Are HD cams over rated compared to Mini DV? Puzzled

Okay folks:

I have a Sony VX-2100 cam (and no at 54 I am too old to be a skateboarder... grin..). I recently purchased a DVD from an award winning couple that do nature films. They used to shoot in 16mm and then painstakingly create this into DVD's for sale.

A few years ago they purchased a Hi DEF video cam and continued shooting similar wildlife footage. I just recently got a new wildlife DVD produced by them. I was surprised at the amount of "noise" and grainy quality of their new footage. Much poorer than their old stuff.

As a matter of fact I dont want to be unkind here but every Hi Def footage I have seen seems less in quality than the footage shot with my Sony VX-2100 on mini dV format.

What am I seeing? I dont get it... Perhaps old Hi DEF cams in action or???? To make things even more confusing, I watched a film called Parrots in the Land of Aus. Shot with extremely expensive high def cams and the footage is mind-blowing. You can see the nostril hairs on the Palm Cockatoos! As a matter of fact the producers of the film wanted to show off the capabilities of Hi-Def technology. Can someone explain this a bit for me? Real puzzled...

Thanks for the imput!

Cheers!

Don Kimball

You can't beat the vx2100/pd170 at that price point for low light/available light performance. It all depends on lighting. What HD cam did they switch to? What SD cam were they using? My guess is they were either not using the HD cam properly (had the gain set too high/left on auto in mixed light) or it was the wrong cam for the lighting conditions. Most HD cams do not approach film for being able to handle contrast/mixed light. Another possibility is that the HD footage was being seriously degraded when they compressed it to burn the SD DVD. Hey when I hook up my old 2100 directly to a TV it looks better than a lot of footage I get from my cable provider. No way is my DV footage a better image or even close to what was shot using high-end Hollywood film cams. But by the time it reaches my TV it is horribly degraded. Now with HD feeds they are starting to change all that. Now a lot of SD programming looks awful depending on how well the TV deals with SD footage. Obviously the couple had perfected the 16 mm to DVD workflow. Give em time.

"As a matter of fact I don’t want to be unkind here but every Hi Def footage I have seen seems less in quality than the footage shot with my Sony VX-2100 on mini DV format." That seems improbable. Maybe your TV or playback or delivery gear is degrading the signal? Are you comparing it to a DVD you burn or direct connection to your camcorder?

It's too bad that blue ray hasn't replaced SD DVDs. Everyone is shooting in HD and then compressing it to SD much of the time. Then again, many folks are listening to their music through the built-in Ipod speaker.


OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

So what would you get if you shot SD (DVCAM) with the EX1? Also, I think that a lot of HDV shooters are quick to boost the gain. If it is important to get a clean black... you should shoot at -3db or 0db! You can fix the final picture in post using auto contrast or auto color. Sometimes stretching the black a little in the camera setup menu can help!

Dave

Dave Speace
Producer/Director/DP
DZP Video