Re: HD & DVCAM

We absolutely love it. We will never rent the F900 or the Varicam again. For acquisition, it is in our opinion, cleaner then the F900 especially in the black levels. You can run with gain up to 12 and still have super clean video. If you want the graininess, you'll have to add it in post.
And -- chroma key is definitely cleaner than what we've shot on Varicam. We don't have any chroma key footage to compare with the F900, but comparing very similarly shot footage between the F900 and F350 -- you'll pick the F350.
I'd have never dreamed this camera would look so good and there is NO visible artifacting in the HQ mode. You definitely want to use this for acquisition and not to bounce to and from HD SDI uncompressed many times. The F900R shares the features of slow shutter accumulation which is such a nice thing to have. And -- we have used the interval record mode, too. We just shot a music video this week and shot several lip sync scenes at 60fps and 48fps. Our DP and LD are totally sold on it now.

The cons right now are software support. Most support is in beta and not yet released, so for HD work, you have to treat it like video tape for digitizing via RS-422. But -- release is imminent. Apples says June for FCP support, and there were PC alternatives being shown at NAB too.

td