Content area
Full Text
For DV shooters with aspirations of working on feature films, network shows, and other high-end dramatic presentations, few cameras hold the promise to so utterly transform the way we work and the way we see the world as Panasonic's new 24p DV model, the AG-DVX100.
Until recently, 24p and DV would have surely seemed like an oxymoron. After all, George Lucas and his colleagues in the upper echelons of the motion picture industry are the ones taking advantage of 24p video production. Now, thanks to Panasonic's new $3,800 DV wonder, the benefits of shooting 24p are available to the rest of us.
In mid-September, I had the opportunity to work with a prototype of the DVX100, and was blown away by the camera's performance.
At the Tiffen Technical Center overlooking the Warner lot in Burbank, I constructed several intimate daylight- and tungsten-balanced scenes with male and female subjects. In one challenging setup, I placed the subject against a large picture window with a pair of daylight-balanced Gyoury lights providing the required soft edge and fill. In another setup more typical of a studio environment, I used a variety of tungsten fresnel units to model the subject's face nicely.
Resolution and tonal reproduction in both progressive and non-progressive modes were significantly better than what I'm used to seeing in this price range. This was largely due to the latest-generation 1/3in., 410,000 pixel CCD and better-than-average camera optics. In 24p mode, the shadow detail is truly impressive, with little if any hue shift apparent in brightly saturated objects - a familiar nagging problem for DV cinematographers, especially in the reds.
From the moment of its announcement at NAB 2002, the DVX100 has generated extraordinary interest. Will anyone forget the unreal spectacle at the Panasonic booth of the clambering hordes fawning over a gray plastic mock-up? Not surprisingly, by Oct. 1 - the expected shipping date - the company had backorders of several thousand units.
Still, for many DV shooters, the advantages of shooting 24p are not entirely clear. After all, NTSC monitors and displays...