Dan Brockett
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Yes, I guess a bit late for the Panasonic modification.
You will be fine converting in post, it is just time consuming and tedious and you will not be able to check the final output for flickering that may not be apparent on the computer’s RGB monitor, unless you have access to a 50Hz capable monitor.
Watch out for discharge (ballasted) lamps or video displays in shot.
Dan
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That NTSC HPX170 can be sent to Panasonic service and for $500.00, they will make it able to be switched to 50Hz formats. That would be the easy and smart way to do this.
Dan
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Great advice from Tom, all of which I totally agree with.
A few additional ideas…
1. If you are doing a project with any kind of budget, FedEx or UPS all gear except your camera ahead of time. I often shoot in NYC and it is a heck of lot easier to just carry my camera case and personal luggage on the plane and not have to worry about lugging lots of big heavy cases through La Guardia or JFK and then having to schlep it in and out of taxis into Manhattan? No insurance means that if the airlines lose your $5,000.00 HD monitor or your $8,000.00 Sachtler, you are screwed unless you have your own insurance. It is so nice to arrive at my hotel and all of my shoot gear is waiting in my hotel room for me.
NOT cheap about $700.00 ea. way. BUT, it is insured, and you can send a few days ahead of you and talk to the hotel staff to make sure that it arrived. Why deal with airlines who suck so badly anyway and don’t really care if you or your luggage makes it to your destination in one piece?
2. That said, I flew to France to shoot a doc this Summer. Traveled alone so there was only so much gear I could take. Took no lighting, was shooting with the Canon 5D MKII so all I took was camera, lenses, cards, batteries and a couple of lavs with a Zoom H4N recorder. Came back with nice footage and I traveled very lightly. So, depending on the style of project you are shooting, you can travel very light and still make nice video.
3. Another tip. Grip and lighting are heavy and bulky. If you are traveling to any metropolitan area, why on earth lug all of your grip and lighting gear? In NYC, I rent it. I have also rented in Miami, Dallas, Chicago and a few other places. It is a heck of a lot easier to land, grab your rental car and go pickup your lighting kit, C-stands and sandbags than to haul them on and off of a plane. Then again, if you are going to someplace remote or a smaller city, this may not be possible. Start going to the states not on the coasts and the amount of rental gear available goes way down. In many states, there may only be one or two rental sources in the entire state.
4. Beware that many European carriers will only let you bring on one carry on, not two as many domestic carriers let you do. So if you need your camera and laptop/drives, you need a camera backpack that can carry your computer as well. Being a P2 shooter, I have to carry camera, laptop and drives everywhere. The CineBags are good, really good and they have a model that can take any smaller prosumer camera (EX1, HVX/HPX, etc.) and a laptop. Bigger 2/3″ type cameras are tough to fly with a laptop all in one bag, it becomes too large and heavy.
5. If you are not using a camera backpack, the best case in the world for carrying cameras, lenses, other electronics is a thrift-store diaper bag. Who would want to ripoff or even look inside a diaper bag? Seriously. Certain airports are famous for thefts like Miami, Charles De Gaulle, etc.
6. Make sure you are familiar with new rules about transporting Lithium Ion, NIMH, etc. batteries in comparing your checked versus carry on.
7. Tom’s advice is great in that you should think that your checked luggage will be lost. You have around a 10% chance these days so make sure that you put mics, headphones, media, batteries and anything else you need in your camera case. That way, if you lose your check in luggage, you have what you need to do a bare bones emergency shoot. You can always duck into a photo store or Best Buy and pickup a cheapo tripod just for the shoot but you have to have camera, media, batteries and audio at a bare minimum, right?
Good luck. Flying with gear is a huge PITA. The FedEx and UPS way is best and easiest but costs the most. I just build it in as a line item in the budget. It is not cheap but it is not that expensive if the client can also afford to fly you around.
Dan
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Hi James:
The 300 is cheap enough in my mind as to be a no brainer. We are talking about a full raster AVC INTRA camera with a decent industrial level lens for around $7k.
I own the HPX170 and really love it but no question that the 300 is a better camera. 1/3″ imagers are only a problem if you don’t know how to light. Yes, obviously a 2/3″ camera is better in low light but I have been shooting with the 5D MKII also, which is great in ultra low light. But you know what? You still have to light it to make it look good. Just because you can shoot in ultra low light levels doesn’t mean things look good. You do shoot with lighting, don’t you? I shoot very little available light these days, unless it is outdoors. But I don’t know what you shoot, do you shoot in a lot of dark envrionments that you are not permitted to light?
Same with Jello and artifacts. Will they crop up occasionally? Yes. Will your audience care about them or even notice them? My experience says no. The only people who care about or notice that stuff are video geeks like us, audiences care about very different things. The Panasonic clip on YouTube that Jan put up does show some good and valid strategies to reduce or eliminate artifacting. I would like to own my 170 because of the small size and weight and the fact that I occasionally shoot red carpets where a billion flashes are going off. But for the lions share of my shooting, I would be in heaven with the 300.
It is up to you to decide if you can live with the limitations of a 1/3″ sensor. I can and the payoff on other features is too great to not want the 300. The 500 has very little going for it that is better other than the 2/3″ imagers. The VF and LCD on the 500 make it a no go for me, I care more about being in focus than having a larger yet thinner raster imager.
The 300 is superior to the EX1/EX3 from a feature and ergonomic standpoint. I like the picture quality better overall and the AVC INTRA100 codec makes XDCAM EX look pretty sad. Yes, a 1/2″ imager set in the 300 would have been nicer but Panasonic doesn’t do 1/2″ sensors and from what I hear will not do them anytime soon.
300 is a great tool. Not perfect but an amazing value nonetheless.
Dan
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Uh, yeah, you need to read the fine print. This adapter will give you a crop factor of 7x, meaning that your 50mm Nikon 1.4 will become a 350mm on the HPX300. You will definitely have shallow depth of field but you will need to be about 100 feet away from your subject! This would only be useful for wildlife shooters who are shooting animals from a huge distance or possibly sports shooters but for “normal” production, I think that this would be quite useless.
It is interesting for certain uses but for general production, not the most handy choice.
Dan
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Do you have a link to these supposed adapters? I have never seen a 1/3″ B4 mount to Nikon F mount adapter. There are Letus B4 adapters that work with the HPX300 but they cost a few thousand dollars.
Assuming that the adapter you are describing does exist, it would not change your depth of field capabilities as the image would still be focused on a 1/3″ CMOS imager set.
If you want shallow DOF capability, https://www.letus35.com/cart/Letus-1-3-Pro-Full-Frame-Relay-Lens.html and https://www.letus35.com/cart/Letus35-Ultimate.html would be what you want plus some Nikons. And Nikons do make some very nice 2.8 zooms so you are not stuck shooting only primes.
If you have a link to this supposed adapter, we would love to see it. JVC makes an adapter that will allow 16mm PL mount lenses to be affixed directly to their camera but it isn’t cheap either and really does nothing for FOV or DOF as is it does not have a 35mm imaging plane.
Dan
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I don’t know about anyone else but when I switched from Tiger to Leopard, my Duel seemed to work okay. Now, it has basically come close to not working for some reason. I am still on 10.5.8, have not upgraded to Snow and have no intention of doing so but the Duel has come to a halt on my MBP. It only works sporadically so I have had to resort to using my wife’s old G4 PB.
Good idea about having a boot FW drive only I think I will go back to Tiger on it. This whole Duel/P2 thing is ridiculous, I may just give in and do what Barry Green says to do, but a $350.00 PC laptop just for dumping P2 cards.
Dan
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I recall the recall, I had two Arri 1k open face lights, they put new housings on them for me, free of charge.
You should contact Arri, this can be dangerous. These are one of the hottest lights I own, when used in a softbox especially. Not sure if the recall is still on but they might just replace them for you anyway. Never hurts to ask. Arri has surprised me more than once by fixing stuff free of charge on their lights when I expected to pay for a repair.
Same with the older black yoke to stand tie downs. The old black and blue ones strip out, the replaced all of mine for free with the newer dull silver metallic ones that don’t strip.
Arri is a good company.
Dan
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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
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I can’t deny what you say Christopher but you could say it for any other camera on the market as well.
Renting is by far a more intelligent choice unless you are shooting so much that rentals end up costing more than the camera. I have been in that position before with a Betacam and with Betacam decks, I recall on 1999, I spent over $28k on Beta SP deck rentals. At that point, it made a lot more sense to just buy it. I think I posted this on one of the other boards I frequent, but the only people who should be buying a camera like this are doing at least a couple of hundred grand of business per year if not more.
If you are doing freelance and just work here and there, I agree, it is unwise to buy any camera at this point, other than maybe something really cheap because the technology changes too quickly and all of these cameras are outdated too soon. Look at my 170, I paid $5,300.00 for it, now you can buy the 300, a much more sophisticated too for just a couple of thousand more.
Dan
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