Cartoonmaker
2007 August 9th, 11:55
So I just got back from a week in Florida. Family, fun, sun... and my HV20.
We went to Sea World Orlando. The weather was 93 degrees, very humid and no breeze, with little cloud coverage all day. In other words, it was sweltering and my camera was in it all day.
I took with me:
The HV20
3 blank DV tapes
1 spare battery
UV filter, ND filter
carrying case
Now I had some time to play around with the camera in the daylight before going, but was unsure what would happen when it got dark. Nevertheless, I managed to shoot footage throughout the day, some shots were for a 25 minute outdoor show, others were just random short bits taking in the scenery or walking through an aquarium. I shot everything in 24p mode. It allowed better lighting conditions and I just really like not having interlaced lines when I pause video. (Call me crazy) I also want to test out my computer's ability to handle batch pull down of a lot of large video files. I will post my results of this later.
We were there from 9:30am and we stayed past 10pm when the park officially closed. Here's what I've learned from that experience.
1. Battery life is pretty darn good. I changed the battery out after steady recording, pausing, and recording for nearly 2 hours of tape. Then switching over to the other battery, I was able to finish up the rest of the 3 hours of tape I had.
2. Heat didn't seem to bother the camera at all. Though my hand was getting pretty warm durring one of the longer animal shows. The camera seems to warm up after 20 minutes of continuous recording.
3. When in dark areas, switch to Cinemode!! Unless you want to manually lock the exposure as was mentioned in another topic in this forum, Cinemode is the way to go. I wish I realized this when I was in the underwater Shark dome. That footage, still great, was grainy from the camera trying to pump up the exposure. I had it on for the Shamu night show, and I was absolutely jaw-dropped when I saw the quality of deep blacks, bright whites, jumbo video screens, and the light catching on the water. It also handled very well durring the fast motion of the trainers performing - riding the killer whale's backs, diving from the nose, etc. I saw no white blow-out on the video.
(little tip: Don't trust the people who've been to Sea World before and tell you you won't get splashed when you're sitting in the "wet zone". One of Shamu's tricks is to actually whip his tail and throw water no less than 50 feet out into the stands. I had just enough time to jam my hand & camera into my book bag before water splashed over us. We were 15 or 16 rows up, and the water still made it up there. The camera's fine, but I was mad. I got GREAT footage though)
4. The Cinemode works great with fireworks too. As long as you have something to focus on before the fireworks start. Across the water, there were city lights, so I let the camera autofocus on that and then pointed the camera upwards. The results were very clean fireworks. I wish I had the wide angle lense though. The fireworks were so big, they went off the screen.
Overall, I'm still shocked at the amazing results of the camera. I will try to post some footage (stills if I can't connect to the server here for video) when I get a chance.
We went to Sea World Orlando. The weather was 93 degrees, very humid and no breeze, with little cloud coverage all day. In other words, it was sweltering and my camera was in it all day.
I took with me:
The HV20
3 blank DV tapes
1 spare battery
UV filter, ND filter
carrying case
Now I had some time to play around with the camera in the daylight before going, but was unsure what would happen when it got dark. Nevertheless, I managed to shoot footage throughout the day, some shots were for a 25 minute outdoor show, others were just random short bits taking in the scenery or walking through an aquarium. I shot everything in 24p mode. It allowed better lighting conditions and I just really like not having interlaced lines when I pause video. (Call me crazy) I also want to test out my computer's ability to handle batch pull down of a lot of large video files. I will post my results of this later.
We were there from 9:30am and we stayed past 10pm when the park officially closed. Here's what I've learned from that experience.
1. Battery life is pretty darn good. I changed the battery out after steady recording, pausing, and recording for nearly 2 hours of tape. Then switching over to the other battery, I was able to finish up the rest of the 3 hours of tape I had.
2. Heat didn't seem to bother the camera at all. Though my hand was getting pretty warm durring one of the longer animal shows. The camera seems to warm up after 20 minutes of continuous recording.
3. When in dark areas, switch to Cinemode!! Unless you want to manually lock the exposure as was mentioned in another topic in this forum, Cinemode is the way to go. I wish I realized this when I was in the underwater Shark dome. That footage, still great, was grainy from the camera trying to pump up the exposure. I had it on for the Shamu night show, and I was absolutely jaw-dropped when I saw the quality of deep blacks, bright whites, jumbo video screens, and the light catching on the water. It also handled very well durring the fast motion of the trainers performing - riding the killer whale's backs, diving from the nose, etc. I saw no white blow-out on the video.
(little tip: Don't trust the people who've been to Sea World before and tell you you won't get splashed when you're sitting in the "wet zone". One of Shamu's tricks is to actually whip his tail and throw water no less than 50 feet out into the stands. I had just enough time to jam my hand & camera into my book bag before water splashed over us. We were 15 or 16 rows up, and the water still made it up there. The camera's fine, but I was mad. I got GREAT footage though)
4. The Cinemode works great with fireworks too. As long as you have something to focus on before the fireworks start. Across the water, there were city lights, so I let the camera autofocus on that and then pointed the camera upwards. The results were very clean fireworks. I wish I had the wide angle lense though. The fireworks were so big, they went off the screen.
Overall, I'm still shocked at the amazing results of the camera. I will try to post some footage (stills if I can't connect to the server here for video) when I get a chance.