- Canon HV40: It is tiny, which in general, is bad. It is cheap in a lot of ways, some bad (manual controls), some good (got it for a third off). It has a slightly bigger chip than I am used to (1/2.7 vs 1/3). I don’t love that it is CMOS rather than CCD, but so I am not too worried about the rolling shutter at the moment.
The biggest issues are going to be squeezing out manual control of the image and getting enough light on the sensor. There are options and hacks for tricking the camera into giving you some control: lock exposure on something friendly, then adjust up or down until you arrive at amicable shutter, aperture, and gain settings; at this point you have to hope that you still have a decent exposure. I am willing to play this game for a $650 camera.
I had a really tough time lighting a setup with practicals. Granted, my adapter and lenses ate some light, but the camera struggled without the extra glass in my living room at night. I will have a new living room in a week and a half, so I will try again. However, like the manual control issues, this is a limitation I was prepared to deal with before I purchased the camera. The point of buying equipment was to make real movies, which means real planning and real lighting. Cheap home depot worklights and Ikea china lamps are in my future.
There are a couple of things that I am happy about: native 24p HD shooting and a cine gamma setting. I haven’t actually edited or corrected any footage yet, but have been able to capture 24p footage. There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the HV “Cinema” setting does. It looks like it prevents the in-camera consumer image processing (over-saturating, over-detailing and killing your dynamic range.) There appears to be some concern that recoverable detail in this neutral image is destroyed by the HDV compression. I can believe this, but I am not convinced that this will be an issue. I think that if a scene is properly lit, and properly exposed (that means using and preserving the 100-110% exposure range) that everything will be okay, but I plan on testing this soon.
For me, I will use this camera for one of two things, which will determine its use. First, I will make movies with it; this means carefully constructing and shooting the mise-en-scene for the most post-production latitude. I would like to think that all my footage would be treated with care and color-corrected, but that probably isn’t going to happen. This leads me to the second use for this camera: capturing little moments of my family. This means I am going to need to be as flexible as possible to record my hyperactive three-year-old. At that point, there will probably be as little post as possible. - Letus Mini: Got a like-new buddle at about a 50% discount. It is heavy and I am glad that there are rails. I haven’t gotten a chance to shoot much proper test footage, so the jury is still out, but what little I have done is really exciting. I can’t wait to play more. Again, using this things is going to remove a lot of flexibility, but I knew that going in AND it is totally worth it.
- Canon FD Lenses: My Letus came with an EOS mount, which I assumed would be the norm. I was dismayed to realize that EOS lenses have electronic aperture only, so I would not be able to control the iris. However, Canon’s old FD lenses have manual aperture AND the lenses are “antiques” or “collectibles” since the lenses only work with film SLRs (at least without an adapter). I was able to pick up 50mm f/1.8, 28mm f/2.8 and 135mm f/2.8 lenses for about $100 shipped. I still need to pick up a couple of rear caps, but the lenses seem to be in good shape and fast enough.
Overall, I am really excited for this setup. I am hoping to have some downtime while I am in San Francisco for work to shoot some footage with a couple of friends.
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