CAMERA TEST FOOTAGE

By Jason Guerrasio in Filmmaker Videos
on Thursday, October 18th, 2007

In the Fall ’07 issue of Filmmaker Jamie Stuart reviews the Pansonic AG-HPX500P. Here’s some footage he shot with the camera.

Download the short here by right clicking and choosing Save Target or Save Link. (28M)

Please visit Jamie’s site at www.mutinycompany.com.

Tags: jamie stuart, New York Film Festival, Todd Haynes

Anonymous

The footage looks great. Why was nothing mentioned in the review that the 500 is a 2/3 chip camera compared to the 200 being a 1/3 chip? This is a big difference.
quci

Auto iris? Complaining about the ND’s in a pro lens vs. your HVX’s fixed lens? Afraid of a larger, more stable, superior camera? How about a more professional product tester?
Anonymous

What a mediocre “test”! Okay, we get the point about the over-cranking: it works. But the lighting conditions inside the apartment hardly do justice to the camera; it’s like putting a Versace evening gown on a chimp. And the long, boring sloppily hand-held shot? This test should have included a variety of lighting conditions and locations and skin tones. Oops, sorry, I am thinking about something a little more like American Cinematographer and less like Filmmaker Magazine. As for the tester: take a basic film production and cinematography class or give the job to one of the hundreds of qualified folks out there who would like to have it…
Anonymous

To the Filmmaker Magazine Editor: Please, don’t let “reviews” like this one make it into your otherwise informative magazine. This was not a review, but rather a novice trying to assert his “skills”, only to display his lack of them.

Readers who are actually interested in this camera may already know the basics of it (although few were mentioned in the article, like 1/3″ chips, control layout, price-point, etc.). We look to your mag for something we can’t get on dozens of great forums: an informed, somewhat objective analysis of the gear by a professional who is qualified to do a real “test”. You published the equivalent of a teenage blogger post. Please don’t continue on this path with your mag. It is degrading to you and your readers. Thank you.
Anonymous

The point of the review was the pointlessness of the camera. It’s over-sized, clunky and built on an outdated approach. It’s basically a news camera rigged for indie filmmaking.

That said, the test was written and created based around the 60 fps because that’s the only thing the guy found interesting about the camera.

If a production is shooting 720, it’s usually not an artistic choice so much as a budgetary one. Otherwise, they’d be shooting at least low-end 1080 on an F900. The HVX is smaller and much more versatile, and so are the higher-end HD, 2k and 4k cameras out there (Viper, Red One, Phantom HD).

If you were looking for a true technical overview, too bad. The guy who shot the footage knows exactly what he’s doing, and the video’s limitations — clumsiness of the handheld, for instance — are the fault of the over-sized camera poorly designed and suited for the clientele that would invariably be using it.

CAMERA TEST FOOTAGE

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