ISO of HPX3000?

[Lindsay Mann]

Anyone (Mitch?) have a rough ISO for the HPX3000? I'm hearing it's somewhere near 250 ISO, but I read on DV.com: "Altering the master gamma to .4, making some tweaks to the matrices and shooting at a 270-degree shutter or a 360-degree (off) shutter for most of the film put us up at 640 ISO"

 

What does that mean for noise, raising the gamma to .4? How far are people willing to push the gain in low light?

[Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC]

I rated one at 800 ISO a two weeks ago.

 

Here is a test I shot. http://www.chayseirvin.com/video/HIEHPX3000TEST.mov

[Lindsay Mann]

Wow, thanks Chayse. I notice some noise especially in the reds on the fill side. But his face looks nice.

 

A couple questions: What did you light him with? Do you have any clips of one or two stops under from that? I'm assuming that's AVC Intra and the digiPrime. You shoot anything with it yet? What's your overall impression of the image and the workflow.

[David Auner aac]

Anyone (Mitch?) have a rough ISO for the HPX3000? I'm hearing it's somewhere near 250 ISO

 

Hi Lindsay,

 

I shot a 3000 last week and my rating come out between 160 and 200, but I can't really tell you the settings it had since I had one of the folks at the rental shop set it up roughly to my liking. Oh and it was set at -3db!

 

Cheers, Dave

[Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC]

I hope to test the HPX again. My rating may have been compromised by my lack of a brand new 18% gray card.

 

I lit him with two 4 light FAY's through Muslin w/ Lee 736 (Wheat) gel. I prefer working with FAY's and Maxi's on some projects because you have more control over power distro in places you may not have any control, plus PAR bulbs are so efficient. I shot the test from +4 stops over key all the way down to -3 stops over key. Not totally sure what lens I used. It was an older zoom. Probably close to first generation 2/3rd HD zooms.

 

I recorded AVC100. It was pretty nice... I was so happy that it was a P2 codec thats 10bit. But Panavision had this other device called Panasonic HPM110 Solid-State Recorder/Player which I thought was really cool. You can send it any HDSDI and record to AVC100 P2. So in a sense you could rent a cheaper camera like a HDX900 and record that compression codec, not sure how that would compare to actually recording HPX vs, but that would be an interesting test. I guess it would depend on if the HDSDI out were 720 or 1080 and the sensor itself?

 

The camera had really nice high light detail, even at +4 stops key my assistances face didn't clip.

 

I love tapeless workflows. I did a Varicam feature a year back where we recorded direct to disk via HDSDI to a mac tower recording 10bit uncompressed 720 59.98p and it looked shockingly better then DVCPRO HD tape... the problem being that uncompressed 720 takes up tons of hard drive space (more space then even 1080 24p because of the '59.98p' the 720 records). At the rate we were shooting some days we would have recorded 3 terabytes a day. The AVC100 isn't uncompressed, but its 10bit, which is a huge leap from DVCPRO HD, and can be managed with minimal hard drive space. But I find all this digital talk very depressing... I love film.

Edited July 22, 2008 by Chayse Irvin

[Mitch Gross]

It's so hard to give a base ISO rating because it is so easy to change variables such as gamma which will then alter the rating. Gamma is usually set to a standard of .45, and with this and other settings at something close to default, I think you'll find the camera in the neighborhood of 320 ISO. The note about turning off the shutter means that you're going from a 180 degree shutter to a virtual 360 shutter, which increases sensitivity by one stop (640 ISO) but may also bring some unwanted motion blur.

 

I think the HPX3000 is an incredible camera. One of the tricks is that the noise floor on the camera is so low that it therefore extends the usable dynamic range, which means that the sensitivity is effectively higher because it sees further into the shadows. A beautiful machine.

 

The HPM110 is also commonly known as the P2 Mobile, and it is a great device. We recommend it all the time to clients looking for a high quality video recorder for cameras such as the Iconix or the Phantom HD. AVC-i 100 is very clean and it also really extends the usefulness of a camera like the Varicam. Instead of recording 8-bit DVCPROHD one can record 10-bit AVC-i 100 and the P2 Mobile will also perform useful functions such as live playback of the offspeed material (slow-motion playback) as well as apply the cine gamma corrections when shooting in the FILM REC mode for extended dynamic range. Previously if one wanted to perform these functions on set a gamma correction box and an edit system would be required, not to mention a deck to feed the DVCPROHD tapes. This is a great, does it all box that's lightweight, small, AC/DC powered and it will dump your files directly to a hard drive at the end of the day as well. Nice.

[Gus Sacks]

With the Pro-35 adapter we rated it at 100 ASA. So... 400 in reality I guess.

[DS Williams]

It might just be my LCD i'm viewing the clip on, but did that test look very noisy to anyone else? It looked as noisy as my HVX200...just saw it as odd. Probably just me.