A few HV20 frame grabs
 

Have been shooting quite a bit with this camera and it's pretty amazing. It's exceeded my expectations. I've uploaded some frame grabs here...

Flickr HV20 Frame Grabs collection

Nice detail and color Wes. These cams continue to amaze me.

Thanks Wes, obviously the video side of the camera has been occupying most people's attention but it's good to see what the still capability is, definitely a far cry from the poor imagining in camcorders of the past. Beautiful cat also!

Charles, those are actually all frame grabs from video. The full motion video just blows me away. I haven't even tried the digital still camera part of it yet, actually just got a mini-SD card in the mail today so hopefully soon. My point and shoot (Canon S400) recently died for the second time so I'm thrilled at the manual controls that this camera has in still mode. Just having the manual focus is really going to be nice.

Another note on the still capabilities of the camera is that I'm going to use this for stop-motion animation for sure. I've tried stop-motion with my point and shoot and it just doesn't work, not enough manual controls. And I can't justify a DSLR just for the occasional stop-mo hobby animation. So I always go back to my DV camcorder connected to a computer, cumbersome but I have some manual control. With the HV20, you get all the nice manual controls in still mode, plus a photo button on the remote so you don't have to disturb the camera... nice.

Amazing shots Wes...

Thanks Chris! I just did some tests of the still image capture and it's really good. I did a quick stop-mo using the remote and that works nicely. The image quality is super. I'd upload video but my web hosting is pretty weak.

I added a still picture and video grab comparison so you can see what the full still mode captures. The still pictures look pretty darn good.

Still mode comparison

Very nice! The frame grabs appear to look slightly better than the stills.

have those images been photoshop tweaked or is that raw straight out of the camera?

image quality comparable with $3000 camera!

Thanks Glenn and Owen. Glenn, I agree, frame grabs tend to look a little nicer than digital stills but I think this is a product of the compression used. Some stills I've taken have had horrendous JPEG compression on them, and all my stills are taken in the highest quality mode so that's a little dissapointing.

Owen, I don't think I did anything to any of these in Photoshop. Everything's in camera! A lot of times in my hunt to avoid clipping I underexpose also, such as the dark shot of the cat looking directly into the camera. I'll say it again, use the Low Sharpening filter and the video just sings.

I find a frame that doesn't have pull-down added, then export it from MPEGStreamClip to 1440x1080 TIFF, then resize it in Photoshop to 1440x810 then upload it to Flickr which doesn't allow me to upload that large of an image. But Flickr's resizer seems to do a decent job.

Wes, your shots make me want to spend the 2200 less on the A1 and just go with the HV20. What is your background in video/photo to get these amazing shots from this camera? HAve you hooked it up to an HDTV, does it look remarkably well? Do you have any comparison to an A1 at all?

Hopefully I am not asking too many questions, but your post here makes me think twice about my future investment

Wes, I think many people underexpose their shots when using zebra stripes. If you look at pro footage with megabuck cameras, there are many many times they have areas overexposed so as to get the main subject rendered properly. I would use zebras judiciously.

I think you at least need to set zebras at 100. The testing I have done shows this camera will blow out quickly.

Thanks Eric. I'm no pro shooter but I have shot Super 8, 16mm, and all the video flavors for my own videos and some televised shows. It's very easy to shoot really ugly video with the HV20 but with a little practice with the manual controls you can get a nice picture quickly. If you are shooting a setup where you have control over your lighting and subject matter you can get amazing video. I don't have an HDTV but I have a really nice CRT (Apple Studio 17") and the video looks absolutely stunning on it. Everything I shoot has the low sharpening filter which I think makes a world of difference.

Ken and Chris, both good points to keep in mind.

Wes
 

Talking of Pushing the boundary's !!!!

Beautifull shots ! / Go my man --- GO !

Herman.