So, some of you may have already seen my short write up about my recent trial of the JVC HM650. Well I have now spent some more time with the camera and gone through the rushes in more depth. I have to say I am impressed.

Who’s it for? First of all lets consider where this camera sits in the wide world of cameras and who it is aimed at. It’s not designed to compete with the currently highly fashionable large sensor cameras. It’s not a camera aimed at high end productions. The JVC HM650 is aimed fair and square at journalists, news agencies and low budget documentary production. It’s priced to sell and sell it will as it does offer very good value for the money.

The HM650 really is a very clever camera, packed full of features that make it a great choice for news shooters. It has multiple codec and recording options, great for when you need to pool or share media. It has WiFi and 3G/4G connectivity via a USB host port where you can add wireless dongle. Brilliant for uploading material via ftp or (via a future firmware update) streaming your footage live. It has a 23x zoom lens, so it offers both a wide angle field of view for press conferences, color shots and GV’s as well as a long telephoto range for capturing those distant stories behind the police lines or security barriers.

3x 1/3″ 1920×1080 Sensors.

The HM650 has 3x 1920×1080 cmos sensors that perform very well. The images from the camera are nicely rounded. Remembering that this is a 1/3″ camera and considering it’s price point, the pictures are very nice. My test shoot on the Watercress Line, a preserved steam railway, took place on a beautifully sunny winters day. Days like this are challenging for any camera. Brilliantly bright blue sky but with deep, dark shadows thanks to the low sun. Throw in dark, sooty trains and any camera will have a tough time.

In addition when the sky is as blue as this in winter colours can look bleak and lack interest. The HM650 did a very capable job in these tough conditions. Colour reproduction was very accurate, maybe tending towards pink in the highlights a little bit, but never the less pleasing to view. Dynamic range is good for a 1/3″ camera. You don’t have the massive dynamic range that some of the new big sensor camera offer, but I didn’t feel that I was being excessively restricted in what I could shoot by a lack of dynamic range. At a guess I would estimate around 9 to 10 stops. Being a CMOS sensor the camera does have a small amount of skew and suffers from the usual rolling shutter issues. However, the engineers at JVC have realised that a camera like this is going to encounter a lot of flash photography. So they have added in camera flash band reduction which can be turned on and off in the menu. This is very effective, leaving only the very narrowest dark band across the image, but it doesn’t work in all modes or when you have the shutter switched on.

Perhaps more important than dynamic range alone is the way a camera handles over exposure. Some cameras do a terrible job with highlights suddenly going into nasty, ugly clipping with weird hues getting added to the over exposure. Non of that here. Over exposure is very well handled with a pleasant transition from non clipped to clipped. The camera is a little “videoish” but really not bad at all for a 1/3″ camera. I expect some of the “videoish” look can be dialed out through the comprehensive camera process page of the menu and next time I get a look at the camera I’ll take some time to go through this in more depth.

The one thing that did catch my eye was the lack of noise. In fact at times there was so little noise that the images looked a little plasticky. Clearly there is a lot of noise reduction going on in camera. The majority of modern cameras use noise reduction circuits to decrease the appearance of noise. These circuits, while reducing noise can introduce other image artefacts. One of the most common of these is image smear. On a static scene you won’t see this but move the camera or have something move through the shot and the motion can look slightly blurred. I did see a higher than average amount of this on the HM650. Don’t panic! JVC are aware of this. Not only are they aware of this, but they already have a fix (or at least useful improvement) in the pipelines. There will be a firmware update for the camera in the coming weeks that will fine tune the noise reduction to reduce the smear. This will almost certainly mean a little more noise in the pictures, but from what I’ve seen so far I think a little extra noise will actually improve the way the pictures look.

23x Zoom Lens

The 23x zoom lens is very nice to use. I’ve been using prime lenses a lot recently and it really was liberating to have a beautifully smooth zoom lens with such a long range. Slow creeping zooms are possible, although it is quite hard to get a completely seamless transition from a static shot to a zooming shot when using the zoom rocker, there always appears to the very slightest of jumps as you start or end a zoom.

This is no worse than most cameras in this class. Focussing manually uses the large focus ring. This is of the round and round, un-calibrated variety but it’s quite snappy and responsive. There is a separate ring for the zoom control as well as iris. It was nice to have a full size iris ring, even if it isn’t calibrated rather than a silly knob or dial. Just to the rear of the lens you have one push buttons for exposure and focus as well as switches to choose between auto focus and auto iris. These are well positioned and easy to use and I often took advantage of the iris button to quickly set my exposure which the camera did very accurately in most cases.

Viewfinders and Audio.

OK, so we have nice pictures, how do you see them. Well there is a nice 3.5″ LCD panel up on the handle as well as a small electronic EVF on the rear of the camera. The LCD is nice and clear and you can adjust the peaking (via the menu’s) to aid with focussing. The EVF is a small 0.45″ LCD panel with good resolution, but it’s small size means it’s hard to see critical focus. Many handycam camcorders suffer from this same issue. All the design effort goes into the LCD and the EVF’s often appear to be an afterthought. It’s not that the EVF is unusable, it’s just a bigger screen would be nicer.

Audio is as you would expect these days. A built in stereo mic plus a pair of XLR inputs with mic and line levels as well as phantom power. There are two small dials for setting the audio levels up on the handle of the camera. When the LCD screen is open you have access to all the audio controls and the dial. Close the LCD and just the lower part of the audio dials sticks out at the bottom of the handle, so you can still adjust the audio levels, but now there is some protection against accidental knocks and bumps. One extra bonus with the HM650 is an additional mini-jack input on the camera body for use with radio mics etc. This makes it easy to switch between say a handheld mic on the XLR’s and a radio mic without having to unplug anything, this is a nice touch.

SD Card Recording.

At the rear of the camera there are two slots for SD cards. The HM650 records in  a variety of codecs including Mpeg2, H264 and the AVCHD version of H264, so you have a choice of codecs. Bit rates go up to 35Mb/s. When using Mpeg2 you can choose between using either MXF. MP4 or.mov as the file wrapper. So Mac users will most likely use .mov and Avid users MXF. If your an XDCAM EX user then you might choose MP4. The 35Mb/s mpeg 2 codec is the same as the one used by Sony in the XDCAM EX cameras, so the workflow is well sorted and the footage support by all the major edit applications. Having the files wrapped in .mov’s (as opposed to the XDCAM EX MP4) removes the need to do any re-wrapping if you use Final Cut Pro and this is a real time saver. For the highest image quality you can use what JVC call UHQ (ultra high quality) mpeg4 avc h.264 which should offer better quality than the Mpeg2 or AVCHD modes, although I didn’t get a chance to really put this to the test. The HM650 can even record Mpeg2 to one of the SD cards while also recording AVCHD on the other card, all very clever stuff. Apparently the HM650 has an additional set of image processing circuits compared to the HM600. This extra processing power is what makes it possible to add the wifi and wireless features. As I said, in the future you’ll be able to stream live footage over an internet connection with the HM650. For now you can connect the camera to the internet using a wireless adapter and use ftp to transfer files from the camera to an ftp server. I didn’t have time to go through all of these advanced features, but if your doing TV news I can see this being a very handy camera to have.

With so many features the menu system is quite complex. It’s not hard to use, but there’s a lot of stuff in there so finding some things can take a bit of hunting. You can use a little thumbstick on the LCD panel or the playback controls on the cameras body to navigate through the menus. If you want to adjust the way the pictures look there is a comprehensive setup page where you can adjust the detail, matrix and gamma settings. There’s only one memory for these settings so no multiple picture profiles to choose from as with some other cameras, but the range of adjustment is good.

Conclusions:

Overall the HM650 is a good little camcorder. The build quality appears very good and the camera is well balanced and easy to hold. The pictures are good and comparable to most other 1/3″ pro camcorders. Where it really excels though is the feature set. A big zoom ratio, great codec and recording choices, flash band reduction, 15 second memory cache, the use of low cost SD cards and it’s streaming and internet connectivity. I’m quite sure that the HM650 will be very popular with journalists, reporters and news organisations as well as anyone else that need the ability to stream live or upload material quickly and easily. Nice one JVC.

I’m going to spend some more time with the HM650 to look at the paint and setup settings as well as the new firmware with improved noise reduction.

I’ve been loaned a JVC HM650 to take a look at. I used it at the weekend to shoot some steam trains on a local heritage railway line. This is always a challenging subject and the bright sunny skies on Sunday made it very tough. Black, smokey trains agains a brilliant bright sky is tough on any camera. Reviewing the rushes today I have to say that the camera does produce a nice picture. It’s not a PMW-200 or F5, but then it isn’t the price of either of those, it’s considerably cheaper. Having spent two weeks shooting with prime lenses on an F5 it was really nice to get back to a video zoom lens. The 23x zoom range of the HM650 gives great flexibility and would be a real boon to anyone shooting sports or event videos. I’ll be posting a much more detail review in due course but so far I am impressed. The build quality is really first class (something JVC have always done well) and the camera feels good and solid. It’s quite large for a 3x 1/3″ camera, but that makes it easy to handle and operate. Image noise, sensitivity and dynamic range are what you would expect for a pro level camcorder with 3rd inch HD sensors. JVC have perhaps been a little too aggressive with the noise reduction algorithms and this does result in a little bit of smear in the images but I have been told that there will be a series of firmware updates for the camera to address small issues such as this. Personally I’d rather see a little more noise in the pictures and have less smear. The problem is that the otherwise very clean and noise free pictures really show up the smear when you pan or move the camera. A slightly nosier picture would to some extent hide any smear. Most modern cameras use noise reduction to help clean up the images, so many cameras suffer from smear, it’s not unusual these days. Out of the box the pictures are also in my opinion a little over sharpened and this also tends to draw your attention the smear as the picture softens as you move the camera. This is not a big deal though as the HM650 has a good range of controls for adjusting the image quality including detail correction, gamma and matrix settings. A few small tweaks to these really helps improve the image quality. If your brave you can even dial in your own custom looks for different shooting applications.
The HM650 uses the same codec as the Sony 35Mb/s XDCAM cameras, only JVC allow you to choose whether to have the video wrapped in a straight forward quicktime .mov file or in a MXF file. The footage is recorded on to SD cards (two slots) which really helps keep life very simple as most modern laptops have SD card slots and SD card readers are two a penny. The HM650 is very similar to the HM600, picture quality is the same for both cameras but the 650 adds some clever tricks and extra wiFi connectivity for streaming etc. More about that in my full write up.
Based on my brief time so far with the HM650 it is a very serious contender in the low to middle end of the pro camcorder market. It’s very easy to pick up flaws in the images of a camera, especially when you’ve been spoilt by the images from a high end large sensor camera like the F5. But I have to put things into perspective. The HM600 and HM650 are cheaper cameras for different applications. I’d be happy to use one as a B camera to a broadcast shoulder mount camera or as a run and gun companion to a large sensor camera. The pictures are overall very pleasing and when you factor in the flexibility of that massive 23x zoom range the HM650 does appear to punch above it’s weight. A more in depth review and write up will follow soon.

Well here is a little teaser from my trip to Norway to shoot the Aurora. Over 24,000 still frames were shot with the Sony Alpha A99 and NEX5. Over 4 hours of video rushes shot on the PMW-F5, Action Cam and A99. All in all an extremely successful trip and some really great material to use in my short film that will be released a little later in the year. Quite a few people have been asking about how the cameras performed, I will write it all up as soon as I get time. The F5 really surprised me. Some of the footage has really blown me away.

Not so much the sensitivity (I think the F3 is slightly more sensitive) but the really incredible dynamic range. Take a look at the fire frame grab. You can almost feel the heat from the fire! The richness of the image speaks for itself and this is ungraded. For interviews against the brilliant white snow the dynamic range really helped. I was really lucky to come across some traditional reindeer herders up on the arctic plateaux.

It was one of those un planned situations with the very real risk that the herders would have to dash off at any moment, so no setup, just grab the interview asap. The cameras broad dynamic range was a real help and the interview looks perfectly OK, even though I’d rather have used a reflector for a little fill and sparkle in the guys eye’s.

Anyway here’s the video clip, mainly time-lapse from the Sony Alpha A99:

I’ve been a little quite the last couple of weeks because I’ve be preping and now shooting the Aurora up in Norway. Last night we had an incredible show, bright Aurora’s all night. The only problem was the temperature….. -30c, -22f. I did experience a couple of small issues with the cameras throwing up errors once they fully cooled down (they were outside for 8 hours), but despite the very harsh conditions all the cameras produced some incredible images. I got real-time footage of the Aurora with the PMW-F5 without having to resort to the slow shutter.

I got stunning timelapse sequences with the NEX5N and Sony A99. As I write this the temperature is -32c and forecast to get even colder tonight. The cameras are all outside snapping and time lapsing away as the sun comes up and turns the snow and ice brilliant orange. I can’t wait to share the video clips and images, but that will take a while as so far I have shot over 8,000  still frames and a couple of hours of video.

Hi Guys. It has been pointed out to me (Thanks Nate) that most people don’t have the software tools to work with linear raw data correctly. The previous F55 sample frames that I provided were linear DPX. So, here’s another couple of DPX files, this time converted from the linear raw of the F55 to log DPX. These should be much easier to work with, especially the 16 bit DPX files (use the free version of Resolve for great results). Here’s the link to the log DPX files. The link will expire on January 31st.

Here are a couple of single DPX frames for you to play with. Created by converting the Sony linear raw frames to linear DPX using the Sony raw viewer application. I have provided a 10 bit and 16 bit DPX frame. If you can try the 16 bit frame, it has incredible flexibility. The 10 bit DPX can be opened in most recent versions Photoshop. Here’s the link. The link will expire on the 31st of January. SEE ALSO THESE CLIPS which are Log DPX. You will find it easier to work with the log DPX files in most grading packages without the appropriate importer/plugin for the Sony Linear Raw files.

Want to learn more about working with 4K using Sony’s F5 or F55 cameras? Why not join me at a workshop being run by Advanced Media of Dubai where we will be fully exploring these remarkable new cameras from Sony and how to get the most from them. We will look at how to set them up, how to shoot with them and then how to handle you material in post production. We are still working out the final details of the event, but we may also have an F65 to play with too. I’ll also be in Dubai for the CabSat trade show a week later.

One of the most commonly asked questions for me right now is which camera do I choose  out of the PMW-F5 and F55. The price difference isn’t huge, around $10k USD. If you have the budget, if money is not a major concern then the choice is actually quite simple. Buy the PMW-F55. The F55 has a slightly better sensor, it uses a global shutter, so unlike most CMOS cameras there is no problem with image skew or flash banding. This alone is probably worth the $10k USD extra. The other major extra features that the F55 offers is the ability to record compressed 4K footage and it can shoot at up to 240fps while the F5 only manages 120fps. The F5 can only record HD and 2K internally, it can’t record 4K internally. If you want to record 4K with the F5 you have to get the add on R5 raw recorder and shoot 4K raw.

If you are on a tight budget (like me) then choosing between them is a little more complicated. You see I have two options, I can afford either the F5 plus R5 or I can afford the F55 on it’s own. Either way I can shot 4K. With the F55 it would be 4K XAVC compressed recorded internally to the SxS cards. With the F5/R5 I can shoot 4K raw recording to the AXS media. Raw will be better for grading, overexposure and high dynamic range shots will be handled much better than the compressed log recordings that the F55 records internally. It’s a tough decision. I’ve actually ordered an F5/R5 but having shot with an F55 using S-Log2 XAVC I have to admit that I’m questioning that decision. The S-Log2 material is very impressive, it copes very well with a couple of stops of overexposure and grades easily and nicely. The files size is quite reasonable with an hour of footage taking about 100GB. The 4K raw footage on the other hand is 5 times the size with an hour of material taking 512GB. That’s a lot of data.

Right now 4K is only really being used for high end productions and if you are working on a high end production then in my opinion, raw is the way to go, so where does that leave 4K XAVC? Well, consider this. Your working on a big production and for your key scenes you would shoot using raw. But what about some location shots, maybe in a remote place where you only have limited access to recording media or back up and archive systems? This is where you would use 4K XAVC. I’m thinking about some of my storm chasing or Northern Lights expeditions, 4K XAVC would be a great candidate. On some of my storm chasing trips I might shoot 10 hours of material in just a few day. With 4K raw that would be 5TB of data to manage and backup. With XAVC that’s just 1TB which will go on a single 2.5″ USB3 hard drive (or at least a pair of them, one being a backup). Even over USB3 it can take an hour or more to make a single copy of a 512GB AXS card, so backups could be a long and slow process.

One thing the F5 does do better than the F55 is low light performance. In S-log2 the F5’s native ISO is 2500 ISO while the F55 is 1250 ISO. Both are impressive figures, but the 2500 ISO of the F5 for me at least will be a fantastic asset when shooting storms etc where the light levels are low. However the flip side to that is that with so much sensitivity I’m going to need to use a lot of ND for many conventional shoots. I will add that both the F5 and F55 are remarkably noise free. Even at 20,000 ISO the F5 noise is really not all that bad.

Basically though, the F55 is the better camera of the two and as I said at the start, I think you should strive to afford the F55. It’s likely to hold it’s value better than the F5 so is probably a better long term investment. I’m still undecided about my pre-order for the F5, maybe I will ditch the R5 for now and strive to get an F55. I can always add an R5 later, while trying to swap from an F5 to an F55 is going to be harder and more expensive. I have to admit that the one thing that’s really hurting my budget right now is the way the resale value of the F3 has fallen through the floor. It’s all but impossible to sell an F3 right now and I have two of them.

So that’s the camera body what about the viewfinders. There are 3 to choose from. The 3.5″ LCD, the OLED EVF and a DVF-L700 7″ viewfinder. All 3 are very nice. The 7″ is more of an on camera monitor than a viewfinder, so really the choice is between the LCD or the OLED. I know there has been quite a bit of excitement about the OLED, it was only the other day that I first got to try one. To be honest I found it rather underwhelming. I’m not saying that it’s bad, but it really doesn’t seem to be that much better than the LCD. The LCD is using a new 960 x 540 lcd panel (is this another iphone screen?). This is higher resolution than the now familiar EX1/F3 LCD panel and I really struggle to see the pixels with the new 3.5″ LCD. The LCD is sharp and clear and has a 1000:1 contrast ratio, it’s a good viewfinder. It also has the flexibility of being a monocular viewfinder or by flipping up the mirror assembly becoming a small LCD monitor. You can’t do this with the OLED finder. The OLED finder is marginally sharper and does have a higher contrast range with true black blacks. But, for me at least I prefer the flexibility of the 3.5″ over the very small image quality advantage of the OLED finder. If you have the budget then the best solution is probably to have both the OLED and the 7″ LCD. You can use both together by plugging the OLED into the dedicated EVF socket (which sticks straight out from the side of the camera and is vulnerable to damage) and then use the main or sub HDSDI outputs to feed the 7″ LCD. The F5/F55 outputs can be split so you can get a clean output on the Main HDSDI’s and video with camera data overlay on the Sub HDSDI’s. Even if the OLED and the LCD EVF’s were the same price I would still get the LCD for it’s flexibility on location. Someone that does more larger crewed film type shoots may prefer the OLED EVF and then add on an on camera monitor.