Got our HD100, some worst-case footage
 

Hi everyone, we finally received our HD100.

Ed took it out in the evening and took some shots in downtown Atlanta.

So far we are in love with the HD100, I'm most impressed with the latitude and resolution, I didn't expect it to deal with highlights and blacks so well. We took some shots of guys with white shirts on in the daytime and it dealt with it well (maybe I'll post that later). Also, I don't think it is too noisy at all as some people were saying (then again, our last camera was the HD10) :)

Anyway, here is one particular test shot I thought some might find interesting:

http://tinyurl.com/hoobk

This link will only be good for 7 days (I used yousendit.com).

It is a WMV HD file, 6Mbps. It is a short clip.

This is what I would consider a worst-case scenario, and it still looks pretty dang good (I just think the waterfall looks cool). This was literally taken out of the box, no adjustments and nothing done in post. Ed can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think aperture and shutter were on full auto. I don't believe gain was being employed. No lights were used (just whatever happened to be there). I believe that is Centennial Olympic Park.

The reason I consider it worst case is a) very low light, and b) that is a very complex scene for the MPEG2 encoder. On top of that it had to go through the WMV encode to get down to 6Mbps so I could post it here.

Anyway, just thought I'd post some stuff from our new toy.

By the way, that is Ant from OOWU, some of you may remember him :)

Ben

Ben,
your example really is a prime example how well the HD100 performs!

Thanks, you are going to love the HD100

Today I added Tim Dashwood's Cine Wide latitude settings to scout some interior locations and I was really impressed with the shadow detail captured by this camera.

Tomorrow we're doing a "making of" video with two art photographers as they shoot people for an art book in a studio. It's DV format but I'm gonna run the Cine Wide Latitude look because they want more of a softer look. I don't know how that will work with 460 60i DV, so I'll have to test it.

Ed

Wow, that is impressive for right out of the box.

Was the WMV 6mbps compression at a constant bit rate or at a variable bitrate with a target of 6mbps average?

CBR, output from Vegas 6

After shooting all summer and fall with an HD100, I took an HD1 to India. I was surprised and how good the HD1 looked with lots of light -- no noise at all. The HD10 is even better because of the lack of edge enhancement.

If you ever get a chance, it would be fun to see a short comparison of the HD10 and HD100 in good light.

Have fun with your HD100!

PS: Remember, the HD10 can feed both 30p and 24p into your NLE via 1394.

I wonder if going to VBR, with an average of 6mbps would reduce the blockiness in the lower right of the framing.

6Mb does not get it for HD. Try 8 or 9 Mb for VBR and you can get away with 7Mb CBR. A true representation would use the "quality" profile set to 100%.

Doh, I didn't realise yousendit.com had a 25 download limit, I'll try posting it somewhere else.

For now that link is dead.

Ben

Hi Ben,
I uploaded the file to my webspace:
http://www.mc-productions.be/HD100/n...0waterfall.wmv

Thanks Marc!

Yes, 9.2Mbps is the "sweet-spot" for WMV HD, that is what we did OOWU in. However, I wanted a smaller file that was easier for people to play and download in this case.

I can post the original .m2t if people want, I have space on our highlydef website.

Ben

Surely you mean the HD100?

After all the comments about poor low-light sensitivity with the HD-100, I was just surpised that we got a usable image in naturally dark areas. Of course, I always use lights for paying clients, but this was an interesting test of the camera.

Ed

Stephen,
How come I can watch Ben's WM clip no problem on my mac, but yours always just come up white with the "codec missing?"