Dawid Ciechowski
I'm still giving some thought to a little bit cheaper Sony and Panasonic cameras - SONY HDR-HC7 and PANASONIC HDC-TM300. Reportedly they deal very well while filming at night, only this CMOS sensor...
Martin Kucera
EF2
Why not new PANASONIC HMC-151?
Dawid, I believe 150 and 151 is the same camera, just the US/EU model difference.
Dan is absolutely right. Just to film lightning, the expense is probably not worth it.
Also Dawid, I bought Sony HDR-XR520 for this past season. That model is an amazing little cam, very simple to use, producing brilliant video. It has even built in GPS. Comes so handy to figure exactly where events took place. The image stabilizer on that model is breaktaking. You can shoot from a bumpy moving car and the video comes out very steady. It is also very, very good in low light. Much better than HV versions of Canons.
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There is no doubt that camcorder technology is moving towards flash storage and small form factor hard drives and away from tape. I'm just curious how the software editing of film clips compares to an older camcorder model that uses Mini DV cassettes? Seems I read somewhere that the film clips a person takes are easier to edit when recorded on Mini DV tape versus flash storage or hard drives because of the format it's stored in (AVCHD). I am really having trouble deciding whether to buy the Canon HV-40 or something a little more advanced like a prosumer model. Knowing myself, I'll probably go the more expensive route but some of those models you guys were mentioning were more like 6 large, which is way out of my league! I feel like I need to do some serious homework and bone up on the decisions I'm faced with here.
Dawid Ciechowski
Maybe somebody knows what camera are using guys from StormScenes.com?
Dan Robinson
Dawid, I have a Sony FX1. It is a CCD camera recording 25mbps HDV to tape. I paid about $3200 for it back in 2005. It does well with daytime lightning but not great with nighttime lightning. There is no rolling shutter thanks to the CCDs, but the HDV codec artifacting is pronounced at night. Out of the countless night storms I have shot with it, I have only catalogged a very few of them for stock. Most of the night lightning footage from that camera is really not good at all. I'll see if I can dig up a frame grab to illustrate the artifacting issue.
Dan Robinson
Here is an example of what compression artifacting looks like with nighttime lightning. This example is from the FX1.
http://stormhighway.com/blog/hdv-artifacting.jpg
Rolling shutter is the other lightning-related problem that is present with CMOS chips. Rolling shutter creates split-screen images on lightning strike frames. Here is a comparison of the FX1 CCDs with the CMOS of the Canon 5D Mark II, using a camera flash to simulate lightning:
http://www.wvlightning.com/blog/dec3008a.shtml
http://stormhighway.com/blog/hdv-artifacting.jpg
Rolling shutter is the other lightning-related problem that is present with CMOS chips. Rolling shutter creates split-screen images on lightning strike frames. Here is a comparison of the FX1 CCDs with the CMOS of the Canon 5D Mark II, using a camera flash to simulate lightning:
http://www.wvlightning.com/blog/dec3008a.shtml
Dawid Ciechowski
Rolling shutter isn't disturbing me unduly, because I have the CMOS converter in my HV30 and frames rarely have been cut till half. HDC-TM300 which I want to buy has 3 new generation CMOS converters, so it's possible that this effect will be less visible or generally speaking it won't be appearing.
PS. Sorry for my bad English.
PS. Sorry for my bad English.
Darren Addy
EF5
I'm a bit late to this thread, but given your interest in HQ frame grabs, I'm guessing that you want to grab lightning frames from a video camera so you can eliminate the problem of pushing the shutter button at the right time.
If that is true, then (IMHO) you are trying to use the wrong tool for the job. You would get better quality of images by spending $300 on a lightning trigger and dedicating a cheap DSLR for the job. You would get much larger images, better resolution, and they would be sharper than any video frame grab.
Nighttime lightning is actually easier to grab, even without a lightning trigger, since you can just choose a longer shutter speed (by setting a low ISO) and let the lightning bolt paint an image on the "CCD film". Lightning triggers also let you do the much harder thing, which is grab bolts during the shorter exposure times you need to shoot during daylight hours.
If you have to use a video camera for your purposes, then the main thing you should be looking at is the FPS combined with image size (which is still going to be just a fraction of what you can get with a DSLR).
(The original poster has already made his decision, but my reply is for any future searchers of the forum with similar questions).
If that is true, then (IMHO) you are trying to use the wrong tool for the job. You would get better quality of images by spending $300 on a lightning trigger and dedicating a cheap DSLR for the job. You would get much larger images, better resolution, and they would be sharper than any video frame grab.
Nighttime lightning is actually easier to grab, even without a lightning trigger, since you can just choose a longer shutter speed (by setting a low ISO) and let the lightning bolt paint an image on the "CCD film". Lightning triggers also let you do the much harder thing, which is grab bolts during the shorter exposure times you need to shoot during daylight hours.
If you have to use a video camera for your purposes, then the main thing you should be looking at is the FPS combined with image size (which is still going to be just a fraction of what you can get with a DSLR).
(The original poster has already made his decision, but my reply is for any future searchers of the forum with similar questions).
