Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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[alichek] “Is there any advantage to shooting anamorphic considering the low light?”
You may see a very slight difference in low light aquisition (worse) when you shoot widescreen IF you’re using the Panny’s in-camera 16:9 stretch, because you won’t be using all the pixels on the imagers. If, on the other hand, you have an anamorphic adapter then there shouldn’t be much low light difference at all.
If you’re doing a one camera shoot and your wedding client doesn’t care about the widescreen/full screen thing then shoot 4:3 because then you’ll be recording a full rez image and you won’t have to worry about using anamorphic adapters or whether or not the in-camera stretch will look good in post.
– Don
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Both cameras you’re considering have the same size imaging chips, which are 1/3″. The Panny is standard definition, so it has fewer pixels on its chips but they are larger and will be better in low light than the Sony Z1U. The Sony is high def. and has a lot more pixels in its chip set but they’re smaller and need more light to get the same exposure as the DVX.
If you’re not worried about the high def. – standard def. thing or don’t need to shoot native widescreen then I recommend you go with the DVX.
The current leader in low light shooting in the 1/3″ chip class, regardless of SD or HD is still the Sony PD170, but it doesn’t shoot in native widescreen and doesn’t do 30p or 24p like the DVX. Perhaps you were thinking of the PD170 when you were told about the Sony’s low light performance.
Hope this helps.
– Don
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Thanks, Klaas.
– Don
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[dpncharge] “Is this where compressor comes into play??”
Not if you want to use iDVD. Just start iDVD and drag/import your QT movies into it. iDVD will decide the bitrate itself and encode your 4 movies so that everything fits on an SD DVD.
Can I ask why you don’t use DVD Studio Pro for this? That’s where Compressor comes into play. It will give you much more control over the encoding process and in addition will allow you to compress your audio to the DVD standard AC3 file format which is much more compatible with consumer DVD players.
– Don
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[Todd at Fantastic Plastic] “It’s more fun yelling “Action!” and bossing people around, anyway.
“Steven Spielberg commented that the very first time he was on set as a director he was so nervous that instead of saying “action” he waved his arm at everybody and said rather sheepishly: “Go ahead.”
– Don
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[Chris Babbitt] “We couldn’t tell the difference. “
That sounds very impressive, Chris. When it’s possible to intercut footage from a sub $10,000.00 camera with one that is way over ten times the price you know you’re witnessing a revolution in the making.
– Don
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Awsome. Thanks for your feedback, Chris. You just sealed the deal for me.
– Don -
For some reason my response was posted twice, so I deleted the duplicate from this one.
– Don
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The EX owner’s manual says: “When you rotate it 90 degress toward the subject, the image on the monitor becomes upside down, indicating the mirror image of the subject. The display direction of the textual information is converted to the readable direction.”
Does that mean “yes?”
– Don
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[Chris Babbitt] “the low-light performance is amazing.”
Chris,
Did you see any low light picture noise in the blacks that you would deem unacceptable? The reason I ask is because several months ago I tried out a V1U with CMOS chips and observed unacceptable picture noise with NO gain at all. This was a deal breaker for me.
I would define acceptable picture noise as nothing appreciable until after +6 or 9 gain is dialed in. So much of our work is done in low light that this feature is quite important to our business.
– Don