Definitely the later - suffers under certain circumstances. Like I said that was the worst I've experienced (and on one of my first shoots too). The best thing you can do is calibrate the camera and test test test. I haven't found any noise unacceptable since then. When using the stock lens especially there are boundaries of acceptable sharpness and color qualities (the subtler of which I'm still figuring out). It can be VERY sharp if your lens is finely tuned.

Here are a few good grabs to help encourage you. It's a great camera and I would guess a killer combo with the Mini35!

(BTW, the "HollandHome" grab does exhibit some CA on the glasses and hair. Shouldn't be a problem if you use something other than the stock lens. The average person doesn't notice anyway.)

Now, are those of you who have the HD250 experiencing the same noise issues? or is this an issue only with the HD200?

Phil,
Your experience and advice is superbly helpful. It seems most of us are using Nikons and I was going to go that route with the Brevis that I plan to order soon, but I realized my old SLR that I have collecting dust has several fast Canon FD primes. Canon optics are known for being quite good, right? Anybody have experience with the Canon lenses.

What I wonder though is why I see a lot of pretty cheap Canon lenses on ebay and such. You can buy fast Canon primes for under 100 bucks. You can even buy a new 50mm/1.4 for like 70 bucks. Is this just way too cheap to be good?

Benjamin

One more thing
 

Phil,
I notice some vignetting in a lot of the shots on your Brevis demo? Was this just with some of the lenses? Am I just making this up. The stuff looks awesome otherwise....and the vignetting adds a nice style, but obviously you wouldn't always want that.

Thanks.

its identical inside so it shouldnt make a difference.

With the vignettes some I added in post, some i did optically by closing down the iris of the 35mm lens which with the Brevis under certain conditions creates a vignette. I also deliberately didn't zoom fully into the gg to enhance that effect. Basically what I am saying is they are deliberate!! I did say that on the page in the shootout but I should put that on the short page too.

Canon lenses are of course superb. Just avoid EOS lenses as they have no manual iris control.

$70 for the lens? buy it! am sure it is fine!

Phil

I see this thread died.
What became of the noise issue?

Is this a setting issue?
Chad's examples really look clean.

Yeah - I hadn't seen Chad's stills. To me those look great. If that's not good enough I don't know what to tell ya.

Why am I buying a RED again?

I think it's partly a settings issue and partly situational. I still get some noise every now and then but it seems to be mainly on darker, predominantly red scenes. It hasn't been enough of an issue for me to want to troubleshoot so maybe I've found the right matrix settings.

I love the camera, but I think I'd still opt for the RED if I could, Joel. ;-)

I shot a dark scene lit with just a red light. It looked awful. It was noisier and looked as if it was out of focus.

I've got a feeling that most video cameras would have choked on that though. In fact, I noticed a scene in "For Your Consideration" that was of a performer on stage and the stage lighting changed to a red light only and that looked like crap too. There's probably some technical reason for that.

Yes - i found any darker scenes - such as night time city scenes are packed full of noise - unusable levels

Have you allready tried it with an M2 and got a foto of the setup and footage. Im consedering getting an m2 and using it with a hvx200 or jvc hd100.

And if you can flip the image in the hd100 (is that also with the hd100?) then it would be great setup to use handheld for a videoclip.

Djee, no flip in the HD100. You can physically flip the viewfinder by loosening a few screws though. I just got my Brevis tonight and am still testing it out. Looks pretty good so far. :-) I have to figure out the limitations yet though. A few wrong moves and you can see a lot of grain/vignetting with certain lenses.

Hmm I don't know if the rental company would like it if I would physically change the camera.

Chad

Keep us informed about results with the brevis and HD100

Thanks


Andrew

Will do, Drew. As of this moment though I can say that it seems that the HD100 lens/macro or combo with the achromat may be to blame partially for the vignettes. I tried my 135mm/Brevis on my FX1 and it wasn't nearly as bad. Dennis has mentioned a new Achro coming soon so that my fix it. Also he's working on an imager that will be better with vignettes on long lenses. Still too early to tell for me. I have a lot of testing to do.