HD For Indies

Remember that big HD camera test I was going to do? It's happening, starting today. Over the weekend, we'll be doing a ton of testing with the following cameras:

Sony Z1U
Panasonic HVX200
JVC GY-HD100U
Canon XL H1
Sony F350 (the new XDCAM HD, the nicer of the two)
Panasonic Varicam

Adam Wilt of DV Magazine and Chris Hurd of DVInfo.net are my co-conspirators - they'd already planned this shoot so I'm jumping in with them. We'll be capturing a lot of footage uncompressed to disk as well, so should be quite interesting and exciting.

And Omega Broadcast Group is going to graciously let us shoot in their space and raid all of their parts bins - we'll be using their Z1U, their HVX200, and their Varicam, as well as lighting gear and who knows what all else.

Here's Chris' Announcement from DVInfo.net:

Announcing the Texas HD Shootout -

Starting today, powerful forces are converging on Austin, Texas for a four-day round up of all the major HD camcorders you guys like to discuss so much around here.

Adam Wilt of DV Magazine, Mike Curtis of the popular 'HD For Indies' mega-blog, and elements of the DV Info Net team will convene in a series of studio and location camera tests in a variety of different situations. Everything will be recorded, of course, and the plan is to offer feedback to interested parties through Adam's articles for DV Magazine, Mike's online journal at HD For Indies, and right here on our message boards at DV Info Net.

The camera line-up includes the Panasonic AG-HVX200 DVCPRO HD P2 camcorder, the Canon XL H1, JVC GY-HD100 'A' with 16x and 13x lenses, and Sony HVR-Z1U HDV camcorders, and the Sony PDW-F350 XDCAM HD camcorder. Plus we'll also have a Panasonic AJ-HDC27 'H' VariCam DVCPRO HD camcorder for reference.

Adam is our technical lead and will be directing with Nate Weaver assisting. Mike is co-directing and managing a truckload of uncompressed capture stations, and DV Info Net regulars Boyd Ostroff, Greg Boston, Pete Bauer and Mike Devlin are lending a hand with all of the cameras and other production requirements. There are a lot of other folks involved who are helping out in several capacities. I can't wait to tell you more about them. We'll keep you guys advised on how this is going day by day.

Meanwhile, although I can't promise this will happen, I'd like to encourage any Austin area members who might be up for dinner and drinks on Friday or Saturday night to please shoot me a private email. Our crew is already talking about going long, so a public get-together might not actually happen, but let me know at least if you're interested and if we can pull it off then we'll manage that by email. Hopefully we can get some Shiner Bock flowing.

Updates follow as this thing progresses -- and be sure to also watch for Mike's entries over at his site, http://www.hdforindies.com."


-I'll blog when I can as we go.

-mike