I sold three of my old cams already, keeping the last one.

Noisier images appear sharper? That is an interesting concept.

It's actually very true Jeff. Most viewers will attribute 'sharpness' to a somewhat noisy picture. It's an interesting phenomena.

Oh well, just because I don't understand it doen't mean it is not true!

Ken, I have adjusted the settings you mentioned a bit, and it looks OK. The remaining issues for me are the lens ramping and low light, but as I said the images are quite nice overall. In a well lit envioronment they really are beautiful. Some footage I shot in the dining room at my last wedding actually border on incredible.

Despite my love for the old camera which I no longer own, I would not go back. The 16:9 alone is a huge step up.

Jeff, it has been mentioned before that the "lens ramping" is much more obvious with the 20x lens of the FX1000/V5 than it is with the 12x lens of the VX2100. But the VX2100 does have lens-ramping also. If you stop your close up zoom short of the 20x position, the exposure change is much less obvious. Most of the change occurs in the last part of the zoom range. If you stop at 12x on the FX1000 the exposure change will be about the same as the VX2100. Very little.

If you just have to avoid lens ramping, get a Z7 and get the Fujinon TH16x5.5 lens. The Fujinon is a faster lens (f1.4) than FX1000 and it has no lens ramping at all. It will hold f1.4 through it's entire zoom range.

Thanks Greg!

Wow hd
 

Whilst I have bagged out the FX in other posts today on a positive I viewed some footage taken in HD of a wedding with the FX and was totally blown away.

Never in my mind was HD going to be this much better than SD.

What I noticed first was the detail of everything. I mean everything is seen, so with that in mind I am starting to think about just how much my shooting style will have to adjust in order to fit in with what the camera captures.

In the not so long ago old days of 4:3 and SD it was like the cameraman had to "try harder" to make a scene look good.

Now we have 16:9 and it really is frame up and record. Throw in HD and everything is there, everything comes to light, everything is alive. The viewing experience has improved 10 fold.

Jeff, so with that in mind have a good think about the close ups. My wedding friend (who calls himself MR Video here in OZ & has filmed 400+ weddings) was saying how close ups in HD show up everything and he's right.

He's talking now about backing off from so many extreme close up as they maybe show up too much detail. You have to ask yourself do people want to see their nose hairs?

So do we now need all those ultra close up, well so many of them? Do we now take the foot off of the pedal & not try so hard & take a more realxed just capture it approach. Do we need to get ultra close ups of wrinkles and every bit of detail on a person's face?

Maybe the lens barelling issue won't end up being that much of a problem if you are not doing so many?

Hey I am saying all this without viewing your end product but just throwing it out there for discussion.

Great forum everybody and yeah maybe the VX's were a little over the top in contrast.

Good point Martin, I actually had to add a little blur to some of the close ups of the last wedding.

Martin, thanks for the food for thought. That being said, I never show unflattering shots in my videos. I advertise that on my website. "Nothing unflattering will ever appear in your video". Even with my old cam if the bride had a bad face, teeth, anything, I avoided unflattering shots. I do not shoot them just for the sake of shooting them.

I have been watching TV more closely, and indeed they are still using extreme closeups same as always.


But I agree with your comment about the images, the cam puts out some very nice images. I'm going to post my favorites of a dining hall in a mansion here in a day or two, I'll let everyone know.

Contrast/saturation seems too high. Image is dull / blurred. Everything looks fuzzy. Seems the Z5 image is more green/yellow in color compared to VX2100.

The little music box looks so much better on the VX2100 image. In the Z5 sample you are easily distracted by the popping, fuzzy and washed out background. The Box pops much less.

Of course i am very interested what it looks like in HD, but it seems like VX2100 is still the winner in SD area. However, i am really looking forward to more tests. Thanks again to William for his time.

I guess we'd have to ask Billy which rendition was more accurate. But it's interesting one comment was the Z5 was lacking contrast and you felt it was too contrasty. Tough crowd to please! :)

BTW Ken, I finished editing a video shot with my 2100 and a PD150 and I saw the noisiness mentioned.

After you get used to watching the FX1000 fotage it becomes much more apparent.

I really regret shooting my last wedding with the FX1000 in non-HD. Even though the images are quite nice (and I used 16:9 settings) I suspect the end product comes out better when shot in HD and downconverted in post.

My immediate thoughts on seeing the clip on the screen were that there was a little more saturation and contrast with the VX2100, which I liked actually. Besides the 16:9 format that I went to HDV for, the initial result of the Z5 clip didn't impress me.

The settings I used to get a bright enough picture was a shutter speed of 25fps on some of the close ups - I had obviously used loads of zoom and lost a f/stop or two. I also used up to 6db of gain on some close ups.
The light was really low, and this is pushing the Z5 against the VX2100's greatest asset, whilst stripping the Z5 of its major asset, HDV!

I haven't looked into setting of white balance yet on the Z5. Maybe the VX2100 is just better at doing this on its own.
I did another side by side comparison in SD in exploring the focal length of each cam - the Z5 has loads more wide angle but only a bit of extra full zoom.

I can't do new comparisons for the two, as Ebay has grabbed my VX2100. I'm posting it tomorrow, but I've got loads of footage that I've recorded with it. When the weather warms to over 1c I'll do a few more outside shots in full HD, and hopefully allow my Z5 to get its own back.

No doubt about it in my mind Jeff.

Jeff, when shooting in HD and then downcoverting to SD, wouldn't you get letterboxing for customers still using a 4:3 TV? If so, you'd have to prepare them for that in advance. Some people get really nutsy about letterboxing.

But's it's good that you're now aware of the cleaner image of the FX1000. That's important to know.

I'm not talking aspect ratios. Only resolution.

No, I know that, but you'd still need to be aware of the letterboxing that would occur while shooting in HD if you plan on delivering an SD product. Some people might not have a problem at all with letterboxing, but others might ask "Why is the picture not filling up my screen?".

You still see some people get upset with this when watching DVDs on a 4:3 screen. Have you compared shooting with the FX1000 in SD 4:3 mode with the VX2100? If I use the FX1000 for corporate work, I'd be pretty much forced to do that since many corporate clients won't be happy with letterboxing.

If I need to shoot 4:3 I still have a PD150. Virtually all of my wedding customers have 16:9 sets, or they will in the next year so. I'm not planning on delivering anything but 16:9 for weddings. I'm not concerned about those few who have 4:3. Maybe I should be, but I'm not.

You can shoot in HD 16 x 9 and still not aggravate customers who might object to letterboxing on their 4 x 3 movie. It actually depends on how you downconvert on whether the image is letter boxed. You can edge crop on your downconversion process to 4 x 3 and there won't be any letterboxing at all. Just a normal 4 x 3 image. You will loose whatever was on the edge of the screen when you shot it, however. I have a car dealership I shoot for regularly. I shoot on 16 x 9 HD but deliver the footage to the ad agency in 4 x 3 SD, non-letterboxed. They have their own editor. Ironically, they wind up putting a letterbox mask over the 4 x 3 SD image in post.

Jeff, I was just curious how the 1000 would do SD 4:3 compared to the 150/2100. I would also say if all your customers have 16:9, you should be doing nothing but HD.

Greg, if you edge crop top & bottom, doesn't this require that you zoom on the center image losing come clarity?

The edge crop downconversion only takes off the sides. The full height (resolution) is utilized.

Nice Greg. Is this done in-camera or software?

When I have done it for the ad agency, I have just done it in camera to Beta SP. I haven't tried it from my edit system (PP CS3) but I am sure it would be possible and actually might be cleaner. But my client is happy with what I am giving him already. And it is much less time consuming.

I guess what's totally confusing me Greg is the following: If you are recording in 16:9, that means by definition (no pun intended), that on a 4:3 screen the top & bottom would be letterboxed...it has to be or it wouldn't be native 16:9. It can only be full height on a 16:9 screen.

So I'm trying to understand how a downcoversion process can lop off the sides of this 16:9 picture and still leave full height on a 4:3 screen without zooming the picture???? There should still be top & bottom bars on the downcoverted picture if no zooming is taking place.

There must be something I'm not understanding here.

Only if you want to see the whole thing, undistorted. There are actually three ways to display 16:9 material on a 4:3 screen: Letterboxed, squeezed and edge crop. Edge crop just lops of the right and left sides and leaves you with 12:9 (or 4:3) rather than 16:9. Top to bottom is unchanged.

Go into the kitchen and get some sugar cubes and make a rectangle 16 cubes wide by 9 cubes tall. Now take away two columns on each side, to get 12:9. That's edge crop.

You can easily do this in post or in the cam, if it's the Z5. The FX1000 doesn't do this.

You've just clarified it for me Adam! I was looking at the FX1000 manual and saw no way to do this. The downconvert function in the 1000 looked like it would leave you with top & bottom bars. The 'squeeze' method is used for anamorphic DVDs and such, so that method wouldn't be practical if you had no means to 'unsqueeze/stretch' at the display end.

I think most NLEs will unsqueeze easily. Certainly Premiere does. I found this out when I had my one really unhappy experience with 16:9 on the VX2000 -- it came in "squeezed" (actually stretched vertically, but it looks the same) -- and Premiere automatically restored it to its proper ratio.

Yeah, it just makes the editing process a bit more tedious. I use Edius Pro and never had a need for this. I'm pretty sure it can do it, but it would be interesting to see if the software does as good a job as the in-camera conversion.

Of course it would be easier if the camera just did as good a job shooting native 4:3 SD as it apparently does in shooting downconverted HDV.

Does anyone have a link to the Z5 manual? I've only found the product brochure on the HDV microsite.

SD on FX1000 - Jury is out
 

Of course it would be easier if the camera just did as good a job shooting native 4:3 SD as it apparently does in shooting downconverted HDV.[/QUOTE]



Hey Ken are you suggesting the FX1000 is not recording SD as good at what say the VX2000 or other cameras.

I am asking this as my eyes are telling me that SD on the FX1000 is a bit fuzzy and not as sharp as my other SD cams. I mentioned this last week and are very concerned about it as most of what I do is still SD. Inknow one can downconvert but to be honest for dance concerts and the like where I need to record contunuasly for over 80 minutes SD in Long play suits me.

Anyone else out there done a test to see how SD is looking?

Why don't you shoot your SD with an SD cam and just use the new cam for 16:9 stuff? I personally can't imagine the new Sony's would beat out the older cams for 4:3 shooting.

FX and SD filming
 

Jeff, I want to shoot SD and 16:9. 4:3 is dead here in Australia! Surely no-one shoots 4:3 unless the client needs it that way?

Re quality I was always pretty happy with the picture quality of my Pana DVC-62 only it was 4:3.

I am still to edit and really look at a dance concert filmed 2 weeks ago from the FX but initial thoughts are that the DVC62 looks more sharp and better in low light but that was the be expected.

I am taking on board what everyone has said about HD looking zillions x's better but the fact is SD is what I need as DVD is what I output.

I really don't want to have to shoot HD as all my older playback cameras only playback SD. Also a lot of what I do gets transferred to DVD recorders in real time.

I am going to ask my wedding friend who has borrowed my FX to do some FX v VX2000 side by side comparisons and will report back.

Martin, you and I are in the same boat. The vast majority of my work is SD for corporate videos. But the reason I said what I did was really based on what you and Jeff said. It seems the concensus (and I don't have the cam yet) is that you get a better SD picture by downconverting HD to SD as opposed to shooting originally in SD.

Frankly, if true, this is a bit disappointing since the FX1000 doesn't do the type of downconvert I'd want (no letterboxing). Thanks to Adam, I see exactly what he was talking about, an option for a perfect 4:3 downcovert with no letterboxing with the Z5.

To be honest, I must be thick about this, but I'm having so much trouble getting my brain around how the Z5 can do this without enlarging the center area of the original frame. Sony's verbaige says "outputs the central portion of the original image by cropping its right and left sides"

I still don't see how this can be done without enlarging that same central portion. If you think of the original 16:9 frame fitted to a 4:3 screen, how can you fill the screen by lopping off the left & right panels without also enlarging that central portion. How else can you avoid top & bottom panels? I must have a mental block on this!

Ken, the central portion is not enlarged but actually reduced in size during conversion. The original HD image has 1080 horizontal lines. The right and left sides are chopped during the conversion process so that the central portion now has 4:3 ratio. And finally, the central portion is reduced in size (resolution) to an SD image of 480 lines of horizontal resolution.

P.

Ken, just think of the 4x3 and 16x9 as the same height to start with. 16x9 is just wider. So the 4x3 crop is just cutting off the sides. 16x9 isn't a letterbox 4x3 which is what you are thinking. Its a wider 4x3. In DV they are both 720x480 its just the pixels have a different aspect ratio. They are not square pixels. 4x3 is roughly 0.9 ratio and 16x9 is 1.2, a rectangle. The downconvert crops and changes the pixel aspect to the new form. For HDV the pixel aspect ratio is 1.333 so the crop also downconverts to .9 DV pixel ratio when a 4x3 SD output is selected. From the camera its normally a centre crop but of course in software the crop can be anywhere in the 16x9 frame and with motion controls in Vegas or ADOBE and Layout control in Edius the SD crop can pan and even zoom within the HDV frame. A few times I have created what looked like a multicam shoot from just my FX1 HDV file. Focus is VERY critical and zoom cannot go beyond the native resolution( you can zoom into about a quarter of the HDV frame going to 4x3 SD, if focus is on the mark!!!)

Ron Evans

Ken, sweetie, just do my sugar cube illustration.

Pedanes, Ron & Adam, thanks, I think I've got it. But Adam, I've got to admit, I have no sugar cubes. :)

So Ron, this brings up the question as to whether the conversion in Edius (my editing software) can produce a 4:3 image from an HDV original, that looks as good as the on-the-fly downconversion of the Z5?

Ken, I don't have a Z5 to compare and the downconversion of the FX1 stays in 16x9 ( no crop available). Do you have Edius 5 or 4.6? The difference is really a fixed crop in layout for 4.6 and a keyframe control for layout in V5. You should try a test. Start a 4x3 DV project and place a HDV 16x9 on the timeline, apply Layout and you will see that the 16x9 image now is much bigger than the output window. You can zoom and crop to fix the crop for the output( keyframed in V5). Lay it back out to the Z5 ( set in DV 4x3 mode, I assume it still does 4x3 DV?) )to see how it looks. I have only just upgraded to Edius V5 so all my earlier crop and downconvert were done in Vegas because of the keyframe control and the ease in understanding the available pixels represented by the before and after preview screens, then going to final 4x3 DV file. I have stopped doing 4x3 now so all projects are shot in 16x9 and SD is also 16x9. I do not see that downconvert and crop would be any different than a straight downconvert to 16x9 which is what I do all the time now. Though to be fair my downconvert only happens converting to MPEG2 for DVD creation not to go to a DV SD tape. In other words I do all my projects in HDV ( and AVCHD ) create a finished 1440x1080 final output that is used for Bluray and also as file input for conversion to MPEG2 for SD DVD creation in my case TMPGenc 4 Xpress really does the downconversion!!!!

Ron Evans

I own 2 Z7u's and I was thinking about buying either an FX1000 or Z5 as a backup. I love the Z7 in low light and from what I hear, both of the newer cameras do a great job. When I am at full zoom with the Z7, I get a f2.0. Do we know what full zoom on the FX1000 and Z5 is? Are the only differences between the two cameras XLR's and direct connection of the memory card drive?