JVC gy-hd200 performance
 

Hi...I am currently using a JVC 51OO to shoot my weddings and am quite thrilled with its overall performance and color scheme..well my question is related to the gy-hd200 performance? I am making a transition from sd to hdv and was jut wondering if the camera's low light performance is "acceptable"...are there any problems or things I would need to watch out for....I know it won't be close to what the 5100 has to offer since it has a bigger CCD but would I be losing a lot of ground when it comes to low-light performance?

I found it to be very borderline with its low-light performance on a number of occasions, especially in exterior shots.

Ditto
 

you must think of your deliverable product you wish to attain, I've got some weddings lined up, but really for a wedding I think your better off with the SD camera with a large chip vs a small chip HD camera, there are a few postings of weddings in this forum with results from this camera, I think most are outside though.
If you work with your own extra lighting as a rule, then go for it, but if you work with at the most a on-camera light, fine for close up and personal, stay with the SD camera and maybe hire a HD cam for people who request specifically for it.
I'm currently getting my workstation together, I'll post a heap of stuff from my outback escapades soon.

(edit - oh yeh, I own a HD251, but have shot with 1/2 SD cams, and even though I'm generally happy with the JVC, when it comes to low light stuff, when you see it back to back you'll see the difference is quite noticeable)

Regards

Adam

Hope this helps
 

This was shot with a HD200 yesterday evening, at a wedding, outside, in low light, by someone who doesn't know shy*t from shynola. Surely someone who can speak openly about the size of their chip, could do a lot better.

Hope it helps.

http://www.gotagteam.com/images/Step...Shtr_30fps.jpg

Sorry about the wrong post..I am new to the site; therefore I didn't know there was section available for weddings and stuff.....by the way..Do any of you know if JVC has any plans of making a HDV camera with a 1/2" CCD....well I always make sure I use my lights during a shoot...both my lights are soft lights with 600watts a piece and I also have a 25watt light on top of my camera....I am hoping this would be enough to accomodate for the "decent" low light capabilities of gy-hd200

No probs Akbar
 

you posted in the right place, I'm just mentioning if you do a search, there's been a few posts which have grabs and footage from this camera.

As I said, I'll end up using my camera for some wedding stuff, but I really bought it for documentary/commercial work. My line of reasoning with this camera is if your in a church for example which won't allow you to bring extra lighting in, then if thats your bread and butter then as you would be aware, light sensativity would be king.

I'm sure there's a lot of guys here who could prob even show in this thread some work, I'll hopefully as I said find time this week to get my workstation up, I did a interview recently in a 100year old farm shearing shed with nothing but a vidled and a bit of ambient light.

Regards

Adam

The Sony is coming up with an XDCam EX, which has 1/2" CCD's, and is priced around 8000 dollars. Coming in november or something.

You can see an HD demo of a wedding shot with 2 HD200's here...

http://www.weddingsonfilm.com/demo_12.htm

There's also some super 8 film mixed in there.

Low light is not a problem if you dial down the shutter speed.

Some beautiful footage there, Justin. You put plenty of guys to shame with that!

Thanks Antony, it takes a long time to get it that tight!

Anyway- the JVC's are fine for low light events like weddings in case anyone was wondering. I'm working on another one with EXTREME low light which will be up on the website in a day or two. I thought we were in trouble when we shot the ceremony but it's turning out quite fine with a lot of postproduction.

Coming from 1/2 inch chips I thought the HD 100/200 series would suffer from lack of DOF with it's 1/3 inchers- but I was way off.

I use the HD100 which is pretty much the same as far as low light performance.

It's not great but it's not terrible either. I always bring my IDX X-3 camera light when I do weddings or shots at night. The light coupled with 9db gain seems to produce very good results for anything within a 15 foot range.

If you want any kind of color detail, you are going to need a light no matter what type of camera you use.

Akbar,

HDV cameras right now, on any brand of small chip camera, are not even close to the low light abilities of a 1/2" sd camera. But there are ways to make the camera work in low light.

You'll notice a major shooting difference from what you're doing with the 5100. Right now you hit a dark area or a dark reception and you probably just open the iris and flip on your on camera light. Maybe you even add a little gain of 3 or 6 db because it looks fine right? With any hdv camera you'll be doing all of that plus knocking down your shutter rate to 30/sec. And you'll also need to start using a 50 or 75watt bulb because 25 watts diffused won't make a scratch on the quality of the footage. This holds for all the current hdv cameras whether it's the jvc, or any other brand. Hdv needs a lot more light than sd.

Of the current lot of cameras, the jvc probably makes the best tranistion from outdoor, well lit footage, to indoor, dark footage. If you start shooting your material at 30fps, when it gets dark and you have to lower the shutter to a 30th/sec., you'll notice virtually no difference in the look of the footage. Try that with a 1080i camera that's shooting at a 60th/sec. outdoors and then a 30th indoors and it's like night and day. And honestly, once I bought my jvc and started using it full time at 30fps I really started to like the feel of the footage that it produced.

I've shot some excellent footage at receptions. But it's only looks good as long as the on camera light is hitting the subject. You definitely lose a lot of the background detail that you could have had in sd.

If Sony comes through on their talk of the EX cam then that will be a very good camera to look at. But right now in the current market, I think that the JVC is the best suited camera to handle low light situations.

Ben

Thanks Ben for the detailed response...definitely put things into perspective...as a matter of fact I must say I am quite amazed with all the valuable information posted on this forum...THANK YOU ALL....I am just suprised I never came across this forum before....but better late than never =)....my initial plan for purchasing the hdv camera was within the year's end....I have never doubted JVC's ability to produce good cameras....I'll wait and see what sony has to offer..and If sony comes out with a 1/2" ccd then I am sure JVC will too.....quite excited now =)..thanks all of you.

Previously on this forum I posted my experiences shooting with the HD200 in DV mode. I said I thought the video was dark and fuzzy.
Well, I realized that was because my back focus was slightly off and I was importing the video into my AVID with bad video levels. I corrected the settings, and now the pics I import look very good. The colors are very rich. Sure, the blacks are crushed compared to 2/3" chip cams but I just have to be more careful with the settings when I import and boost the black levels. I've shot several commercials in DV mode and I'm happy with the results. More importantly, my clients are happy.
Lately, I've been shooting HDV in our Sony Z1 and importing it as standard def into my AVID (it's not HD capable) via component cables. The results are simply amazing. As soon as I can get my hands on a JVC deck, I'll do the same with my HD200. I'm getting a Mac G5 with FCP 2 installed soon. I'll then go full HDV on all my shoots.
I'm very impressed with the HD200.

Hi Glen

why don't you just get a DR-HD100 you won't need a deck to do HDV

just a thought
joe