Ok,
So I did my first all HDV wedding yesterday, and here are my impressions. First of all, all of the arguments over presets on this camera faded away for me as I don't think I checked but once or twice to see which preset I was using. It is not something that I am going to stress about at all from this moment on. I have to answer the low-light question I know everyone is asking, and here is my opinion. This camera was considerably darker than what I am used to, but in real world application, I saw no unusable situations even in a very dark reception hall. The image was dark, but the images were fairly clear and detailed. The color was retained fairly well, and the noise was not as big of an issue as I thought. I have tested bosting levels on a few clips and it appears to handle boosting the levels very well. The other thing I noticed was that being able to dial in a Kelvin white balance really helped me to retain a proper white balance. Just looking at the clips initially, I would say that my white balance is a lot more consistant that it ever was on the Sony. That is going to save me alot of heartache in the long run. This was a catholic ceremony with a relatively short :45 I had my 2 A1s as A and B cam, and my HV20 as wide. With 5 total tapes, 1 being only about :36 minutes, I am sitting on 51GB for the raw footage. I also shot this one without a wide angle adapter, but even though the lens was wide enough, I got used to the effect that the Canon wide angle on my sony used to give me with the cool barrel distortion you only get with a wide angle lens. This felt odd, and I felt like my creativity was off because of a lack of the distortion. I don't know if this makes any sense to anyone, but I am ordering the Canon WD-72 in the morning so, that is a recommendation to anyone who is used to shooting with a wide lens, even though it is wide enough without it, it doesn't retain that magic wide angle thing. I ran into 2 major obstacles with this camera and neither (shockingly) was low light performance. Number one is that this camera is alot more complicated than the VX2100. I felt myself getting a little frustrated over all of the different switches and buttons I had to fiddle with all day. Going from inside to outside to inside was more complicated. The other thing was that true handheld shooting transfers alot more bumping and bobbling than the SD. I will work out those 2 things though.
Also, the little HV20 seved well as a third cam. I am amazed at its ability to keep up with cams that are 3 times the chips, and 3 times the price
I couldn't be happier with my decision on this cam and am sighing a huge sigh of relief. Now until I start editing, I will not know how things really are, but so far, they look really good.
Bill
