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An AJ-HPX2700 for $19,500.00!?!
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Problem in the wildlife business is that you can’t rent a camera and know the animal will turn up on that day! You have to have it with you all the time to catch the action and make the best of the weather.
Steve -
Update on my HPX2700, the Panasonic director of sales called me today to address my concerns. Hope to have the camera PASS registration issue taken care of early next week, which was my concern due to the 30 day window Panasonic normally allows, that is up next week. I have no doubt Panasonic will make good at this point and appreciate somebody from high up taking notice.
So, if I can just figure out why my preset is cold, 2.6K vs. 3.2K, I’ll be a happy camper. I do believe Panasonic is more responsive to customers than many. Jan Crittendon-Livingston has always been great and I’ve had good response from Panasonic engineers in the past. I apologize to Steve Cooperman if I missed his responses to my emails somehow.
Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video
http://www.ssv.com -
At first blush, it sounds like a great deal for us.
But why these fire sales?
Panasonic is throwing their entire product-line pricing into disarray, confusing prospective buyers, infuriating recent Varicam purchasers, and sending mixed signals into the marketplace. A marketplace that was already confused by Panasonic’s bloated and redundant product lineup with all of the overlapping features, hobbled models, overpriced media and accessories.
So why risk that much damage for a few sales? What are prospective customers supposed to take away from all this? And does Panasonic actually think they can go back to retail Varicam pricing after this promotion ends and expect to make a ton of sales?
The moral to the story is this:
P2 is past it’s prime. We demand affordable and archivable media.
The split Varicam line was ill-conceived…from a marketing and technical standpoint. A $60K ENG camera doesn’t cut it anymore, regardless of the badge on the side.
We shooters have too many other more-affordable options for getting the same or even superior results.
The marketplace has moved on.
Hence the fire sale.
J Cummings
Cameralogic/Chicago
cameralogic.tv
HDX-900/HDW-730S/DXC-D50 -
There sure are a lot of broadcasters and production companies all over the world just getting into using this “past its prime” media, P2. As a matter of fact, it is the most popular SSM format in pro video by far. NBC Universal just bought hundreds of HPX300s and thousands of P2 cards to go with them for their national and regional new operations. Doing pretty well for an outdated format.
SD, CF and other forms of SSM do not have the redundancy, track record or reliability when used in professional video environments, P2 does. The architecture of PCMCIA may be old but P2 media itself is far from dead. The new E-Series have been hot sellers and most P2 users are very happy with the media, I know I am, I own eight of them.
You may not like P2, which is fine, but don’t confuse your personal bias with what the facts show the market as a whole is doing. Jan Crittenden could provide better numbers than I can, but I have seen them and they are very, very large.
Dan
Providing value added material to all of your favorite DVDs
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I often hear people say, “until P2 cards are the same cost as tape, I won’t buy into it”. My take on this is that the solid state media used for tapeless workflow was not intended to be used as an archival media. When I hear this, I think the person doesn’t understand the tapeless workflow concept.
P2 or SxS cards aren’t designed for archival anymore than a FireStore FS-100 is designed for archival.
I can record 400 minutes of 720/24PN footage with 5)32Gb P2 cards, which represents 12)33 min. tapes, about $144, similar to the cost of a 500Gb Firewire hard drive. Of course, that 500Gb hard drive can hold 37)33 min. tapes worth of footage, about $444 worth of tape. That’s three 500Gb Firewire hard drives for archival redundancy. Then there’s the cost savings of not buying and maintaining a studio deck, or the time wasted doing realtime ingest.
The only people I hear complain about P2 workflow are those who don’t use it.
Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video
http://www.ssv.com -
That’s just crazy talk, John. P2 is just beginning to hit its stride! The bigger card sizes (64Gb), the lower prices for cards (E series), the lower prices for cameras, the better software tools for managing and editing metadata (P2 Flow), Final Cut and Avid support for AVC-Intra, etc. etc. P2 is finally beginning to feel mature to me (in a good way), and I’m really enjoying this ultra-smooth workflow I have.
You say “We demand affordable and archivable media”… Well, P2 **is** affordable; you make a one-time purchase of media cards, and never have to pay a cent for media again. For production companies that shoot a lot (as opposed to the individual shooter who may shoot rarely), P2 represents a HUGE savings over buying endless tape of XDCAM cartridges.
As for “archivability”, well, you might as well condemn a lot more formats than P2–like Sony’s cards for the EX1 and 3, like the Red camera, like JVC’s new camera line, etc. The fact is, archiving is far better with a tapeless system like P2. My footage goes straight from my cards to a Raid 6 and then to an LTO4 tape, which stores about 26 hours of 720p/24 footage per $50 tape (and reads and writes that footage faster than a single hard drive could). At the same time, my workflow instantly creates proxy videos of my footage, which are small enough to store on my editing system, so at any time, I can see instant previews of *anything* I’ve shot, and quickly grab an LTO tape to restore hours of footage with a button click or two. To me, that’s a whole lot better than having to manage and store a library of hundreds of video tapes, each with about 30-45 minutes on them, which have to be manually fed into an expensive deck one by one if you ever need to go back to them.
Anyway, I highly doubt Panasonic is ready to retire P2 and go back to tape or a strange and klutzy hybrid like XDCAM disk. Time will tell…
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Long Time Freelance Shooter Here:
I was just about to pull the trigger and buy a 2700 (btw the price quoted does NOT include a lens), when several calls for major TV shows came in. They don’t care for getting a drive at the end of the day, they aren’t going to pay for a P2 wrangler, they don’t want to take time for a media dump, they want either a tape (HDX900) or XDCAM discs at the end of the day, especially the out-of-towners. Also, the big dogs dictate to freelance shooters like myself exactly which model camera they want, including settings. Had I bought a 2700 I would have had to do a lot of sweet talking, perhaps offered to do the media dumps after dinner on my own time?
So, I bought a HPX300 for an “around the house” camera for mid level corporate etc., and it is best to rent when they demand a $20-40K body with a $15K piece of glass. Seems to me the Sony XDCAM format is gaining popularity on the east coast mainly because that’s the calls I’m getting. If I thought the HDX900 had a longer future I would have bought that but I have been doing this for so long (33 yrs) I have seen great DPs go broke buying the wrong tech at the wrong time. If you are in a closed loop shop then a 2700 is great, but as a freelance shooter there is no one HIGH END model anymore that will handle all the incoming calls because each high end client is dictating which model to use, based on what the other scenes were shot with.
It all comes down to making a profit. The low and mid range folks are still fine with HDV so talking them into paying more for using a 2700 won’t work. In fact, it’s possible to clear more per month servicing HDV clients then to have a 2700 on my shelf that only works a few days a month, agreed?
I will swear that the high end Gold Level shows on Discovery & Hist Ch do not want to risk data dumps by almost total strangers, they don’t trust traveling with drives, they don’t want to schedule time for data dumps since they barely give us time for lunch. So I see P2 as an interim format that I have bought into for the time being for local clients who don’t mind the time to data dump.
As it stands, since I started doing P2 (does P stand for Pain in the Ass?) I have given up many of my lunch breaks for data dumps, valuable time when I need to respond to clients via email, etc. and eat and rest. Also, when I get home I have to do dumps, buy drives, get them to the client the next day somehow. What a pain….I can see how P2 helps the post folks but it is a major set back for a freelance DP like me, when I want to have dinner and pop a beer, watch some TV, I am now having to mess with P2 footage that didn’t get done during the shoot day…
And the reason I see XDCAM winning in the long run: some of my clients who are now starting to edit tapeless and have accepted the P2 workflow from their local shooters, are now trying to figure out how to ARCHIVE the projects. They don’t trust drives for long term storage. So I am hearing the solution they have found (drum roll): archive onto Sony discs. So they will then have the decks to play XDCAM discs that were shot in the field as well. At least that’s what I hear. So that means that if I do buy into XDCAM I will know it will be accepted by more clients, especially the ones skittish about going totally tapeless.
In summary, P2 is great but I see (and hope) it will be an interim format. As a freelance shooter life will be so much simpler if I could just hand recorded discs to a client like I handed shot beta tapes. As it stands now, at the speed we move, it seems that the data dumps need to be done after the shoot, and since I own the cards that means ME working into the evening. So I don’t see how a 2700, as great as it is, helps in the long run. I have seen many formats begin like this with tremendous excitement and then the herd suddenly migrates to the new cheaper/faster/quicker option. Although I just bought into mid-level P2 I am too jaded to jump into the deep end of the P2 pool. I’ve seen this movie before…Please be careful. Perhaps survey your clients to make sure many of them want it.
Later,
Ned
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A good letter Steve. Ok folks, so with what you know, what tapeless camera would one purchase today in the budget range of $20,000? Sorry for being nebulous but I’m at a loss for what’s next and, as much as one could complain about Panasonic, I’ve lost faith in Sony even more.
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If you’re talking about a camera body, then the HPX2700 would be the most bang for the buck. If you need the lens and viewfinder to be included, as well as P2 cards, in the $20K, then you’d be looking at HPX500/300 cameras. A good in between solution could be a used HPX2000, preferably one with an AVC-Intra card installed.
Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video
https://www.ssv.comJeff Regan
Shooting Star Video
http://www.ssv.com
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