Jon Fordham
January 14th, 2004, 04:30 PM
First off, let me say to those of you who have been looking forward to, waiting for, and even bitching at me about the footage from the comparison I shot between the HD10 and the Varicam, the footage is coming. The downconverts were done shortly before Christmas and clones are now in Heath's possesion. It's now up to Heath and the powers that be to post the footage for you to view. I trust that the footage from the HD10 will also be downconverted to Standard Definition DV25 for proper comparison. If comparison of the footage in Standard Definition is unacceptable, then someone will have to volunteer to post the footage from both cameras in High Definition. I will make the Varicam footage available to anyone in New York City who has the proper facilities to capture and post the 1280x720 DVCPROHD tapes. These HD masters are however part of a film that is currently being offlined. Therefore the HD masters will not leave the producer's possesion. Either myself, the producer, or director will accompany the footage to the facility to oversee the capture and leave with the tapes in thier possesion. If you or an associate of yours wants to take on the responsibility of doing this capture for the sake of this board, then I will accomodate.
Now, on to the next chapter of my experiences with the HD10...
As Heath has already posted, he and I made some time to meet up and shoot a little short film with his HD10 over the Christmas Holidays. Heath and I have known each other for awhile and have been discussing my involvement as Director of Photography with his upcoming feature film. We both wanted a chance to see how we worked together and a short film with the HD10 seemed like reason enough to test out our working relationship.
Prior to this I had been doing some informal tests with the HD10. After putting it next to the Panasonic HDC27F Varicam, I spent a couple weeks doing some side by sides with the DVX100. I attempted to convince Heath to shoot this short film with the DVX100, but he was much more interested in working with the HD10 for tests purposes.
The script, entitled "Release Me", was a modest page and a half. We wanted to take our time and not make a big production out an informal test of our working relationship and HD10 curiousity.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that we didn't want to make a big production out of this one and also because we did not have a proper budget, I did not have the size of crew that i am use to working with. Nor did I have the size G&E package that I am accustomed to. Leaving us at the mercy of circumstance and our own ingenuity.
After doing some shooting with the HD10, I've found the edge enhancment (yes, even on the HD10) to be objectionable. I chose to use a light to moderate diffusion filter. I removed the JVC lens hood and replaced it with a Cokin A series modular hood and attached a C830 diffuser. For those who have asked, I used the A series size for two reasons. One, because they are the perfect size for the smaller handycams like the HD10. And two, because it fit much nicer in my backpack on the plane trip to Florida. And Heath owes me some warmer sunshine cause when I got to Florida it was ridiculously cold that week... :) And if Florida weather is cold to a guy who lives in NY then something is definately wrong.
The shooting conditions consisted of a handful of day exterior shots coupled with some day interiors and some night interiors.
The only G&E I had at my disposal was a Arri tungsten kit consisting of 2 650's and 2 300's, 4 stands, and few sheets of 250 & black wrap.
We started out with the day exteriors. The shot consisted of few angles of a couple putting some boxes in a SUV, getting in and driving off. With no 12x silk, no HMI's, no bounce boards, and no crew, I was forced to shoot with natural and available light only. Heath and I chose to put the SUV in a spot with as much shade from direct sunlight as possible. This helped out a great deal, but did not completely shield them from sunlight.
Immeadiately I had problems with highlights. The sunlight hitting the SUV's corner in a wide shot, hit the diffuser and created a bit too much of a noticeable higlight 'ping' in my opinion. Not enough to justify losing the diffuser, but enough for me to wish I had more control over the light.
Next we moved into MED's and CU's. These put us out of direct sunlight and the exposure evened out a bit. Unfortunately, I was again plagued by lack of control. This time the choice was between locking exposure or locking shutter speed. I chose to lock the exposure only to find that my shutter speed decided to change and compensate for my exposure level! We got through the MED's and CU's of the talent and decided we'd try a shot from inside of the SUV looking out of the actor opening the rear door and placing one of the boxes inside. I knew this probrably wasn't going to work. But we decided to try it anyway. In true HD10 form, the camera tried compensate for the changing light levels, going from a bit underexposed to drasticly overexposed, then clamped down to exposure, then to drastic underxposure... We tried it twice locking different single values down, but in the end we weren't able to get a shot that was usable from beginning to end. Perhaps the magic of post will be able to cut around it.
After getting the exteriors we moved inside for the rest of the shoot. With AC power, I was now able to use a small 19" consumer television. Certainly not perfect, but a much appreciated CRT to view my shots. Unfortunately, being a consumer television we couldn't monitor our images in a letterboxed form showing us the "real" top and bottom of the frame. Heath and I found that the HD10 will only display a letterboxed image live when there is no tape loaded. Even with the menu set to "4:3 TV". Whether or not this is a quirk of Heath's unit or particular to all HD10's I don't know. I don't recal reading about such a function in the manual, but i could've missed it. The fact that once I noticed what it was doing, it continued to follow the same pattern of displaying a letterboxed image only without the tape loaded, makes me think that this a design of the HD10 and not a defect of Heath's camera. We pressed on viewing the image in its anamorphic state.
Now, on to the next chapter of my experiences with the HD10...
As Heath has already posted, he and I made some time to meet up and shoot a little short film with his HD10 over the Christmas Holidays. Heath and I have known each other for awhile and have been discussing my involvement as Director of Photography with his upcoming feature film. We both wanted a chance to see how we worked together and a short film with the HD10 seemed like reason enough to test out our working relationship.
Prior to this I had been doing some informal tests with the HD10. After putting it next to the Panasonic HDC27F Varicam, I spent a couple weeks doing some side by sides with the DVX100. I attempted to convince Heath to shoot this short film with the DVX100, but he was much more interested in working with the HD10 for tests purposes.
The script, entitled "Release Me", was a modest page and a half. We wanted to take our time and not make a big production out an informal test of our working relationship and HD10 curiousity.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that we didn't want to make a big production out of this one and also because we did not have a proper budget, I did not have the size of crew that i am use to working with. Nor did I have the size G&E package that I am accustomed to. Leaving us at the mercy of circumstance and our own ingenuity.
After doing some shooting with the HD10, I've found the edge enhancment (yes, even on the HD10) to be objectionable. I chose to use a light to moderate diffusion filter. I removed the JVC lens hood and replaced it with a Cokin A series modular hood and attached a C830 diffuser. For those who have asked, I used the A series size for two reasons. One, because they are the perfect size for the smaller handycams like the HD10. And two, because it fit much nicer in my backpack on the plane trip to Florida. And Heath owes me some warmer sunshine cause when I got to Florida it was ridiculously cold that week... :) And if Florida weather is cold to a guy who lives in NY then something is definately wrong.
The shooting conditions consisted of a handful of day exterior shots coupled with some day interiors and some night interiors.
The only G&E I had at my disposal was a Arri tungsten kit consisting of 2 650's and 2 300's, 4 stands, and few sheets of 250 & black wrap.
We started out with the day exteriors. The shot consisted of few angles of a couple putting some boxes in a SUV, getting in and driving off. With no 12x silk, no HMI's, no bounce boards, and no crew, I was forced to shoot with natural and available light only. Heath and I chose to put the SUV in a spot with as much shade from direct sunlight as possible. This helped out a great deal, but did not completely shield them from sunlight.
Immeadiately I had problems with highlights. The sunlight hitting the SUV's corner in a wide shot, hit the diffuser and created a bit too much of a noticeable higlight 'ping' in my opinion. Not enough to justify losing the diffuser, but enough for me to wish I had more control over the light.
Next we moved into MED's and CU's. These put us out of direct sunlight and the exposure evened out a bit. Unfortunately, I was again plagued by lack of control. This time the choice was between locking exposure or locking shutter speed. I chose to lock the exposure only to find that my shutter speed decided to change and compensate for my exposure level! We got through the MED's and CU's of the talent and decided we'd try a shot from inside of the SUV looking out of the actor opening the rear door and placing one of the boxes inside. I knew this probrably wasn't going to work. But we decided to try it anyway. In true HD10 form, the camera tried compensate for the changing light levels, going from a bit underexposed to drasticly overexposed, then clamped down to exposure, then to drastic underxposure... We tried it twice locking different single values down, but in the end we weren't able to get a shot that was usable from beginning to end. Perhaps the magic of post will be able to cut around it.
After getting the exteriors we moved inside for the rest of the shoot. With AC power, I was now able to use a small 19" consumer television. Certainly not perfect, but a much appreciated CRT to view my shots. Unfortunately, being a consumer television we couldn't monitor our images in a letterboxed form showing us the "real" top and bottom of the frame. Heath and I found that the HD10 will only display a letterboxed image live when there is no tape loaded. Even with the menu set to "4:3 TV". Whether or not this is a quirk of Heath's unit or particular to all HD10's I don't know. I don't recal reading about such a function in the manual, but i could've missed it. The fact that once I noticed what it was doing, it continued to follow the same pattern of displaying a letterboxed image only without the tape loaded, makes me think that this a design of the HD10 and not a defect of Heath's camera. We pressed on viewing the image in its anamorphic state.