right, plus shipping, came to basically the same.

For the love of... zoom
 

Update, I heard from Mike Tapa that he's been run dry on his adapters. New shipment coming in this week, then he'll send one out. Other than that it's been raining like hell here for days and days so I've shot nothing - except for a quick hour today before the rains came again. Found some egrets and watched them through the 300mm. Couldn't figure out what they were eating exactly, until I checked the footage!

If you look closely you can see the trademark purple haze around the high contrasty edges of the egret on the right and the background. Being that every lens I have put on this HD200 gets that fringe in extreme conditions (whites on blacks, or darks), I am growing suspicious that perhaps this is not a lens situation at all. I think it's the camera.

Anyone care to share some knowledge on this?

FYI the guy on the right is worse because he was shot a bit overexposed. I took that shot down a bit in post, but included it here to show the struggle. Typically I'd try to shoot these troublesome snow white guys underexposed, then bring them up in post - which I did to the fisher king. Works out much better this way. As you can see the two shots look just about exactly the same in the end, only the one shot overexposed is pretty well screwed as far as the purple fringe.

Oh and good lord I thought I had ugly feet?

Still great shots Eric. I think you are well within acceptable technical specs for real world footage like this. Video has it's limitations, and I'd be very curious to see another camera perform better anywhere near this price range.
I might have missed it, but have you tried calibrating the HD-200's white shading for you nikons (and confirmed preset with your 16x)? It could factor in to something like this - I won't say likely, but possibly ;^).
There's a 3rd party fcp filter that detects and masks CA (by selectively de-saturating hi-contrast edges I believe). I haven't tried it, but I can look for it if you're interested. Processing footage is an extra hit of time, and can potentially degrade the footage, but some existing light conditions will stress the limits of any optics and camera. Even film and exotic glass can be pushed to it's limits. What we can do is learn how to extend the limitations, and know the range for acceptable results.
BTW - acceptable is a moving target. If the content is amazing, acceptable can be pushed quite far - if the content is mediocre, well....

Which brings me to a burning question.
What do you want to do when you grow up, GoGo? :)
I mean this is in the most warm and jocular way of course!
I think you have already established that you can get spectacular footage of wildlife and remote live action sports. Do you have a project with this type of material in mind? Plan to accumulate and sell stock footage? Hope to attract a producer/contractor? Probably deserves a new thread !

First off Sean, "GoGo" will never grow up. He'll look older and move slower, but he'll never grow up ;- )

You are right, it's a new thread - but a truly burning question. Where does all this go..

My Mom once told me, "Do what you love, and do it your best. Everything else will fall into place." I feel like calling her to ask, "What place?"


As of yet I have never used a plug-in filter for anything. When I was at Paolo's he mentioned plug-ins too. I don't even know where to look, but I'll start now.

Processing the footage, in our situation, is something that I believe should be part of the "budget". Unless of course you are shooting something run-and-gun for the local newscast, CA would be the last of our concerns :)

If you shoot other types of videos I would suggest to include post-processing and color correction as part of the process. There is just so much be gained by doing so. If done correctly, CC can be a truly amazing tool and one that doesn't degenerate the image. The secret is to avoid transcoding. I posted here before that editing and outputting your clips in HDV doesn't prevent transcoding and recompression.
We know that the latest version of FCP Studio has Color built in but you don't need that in order to do CC without data loss. To tell you the truth I have been using AfterEffects for quite some time and the color correction tools that it has are as good as anything that is out there and the processing at 16 or 32 bits makes CC a perfectly safe operation.

So, instead of shelling out more money for an upgrade that I barely need, FCP Studio 2, I use tools that I can run from my MacBookPro at satisfactory speed and that can output my clips as well as any other high-end product.
The secret is to avoid recompressing. There is a great tool that can import an FCP sequence into AE: http://www.creative-workflow-hacks.c...ut-the-hassle/
The script creates a comp that links directly to the original clips, similarly to what FCP does, but it uses AE layers. If you want to follow this path use FCP to do the editing, avoid transitions and CC or other effects. If you need to get crossfades and such in the sequence to get an idea of the timing then put the crossfade but then remove it before outputting to SE. Or duplicate the sequence before export. To export from FCP for AE simply use the XML exporter. Close FCP. Open AE and use the FCPtoAE script. Switch you AE project to use 16 bit, or 32 if you have the horse power. Use any of the plugins included in AE for optimal quality CC without data loss. Color Finess is great, Levels and Curves are excellent. Personally I found Magic Bullet Colorista and Looks the easiest and more powerful combination.

Regardless the tool, add an adjustment layer on top of your clip, add the CC tool of choice and tweak away. You will be guaranteed to preserve all your color information and by turning the adjustment layer on or off you can do a quick comparison with minimal if any rendering. Given that I often get to AE to complete my editing, the tools is just too flexible and easy to use, CC in AE comes basically for free and the 16-bit processing guarantees that I don't loose precious data. I found that the results are consistently superior to whatever I get from the NLE.