I posted this on another tribe, regarding a back -up camera, and thought that since you can get this camera for about $1000, it should be here in "Budget Filming." I'm referring to the JVC- GZ-HD7. So here goes:
Well, I managed to get a perfect, used HD7. Very interesting to say the least. In comparing image quality to other HD consumer cams (although I think the HD7 deserves the title "prosumer" and I'll explain why), it seemed to surpass every other model JVC cam, Panasonic, Sony, and matched the Canon HV-30, although I thought the Canon HF-10 looked very good. Maybe it's because of the Fujinon lens. At full HD mode, the 60 gig internal disk drive handles 5 hours of "full" 1080x1920 HD resolution. Here's something I wasn't prepared for; I was under the assumption that JVC did not put anything equal to a 24p mode in the camera, and thought that I would have to use software to get that "film" look. There's no info relating to this on the specs in the JVC website. Well guess what? Turns out the camera has a "Classic Film" mode and Lo and Behold- it resembles film! However, you need to manually adjust the shutter to at least 1/250 sec to get rid of some jitter in this mode. I'll come back to this is a second. The camera has shutter speeds ranging from 1/2 to 1/4000 sec so you can get incredible motion blur to perfectly sharp freeze frames. The amount of manual control this camera has can produce outstanding results in all conditions, which is why I think this is more "prosumer." There's something else; if you shoot in dark conditions and keep the shutter speed fast, you can up the gain which produces a muted color, grainy effect that is not unlike scenes from the movie 300, so you have some great stylistic options here. Colorwise, the whites are true on Auto White Balance, and flesh tones are just a bit warmer than natural, creating a beautiful effect for shooting people that eliminates the need for pancake make-up. The LCD is perfectly visible in sunlight, but I actually preferred the huge color Electronic Viewfinder! Control settings for everything you can think of, including external microphone levels are all present, and even using the built-in stero mike has a "wind-cut" feature. Audio from this camera is actually better than most, including the Canon models, but I'd still attach a small shotgun mike. The camera is extremely comfortable in the hand too. The only downsides to this camera is that there is no external headphone jack, and the provided battery doesn't give you that much recording time, but JVC has two other batteries for this camera that triples the usage of the provided battery. All in all, this is really a great low-budget solution for those starting out and wanting professional looking results. You can probably start picking these up at lower prices soon, because JVC is discontinuing the camera for a rumored 120 gig Drive version..
There are some reported codec issues that I've read that requires the JVC software, so I'll post info on that as soon as I edit the first short film done solely with this.
Well, I managed to get a perfect, used HD7. Very interesting to say the least. In comparing image quality to other HD consumer cams (although I think the HD7 deserves the title "prosumer" and I'll explain why), it seemed to surpass every other model JVC cam, Panasonic, Sony, and matched the Canon HV-30, although I thought the Canon HF-10 looked very good. Maybe it's because of the Fujinon lens. At full HD mode, the 60 gig internal disk drive handles 5 hours of "full" 1080x1920 HD resolution. Here's something I wasn't prepared for; I was under the assumption that JVC did not put anything equal to a 24p mode in the camera, and thought that I would have to use software to get that "film" look. There's no info relating to this on the specs in the JVC website. Well guess what? Turns out the camera has a "Classic Film" mode and Lo and Behold- it resembles film! However, you need to manually adjust the shutter to at least 1/250 sec to get rid of some jitter in this mode. I'll come back to this is a second. The camera has shutter speeds ranging from 1/2 to 1/4000 sec so you can get incredible motion blur to perfectly sharp freeze frames. The amount of manual control this camera has can produce outstanding results in all conditions, which is why I think this is more "prosumer." There's something else; if you shoot in dark conditions and keep the shutter speed fast, you can up the gain which produces a muted color, grainy effect that is not unlike scenes from the movie 300, so you have some great stylistic options here. Colorwise, the whites are true on Auto White Balance, and flesh tones are just a bit warmer than natural, creating a beautiful effect for shooting people that eliminates the need for pancake make-up. The LCD is perfectly visible in sunlight, but I actually preferred the huge color Electronic Viewfinder! Control settings for everything you can think of, including external microphone levels are all present, and even using the built-in stero mike has a "wind-cut" feature. Audio from this camera is actually better than most, including the Canon models, but I'd still attach a small shotgun mike. The camera is extremely comfortable in the hand too. The only downsides to this camera is that there is no external headphone jack, and the provided battery doesn't give you that much recording time, but JVC has two other batteries for this camera that triples the usage of the provided battery. All in all, this is really a great low-budget solution for those starting out and wanting professional looking results. You can probably start picking these up at lower prices soon, because JVC is discontinuing the camera for a rumored 120 gig Drive version..
There are some reported codec issues that I've read that requires the JVC software, so I'll post info on that as soon as I edit the first short film done solely with this.
posted by:
|
New York City
|
