HD-100 online clips montage wmv and DivX
 

This is for people who haven't seen anything from the HD-100. I made a short montage showing some clips and screen captures of footage gathered from the web. I have worked with all posted clips (that I could find) but not all clips are in the montage. The footage has been easy to composite, color correct, scale and do title composites with. Great quality and I expect the camera, in the right hands, will be a great tool for aquisition.

Click here for wmv

Click here for DivX 6

Sorry Mac guys, no H.264. Quicktime 7 Pro still does not work quite right on Windows. I posted DivX for you.

I do not own an HD-100 and have only worked with the supplied clips. The m2t's speak volumes to me in the quality that can be obtained. I have other composites and video test. If anyone cares to see them, let me know...

Thanks for doing that... but the page is no available! Can you also post a version with no color correction?

Server issue, Try it again....

I am on a Mac and my Windows Player v.9 won't play it. It says it doesn't support the codec that was used to compress the file. The VLC player cannot play it either. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Same Here. Try QT please.

Oh, and thanks for posting it!!!

Stephen,

Feel free to use any of the "available street light" clips in my public folder.
http://homepage.mac.com/timdashwood/public

I haven't published the results of this impromptu test yet, but all shots were only reading 2 footcandles or less.
I've been experimenting with gamma curves and trying to obtain +12dB equivalent exposure in 0dB. Things are VERY promising so far, but there is more work to be done.

Tim

Mac guys and gals,

I posted a DivX encode at the top of the thread. I hope you can view it. QT7Pro still has 'issues' with Windows XP right now so no H.264 encode available yet. Sorry..

I'm going to check into that. Thanks for posting those...

Tim,

I checked out the m2t's.

First the good news. I didn't see any split screen effect and the black level was consistent across the entire frame. I brought the black low and mid up just to see how much noise there was in the picture at 0 db and it was very even across the board noise wise. Your street lights do not illuminate to 60 lux do they? What was the lux on the street shots? All in all it was a decent showing.

Second the bad news. The CA is overwhelming on the street shots. I did a selective color correction to desaturate the CA and the street scenes evened out. I can't see using the stock lens at low lux, can you?

Stephen

I have no idea how to measure lux. "Damnit Jim, I'm a DP...not an engineer!"
I use footcandles.
The incident light reading for the guy's face was under 2 footcandles. How many lux is that?
The needle on my lightmeter barely moved.

As for CA. I think you may be confusing flaring for traditional CA. The DVX exhibits the same characteristics when light is focused straight into the lens. Multi-coloured fringing and flaring is a chromatic aberration at heart, but is to be expected on all CCDs using zoom lenses when light is focused down the barrel.
Real CA is much more noticable on well lit scenes with any straight lines near the outer edges.

The one thing the DVX does handle much better is the "vertical" streak. The denser the pixels, the more streak. This is one big disadvantage of 1/3" HD CCDs, and care must be taken to avoid hot spots.

Here's the HD100 flaring from headlights (I also noticed some split):
http://homepage.mac.com/timdashwood/...0_flaring2.jpg

Here's an indirect hotspot on the HD100:
http://homepage.mac.com/timdashwood/...0_flaring1.jpg

Here's some weird stuff happening on hot spots on the DVX100 (notice the bad 4:1:1 colour sampling on the red tailights):
http://homepage.mac.com/timdashwood/...ing/DVX_CA.jpg

Here's the DVX flaring at +12dB. Very controlled vertical streaking. It almost looks like they have a cross/star filter built in.
http://homepage.mac.com/timdashwood/...flaring+12.jpg

Hi Tim,

Here is the formula to change footcandles into Lux:
1 Lux (lx) = 1 Footcandle (fc) x 10.76
In your scenario you listed 2 footcandles which would be approximately 20 lux. That is very little light. BTW: Click here for light formulas

I thought maybe I'd looked at the street images incorrectly. The white balance has led the entire frame to be purple. I did a 2 point gray balance on the frame and it got rid of alot of purple and the images seems alot better. The cityscape shots do display CA though. I couldn't get rid of it with a simple gray balance.

Click here for DivX AVI of white balanced image

All in all it's a great showing for 0 gain @ 20 lux. It certainly is fun working with these images. Fantastic camera...

OK. So assuming the manufacturer's specs for rating the DVX is ƒ11 @ 2000 lux and the HD100 is ƒ8 @ 2000 lux, the ASA ratings at 1/48th shutter speed should be 1000ASA and 500ASA respectively. This makes no practical sense, so I'm not sure where I went wrong in the calculations.

I used 3200K preset, and the street lights were obviously not 3200K. Try using the still shot of the Macbeth colour chart to balance.

I you liked those quick and dirty tests, then you'll love the stuff I shot last night in the same conditions (3footcandles key) in the rain. I can't wait to post it.

I've been away for a couple of days so I need to catch up.

Tim

Tim D,

It'd be great to see the clips!

Tim, I know you've got a lot of stuff online... if you ever need any help with hosting clips, I'll be happy to make some DV Info Net server space and bandwidth available to you.