HVX-200

Sorry for asking yet another question about cameras, but I am trying to educate myself as much as possible. I believe I am set on the Z1 as a camera choice, but have recently read (and seen footage from) the HVX-200 and am having second thoughts.

I foresee that this camera will have a significant amount of topside use, in addition to its underwater use. I have to say that, to my eye, the HVX footage is much more stunning than anything I have seen from the Sony line. Perhaps that is simply the difference in footage I have seen...

So...

Other than the clear downsides, including:

1) Increased cost

2) Reduced choice of housing

3) Perceived difficulty/cost of working with P2 storage

Are there reasons why people prefer the Z1? I guess I am asking at a technical, spec type of level...

Again, thanks in advance as always for any and all help.

-Matt

Those are the reasons really. I'm not sure if the Panasonic can downsample to standard definition DV during IEEE1394 capture. That's very useful on the Z1 for me with my ageing laptop.

If you've got the bigger budget and you really want a 24P "film look" and you're happy with a Gates mechanical housing then it's worth considering the HVX-200. But the 24P is only at 720 lines, not 1080. P2 cards are getting bigger which is reducing the importance of your third reason. See Josh Jensen's HD showreel for some underwater footage from the HVX-200.

But the 24P is only at 720 lines, not 1080.

Where did you get this information? Please recheck your sources.

Two Housings that I know so far support installing the FS-100 drive inside the housing, so the P2 card is not limiting.

Oops, you're right. I was thinking of the 60p mode which should be great for slomo but is only at 720 lines. Corrected my post above.

Looking at the HVX 200, as it shoots in DVC Pro HD will there be less compression issues that HDV suffers from?

The thing that I find hard to understand is the increased cost of the gates housing, it is about 35% more expensive than the Z1 housing... Do we think this is just because they will not sell as many?

Jon

Looking at the HVX 200, as it shoots in DVC Pro HD will there be less compression issues that HDV suffers from?

The HVX200 and DVCPro HD compression is a great improvement over HDV.

I did a test from a D5 tape of a Feature Film Master using Uncompressed 8bit and DVCPRO HD at 1920x1080 in FCP using an AJA Kona 2 and there was no change between the two images in quality, just a very, very slight color shift. The DVCPro file off the top of my head was like 680mb vs the 8bit 1.3gb, so it is quite a space saver in that particular workflow.

The files may be a little larger than HDV, but the end image result is worth it.