[Steven Bradford]

I’m fairly certain that CMOS sensors don’t have trouble with vertical smear at all. At least that’s what a quick google confirms.

Steven Bradford
https://www.3dstereomedia.com 3D company I’ve worked with since 1990
https://www.seanet.com/~bradford/ my personal home page, find my greenscreen page there.
https://www.seattlefilminstitute.com the school I teach at.

[Steven Bradford]

Actually, the component out is less compressed than the HD-SDI is, sort of. Since it is the direct analog out signal, before digitizing.

Which means the digitizing is happening in your capture card, not the camera. How are you digitizing?

Steven Bradford
https://www.3dstereomedia.com 3D company I’ve worked with since 1990
https://www.seanet.com/~bradford/ my personal home page, find my greenscreen page there.
https://www.seattlefilminstitute.com the school I teach at.

[Steven Bradford]

There’s not a lot you can do, other than to get a better camera. And by better, I mean quite a bit more expensive than you’re probably wiling to pay–this is one of the big dividing lines between pro and consumer gear.

The best I can think of is try to avoid having the lights right at the top of the frame edge. In some cameras this seems to result in the biggest streaks. Setting to a higher speed shutter will help, but of course, this will negate your ability to shoot in low light.

What’s happening is that the sensor wells where the light hits are overloaded and the voltages cascade down the sensor. It’s almost as if they’re overflowing with photons. This was a big problem with the first broadcast grade expensive news cameras with CCD chips 20+ years ago. It was removed by using different chip designs.

Over time I’m sure we’ll see this disappear from low end cameras too as the cost of sensors drop.

Steven Bradford
https://www.3dstereomedia.com 3D company I’ve worked with since 1990
https://www.seanet.com/~bradford/ my personal home page, find my greenscreen page there.
https://www.seattlefilminstitute.com the school I teach at.

[Steven Bradford]

“and did some tape recordings ”

This is your problem right here. The tape recording is HDV with it’s limited colorspace and massive compression.

You want to capture live directly out of the HD-SDI ports to your blackmagic card while you are doing the shoot and leave the tape step completely out of the equation.

This is a very cost effective way to get great results. Otherwise you have to use very expensive tape decks to record that HD-SDI output.

Steven Bradford
https://www.3dstereomedia.com 3D company I’ve worked with since 1990
https://www.seanet.com/~bradford/ my personal home page, find my greenscreen page there.
https://www.seattlefilminstitute.com the school I teach at.

[Steven Bradford]

Hmm.

I think I get a clearer picture now. I’d say get one of the panasonic or canon camcorders. The HV30 makes okay keys, we’ve used it at school a couple of times for that. A Panasonic DVX100 is also fine, though not HD, as is the HVX200 or HDM150 which are HD.
The main thing is, get a 3 chip camera. Don’t get one that records to little SD chips, those compress the signal too much.

When you need to do the chroma key, you’ll ask around and get some advice, and eventually figure out how to do it. That’s how it works out for a lot of people. I have a web page about it that you can get too from my home page, see below. Your clients don’t seem that sophisticated, my experience is that they’ll love the results.

That’s why I think the whole 4:1:1 vs 4:2:2 thing doesn’t matter, you’ll get results that are good enough for your clients.

Steven Bradford
https://www.3dstereomedia.com 3D company I’ve worked with since 1990
https://www.seanet.com/~bradford/ my personal home page, find my greenscreen page there.
https://www.seattlefilminstitute.com the school I teach at.

[Steven Bradford]

Chelsea-

If a primary use of this camera is for chroma key, I would look for a camera that has full bandwidth component HD outputs. Then you can record directly into a computer with a component HD video capture card or box. This will greatly improve the quality of the chroma key, and the speed with which you can accomplish them. All the cameras in your price range record very compressed signals which work are so-so to ok to pull keys from. Several cameras in this price range have these outputs. I believe the canon xh a1 is just barely in your price range, and it has a full uncompressed digital output, HD-SDI, which would work the best capturing live into a computer with an HD-SDI capture card.

Steven Bradford
https://www.3dstereomedia.com 3D company I’ve worked with since 1990
https://www.seanet.com/~bradford/ my personal home page, find my greenscreen page there.
https://www.seattlefilminstitute.com the school I teach at.

[Steven Bradford]

PS– I’d take a close look at the new JVC GY HM100U, which is more directly comparable to the Panasonic.

Steven Bradford
https://www.3dstereomedia.com 3D company I’ve worked with since 1990
https://www.seanet.com/~bradford/ my personal home page, find my greenscreen page there.
https://www.seattlefilminstitute.com the school I teach at.

[Steven Bradford]

Both of these cameras use 1/3″ chips by the way. I’d try to demo each one. The great advantage of the JVC is the interchangeable lens. You’re more likely to find a good price on it, since it’s a discontinued camera.

And yes, the tape drive can be a problem on JVCs.

Steven Bradford
https://www.3dstereomedia.com 3D company I’ve worked with since 1990
https://www.seanet.com/~bradford/ my personal home page, find my greenscreen page there.
https://www.seattlefilminstitute.com the school I teach at.

[Steven Bradford]

What Mark said. Plus, why are using a truck to begin with? That’s 90% of your problem right there.

My students just failed miserably trying to do the same thing with a small jib. I wished they’d asked first, because the first thing I would have said was, don’t use a truck. Use a convertible car. preferably a luxury or american car. Eldorados used to be great for this. Trucks, especially trucks that aren’t carrying much of a load, are goind to transmit way to many shocks to the tripod. Letting the air out of the tire helps some.

Find a big old american car with a good size trunk, and remove the trunk lid. An old Town Car is perfect. You now have something very much like a pickup in back, but with a very smooth ride. After letting the tire pressure down to 22 or so.

Steven Bradford
https://www.3dstereomedia.com 3D company I’ve worked with since 1990
https://www.seanet.com/~bradford/ my personal home page, find my greenscreen page there.
https://www.seattlefilminstitute.com the school I teach at.

[Steven Bradford]

I don’t like either of those. These are students in a traditional film program? What are your objectives? Is audio completely immaterial? I could “maybe” see using these cameras in a visual journalism program, where the emphasis was on journalism, and not the pictures or the sound.

I’d go with the panasonic AG-HMC70. Full manual, XLR audio inputs, professional form factor. In fact it almost seems as it it was designed to be a school camera, sort of the Pentax K1000 of video. By the time you adopt it, and in the quantity pricing you’ll be able to get, it will quite possibly be under $1500.

I suppose I should be glad your school is doing this! Every time a film school does this, it makes it easier for us to recruit students. 😉

Steven Bradford
https://www.3dstereomedia.com 3D company I’ve worked with since 1990
https://www.seanet.com/~bradford/ my personal home page, find my greenscreen page there.
https://www.seattlefilminstitute.com the school I teach at.