Camera Log

The shoulder-mount S270 (left) and the handheld Z7 (right) share the same innards.

The HVR-Z7 and HVR-S270 camcorders take Sony’s commitment to the HDV format to the next level. Both are based on the same core technology: three 1/3” ClearVid CMOS sensors viewing the world behind interchangeable lenses.  The cameras share the same EVF and LCD panels, the same microphones, the same rich feature sets (including CF card recording, and both interlaced and true progressive HDV modes), and the same fundamental performance, but they’re packaged very differently. The Z7 is a svelte Handycam, while the S270 is a no-excuses shoulder-mount camcorder, bristling with dedicated buttons and switches, full-sized BNC connectors, large-cassette capability, and four channels of audio recording—a first for HDV.

Normally I leave article comments as they are, even when they are (to my admittedly biased viewpoint) flame-bait, less than perfectly well intentioned, or otherwise not especially helpful. I figure that folks will soon learn who the good guys are and who the trolls are, and so far it’s worked pretty well: the quality of discourse in the comments section is considerably higher than on many other site with open postings.

But a few of my articles have been accreting “comment spam”: one-liner comments, keying off a word or two in an article or a previous comment but otherwise completely uninformative, like “Log the camera!” or “Wow, we need to discuss that!”. The poster’s link is simply a link to an e-commerce site, and one not even related to the topics at hand.

I will be removing these comments as I encounter them. I’m not purging them for “political correctness” or for anti-Adam viewpoints, just for spamming. Please continue to discuss the topics of articles without fear of censorship. The only thing I’m gunning for is spam (and anything else entirely off-topic); I want to keep the signal-to-noise ratio here as high as possible.

Tim Blackmore helps John Chater tweak back-focus on a RED ONE

The more we work with RED ONEs, the more we learn about what they do and how to work with them, thus the following grab-bag of observations and experiences.

I obtained a new, 4K resolution test chart at NAB, and aimed RED ONEs running build 15 version 2.2.5 at it using four different lenses: a 50mm Super Speed, a 50mm Ultra Prime, a 18-50mm RED zoom, and a 24-290mm Optimo. Cutting to the chase: I’m pleased to report that I see detail extinction at about 3.2K, confirming the numbers RED and others have claimed.

Art Adams with the 486 filter on a RED ONE

Last week, Art Adams, Tim Blackmore, Ted Allen, and I tested the Schneider 486 UV/IR cut filter on a RED ONE and on a Sony PMW-EX1. Tim wore his famous “doesn’t look anything like that in real life” “black” shirt, and we lit him with IR-rich incandescent sources.