In the tests that I did with the HMC150 today, I noticed that at 24p, there is a slight increase in sensitivity. That is good news.

As for shooting 60p all the way for getting the slow motion (when desired) in a 24p timeline, it sounds like a tedious workflow. I may be wrong, but I'd worry about audio issues. And I'd also be worried that if the timing is a tad off, frame blending would degrade image quality. Never really tried it, so I'm curious. If some are doing it, I sure would like some clarification on this.

I personally would shoot 24p and retime in post (using Motion's optical flow for smooth slow-mo with ramping). If I can or could plan for a slow mo, then I'd only shoot that scene in 60p, but for weddings, changing frame rates on the fly can be a hassle (I guess the EX-3's frame rate dial would come in handy at this point). But if shooting 60p for a 24p timeline works without a hitch, then I'd be interested in hearing how it's done.

On the 150 it's really easy, but you do have to know how your editing program will behave with the footage.

In Vegas, for example, you'd set up a 24p timeline, and put your normal footage on there. When you want slow-mo, you'd shoot that in 720/60p, drop that clip on the timeline, right-click and disable resampling and set the playback rate to 0.400. Voila, instant film-style frame-accurate perfect slow motion, and I dare say it'll be way smoother than anything you'd get from trying to post-manipulate and slow down 24p footage.

I tried it in FCP, but I can't seem to get the desired effect. Any particular trick? Because juste slowing down the footage is horrible.

Since Vegas can't handle a 720P60 timeline, I never thought to try it on a 24P timeline (for slowmo).

Thanks for the tip!

You can set Vegas Pro 8 timeline to render out to 1280 60p custom settings.

Ok I got my camera last week and conformed it to 24p. When editing everything is crazy clear. I'm now having issues with exporting. When exported for online it's kind of jumpy (see below link). I have the western digital media player hooked up to my TV and I can't quite figure out the correct mpeg4 settings. I basically want to export my HD clips at the BEST resolution so everything looks GREAT on my plasma.

HMC150 first weekend test footage on Vimeo

I've been shooting some stuff in 720, 60p and conforming it into 24frames. Everything looks SOLID.

Now my next question is. what if i took 1080 30p and conformed it to 24, would that look good or is 720 60 the way to go for smooth slow motion?

You can change the framerates in Virtualdub and import those files into your 60i timeline. Works well for me in Edius and plays back super smooth 40% slo-mo.

Steve

HMC-150 Slow Motion
 

I tested some footage using the 60p technique in FCP. Basically you open the clip in Cinema Tools , Conform it to 23.98 FPS then open back up Final Cut, go to Tools and Synchronize with Cinema Tools. The footage comes out nice and Smooth. This clip I shot in 720P 60P. I think using this instead of the 1080p 60i looks a lot cleaner.

American Nightmare on Vimeo

for the person who posed the audio question shooting in 720p60, I did that my first time out with this camera and ran into sync issues with my zoom h2. the solution, is to resample your audio at 120khz, it works perfectly. I found the formula after searching for hours, but you can sync audio at 120KHz with any frame rate.