HD100-A: From a Recent Shoot. Good, Bad & Ugly....
 

Here's some stills and an offline jpeg from a recent outdoor shoot.
This is with our HD100-A (upgraded a few weeks ago. camera was purchased Late January 2006)

The scene setting loaded is Paolo Ciccone's version 2 with detail changed to -7)
Paolo THANK YOU SO MUCH for sharing your experience! :)


Fortunately all the footage we required had perfect
exposure with some amazingly bright but not blown out clouds.


right click save as (if you wish)


The Good:

http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/track.png
http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/lot.png

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The Bad:

A strange vertical contrast issue.
Anyone know what causes this and how to avoid it?

http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/strange1.png (below the sign)
http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/strange2.png (middle, below rafters)
http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/strange3.png (below telephone pole)


Here's a look at some vertical streaking.
How can this be avoided?

http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/vstreak.png


Here's something interesting, In the middle of the composition
you can see a reflection of our lense. Almost looks like a speaker.
You can see it more clearly if you do a bright/contrast adjustment.

Is this caused by the Tiffen UV Filter?
We do have one for lense protection. What can be done to avoid this?

http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/lense-reflect.png

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The Ugly:

Here is the SSE I talked about and in full light.

Carl or someone in the know, can you tell me what I need to do so i can
get my HD100 calibrated in cypress asap?

http://www.rexpost.com/jvc/sse.mov (1.6MB)

I noticed the sse when you panned into the grass but it looks like it disappeared at the end.
I wonder if you panned slower that it might not show up?

Hmm..
I've stared at many hours of footage and have yet to see any of this.
Having said that, I would send the camera into JVC (CA) ASAP for repair.
Send these frame grabs with it.

is this new?
 

Mark, did these strange marks appear before the upgrade or until it was upgraded?

Wow. There is some really weird stuff going on here. Was it humid? Did you go from cold to hot to cold etc? If so, did you climatize your lens and glass elements.

Did you clean your tiffen UV filter before putting it on the lens.


The SSE is extreme for this type of shooting. You should definitely get it calibrated.

I had not seen SSE, but we had noticed the vertical contrast lines.

Tim, It wasn't humid. It was a lovely warm day. All of these shots had been taken after the camera had been on for at least 30 minutes.

The tiffen uv filter is brand new, has never been dirtied or touched.

I love the camera (so do my shooters who use DVX100 & super16 film from time to time) so I would like to use this thread to point out and address the issues so that we can all get the best out of our equipment. It might save some of you from issues during important shooting... yeah never know. :)

All of my shooters are impressed most with the dynamic range and the focus assist. They love the camera ergonomics and liken its basic look to what somebody called a "baby Cine-Alta."

Do I just call JVC cypress and make the arrangement? I had hoped they would automatically perform a calibration when the A upgrade happened but I understand they have a large workload.

Another thing I'd like to address.

What is it that causes the camera to be showing a purplish tint to the clouds? (I religously white balance btw)

I noticed this one time (before the A-upgrade) when shooting some projected Black & White 16mm film for a friend of mine. The camera actually added some purple uneven color to the video recorded on tape. I had to go in and apply a B&W filter to get it back to the way it was. I'd like not to have to set it in a black and white preset to accomplish this since I do 8mm and 16mm film transfers as a side business and sometimes b&w is mixed in with color on the same reel.

If you weren't using a matte box and there were no light leaks from behind, then I have a theory on the streaking:

Brand new filters straight from the manufacturer sometimes have a cloudy "film" of something greasy on them. They should really be cleaned before going on the lens, even if brand new.

I would also take the lens off the camera and "check the gate" and make sure the glass CCD protector doesn't have any marks or fog on it.

Looks to me like all of your problems except the SSE are caused by CCD flare. Due to the way CCDs scan, a pixel with a lot of energy can cause other pixels in the same vertical line to brighten up as well. It can be minimized, but that costs money.

In the case of the pictures where you see "dark lines," what you're seeing is all of the energy from the overexposed sky causing flare. Noticed how the parts of the picture under the clouds is somewhat washed out. It's not too bad, but because those poles are in there blocking the sky, parts of the image are not affected by flare and you're seeing those "dark lines." In the car picture, an extremely bright highlight on the fender is flaring up. That picture looks overexposed to me anyway, so the problem could go away if you run your iris a little less hot. The other images are a tradeoff between the bright sky and the much darker landscape, so I'm not sure what you can do about it... I'd say iris so the sky isn't overexposing as much and stretch the blacks.

EDIT: The purplish colors seem to be in the fringes of the overexposure areas of the clouds. My theory is that the blue is maxing out early, but the red keeps increasing, adding a purplish tinge before it maxes out itself.

I have checked the glass with the lense off. crystal clear.

I'll clean the filter. why does it reflect the lense though? should I get a more expensive one?

Thanks for the comments Stephan. The shooter that day was "playing around" with the iris between takes. It does look overexposed there for sure.

One thing I found interesting and confirms that its absolutely essential to view footage and if possible shoot with a calibrated professional crt. Some of the shots he took (not shown) looked blown out on the pc monitor, but on viewing on the sony pro crt looked perfectly exposed.

EDIT: when I captured the 16mm film the iris was left on "auto" and yet the picture always had some purple characteristics.
another thing I like is how fast the auto iris responds. my GL1 is slow as molasses. The Sony 3-CCD DXC block camera I used to use for film transfers (before it crapped out) had a really fast auto iris but it was about 1/3 slower to respond than the HD100. :)

Alot of the png's are overexposed. The SSE needs recalibration. Remember, just because the "A" was applied doesn't mean it was calibrated. Your camera needs adjustment.....Badly..

Amen Brother!

I'm going to make arrangements this week to send it in.

I would believe it could be CCD flaring if the detail was cranked, but I've never seen anything like this in daytime on the HD100. I have pushed hi-contrast to the limits in my chromatic abberation testing and still haven't seen it.

Yes, we've all pushed these cameras. If it exists with other HD100 cameras, we would of seen it by now.

Mr. Silva, please email me at kfreed@jvc.com.

We are very much interested in your experiences and would like to take care of this.

Wow! That's customer service alright...!
(A nice change since my SONY days...:-)

Contact
 

Hi Mark,

Ken beat me to it, so get him your contact info and he'll help you arrange for service.

Regards, Carl

It's great that JVC monitors this board and is proactive in providing assistance without even asking for it. That's how commited they are to a positive experience and fixing our problems.

Looking at the footage, it looks to me like severe vertical smear being introduced by any overexposed areas, including the clouds. This smears the whole frame except where the sign or pole break the bright areas.

This camera should be calibrated by JVC.

I'm really impressed Ken & Carl.

I checked my email just this morning before coming in here and Carl had sent me an email. I replied back. Perhaps the two of you can work out which one of you will email me back with instructions, so that I don't confuse the matter emailing you both.

Thank you VERY MUCH. I NEVER would have gotten this level of support from Sony.


Edit: I had not even hit the reply button on this message and the phone rang and Doug Mullin
from Support called me to make arrangements. That is nothing short of Stellar Support.
The Best I've experienced for Anything.

JVCs commitment is why I ended up purchasing this cam. There are plenty of great cameras out there now days, not plenty of great service.

btw Carl, it was nice to meet you finally.

FWIW the lens reflection and dust in the last png is surely a result of the camera at an angle toward the sun and reflecting off of the UV filter. Even clean lenses will often look like this under the right (wrong) circumstances.
It would need a flag and better positioning to aviod it.

I agree with the analysis, and would add that it looks like 2 problems: both the camera being out of calibration and/or various shooting experiments/incorrect settings.

I shoot quite a bit of action sports, with a range of cameras from 16mm to DV, and with the exception of the SSE and your banding, most of the other issues would occur with other cams as well. Lens flare is lens flare, over-exposed shots are what they are, complex backgrounds with complicated lighting such as you had are always tricky.

I'm curious if some of your problems that you talk about in the still images were as conspicuous with the moving vid?

Thanks very much for taking the time to document your experiences! As I'm currently very close to purchasing one of these cameras (will rent them first), all the extra info I can gather helps.

In the same vein, the JVC team's response goes a long way to helping me make a decision.
Thanks,
Mathew

That sounds good to me. We are going to be getting a matte box and french flag /filters setup for it soon.

Can anyone recommend a good one that would work but not be too bulky and not require a mounting plate with those tubes on it?


"I'm curious if some of your problems that you talk about in the still images were as conspicuous with the moving vid?"

Yes Mathew. During logging I was like "What the Hell was that!?!" I posted stills because I wanted all of you to be able to see the full resolution of what I was seeing. The SSE was prominent enough for a small web video to show.

Even after seeing all of this though, I didn't once have an ill feeling for JVC. I knew they would "make things right." I was just telling Carl this morning in an email how the whole HD100 experience (camera + support) has really turned my impression about JVC as a company a full 180.

Glad to share the info :) Hopefully this will save some of you from having it occur during your "money" shots. :D

Screw on Filters on lenses often cause flare and optical distortions like you are experiencing. Just because they are clear or UV's doesn't mean they don't cause issues in the optical path. I have rented many cameras which came with a filter on the lens and couldn't use them without taking off the filter in relatively benign situations. I know people want to protect their lenses but it has become my policy to remove clears and UV's (unless they are called for) when I am shooting since I have had them cause many problems which are minimized by removing them

I have a Chrosziel 169 Matte Box (they refer to it as sunshade) and it doesn't require support rods. Comes with a French Flag and has the capability of expanding to side shades and all kinds of other things. You need an adapter ring for the lens and that's all. You could add the support rods later, if you need to. It has two trays, one rotating 4x4 and one non-rotating 4x5.25 - it's been great, I am very happy with it.

yeah, I just noticed that again today while doing an 8mm film transfer that had to get done before shipping the camera in for the calibration service.

Removing the UV got rid of some strange visual abberations. I'm concerned that not having it for outdoor shoots might risk the existing lense getting dinged.

Jiri thanks for the tip, I'll look into that!