Canon has announced the HV20, a tiny little 1080p24 camcorder with an MSRP of US$1,099.
Dzang!
It has HDMI out, which means you could pair it with a Blackmagic Intensity card ($250) to capture 4:2:2 uncompressed 24p for less than the price of a decent boom mic setup.
The CMOS chip is true 1920x1080.
We'll have to see how fussy the manual controls are, but this camera just may have DV Rebels everywhere contemplating an impulse buy.
Update: More info from HDVinfo.net.
2nd Update: HV20 now available from Amazon.
Friday, February 02, 2007
DV Rebel Crash Cam
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17 comments:
Sho nuff! Got me checking eBay prices on my little Sony HC1 quite quickly. Time to trade up.
So are we to believe this is indeed true 24P, not some 24F or 24fake or 24kinda?
THIS is the only profile camera I can really own for shooting my 4-year-old children (talk about run and gun), so I HAVE to have a camera this small. The whole reason I have an HC1 is simply that I wanted to shoot them in HD ASAP; I honestly never expected a 24p option in a consumer camera this small. So after giving up my Elura to go HDV, looks like I get to go back to Canon for 24P...and (of course) for rebel filmmaking. [Insert evil laugh here.]
This almost makes me more excited than I get about shooting with the RED. (Well, comparing prices, proportionally more excited for sure!)
When Canon said "true 1920x1080," they meant "true 1440x1080 with wide pixels like HDCAM."
This will of course convert nicely to 1920x1080 in the 1.0 PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio) of a HDTV screen."
Good point BJ, all 1080p HDV is companded to 1440 across on tape. Of course, the same is true of HDCAMSR!
I believe the "true" 1920x1080 refers to the sensor resolution. An important distinction when you have cameras like the HVX200 which offer 1080p recording, even though the sensor offers nowhere near that resolution.
So re. 1920 vs 1440, what will you get in that 4:2:2 stream out HDMI? If it's pre-HDV compression, is it also 1920 or already scaled to 1440?
HDCAM-SR records true 1920 to tape, not 1440 ;o)
Interesting spin on it!
I'd seen the PR on it and had blown it off as "below margin of interest" for indies, but an $1100 24p crash cam suddenly makes it a more interesting proposition.
and Stu - HDCAM SR actually IS full raster! Shame on you for mis-stating that on your own blog!
After you repost your comment correcting that, THEN you can delete this post!
; p
-mike
Thanks for the corrections guys, meant to type HDCAM, but my fingers got carried away. Nice to know screw-ups like that can't go unnoticed on this blog!
Pre-HDV compression? 4:2:2 ? Do you mean capturing via Blackmagic/hdmi WHILST shooting, tapelessly?
New Panasonic Camera
panasonic put out their own crash cam style with a 40gb hdd in it. and a faster lens f1.6.
its only getting better.
j
Jason, thanks for the link!
But I see no mention of 24p, which is a dealbreaker of course.
Please help me understand some things...I'm trying to learn more about digital movie making, but I'm not very technically versed (although, I'm trying to get there). Since this camera's HDMI output (coupled w/ the capture card) can give you uncompressed images with 4:2:2 color sampling - does that make this the best/most affordable greenscreen keying camera option around? As I understand it, 4:2:2 is more important than resolution. Is this correct? Or does the fact that it has only one CMOS hinder it's ability to key greenscreen footage? Should it work well with Keylight, Primatte, Ultimatte or other software/plug-ins? What about coupling this camera with Ultimatte hardware? Thanks for any responses - I'm hoping to build a greenscreen stage in a smaller market city and start producing film-looking projects (as economically as possible, of course).
Again, thanks. I enjoy learning from your blog and I'm buying the book soon (well, hey - I just found Rebel Cafe while writing this post). Should it be on shelves at Barnes & Noble, or do I have to buy it online? I zipped in & out of B&N the other day and couldn't find it. What about Books-A-Million?
Stu,
Reading your book. Great stuff. Perhaps the most user friendly digital film making book I have read.
Concerning the HV 20's Cine Color Mode
In Chris Hurd's overview of the camera at dvinfo.net, he writes:
"There's a Cine color mode available as well, which can be used with or without 24p. It's actually based on one of the Custom Presets included with the Canon XH A1 and G1 camcorders, number 8 (Cine.V.) The parameters of that preset are Gamma: Cine 1, Knee: Low, Black: Stretch, Sharpness: -4, Color Matrix: Cine 1, Color Gain: -20, Color Phase: +5, Red-Blue: -5, Green-Red: -5, Blue-Red: +5, and Red-Green: +12. When the HV20 begins shipping in April, it'll be interesting to see how this Cine color option matches up with Custom Preset 8 from an XH A1."
Now I realize that tyhe camera is not out here in North America yet, but, assuming it is actually close to the Custom Preset 8 of the Canon XH A1, and with the idea of shooting as wide a dynamic range exposure as possible, for either better color correction in post or for a film out, do you have an opinion as to how this Cine Color Mode might stand up? I ask this because of what you say about using the Panasonic Cinelike D etc. in your book.
Thanks,
Geoff
Yeah, Stu, I'd also like to hear your thoughts on shooting with CINE-LIKE-V when CINE-LIKE-D is not available. (I really appreciated that supplemental chapter, and could imagine PDF online updates on it, as more camera options appear on the scene!)
Are there cases where you'd actually punt back to some default settings and correct from there, or will V still give superior latitude to other settings?
I know you recommend D over V unless you blow out skin-tones, at which point V is the choice. In this case, if the HV20 only gives us a "V"-like setting, is that still going to be the setting du jour in most cases?
See this? Popped up on a couple of other sites.
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/4051/hv50naf3.jpg
Geoff
Yes, I've seen it. And I've seen it debunked as being a Photoshop job - as in: fake. The 20 is the only camera actually coming up soon.
...damn...
just bought a 24" iMac - as there's no way of plugging in that card it seems that I can't capture 4:2:2 color space from the HV20 on the iMac?
Any ideas for an alternative?
Thanks a lot!
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