I've had a few days with this camera, been testing it against the FX1000 which has served me well filming weddings. Can't give a full review until I use it at a wedding but so far it looks like it exceeds the FX in everyway, especially lower noise in low light.

This test footage was to check the 90 on the Merlin with O.I.S off then on. In the first scene the OIS is off and I didn't have a set screw to fit the 90, so the camera has a bit of bounce on the Merlin while walking. With OIS on it takes this out.

Also checked the DOF and auto focus. Will have to experiment more on this. Wasn't pleased with the way it would'nt re-focus on object until the whole frame was filled, bit concerened about that but it wasn't a person so I would guess that might make a difference.

The last scene was at dusk to check 30db with slow pans with OIS off.

Tim

AG-AC90 on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/akin/ag-ac90)

Screen grab of the 90 and FX1000 in very low light.

90 on the left


http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/members/tim-akin-albums-fx-vs-ac90-picture773-90vsfx.jpg

Thx for sharing. There seems to be something wrong with the screen grab, doesn't open here? (edit: now it works)

I"d be interested to see how the camera handle high contrast scenes, like glaring sun and shadow, especially how it deals with highlights on white shirts or faces and how the highlight roll-off looks like, could you maybe do such a test if you have the time?

I might get this one to replace my xh-a1, it's really cheap here for what it offfers (about 40% cheaper then a canon xf100) and for a compact run and gun camera with sufficient manual controll it's seems like a good camera.

Screen grab of the 90 and FX1000 in very low light.



Can I ask at what gain the fx1000 was compared to the ag90?

Their both zoomed in, the FX is 3.1/ 9db....the 90 is 2.5/30db.

Thx, my father has a fx1000 and when I bhought my cx730 I did put it side by side but only judged based on the viewfinder and my cx730 was equally sensitive but without the excessive noise and with better color reproduction. (the fx1000 was at 21db gain compared to 24 db gain on the cx730) but as it was just a visual comparison on the viewfinder it's hard to see what the real difference was.

I might do a real test tomorrow comparing with that fx1000 again but actual film something, this only to see how the Panasonic compares to my Sony's in low light. (considering that 9db gain on the fx1000 equals 30db on the pana) I"ll match my cx730 then with the fx1000 when at 9db gain and see what gain value my sony is at then.

Noa that would be interesting and I'll try to get some bright shots soon. I've have been concertrating on low light and haven't even thought of how it handles bright highlights.

Always had trouble with the FX and the brides dress in bright lights or in direct sun.

Funny thing, I got a little worried last night testing the 90 around the house with all the lights on. It was adding 28 to 30db of gain in very well light rooms. Went to bed worried about that. Got up this morning early to do some more testing before the sun came up and the first thing I noticed was the shutter was on 180........lol. Changed it to 60 and gain went down to around 13db.....whew....I was ready to send it back!!

Not sure how the shutter got changed.

I'll post some of my notes here as I go in case it might help new users to the AC90.

In dark situations like most receptions will be, when setting the WB, I have to pull back from the white towel I use to set white balance. If the screen is filled completely it will not set. If you move back and only fill 3/4 of the screen it will set correctly.

Not sure if this is a Panny thing or just the 90. The Sony's never set that way.

I know on the GH2 you only need to fill a small portion in the center to get it to set.

I read a bit to fast but now I see you zoomed both camera's in during your low light test and the bigger sensor fx1000 might have an advantage in that case. Is it possible for you to check again with both camera lenzes fully wide with the iris wide open and then set the gain on the pana at 30db and then see what gain value you get on your fx1000 if you match the exposure on both camera's?

I just tested with my father's fx1000 and my cx730 and 15db gain on the fx1000 equals 21db gain on the cx730 and 21db gain on the fx1000 equals 24db gain on the cx730. I attached a framegrab at those values. The cx730 could keep up with the fx1000 at it's highest gain value but was MUCH cleaner. At 24db gain the cx730 switches to a 1/25th shutter so it might not be a fair comparison as the FX1000 was at 1/50 but the image from the fx1000 was allready unusable at 21db gain and the cx730 can be used, switching the shutter to 1/25 on the fx1000 wouldn't do the image any good at 21db gain. The fx1000 was a bit sharper as at those high gain values the image from the cx730 gets softer.

framegrabs here: (it also shows the difference between a 29,5mm and a 26,5mm lens as it is comparable to the ac90.)

730 looks darn good, amazing what these little cams are capable of.

Did some more testing this morning. I wanted to see how much light the 90 needed to get the gain down to 20db or so. I used an HDV-Z96 lamp on the camera and walked around the completely dark house. This cam doesn't need much light to perform well. Dimmed the light to about half its output to get gain down to 18db, as long as there were objects 10 or 12 feet from the lens.

I can see running the lamp even lower than half at receptions to get the gain down. What I have seen so far, the lower the gain the better the background looks. The foreground or subject doesn't seem to look as soft as the background at higher gains above 25db. By soft I don't mean out of focus but more of an excessive noise reduction type look.

Noa, I made a test video with some white cars in the sun and shade but Vimeo is taking a long time to process it. Not sure if it's what you wanted but as soon as it's ready I'll post it.

I noticed that the user can not equate the gain on the 90 with other cameras on a 1:1 basis because the noise reduction is so good in the 90. 18db on my Pann 130 has grain, while no grain at 18db on my 90 albeit a softer but pleasing picture.

I agree, like my framegrabs show the fx1000 is equally sensitive at very high gain values but has a unusable image. But the reason why I asked Tim if he could check was to see how the pana ac90 compared to my cx730 in terms of sensitivity. As he and I have access to a fx1000 I could somewhat compare and have an idea before I made a purchase.

For me it's important to have a camera that can cope with low light, not only it should produce as less noise as possible, which the ac90 has covered, but if it would be on par with a fx1000 at 9db, which it appears to do when at 30db that would barely be sufficient, but could work for me and still be much better then my xh-a1 that get's plain ugly at anything above 6db gain.

I just wanted to know how it compared when the lens was not zoomed in and in Tims test both camera's where zoomed in where the fx1000 might have an advantage. My cx730 lens ramps when you zoom in and looses low light sensitivity very quickly, so it's not an ideal camera to zoom in dark areas but that is something I don"t expect, I just want it to perform when the lens is wide open.

Noa, I'm not sure the FX has an advantage or not. The cams were sise by side and the FX is at f3.1....the 90 f2.5. The FX is f1.6 at wide and I believe the 90 is f1.4.

I will try and test them wide open if I get a chance. Gonna try to get some game footage tonight at a high school basketball game.

that would be great Tim, thx for your efforts.

I found some footage from a wedding done with the camera:
The indoor stuff looks great but I don't like what I see outdoors.

panasonic ac-ag 90 quinceañera - YouTube

Here's a short video of the game footage. I made a quick one for one of our players that broke the all time scoring record at our high school.

I'll try and get some of it up on Vimeo soon as I can.


Robert Hubbs - Flying Dunk - YouTube (http://youtu.be/7026jYzSd_w)

This kid has already signed with the University of Tennessee Volunteers

[QUOTE=Noa Put;1766257]I found some footage from a wedding done with the camera:
The indoor stuff looks great but I don't like what I see outdoors.

I'm not at my editing monitor but on work monitor so I can'r t say for sure. I wonder if there was any color correction done. In some or the outside stuff the sky looks greenish, in other shots more blue.

I do know in that sun if an nd filter was not used, it would be hard to get it right. I have my irish level set to -10 on all scene files but one also.

Hi Tim

Were you not shooting a wedding on last Saturday??? Did you use the AC-90 ?? I'm itching to see if it handles weddings well or not??

Chris

My next wedding is Dec 15th. I can't wait to give it a go.

I can't see the 90 doing bad. At the basketball game I was real impressed with how fast and seemless the auto iris/gain works. I think it's going to be a run and gun dream to use if the images look good. I can't even begain to imagine following a bride in from outside to inside and not have to touch one button......well maybe WB.....that would be fantastic.

Hi Tim

If you inside the venue simply let the cam do an AWT on a nice white tablecloth and it will be balanced for the interior and compensate for the external light too. I'm assuming it works the same way as the HMC's??? That's the way I do bridal entry from outdoors to indoors and it works fine. The AWT in auto just needs around 10 seconds to sample and it will get the lighting right...I seldom need to do a manual WB!!

Looking forward to seeing how it handles a wedding...Is the ceremony in a Church or outdoors...My AWT of the AC-130's was very poor but my HMC's in full auto are deadly accurate!!

Chris

The wedding is indoors. The ATW on the 90 seems accurate but it will shift which can be noticed....but it also has ATW lock, which I like very well.

I think every camera will have a shifting WB if you leave it in auto, what is this atw lock? Is it a in- or outdoor preset?

There was one thing I wanted to ask as well, does the ac90 has the synchro scan function to eliminate flicker that you see on monitors or banding that certain led lights cause?

ATW lock is really cool. After you set ATW, if you push ATW button again it will lock on that WB setting. I see this being useful at receptions when there are bands or DJ's that have different color lights. Lock will keep ATW from shifting once it's set. Only bad thing is you lose it when the cam is turned off.

Haven't seen anything in menu about "synchro scan"

Have you already downloaded the pdf manual?

Do you know what the download link is for the manual? Synchro scan is a feature that's usually on a bit higher end models, I guess the 130 and 160 should have that but the 90 fals a bit between consumer and semi-pro so it could be they left it out.

Manual - Panasonic AG-AC90 - AVCCAM Solid-State Camcorders (http://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/AG-AC90.asp#resources)

Thx! But it doesn't seem to have that, there is a small part referring to the banding issue and they just state to switch either to 1/50 or 1/100 while clear scan allows you to dial in with much smaller increments. Me no like.

What worries me most when doing events is that LED light is being used more and more and those can cause serious banding in your image (dark grey lines moving from top to bottom of your screen.) I Had this issue at a wedding a few months ago where all the venue's light where small led spots and setting the camera at 1/60th shutter didn't help (tried several shutter speeds but none solved the issue), eventhough I was not able to test it I"m almost sure with clear scan you can make the banding disappear. The footage I got then at a reception looked quite bad and the banding is not possible to remove.

I encountered it a few times as well when the DJ have led lights but then only the dancefloor is affected. Will have to think real hard what to do now :)

My on cam light is led, will that cause the banding. I could do some testing if you think it will.

I've only encountered banding with flourescent lights.

Noa, here's the test I did with some white cars in sun and shade. Not sure if this is anything you were wanting to see or not.

Scene settings were Detal Level -2, V Detail -2, Coring +2, M Ped -2, Auto Iris -8, Gamma Cine-Like V, Matrix Cine-Like, everything else 0.

Had to upload to youtube, only 1 HD video a week on Vimeo.

white - YouTube (http://youtu.be/DVnSwABRjSg)

My on cam light is led, will that cause the banding.

No it won't, this only happened to me twice with large led lights from a dj, those that emit different color and then once there where small spots build in the ceiling of a small venue and each spot had 4 small led's, those where really bad. I can only hope I won't encounter this too much.

Thx for the test Tim, looks pretty ok to me, I really would like to see the cam in action at a wedding, guess we have to wait a few months before the first wedding videos appear online.

Well I'll have one on the 15th of this month so I'll know then. I usually have a trailer up within a week if I get to work on it enough.....I'm just part time with video. Those cars you saw in the test is what I do haha

Tim,
your footage has helped me to decide which cams I'm going to get after the first of the year. Thanks for all the hard work, time and effort spent.

No problem Don, I was doing it for myself too. If your like me, you may change your mind several times before the first of the year :)

Hi Tim and Noa

The 90 certainly should have syncro-scan? The 40 and 80 series have it.
I actually don't even use it as it's mainly used if you want to film a TV/monitor/powerpoint show and are getting banding.

LED lights on the camera will cause no problems at all!!! The ones people were complaining about were the ones venues and DJ's were using to light the dance floor/venue

Chris

Here's some more test footage from the basketball game. Scrubbed the timeline and pulled some of the more challenging shots. Fast zooms and pans to see how fast the auto iris/gain could compensate. Very well I would say. Wide shots would have 0 gain and full zoom would go to 18db. It worked fast and looks seamless, not in steps.

The full zoomed shots are i-zoom, there is some degrading and loss of color but not as much as you would expect. I can see using izoom at weddings in a have to case.

You don't have to worry about out of focus shots much because everything is pretty much in focus. If you like those cinema looking blurry backgrounds, you will have to work real hard to get it from this camera. That's not what I want from this camera, it's to get the shot...thats it!

Scene settings were Detal Level -2, V Detail -2, Coring +2, M Ped -2, Auto Iris -8, Gamma Cine-Like V, Matrix Cine-Like, everything else 0.

http://vimeo.com/55027169akin/agac90

The 90 certainly should have syncro-scan? The 40 and 80 series have it.

The manual from the ac90 however doesn't mention this?

The full zoomed shots are i-zoom, there is some degrading and loss of color but not as much as you would expect. I can see using izoom at weddings in a have to case.

Is that something like a digital zoom? The footage from the ac90 is very sharp, however I noticed several shots where you zoomed in completely on the people on the opposite of the room and those where noticeably soft, as if the camera didn't manage to get it into focus, is that the image degradation you mention while using the "i-zoom"?

Yep, that's it. You can read about it in the manual. It says there's no picture quality loss, but I would have to disagree. It's different than digital zoom though. The 90 has that too but I don't see using it. I would have to compare some i-zoom and 2x digital zoom shots to see how much difference there is between the two.

I just read the i-zoom is 25x zoom, (I already thought that amount of zoom in your film was much more then 12x) there was also stated that it was without image degradation, from what I see in your film on Vimeo in HD there is a definitive softness, almost like out of focus degradation going on.

I find it hard to believe that doubling the optical zoom would retain image quality.

The 90 certainly should have syncro-scan?

I just received a confirmation that the ac90 does not have synchro scan, there are only fixed shutter speeds :(
Not the end of the world but could cause issues if you are facing banding and the fixed values don't help.

Hey Noa

That's a bummer for people who need to do shots of computer generated screen projections cos it will cause banding. The 90 also doesn't have a WFM which is a pity but I guess they had to cram a lot of stuff into a tiny body!!!

One of my other concerns is that with such clean gain one would have to be very carefull that your night shoot doesn't appear to look like daylight!! I would think that even with clean gain, a manual exposure would be the right thing to do as autoiris will simply be looking at all this dark background at the wedding reception and then lifting the gain to expose correctly so backgrounds that should be black appears a lot lighter which to me ruins the ambiance?? I go manual at receptions and limit my gain to 10db so the ambience is preserved but of course I need to splash some light on the subject which works well!!

With your DSLR's using your incredibily fast lenses, how do you keep the subject nicely exposed but still keep the background as it should be???

Chris

Again confirmation from Barry that the izoom is a 2 times digital zoom and he recommends to turn it of and to only use it if your shooting standard def, the softness you see in the image at 25x is a result of that.

About the ac90 overexposing at dark reception I wouldn't worry about that much, from the comparison tests in this thread my cx730 should be more sensitive so I think the ac90 will just cope wide open at 30db.

In the "shooting weddings with small handicams" thread I started I posted a video of the last event I did with candle light only in the centre and spotlights on the side of the venue, in those more extreme situations I think the ac90 would have issues getting the "right" exposure because it would underexpose.

About how I keep exposure right is very simple, I always do that part manually :) You can see in Tims basketball video he used auto exposure because you can see the camera adjusting everytime there is close up of someone with a white shirt, the camera sees a large part of that bright white in the image, adjusts to that and underexposes. That's why controlling the iris manually is so important.

My handicams only allow to adjust one thing at the time and I have the knob on the front of the camera set to exposure, there are also 3 assignable buttons on the lcd screen and they are assigned to controlling focus on the touchscreen, turning the ois on or off and to change the white balance to in- or outdoor presets or just to auto.
The camera holds focus very well, also in quite dark places and even in tricky situations with indoor light mixed with outside light it gives a quite accurate color, but with setting the exposure the camera can mess up the most so I feel that at least is the only feature I always should control manually. WB I always set to presets unless it's a mixture of light and then just let the camera decide, focus usually on auto unless I zoom in on a face, then I first fill the viewfinder with the face, switch to manual on the touchscreen and then choose my frame.

With my dslr all is manual but I only use that for controlled situation, I set WB, focus and exposure manually up for every shot before I start shooting, You can however set the ISO at auto to get very gradual changes in exposure if you would make a outdoor to indoor shot in one move on a steadicam, works very well but there is a risk of getting too high gain and a very noisy image, I only use that when I have no other option.

The ac90 has left me a bit sleepless the past days :) I"m not that kind of guy that always wants the greatest and latest and I do have a limited budget. I choose my gear based on what would work best for me and I choose the cheapest camera's possible that can deliver quality that is on a level my clients would accept. I usually go for proven technology so camera's that have been out for a while and where there is enough user feedback to be found so I always do my homework before I buy and don't just pre-order based on speculation, only with my cx730 I did change that approach as I knew the cx series where good so I couldn't go wrong with a updated version, the panasonic ac90 though has left me in a bit of doubt since it is so new but it does offer so much considering it's price and that is what makes it so tempting.

I left my xh-a1 at home mid this year because it's just not up to it's task anymore doing weddings and events and the cx730's are much better, I used the xh-a1 a few times the past years on corporate videos and there it was good enough, there was always sufficient light and then the camera does well, but I have to be honest that at least 95% of what I do is weddings, businessevents and a few danceperformances and those just scream for lightsensitive camera's.

The only thing I miss so much on the handicams is real control like I had with my xh-a1 and that gap the ac90 can almost fill at a price level I can afford now.

I always myself ask if I buy something, "do you need it or do you want it?" :) The ac90 fits that "need" bill partly, I need a camera that gives me control during dance performances AND that can keep focus once zoomed in and locked, the cx730 don't as I found out last time, you zoom in, lock focus and you'd expect it to keep focus then during zooming in and out while you follow dancegroups in close up but it doesn't and that is quite bad. My xh-a1 doesn't cope there anymore because it produces a too flat image and it's hard too color match and its not sensitive enough and produces too much grain.

At the event I did last week I so missed having a real focus ring so I could zoom in quickly on a person and then set exposure and focus manually, now it's so fiddly and you see that sometimes during my filming because I"m messing about on the touchshcreen.

The only few worries I have so far is the missing synchro scan, the fact that colors might deviate compared to my cx730 and it would be hard to color correct, the fact that it might be too sharp to match my small Sonys, but here I guess some sharpening in post can solve this and the fact that the camera has issues with high contrasts like glaring sun a shades because for such a small sensor camera dynamic range is not that good. I have owned a dvx100b and that one too had issues with handling highlights on faces (outside in the sun), similar to what the panasonix af100 is suffering from.

The Sony nex ea50 crossed my mind as well but it's twice the price and it would compliment my dslr's only, that would be great if I was a 2 or 3 man team but as a solo shooter I can't do multicam shoots with 3 dslr's (like a wedding in church) but I can do that with regular deep dof videocamera's and that makes such a difference in the end result.

I have 2 more weddings to do this months and then nothing will happen for about 2 more months, the ideal time to test a new camera before it's put to a paid use but will have to sleep on that some more :)

Hi Noa

I have exactly the same feeling sadly and being undecisive isn't a good place to be! "I want it but what do I do if I'm disappointed with the results" That is exactly what happened to me with the AC-130's..I figured bigger chips, newer camera everything will be awesome and I did the stupid thing (due to budget restraints) and sold the HMC82's as soon as the 130's arrived to offset the costs and they did didn't suit me and that then entailed me selling the 130's at a loss and buying two new HMC82's ... expensive mistake!!

Do you REALLY, REALLY need an AC-90 or do the specs entice you to simply want one??? I look at my HMC 82's and think that the image is absolutely brilliant in good light, the camera has a WOW factor for me since the HMC's still used Leica lenses unlike the AC series. As costly as it was the image of the 130's never impressed me... sure it was sharp as a tack (unless the AF failed) BUT it never ever had a wow factor and I missed that!! I shoot the 82's with the scene files at default so it's a flat image with no enhancements yet the end result is eye popping good! The 90 guys are already using scene files to modify the camera's profile so my other worry is that maybe you need tons of work to make the picture look good????

Sure after 15 db the HMC's are noisy but at weddings I simply lock the gain at 10 or 12db and pop on a LED light and I like what I see!!! Because I'm lighting the subject the camera responds with an equally good after dark image. I'm very reluctant to change at the moment (maybe better the devil you know??)

Yeah the Sony really did perk my interest BUT in low light situations shooting wide I cannot see the stock 18-200 making the grade at weddings so one would need something like a 16mm F1.8 for close work and then maybe a 50mm F1.8 for other reception work....Add two decent fast lenses to the price of over $4K already and you have quite an expensive outlay ...probably anything up to $6K with spare batteries. Do I want to sell my HMC82's for say a $1K - $1.5K on eBay and then have to outlay an extra $5K PER CAMERA to get a better picture ??? At the moment all it costs me are a couple of video lights and the hassle of setting up a light for speeches with 4 x CFL's in it.

Maybe I'll stay where I am and look at the new season and see what the feedback is?? (September 2013) ....However, based on Tim's footage just one AC-90 might be on the cards so my Stedicam and for doing Realty shoots (then againthe 90 is handheld and I really am used to shoulder mount cameras)

See??? I am having sleepness nights too!!!

Chris

I don't "need" the ac90 but I surely need a camera that has more control, for the most of my work the handicams suffice but there have been several occasions the past weddings I wished I had more manual control and currently that is holding me back, it takes too much time to get the shot I want when I need to adjust focus on the touchscreen and for danceperformances the cx730's can have issues holding focus during zooming, you could have them in auto focus but because at a performance they first turn off the light and then turn it on when it starts, the cx730 might take a while before it locks into focus and that is unacceptable. This problem only occurs if i"m too far away from the stage, I had 2 dance performances beginning this year where I was pretty close to the stage and all went well, also when zooming in and locking the focus so I was very happy but the last performance I did I was all the way at the back and had to zoom in completely and then the camera doesn't hold focus anymore during zooming.

So to maintain the quality of my productions I realize now I need something as well with some more controll and it's actually the ac90's prize that has my attention, I mean, it's the same prize as the xa-10, it's a few 100 euro's cheaper then the sony nx30 and both are real handicams in size and functionality. And if the ac90 would be really bad, what I doubt based on barry Greens own experience, if you sell them again you won't loose that much money, even if you sell at half the prize, so I think it's a good investment.

Unlike Canon, Panasonic at least know how to prize their camera's correctly, 16000 euro for a C300 without lens while BMC can deliver a raw camera for 3000, yeah right...

Noa and Chris,

For me, I knew the 90 only had to be as good as the FX. I knew the FX was only good up to 9db of gain and that was streching it. I really had all intensions of sending it back. After I compared the two, I really believe the 90 will be as good as the FX in low light and better than in good light. The FX also struggled with highlights, bright faces and brides wedding dress were sometimes blown out. I learned these situations and tried to not let it happen.

The 90 does have a lot of control but is lacking a couple of things I miss. One thing I'm not sure about,is I don't think you can control focus when in auto-focus. You can't take over with the ring when in auto. It's hard to tell if this is true because the auto focus is so good, it never goes out that I can tell.

The other thing is no limit setting for gain. I really would like to be able to limit the gain when in auto using a light.

Hi Tim

Panasonics work differently!! On the 40/80 Full auto (switch in auto) the camera does everything..if you switch to manual then the focus is STILL in auto and the iris is still in auto BUT the wheels can trim both focus and iris up or down so you can tweak both focus and iris manually. Flipping the switch to auto and back to manual ..resets your changes to the default settings the camera chooses so you have the auto working with the ability to adjust both so it's a semi-auto state. To go full manual you need to switch either focus to manual or iris to manual (or both) A very useful feature!!!

You might have to check the menu cos on the 130 you can also set shutter/iris/focus states in manual so the 90 might have these. I use my 82's in manual but autoiris and autofocus are still active and I can change either or both to a degree. You only have full manual control when you switch each section itself to manual or auto ....It's great cos in a tricky situation in manual I can run focus in auto and iris in manual or vice-versa ..the best of both worlds. On the 82's the camera must be in manual to allow the wheels to work so the 90 should be the same.

Chris

I found the fx1000 delivering a quite good image, much more color standard then in my xh-a1, the canon was known for having a flat image and you did have the possibility to apply presets or to tweak the image but there was no preset I liked and tweaking the image never gave good results so I always did CC in post. It's good that the ac90 gives you that option as well, from experience (with my dvx100b I had) I know that values you"ll find are a good starting point to improve the camera image and they give better results then what I could achieve with my canon. With my small Sony it's take it or leave it but luckily Sony managed to get it right.

Concerning limiting the gain, you should try to do the exposure manual using the lens ring, I too had problems getting the hang of it but after a while it became second nature, it will make a big difference in your image if you get the exposure right, as long as you let the camera decide you will have issues.