I assume the z1u's were not primary cameras on that shoot, other than that I have no idea what they did if they used them on deadliest catch. All I know is we used to use them on boats all the time and the codec would just fall to pieces. You could look at the frame and see compression artifacts everywhere. Just terrible. So many beautiful shots made ugly by the codec. Scared me off hdv forever.

We replaced it with a camera that is not HDV and now all is well. The thing about shooting on water is that your entire frame is high detail, high contrast, and changing every frame. there is no way the codec can keep up with that.

That's good to know, Jeff - something I have not tried yet myself, but I can see how that type of situation with little to no similarity between frames would be a nightmare scenario for long GOP. Thanks for sharing!

- Martin

Jeff, when they aired a show on "the making of World's Dealiest Catch" They showed the equipment when they were getting it in and setting it up and the ONLY cameras they seemed to have were Z1U's. They had crates with 5 Z1U's per crate. And 10 crates. They did say that when the show was over that all of the camcorders were trashed because of the continued salt water exposure and they just threw them away.

Interesting about deadliest catch. I did not notice anything terrible watching at home, but I imagine, with some of those shots that they had to do a whole heck of a lot to clean them up. Mind you, all the shows I watched were in SD.

I'd have to say that I have never seen enough compression artifacts from my FX1 to deem the footage outright ugly; even in high motion subjects. Jeff, what NLE and/or capture program do you use? I know I'm stating something very obvious and basic here, but I can remember when I first viewed my 60i HDV footage from my FX1 in Avid Liquid 7 I saw all sorts of crazy looking compression blocks dancing all over the screen. I was really scared at first, but when I viewed the .m2v files in VLC (deinterlaced of course) they looked great. 60i HDV in Liquid looks horrible, so I was wondering if you use Liquid, or perhaps maybe other NLE's show something similar.

I'll second John's comments. I shoot a lot on the water, and a lot of water events (Ironman, outrigger canoe races, etc) and have been very impressed with HDV footage from the Z1 and V1. Of course, my frame of reference is SD output from PD 170s. I'm sure the big Pana and Sony HD cameras are a bit cleaner, but for me, HDV has been a huge step up in image quality, both on the water and off.

Z1U Accessory...
 

Congratulations!

When funds permit, you may want to add one more item to your Z1 setup:

The Sony Wide Angle Adapter, (.8) .....I have it and it will yield approx. 20% wider shot for you with no distortion and you can "zoom through" it regardless of the focal length setting you're at...

It's currently offered on Amazon at $104 US. (Check BH Photo too.) Great value!

Something to think about....

Have Loads of Fun...

John

Thanks John Reilly,
Yes as soon as money permits I will get the Wide lens. In Australia is selling for six times that price in AUD.

I wonder If Amazon would ship to Australia? I will ckeck It out.

Cheers
Simon

All I'm saying about the Z1 and HDV is make sure you are aware of its limitations.

I've looked at the footage originally in Premiere CS2 captured off a sony hdv deck, then we got our new equipment and it was final cut pro, then final cut pro with MXO monitoring.

That's for editing. Then deinterlaced because ultimately it goes up on a progressive screen through progressive delivery. I've seen it on plasmas, LCD's, computer monitors, exports to bmp's and picts in every export setting.

I've compressed for final delivery at 720p 11 mbit wmv and seen it big on projections screens. There is very little that we shot in 6 months with a camera around water that I couldn't find compression problems.

But that said we move a lot. I don't think you could find more challenging shoot locations for that camera than what we do.

It's probably excellent for 80% of most people. You just want to be sure you're not among the 20% that have problematic locations and applications.

Woops--My Mistake...
 

Simon,

Sorry about that.....I gave you the wrong pricing on the Sony VCL-HGO872 Wide Angle Adaptor for the Sony Z1U...

It is actually $370.00 USD at B&H. When I was writing earlier, I was busy opening my Sony Battery from Amazon, which was $104....Dumb mistake.

So, actually, the price you found over there is not 6x US, but still 40-50% more.

Sorry for the confusion,

John Reilly

Steven, I'm wondering how the color matchup is between the V1 and the Z1 ?

We've had some major probs with trying to color match the singlechip CMOS cam Sony A1 with a 3 chip V1. We finally gave up as they were just too far apart for production use.

For the most part the color matching is pretty easy. In my humble opinion, the V1u's are a little more color brilliant, but that's just my opinion from the wedding's we have done. So what I end up doing is adjusting the saturation a hair in post. CMOS vs CCD is not that big of a deal for what we do.

I did a 2 camera shoot on a cloudy day with a V1U and and FX-1. We spent some time getting the WB to match using a PVM-8041 Sony field monitor. In post, the images were virtually the same. But I would expect slightly more color saturation out of the V1U on a bright sunny day. But I have no facts to support that.