Second Camera
 

Hi guys, i am on the market to buy a second camera. I have the canon A1 which i love. But i don't want to buy second A1. I really like the hmc 150 and sony ax2000 but worried about their format. I have adobe cs4, is it possible to use footage from hmc 150 and the sony on the same project or do i have to convert them. Thx

Hi Kiflom

Seriously I do believe that it's better to have matched cameras ..I've seen some horrific wedding footage where the cameras were different!! Panasonic and Sony produce a vastly difference image so IMHO it would be better to either get another A1 or sell it and grab 2 x HMC150's

Others will have different opinions but I like the fact that my A and B roll footage integrates with no need for huge adjustments and matching!!!

Chris

A fair number of people use an HV-40 (or the previous HV 20/30 models) with a Canon XH-A1. Still tape, which may or may not be an advantage for you. There's a thread about colour matching by Taky Cheung linked here http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-xh...ml#post1379340.

I was able to trade away my DVX100 for a HV40... I've been happy so far with it.
It's not hard to match up with my a cam (JVC200U). I just have to add in some gamma, bump the saturation a bit, and it looks pretty darn close.
For the price I think it works great.

Steve

Why stop with one?
 

I got two HV30s right when the HV40s came out, and I love using them. I was in the same situation as you. I would also suggest getting some accessories as these cameras are very small. Since you are doing weddings, a lot of people will be checking out your gear and it would help to add a little 'wow' factor to these little guys. I got a lends hood, and a add-on mic ($14.00 for the hood, $150.00 for the mic). I've seen a lot of different combos out there to improve this cam-not to mention make it look a little meaner.

My third little cam has come in handy so many times, so if you can get one cheap enough I would go for too.

I have an A1s, and my other cams are a 7D with a few lenses and an HF20. Both of those blend well with the A1s footage, especially if you shoot all of the cameras with the flattest profile you can and then color match in post. The HF20 and A1s look remarkably similar in daylight - not so much in low light (the HF20 sucks in low light!)

Good luck, let us know what you end up with!

Thank you guys. i am ok with color because i will do it on post but i am worried about the format. The A1 is HDV and the other AVCHD. Would i be able to edit the avchd footage with canon on the same project on adobe cs4. thx

Grab a copy of VAAST's Upshift and it will transcode your AVCHD into 50mbs HDV effortlessly!!

Works a treat and the software is a mere $49.00!!

Chris

Thx chris, do you how long will it take to transcode?

I only used it on my first wedding and then I discovered that Panasonics MainConcept Transcoder would zap the footage direct to AVI for me.

As far as I can remember I had around 70 minutes of raw footage on each card and Upshift did it in less than 20 minutes per card on my DuoCore 2.2GHz machine which isn't too bad!! I did use the highest quality preset with a bitrate of 50mps and a GOP of just 1 ..I suspect if would be a lot quicker if you tweaked the settings.

They do have a trial version too so if you can get hold of some AVCHD files ..test it out for yourself???

Chris

Sorry i am asking a lot of questions cuz i have several weddings coming up, so do you mean SD AVI. HOw is the quality compared to the row footage. thx (*___________*)

Hi Kiflom

OK, we have a situation here where virtually no-one owns a BD player but everyone seems to have a LCD big screen TV hooked up to a normal DVD player. Since I supply all my brides SD DVD's it made sense to transcode to SD-AVI and let the Transcoder do all the work than let my little DuoCore machine battle with AVCHD editing. Unless you are using a camera with a practical line resolution of over 900 and at least an AVCHD bitrate of 26mbs you are unlikely to spot any resolution difference between HDV to SD and AVCHD to SD or SD to SD. I ran many test disks and on practical footage you can't see any difference even if you look hard....certainly a bride wouldn't spot any difference!! In your case, I would still convert the AVCHD to HDV as the A1 already is HDV and the format renders pretty quickly compared to AVCHD. Just remember that if you shoot interlaced, you will need to get your NLE to de-interlace the source footage before you render to SD as HDV has Upper Field first interlacing and SD has Lower Field first!! If you don't, you will get nasty jaggies when you downsize from 1440 to 720!!!

The Mainconcept Transcoder is of no use to you BTW!! It only works with Panasonic AVCHD files!! so definately stick with dropping your second cam's AVCHD to HDV to match the A1

Chris

Yeah I also use XH-A1 as main cam and HV30 as second cam. And I agreed you really need to gear up the HV30 so it won't look like amatuer in weddings. Lots of guest and bride's uncles will be shooting video at the same time. You do need to have something stand out.

What I do is to

- Add a Raynox 6600 or Canon WD-H43 wide angle lens
- Mount the Xh-A1 lens hood to the wide angle lens
- Add a flash bracket that has 3 shoes Flash Bracket with 3 Accessory Shoes | L.A. Color Shop
- Add video lights to the rig
- Add shot gun mic to the rig

Here's some photos
My Even Newer Twin Lights

- Mount the remote control of HV30 to the tripod handle, then wire the signal using an optical (TOSLink) cable so you can use the remote control as LANC controller.

Cheap solution to missing LANC | L.A. Color Blog

Not to sidetrack the thread, but I don't quite agree with throwing attachments on a camera just to stand out. I checked out that link with the HV30 all decked out with two lights and a mic, etc. It's impressive for sure, but it's also going to 'stand out' and be a bit of an eyesore in my humble opinion. I just think you should add accessories to your camera to improve your product, not to improve your image .. pun intended. d;-)

how about buying sony ax2000 or the panasonic hmc150 to go along my canon xha1. I want to buy for the future but iam worried about hdv vs Acvhd. How is hv30 in low light. Thx a bunch guys, summer is comming up and i want to be ready