The digital revolution is trying to take a serious shape. I was watching this brand new TV cop show “The unusuals” and I was thinking that it looked “different”. There is almost no shallow depth of field in it. I kept thinking that they used a cheap(er) camera, and they did: the $10,000 Sony EX3, with its 1/2.0″ sensor. They also use the much more expensive F23 sometimes, but the EX3 seems to be the camera used mostly. The CC and lighting is minimal and that makes the show look cheap, but I guess this is part of the idea behind the show to make it look like a documentary. Still, it’s cool to see a digital camera used for a TV show, because on most of the rest of the primetime shows, they use film.

This is such an unprecedented record for any consumer camera ever, and surely for many prosumer cameras too! There are out there over 250 official music videos shot with the HV20/30 cameras. It really shows how easy it has become to attain high quality output from a $500 camera and how people jump on the opportunity to take advantage of this great deal!

Here’s a recent music video by the Outsider, shot with an HV20 and a JVC camera, I love the song. Can’t wait to get released on iTunes soon!

The only thing that’s mind boggling and shows how slow and stupid big corporations are, is Canon not taking advantage of the huge HV20/30 success and fanatical community in the last 2 years. They do nothing with this unique opportunity, apart from slightly refreshing the brand with the upcoming HV40 model (which was basically a cheap throw in to shut us up). But when I am saying that they should do something about it is not about creating new HV models (their time is passed, people don’t want tape cameras anymore). What I am saying is, heck, where are the official HV20 t-shirts I could buy? Where are the paid firmware upgrades that could make thousands of us flock to pay that 50 bucks per year in order to get full manual control, or native 24p.

The problem is that Canon believes that the way to cater to these needs is to release a new camera. Like these new super-noisy and non-stabilized HF-S10/S100 models. Erm, no thanks. Canon fails to realize that a good percentage of enthusiasts like us don’t move to another product so easily. We are here for the long run. Users who already own the legendary HV20/30 won’t rush to upgrade as easily as someone who upgrades from a Sony HD camera, or from a plain DV camera. Reason being, we already have a “good enough” camera.

Canon needs to wake up and smell the money they are losing for not appreciating this thing called ‘community’. They see their buyers in a flat way, but unfortunately for them, the HV20/30 enthusiasts are not your average customers. And there are thousands of us. Not to mention the whole marketing game that they don’t take advantage of, as many HV videos are very popular and potential new customers keep asking over and over what camera was used.

Camcorderinfo.com finally posted their review of the Canon HF-S10/S100 camera, which is supposed to take over HV20/30’s reigns. The camera has been in the market for a month now, so we already knew most of what was noted in the actual review. After 30+ pages of discussion over at HV20.com, we now know this camera pretty well.

Here are the good points:
1. Sharpest camera in the consumer market today, when light is adequate.
2. More manual controls than other consumer cameras.
3. Other stuff, as I have mentioned here before.

Here are the negative points:
1. High levels of noise when light is inadequate, and terrible low light support in general.
2. Terrible image stabilization (especially compared to the Sony HDR-XR520V).
3. Other stuff, as I have mentioned here before.

I think that Canon will have no choice but to use larger sensors in the future to make up for the bad low light support and noise. One thing is for sure: I won’t be buying that camera. Neeeext…

This is a good buy if you already don’t have a Canon HD camcorder. But if you do, wait for the next generation, next year.

So many times I speak about the HV20/30’s video abilities, but its still imaging capabilities are possibly even better. The HV series are better digicams than any consumer snapshot digicam. You see, HV’s lens is a ‘faster’ one and of higher grade/sharper than the one used in most digicams, it has a huge aperture compared to most digicams’, plus its 10x zoom is equivalent to 16mm film in terms of background blur. In other words, the HV’s still imaging capabilities are somewhere in between a DSLR and a snapshot camera. The only thing missing is resolution (3.2 MP). The new Canon HF-S10/S100 camcorders ($1100) are over 8 MP, so if you are into a single device that does both photo+video well, these might be the models for you.

Here are some good HV20/30 pics. Click in to go and see their higher resolution version.

Click the link below to view more cool pics!
Read the rest of this entry »

Canon’s photography department just doesn’t have a freaking clue about video. Their latest 500D shoots in… 1080/20p. Yup, 20 fps. They could offer us instead 720/24p, 720/25p and shutter speed control in addition to their 720/30p mode, and completely laying off that 1080/20p madness, and that would have made the camera much more useful and without cannibalizing their camcorder line (because there would be no 1080p mode). Prolost blogged about this twice, and there’s a long thread on HV20.com too.

I know I said that this blog is closed, but I got messages from people asking me about my opinion on the new Canon camcorders, announced yesterday. Instead of emailing each and every one of you separately about them, here’s a quick post instead. Also, thank you to everyone who emailed me in the past 2+ weeks to wish well for my health and express their surprise, sadness (and in one case, …happiness) for the closing of this blog.

So, the (quite possibly) last of the HV-series, the HV40, adds just a customizable button and “true” 24p, without the need of pulldown removal. If you already have an HV20 or HV30 and a utility to remove pulldown out of PF24, or you just never shoot in PF24, then there is zero reason to buy this camera. It doesn’t worth the upgrade from a previous HV camera. It’s only a good solution if you are using a different, cheaper/older, camera. And it’s even less of interest if you live in a PAL country, as the only new thing you are going to get is the customizable button (PAL cameras don’t have 24p support). LAME.

The real interest is not in the HV series anymore. In my book, the HV series are dead in the “DV Rebel” amateur artistic videography. Long live the HV series. The interest is now in the AVCHD-based HF-S series. These two new models (HF-S10 and HF-S100) have some really good features, and only “lose out” to the HV40 in five departments. First, the good things about them:

Pros of the HF-S10/S100 compared to the HV20/30/40

- 8 MP sensor (in RED terms, that’s a 3K resolution, similar to the upcoming RED Scarlet). The picture captured is 8 MP and then it’s resized down to 1080p. Depending on the algorithm used to resize down the image, it should produce some very good quality picture, not only compared to the previous king in the consumer market, the HV series, but also compared to some prosumer cameras!
- It uses the brand new DigicDV III sensor. This sensor, in addition to the features mentioned above, is also faster. This means that Canon CAN optimized their h.264 AVC encoder to cram more quality while encoding at 24mbps. So, even if its 24mbps bitrate is the same as the HF11/HF100/HG20/etc cameras, the new faster sensor allows for more optimization of the encoder used during recording. More encoder optimization, better final quality.
- The new sensor is 1/2.6″ size, which is bigger than the HV-series’ 1/2.7″ size. Bigger sensor means shallower DoF, and better quality. Overall, that’s a 5% difference though, and quite honestly, not a huge difference. You will still need to zoom in at around 75% to get some nice-looking background blur.
- More dynamic range. Canon in fact specifically advertises this.
- Full 1920×1080 recording, instead of the HV’s 1440×1080.
- Zebra support. The HV series have that too, but this is a first for Canon’s AVCHD cameras, so it’s worth mentioning.
- Gain support. This is the first consumer Canon cameras ever to offer Gain/ISO control! With their Tv/Av modes, exposure compensation & locking, and now gain support, you can get a lot out of these cameras, only losing very little compared to having full manual control. Only extreme cases would require you to have a light meter and full manual control.
- Better focus roller. Unfortunately, this camera doesn’t have a full focus ring either, but its focus roller is bigger and more accessible than the HV series’.
- CineMode has *most probably* moved to the Colors Settings, rather than the ‘Programmed AE’ menu found in the HV series. If this is indeed true, it is a very good thing, as it will allow you to use a cinema gamma/look, while you can use your camera in Tv or Av mode at the same time, to properly control it. [Update: Unfortunately, no, it's still in the Program AE menu]
- Focusing has been improved, by including color peaking and targeting, and face targeting. Overall, the camera has 3-4 ways of focusing. Still, the LCD screen is the same 2.7″ as in the HV series, I would have personally preferred an upgrade to 3.0″.
- Advanced auto-exposure, with the help of the DigicDV III.
- Much better still picture support and software controls for it.
- No LCD overscan. What you see on the screen is what it’s been recorded. On my HV20 I had ruined quite a few shots because its LCD has overscan.
- Color bars with Test Tone. To be used to calibrate third party hardware that work with your camera.
- No tapes. For some, this is a downside, for me, it’s not. I had enough of the tapes.

Cons of the HF-S10/S100 compared to the HV20/30/40
- No true, native 24p support. This is NTSC HV40’s new feature. NTSC HV20/30 cameras don’t have that either, they can only shoot in PF24. Removing pulldown for AVCHD using the freeware method is not fool proof: A/V sync issues appear overtime. And Cineform’s NeoHD utility costs $500. So yeah, I am kind of pissed at Canon for including true 24p in their dying HV40, and not to the HF-S series. For us, Sony Vegas users, this is a blow. Update: Cineform now sells a new product, called NeoSCENE, that removes pulldown of HDV and AVCHD. Costs just $129. Good to hear that at least someone can make money out of Canon’s screw ups.
- No Video input. This means that you can’t record (telecine) your old VCR tapes via your camera anymore. Or record your gameplay from a gaming device.
- Mini Advanced Shoe, instead of Full Advanced Shoe. This is a deal breaker if you already have Full Advanced shoe add-ons, like in my case, the VL-3 light & the DM-50 microphone. Even worse, there is no converter from Mini to Full in the market as of this writing (there’s only a $30 Mini-to-Cold shoe converter which is not useful in my case). I hate it when companies try to break existing standards on a whim to diversify their market while it doesn’t need diversifying.
- No viewfinder. Not a big deal for me, I never used it on my HV20. I always use a stabilizing gadget anyway. I never shoot handheld. And when I do, I hate that footage and I throw it away.
- The Canon site says that the HF-S series require 3 LUX as minimum illumination, while the HV series can deal with 2 LUX. However, measuring LUX capability is not very standard, so while the pixels are smaller in the HF-S series (more crammed pixels in the almost same-sized sensor), it should be up to par with the HV series in terms of low-light support. Possibly not better though. Camcorderinfo’s review in a few weeks will clear this up for us.

What I personally find annoying with the HF-S series
- No 24p native support. It’s stupid of Canon to give true 24p support to a much inferior quality-wise camera like the HV40 is, and not to the HF-S series. I am EXPECTING that the traditional refresh that Canon does every August to their camcorders will have this feature added to the HF-S series. So I might wait for that August refresh before I buy the HF-S100.
- The Mini advanced shoe is not compatible with my Full advanced shoe microphone and VL-3 light. That is $200 down the drain for me.
- The 58mm filter thread used is too huge, and all my 52mm filters might show vignetting if I use a step-down ring. The lens itself, quality and speed-wise, seems to be the same as in the HV series btw.
- No full focus ring. Thankfully, the new focus roller seems to be better than my HV20’s.
- Still, no full manual support.
- No ability to rotate the screen’s contents without rotating the screen (useful for 35mm adapter usage).

I would have gladly paid an extra $500 to the cameras’ price (estimated between $1200 and $1500) for these annoyances to go away. Still, if Canon updates the firmware with true 24p in August, I will go for the HF-S100 regardless.

Update: Some screenshots from an HF-S series stream.

Geeks.com, known for their cheap electronics store, sent over two interesting gadgets for a review, one that geeks will find interesting, and one that videographers will.

* 9″ Axion AXN-6090A Widescreen Portable DVD Player

This portable DVD player comes at the very affordable price of $70. It has a 9″ widescreen but low resolution LCD, and it can play NTSC DVDs. It has AV in/out support and cables, a battery, and a remote control. The device is amazingly cheaply made, the case is probably one of the few gadgets I’ve ever reviewed that feels so cheap and fake. However, so far, the device has hold together and its software hasn’t outright crashed.

There are some buttons on the device itself to control DVD playback, brightness and volume, but you will find more setup and menu options by using the remote control. This means that if you ever lose the remote control, you will lose a large part of options. Regarding compatibility, I found that the DVD player was unable to playback the double-sided DVD “Drowning Mona”. It did play single-sided DVDs though. I wouldn’t be surprised if the player had trouble reading home-made dual layer DVDs, but I had none to try out.

Visual quality is pretty bad when playing back the DVD, as the LCD is low-res. While the video picture itself is manageable (your eyes will probably get used to it after a few minutes), the subtitles are almost unreadable because of the low-res — and that’s a real problem.

However, this DVD player can have another, more useful usage: as external monitor on camcorders with 35mm adapters. The player has A/V-in support, so you just connect your camcorder’s female AV cable to this player’s male AV cable and you are good to go. Many in the videography scene use the Sony DVP-FX820 model that can rotate its screen, and has a high res LCD. However, I found that the difference in visual quality between the two monitors, when using the AV cable, is minimal! Sure, Sony’s LCD is still a bit better, but not by much.

A small problem is the large battery that extend on the back of the device quite a bit. The battery can playback a two-hour movie fine, and can serve up to 3+ hours as an external monitor. A car adapter is included. As for the weight, it’s almost the same between the two monitors. Regarding the overscan that screens usually do to the incoming video feed, the Axion monitor “sees” a tiny bit more horizontally than the HV20 LCD does, and about the same vertically. The Sony monitor can “see” much more of the area that’s been recorded recorded, both horizontally and vertically.

Overall, this device is pretty bad as a portable DVD player, but if you are a budget-conscious videographer who is handy with tools and can create a custom tripod stand for this device, and doesn’t need screen rotation (or you can use rails that mount the camera rotated instead), then this is not a bad deal at all. For $70, the Axion is $100 less than the Sony monitor, so you got to ask yourself if screen rotation, and marginally better battery life and RCA quality is worth the extra cash for you. Geeks also sells some other DVD players that can act as external monitors (with some googling you can easily find which ones have AV-in).

* Bluetooth v2.0 Class 2 Mini USB Dongle

This is my favorite Bluetooth dongle of all times. It’s so incredibly small that never looks ugly by sticking out as most dongles do. This small dongle is ideal for those who have netbooks that come without Bluetooth, like the Acer Aspire One and most of the Eee PC models. It’s a class 2 dongle, so up to 6 meters reception was good with my Ubuntu netbook. If you own a netbook, or a laptop without Bluetooth, this is a must have!

Geeks.com sent over three nice gadgets for a review, two of which will be reviewed here. The third item’s review, the Kodak Z1012 IS, will be published in a few days at FreshDV.com.

* Micro Innovations PD5230LSR 3-Button USB Laser Travel Mouse w/Retractable Cord

A travel mouse is an ideal companion to use with the Acer Aspire One netbook, and at first glance this Micro Innovations mouse sounds like a good deal. It is a high DPI laser-based mouse, has 3 buttons & a wheel, and a retractable cable. It feels pretty good in the palm, and after using it for hours didn’t made my wrist hurt. Unfortunately, I can’t qualify it exactly as a travel mouse. This mouse is not very long, but it’s very tall! It is taller than my regular mice in my office! And when you pack gadgets in your laptop bag, you mostly care about their thickness, not so much about their length. Given these realities, this mouse is just too thick to fit nicely in a laptop bag and this takes away a lot of its value.

* Made-Always-On camera cases

This is a great little cheap addition for yourself and for sharing with your family. The package includes three cases for digital cameras. The more serious-looking black and blue, and a pink one that feels softer to the touch than the rest two. These cases feature a thin metal bracelet at the bottom that has a tripod head-sized screw on it. You screw this on your digital camera’s tripod hole to hold it steady, and then you wrap the case around the camera to secure it via the provided Velcro. What I like about this case is the fact that you never have to fully remove the case from the camera, you just unwrap it, shoot your picture, wrap it back. This is much more convenient than having a traditional case where you remove the camera from within, place the case in your bag, shoot, take the case back from your bag, put the camera back. Now, you are probably thinking that not having the tripod hole available is not a good idea when using a tripod. That’s true, but these cases only fit the “thin” consumer cameras (e.g. Kodak’s V- and M-series), the kind of cameras usually people just point and shoot. The Canon A-series, Kodak’s Z-series don’t fit, for example. So this product is useful and well-thought, for its intended audience.

RED announced the specs for their 2009/2010 products: ranging from a fixed-lens 3k Scarlet at around $3000, to a 9k system that can shoot in stereoscopic 3D mode (two connected cameras at once, next to each other), to a crazy 28k (261 mega pixel) sensor ($55,000 just for the main unit). How big is a 28k image you ask? Here’s a comparison to a 1080p HD image. These are amazing specs of course, and the prices are extremely low for what these products will be able to do. There’s no question about that.

Here are my two problems though.

1. I am what the author and video professional Stu “ProLost” Maschwitz refers to as a “DV Rebel” on his book of the same name. DV Rebels are basically amateur videography artists, that take cinematography more seriously than normal camcorder owners. DV Rebels try to make the best with what they’ve got even if they only use dirt cheap hardware. In essence, is a lot like how computer geeks like to play with Linux, tweak it like there’s no tomorrow, and enjoy the challenges. The 3k fixed-lens RED Scarlet, possibly the cheapest RED of the bunch, will still cost over $3000 after you add an LCD monitor to it, the special kind of CF cards it requires, battery etc. I am sure that quality will be good, but if Canon comes up with a next-generation 1080p “geek” AVCHD camera for under $2000, similar to what I describe here (e.g. all features the HV30 has, plus gain/AV/TV full manual control, true 24p, DigicDV-4 half-inch sensor, 43mm filter size, fast lens up to 8x or 10x zoom, full 1080p at 24mbps, proper focus ring), I would go for that instead of a Scarlet. Simply because, it would be enough for my needs, and a good bump over the HV20/30 legacy. The RED will definitely change professional cinema as we know it, but I don’t think it will grab all the lower-end artist attention. I have a feeling that wedding professionals won’t care much about it either. In other words, Canon will continue to exist and sell well, but it will feel the heat and hopefully will upgrade their specs for a new market class that it’s between consumer and prosumer. That’s what I am waiting this January from Canon.

2. RED is a hardware company. And as with all hardware companies, their software sucks. RED has been under heavy criticism about their buggy software, and how they sell hardware where the firmware is barely stable. The early bird users end up losing their feathers and becoming guinea pigs, while some basic functions for professionals are missing. Their computer tools are not great either, and only few editors support their files (meaning that you might need to additionally buy the $1000 Cineform Neo4k to get your footage on your editor). Adding to the injury, if you complain about these problems, you end up getting banned from their online forum.

The only way I am getting the cheap Scarlet is if the complete package (with LCD, battery, CF card) costs up to $3000, if it has the ability to shoot 1080p in non-windowed mode (I don’t care about its 3k resolution at this point as I don’t own a super-computer to process it), and if the PC tools (compared to their Mac tools) are sane enough to let me process the raw image and export in an AVI lossless codec via DirectShow (so I can edit in Vegas). There are a lot of “if”s there, so there’s a better chance that Canon will release a hybrid consumer/prosumer “geek” (”DV Rebel”) camera that does everything I need in a more convenient fashion than RED can.

Discussion here.

Geeks.com, known for their cheap digital cameras, sent us four gadgets for a review: the Kodak M883 8 megapixel digicam, a flash reader, a 16 GB SDHC card, and an iPhone case. It also happened that this weekend we spent it in the beautiful Seattle, visiting museums and friends. What a better way to test these items but by taking them with me to see how they perform and survive the trip!

* Kodak EasyShare M883 8MP 3x Optical/5x Digital Zoom HD Camera
The M883 is a low cost/range 8 MP digicam from Kodak, currently selling below $100. It has a flash, 3x optical zoom, digital image stabilization, video recording capability at VGA resolution and 30fps, a microphone, and a nice, spacious 3″ screen. The camera is physically pretty thin, and stylish.Exactly because the camera is a cheaper one, it has fewer buttons than the $200/$250 range Kodak digicams, but this actually works to its advantage. Switching between video, auto and scene mode is very organic, and the joystick carries through actions like “flash on/off”, focusing, and screen information. Through the main menu you can choose between focusing options, a choice of 4 white balance presets, SDHC formatting, image and video resolution. The main problems with the product is extreme purple fringing, a very mushy look at the upper right side of the image, and complete inability to do macro in any way that’s useful. Adding to that, it takes up to 4-5 seconds to save a JPEG image, which is a rather slow performance. Nevertheless, the “you get what you pay for” doctrine applies here, and the M883 is better than most cameras in that price class. But don’t expect miracles.

* All-in-One USB 2.0 Card Reader/Writer
This travel-size flash reader is an extremely useful tool, for the right price. It’s extremely small and it easily fit in my laptop bag, along its small USB cable. It not only supports all the major flash format card standards, but it is amazing that it can fit in there a Compact Flash reader and full SDHC support. In fact, finding specifically SDHC readers is still an exercise in patience, so this reader has it all: features, and small size.

* Transcend 16GB Class 6 SDHC Memory Card
With the above camera and reader I used a Class-6 16 GB SDHC card; it worked out of the box and without compatibility problems. When I used it with the above reader and the Acer Aspire One netbook that I also had with me, it flew. Reading/writing from and to it was really fast and without problems. A good card to trust for your AVCHD needs as well.

* Leather Case for iPhone
From the four review items in this blog post, this is the worst one. It doesn’t properly fit the iPhone. Sure, it looks good on paper, with a nice build quality, a magnetic lock, all the right cuts around the speaker, microphone, volume keys and camera, but when you actually use it with the iPhone, it proves that can’t be trusted. When opening the magnetic lock to access the phone, the iPhone doesn’t securely sit in the case, and I had two cases where the iPhone almost flew out of place to the floor. I had to use an additional silicone iPhone case to make sit properly in this case.