Troy Warr

Sure thing, Daniel! Hope that works well for you. If you get a chance I'm curious to know what you think of it once you start using it.

Just in case anyone is eyeballing the new Sony HDR-FX7 - a recent post on a German blog highlights some of the differences between it and the HDR-FX1. It's a little difficult to decipher due to the translation, but should provide at least some insight. The translated version is available here. If you're fluent in German, the original version is here.

Hi Daniel, I don't have any experience with the Gossen Digipro F, though I used to work in a rental department and worked with what appear to be similar Gossen meters based on this one's specs. I try not to be brand partial but I've personally had better impressions of Sekonic light meters. They sell a unit called the L-358 that's a great budget/midrange meter. B&H has it for $239 right now. I don't know if it has all of the features that you need, but the major features should at least be comparable to the Gossen. In my opinion it's worth a look and some research on the Sekonic site before you make the purchase. Hope that helps!

http://www.sonyv1u.com/ - no footage yet but they mention there will be some soon.

Is this equipment that you own, or are looking to rent or buy? If you have the option of using a newer Sony HDV camera, the HVR-V1U for example, you can run the HDMI-out into the Blackmagic Intensity card (mentioned in Will's post above - only $250) and capture 4:2:2 either uncompressed or with much lower compression codecs than HDV. According to their specs, you would also have the full 1920x1080 frame, rather than the 1440x1080 that is the case with HDV. I'm still shaky on the details, but it seems like an awesome solution if you have HDMI-out on your camera (only newer Sony's do, as far as I know). I e-mailed a sales rep at Blackmagic a while back about this very subject and would be happy to forward you his responses if you're interested.

Hi Phil, Thank you for your input! That's encouraging to hear. I have very little experience in the field, but part of what drove me to investigate this option was my experience with a very small composite video camera that I bought a few years ago. I used it in conjunction with an entry-level Canon miniDV camcorder (as a deck) to record some footage from the POV of my car's front bumper. I taped it underneath, about 4" from the road surface, and ran the cables into my car, plugging the DC input to my car's cigarette lighter (using an adapter) and the RCA output to the camcorder's analog-in port. As you mentioned the video wasn't stunning, but it was surprisingly good for a $50 solution, and honestly, the limiting factor in video quality seemed to be the Canon camcorder itself; i.e. the video that I captured looked indistinguishable from the camcorder's native footage (albeit monochrome). Granted, this was a budget model (a ZR70, as I recall), but if I this concept is scalable and I can squeeze entry-level HDV quality (e.g. on par with a Canon HV10) out of this camera from EPIX - especially if it's capable of 1080/24p - I'll be a very happy man! Hal - thank you so much for taking this step! I'm really excited to hear what the response from EPIX will be. You're certainly right that this could be an ideal option for a crash cam should it prove to be practical and compatible with (or at least adaptable to) current HD formats. Since the camera is tethered to a remote PC via Ethernet cable, the possibilities would be great: no onboard media recovery to worry about, a very compact form factor, and the option to operate the camera from a great distance relative to the controller PC. I remembered an article in American Cinematographer that detailed the use of Sony XC999 lipstick cameras in the movie XXX. Several were strapped to a car that was driven off a bridge, and the trunk was filled with crash-proofed miniDV recording decks. I've seen the XC999 camera heads alone retail for around $1000 each (likely more for the PAL versions used in XXX), and miniDV decks are certainly not cheap. Combine that with the fact that you're risking the shot by crashing your recording media along with the recording devices, and on an expensive/complex stunt, that seems awfully risky. Using that same stunt as an example, I could envision using several of these 9T001C cameras in the car, running Ethernet cables in a bundle to a remote location (maybe even still on the bridge?) where a PC can capture their output (the EPIX site somewhere mentions using up to 8 PCI cards and attached cameras per PC) until they hit the ground. I believe that Ethernet cable can be run for fairly long distances before a repeater/amplifier is needed, and it's compact enough to be hidden or rotoscoped from external shots, and cheap enough to be disposable. If you rig up a simple "breakaway" section of cable, you could even eliminate any damage to the recording PC should the cable become snagged or ripped away from the PC along with the camera head at the moment of impact. Anyway, please let us know what you hear back from EPIX - I'd be more than thrilled if some of the pros from this forum were able to test a demo unit and provide feedback! Thanks again!

Thanks, Luke! That's a good point. I *believe* that you are able to set most features of the camera, including resolution and pixel clock. I've tinkered more with the demo software, but there's not a whole lot to gain from it without having a camera attached and its drivers installed. But, there are settings for horizontal and vertical resolution, among others - so I hope that's a good sign. It appears that there is a maximum datarate that can be handled by the CMOS chip and/or controller card, as well as a maximum practical number of frames per second - but it seems that if you don't exceed those limits, you're able to set almost everything manually. I am encouraged by the fact that nobody has pointed out any major pitfalls yet - not that that's any proof of concept, but I think that at least means that it's worth investigating further. Though I'm not holding my breath for the best image quality, it would be awesome if I'm able to squeeze out decent 1080/24p video from a ~$1000 solution! Thanks again for your help!

Thanks, Ilmari, for your feedback! These are all excellent points to consider, and I definitely have my work cut out for me if I decide to take this route. EPIX provides a demo version of the XCAP software that's used to acquire images from the camera, and though I'm just starting to learn its features, it appears that the formats of choice for image acquisition are either TIFF or BMP. I'm assuming that I would be able to capture a sequence of still images that I could then place on a timeline in Adobe Premiere or After Effects, edit and then export in the desired HDTV format. Also, for some reason I'm under the impression (though I could be dead wrong - I need a little more research here, too) that the CMOS chip used in this particular camera is the equivalent of a 3-megapixel still camera chip, likely from a digital point-and-shoot or the equivalent; my guess is that it's just controlled through the included PCI board in such a way as to allow for rapid capture of still images, to essentially form the equivalent of progressive-scan video, just captured as a sequence of stills rather than with a traditional video codec. If that's the case, I'm hoping that speaks favorably to the image quality - and at least that would get me in the ballpark of a decent HD video camera, albeit one sourced from the imaging chip of a point & shoot digital still camera. You're definitely correct about the problems with resale - I can't imagine having anything but a hard time trying to recover any money on the investment should I decide to sell this down the road. Fortunately, though, it doesn't appear that I would need to upgrade my current computer to support the bandwidth required for image acquisition, and any image enhancement methods that I try (purchasing a high-quality C-mount lens or two, finding a way to adapt SLR-based 35mm lenses for increased DOF) *hopefully* wouldn't mean much more than an investment in some popular optics, e.g. Nikon F-mount lenses. I would think that the $1000 investment in this system would be the only major part that I couldn't expect to mostly get back with resale. That's a good point about the pitfalls of working in the field, too. I would have to haul a PC and monitor around tethered to the camera - but I'm prepared to do that. Another alternative that I have considered would be something like the Sony HDR-FX7 attached to the Blackmagic Intensity HDMI card, which would also require a tethered PC. I really don't like the implications of the HDV format (high compression/low bitrate, long-GOP interframe codec, 4:1:1 sampling, no 1080p) so the Blackmagic card would give me a higher quality solution, but at a greatly increased cost (probably $5-8K after camera, 35mm adapter, card, PC upgrades) vs. this solution at about $1-2K, if it would in fact work as I hope it can. Provided that the camera captures TIFF or BMP sequences, can handle 1080p/24 (at least at 2:35 ratio), and has image quality at least comparable to a 3 megapixel digital point & shoot camera - all of which appear to be possible but I still need to verify with EPIX - can you see any other potential pitfalls, better alternatives, or drawbacks to this system that I might not be considering? Keep in mind that I don't need sync sound. Thanks again for your feedback!

There are a couple of clips here and here - you'll need an application like the free VLC player to view the .m2t footage.

After stumbling upon a post in another forum, I've gained new interest in an idea that I've been kicking around for a while. I'm interested in the viability of using an industrial CMOS camera as an HD cinema device. Does anyone have experience with a camera anywhere along the lines of the Silicon Video 9T001C from EPIX? My budget doesn't have a hard ceiling (roughly $3-5K), but a $1000 1080p setup (actually more like 2K) that includes camera, capture card and frame grabber software is very intriguing. The sensor specs can be found here. The type of stuff that I shoot (MOS shorts, music video, experimental) often requires the small camera form factor, so that's a big plus. I don't mind being tethered to a PC, and I love progressive scan and the capacity for variable frame rates. However, I'm unsure of several things about this kind of setup: - What kind of image quality should I expect? Obviously this won't compete with any high-end 1080p cameras, but using good glass and low compression, could it possibly get me anywhere near the current crop of HDV prosumer cameras ($3-5K price range)? - If I mount some super-fast lenses (e.g. f/1.0 ballpark) and shoot at large apertures (maybe using ND filters to reduce the light), would the 1/2" sensor give me any shallowness to the DOF? Or, could I find a way to buy/build a 35mm lens adapter to interface with the C mount (same concept as the P+S Technik or the Red Rock Micro)? - Given a fast, modern PC, would I face any bottlenecks or extra expenditures involved with live footage ingest? Would this be prohibitive when considering this setup from a budget standpoint? An obvious alternative to something like this would be a low-end HDV camcorder like the Canon HV10, but the potential advantages to this setup (variable frame rates, progressive scan, lower footage compression, interchangeable lenses, live footage ingest) are very desirable to me. Thanks in advance for any feedback!