, or do you financially need the HD10 now?

heath

I did the same thing, I sold my GL2, and purchased HD10.

My conclusions so far.

I don't own a mac, so I can't speak for it, but Editing on a PC is slow.

I have tested ASPECT HD, and it seems to work ok, if you have the harddrive space, it captures the files and uses it's own HD Codec to edit.

Vegas, and the Mainconcept MPEG Pro Plugin are slow. I have used the HD capture utility that comes with the HD10 to import clips into PC, sometimes the MPEG Pro plugin will not import a clip and call it bad.

I own a Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz 1GB Ram Serial ATA Drives/7200.

Bad lighting with camera produces some pretty bad video. I was so happy with my GL2 under low light situations, the HD10 is just not as nice, there is alot of chroma noise and colors are not good under poor light.

Forget everything you've learned about run and gun and low-light with DV cameras when using the HD10 or HD1. Think of it like shooting higher-end HD or film: Lights! Tripod (as often as possible)! Filters, when needed!

You should get great stuff when you control the shoot. I miss that aspect of DV, being able to do stuff in little to no lighting, etc.

heath

Yes to a tripod or steady-gimbal support. The optical stabilization on the JVC is almost nil. I think Sony has some nice patents on that stuff. I almost thought my camera was defective because of the stabilizer not working like I'm used to.
-Les

I agree with that 100%!!!!!!!!!!1

Do it !
 

I moved from a GL1 with a Century 16:9 anamorphic adapter to the HD1 and although I love the 3CCD Canon and its colors, I would do it again in a microsecond. The HD10 is even a bit better so go for it. The reason why I bough the HD1 was a $400 rebate on top of the already lower price. With the rebate I got almost for free a DVHS VCR and then I bought a nice Audiotecnica microphone in order to bypass the built-in wind sensitive thing.
I recently went to shoot a group of gliders here in Southern California. There was a number of jaws dropping when they saw what this camcorder is capable of. If you have good light this thing is a killer.
Only thing that bother me is color temperature. Although adjustable I found it to be still too cold in the winter/early spring . In the summer it is just great. I think that although the temperatur setting works, the curve is not very linear. In any case this camera is one of the biggest value for the money. THe other thing the almost impossible setting of a certain aperture with a certain exposure in manual; it is pretty much either or, although some trics allow it.
It would be crazy to buy anything else unless there are specific technical reason to do so. For general purpose use, taking care of lights and as somebody said with a few filters used in certain situations, this camera kicks royal a$$. If you move on to this camera you will never look back. I sold my honorable GL1.

Gabriele

I forgot to say
 

About the computer, everybody has to understand that we are talking HDTV here. I saw the previous post about a slow P4 2800. I strongly suggest a dual processor for HDTV. I do have a dual Athlon (and a 4 Opteron in the making) and I don't see problems at all. ALso, it is reccomendable to have a RAID , better if SCSI at 10000 RPM or higher with 4 or 5 disks in striping. They are amazingly fast. It is important to have a lot of memory and the swap file on the RAID volume.

Gabriele

Aldo,

I think a lot would depend on what you mean by "club lighting". Relative to your Canon, the HD10 does NOT like low-lux situations.

The lack of good image stabilisation in handheld situations, and the difficulty in obtaining sufficiently accurate focus in a fast-moving club situation would be additional concerns.

But .... if you can address those issues with lighting and stabilisation, it will definitely blow DV footage out of the water!

Stabilization
 

I agree that low light and AF are not the forte' of this camera but I kind of disagree about the stabilization, I find this camera pretty good and my Canon stabilization wasn't any better. Clearly they are both quite far from the stabilization available in the high end lens for fotography made by Nikon or Canon but I found to be pretty good all things considered.

Thanks for all the helpful replies. Since 80% of what I videotape is in a club setting, the comments about slow focusing, stabilization, chroma noise and poor colour rendition under low lighting conditions have made me decide to hold tight and wait for the 3 chip HD camera. I'm getting a few bands to hire me to tape their shows and they're all impressed with the quality of the GL-2 footage. The last thing I'd want to do is give them something with less than 3 chip quality.

Like Heath suggested, I can continue to generate income with the GL-2 to save up for next year's (??) 3 chip HiDef camera.

Cheers,
Aldo.

To be honest, the 1 chip HD mode is still AWESOME! Do some research, but if you don't need it yet, wait.

Also, when you're ready to sell, try doing so in our Private Classifieds section.

And when you're ready to buy your new HDV camera, check out some great deals from our sponsors!

heath

Aldo, do a test yourself
 

Try to find a way to test the camera. The GL2 value will quickly go down, you may want to sell it quick.

FYI all my GL1 tapes are working perfectly on the HD1. I know of people having problems going from Canon to Sony with the old tapes being unreadable.
Actually they work even better, not only I don't have any error reading them but I go straight out in component video (when I display them from the camera) and I've another kick in quality.
Gabriele