[Larry Grimes]

Maybe it was a defective camera, maybe not. At the end of the day, it’s the OP’s money, and he can buy whatever he likes best for his business.

That being said, I will say that when we were buying three new cameras for our facility back in July 2009, we tested practically everything in the $6k – $12k range. The HPX-300 won in just about every category that we needed fulfilled by a camera. The HM-700 just had too few options, was awkward on the shoulder, had a weak viewfinder (“high-res” viewfinder = NOT HD Viewfinder = hard to check “HD” focus on the fly), and overall picture quality was quite bland. The image that it produced was sharp, however it seemed like it was geared towards people needed less chroma, possibly for tweaking in post, which I found odd because as far as I know, the HM700 records in 4:2:0 color, and only outputs 4:2:2 for live applications via HD-SDI.

The HPX-300 met every one of our needs, even with P2 media being as pricey as it is. We ordered from our regular local place, and the cameras came straight from Japan at a time when nobody else in Dallas could even find the camera. “Out of the box” the HPX-300 (all three of them) produced sharp, colorful, contrasty, beautiful images (even under awful fluorescent light). Had we encountered any problems, our local company would have replaced the product immediately.

I get such shallow depth of field with this camera, that you’d never know it has 1/3″ sensor. The greatest thing is that I have options for shooting. I can make the image look super video-like, or make it look really darn close to film. I can strip out tons of chroma in camera, or completely saturate the image with a simple scene file change. Plus, go figure, it’s an HD camera with an actual HD viewfinder (though I do wish it was detachable)! Overall, it’s a workhorse, and seems built to last for a good while, at least I hope! We shoot a lot of AVC-Intra50 on most everyday projects, and AVC-Intra100 for more important projects, and both produce a remarkable image. We tend to stay away from the DVC-PRO codecs, which was a hard thing to grasp having used lots of Panny gear in the past. We shoot primarily 720 at 30p, with the occaisional 1080i project popping up. Like I said, virtually everything we shoot looks great, including an SD project that came about, which was one of the only times we’ve used a DVC-Pro Codec on the camera.

Anyway, I probably just took up entirely too much space and time, but I wanted to chime in on the subject. For the record, we also have 3 JVC-HD250’s that we use for some live event work, and honestly, I wish I’d been in on the decision to buy those cameras. I’m just not a big fan. Although the image quality is fair, I just find the cameras awkward, and the “high-res” viewfinder and LCD are just plain inadequate for an HD camera. Plus, after 2 shoots, we had to send one of the cameras in for repair when the fan in the back ceased to function, with only around 12 hours of use on it!