Iris control
 

Hi, has anyone had any trouble with their iris control? Maybe i'm doing something wrong (hopefully) the iris seems to get stuck on either 2.8 or 2.4 i'm shooting in full manual mode? I lets me close it all the way up, but won't let me past 2.4. Can anyone help? Thanks

it wont open up any further if you are zoomed all the way in on telephoto shots. If you are full wide, it will open up to 1.6. All stock DV cameras do this.

- ShannonRawls.com

Thanks Shannon, that's all I needed to know. :-)

Just curious if 2.8 is the highest it reports when zoomed in, or if it goes to 3.5? In reading the specs, the lens is 1.6 to 3.5 - so I guess I was assuming that if you zoomed all the way in, the viewfinder would report 3.5 when you're 'open', and that it would go to 1.6 when you're wide. A good couple of stops difference.

I'm very interested in the camera (after not thinking about it at all). This was one of the only concerns I had with it on paper, all things considered. That is, what it's low light performance might be zoomed in.

I have the Z1 and HD100, and have been waiting for the HVX200 like everyone. This H1 seems pretty nice by all accounts, which has got me thinking...

Thanks,

Shawn

Dear Shawn,
Our camera reports up to 1/1.6 fully wide and up to 1/3.4 (!) at maximum focal length. Perhaps we have got a better lens than the specifications ... (Or just a round off in its computer.)
When comparing with other cameras, please take into consideration that full tele is 108 mm which should give a smaller field of view compared to other cameras with fixed zoom lens.

The viewfinder information can be set to show the zoom factor from 0 up to 99 %. (I don't know if this is linear distributed from 5.4 to 108 mm but I assume that.) If you are interested in numbers here we go:

For instance, it will show a maximum aperture of 1.6 from 0 % zoom up to 36 % where it changes to 1.8 indication.
At 65 % it changes to 2.0.
At 81 % it changes to 2.2.
At 87 % it changes to 2.4.
At 90 % 2.6.
At 92 % 2.8.
At 95 % 3.2.
At 97 % 3.4 up to 99 %.

I havn't compared this to Z1, HVX etc but these numbers above could tell us that the lens is 2.2 or better up to around 92 mm! The light drop is obviously only at the very long tele settings, something which the before mentioned cameras don't have anyway.

Johan,

Thank you very much - this post is tremendously helpful.

I'd be curious also about the way the iris is setup. If you change the iris settings, is there a 'step/jump' as you adjust it (say like a pd150/z1), or is there a smooth adjustment, allowing you to slowly adjust it/find a sweet spot inbetween numbers (say like on a manual lens (JVC DV500, betacam, etc)?

I wasn't even going to look at this camera - I get closer to buying it everyday.

Would love to hear what your experience is with it in lower light scenarios, especially when wide, mid, and zooming in. Would be interested in picking this up for event work, amongst other things (use with mini35, etc).

Any additional information or even .m2t clips would be very much appreciated.

Again, thanks very much again,

Shawn