PANASONIC AG-DVX100A Mini DV Digital Camcorder for Professional Use

Rating:
Summary: screenwriter's perspective--why DV is a solution
Review: All of these technical details are important; I find them fascinating and vital to read, as I am trying to decide on a camcorder to shoot a feature with. But I do think some of you DPs have missed the point.

THE most important factor is getting your work out "there," and "there" does NOT need to be Sundance. The work simply needs to be a finished product, not an idea in your head that has nowhere to go.

I, and many like me, cannot afford to make a film for 50 or 100 grand. It is not going to happen. But if there is a way to get a film done, or a promotional short of your film done for much, much less, then every writer and filmmaker now has a chance. [And many producers merely want a decent visual form of one's story; they have money to invest in remakes.]

To all the DPs who chastise would-be DV filmmakers by saying it is going to be so far below quality that the finished product will be limping around to sorry, class B festivals... better to have a faulty DV product and be in the race, then be sitting on the sidelines empty-handed.

Rating:
Summary: Shooting 16mm is like pulling teeth if you have this.
Review: Cine cameras are expensive because they are controlled by monopoly groups that have a monopoly on the industry. So do Cinematographers with their ASC credits. Saying that you want to shoot on 16mm or 35mm is like saying I want one of the 50,000 cine camera crawling the planet today. Some are rusted and need money to repair, most are noisy, and the few that you need are too expensive or unavailable for rent until you get expensive insurance. Filmmakers do get their own cine gear, but only once they get there after success. Everything before that is borrowed from the rental department... if you can get it but who cares about the festivals? If you want to see your DV production destroyed because you choose to show it on a big screen via 35mm projection (God forbid you have the inclination to do that without a film history) then be my guest. As we all know the vast percentage of new and up and coming directors who shoot DV go the DVD route avoiding all costs of any celluloid being introduced into the process. The result - what a 16mm film student or movie maker wanted. A film on DVD.

If you want to shoot 16mm then just go buy a Konvas 2M, a Russian 35mm camera and avoid shooting 16mm altogether by going 35mm with a camera that costs the same price as this one. Besides we hear the same rhetoric than DV costs so much money to touch up and get right for 35mm print as if motion picture doesn't go through the exact same process at the exact same price. How many big buget, cinematographer paycheck and all, productions on 35mm have we seen that look truly ghastly? Plenty, because we have lots of experience seeing exactly this.

Besides in the closing statement you already admitted as much with both ARRI and Aaton producing new lines of digital cinema cameras.

Shoot 16mm is a joke because if you have the funds for this cam you have the funds for a Konvas 2M. Eitherway 16mm is nowhere middle format film that is going to go the way of 9.5mm (yeah that existed one time also... until 16mm out sold it.)


Rating:
Summary: That's Why You Rent
Review: Cine cameras are expensive because they are intended for rental use by professionals, not private ownership by "filmmakers" that finance their "productions" by growing and selling drugs. Yes, telecine drops the resolution down to NTSC if that's your destination medium, but there's more to image quality than resolution. If cost is your only concern then by all means shoot DV. If you do get into any festival that counts (Sundance, Cannes, etc.), which you won't with DV anyway, see how good your DV footage looks when blown up for theatrical projection. I am a DP and personally my primary concern is image quality. I shoot whatever the producer tells me we can afford, though I'll always argue for film because at the end of the day it just looks better. Yes it's more expensive, but when it isn't my money paying for it (and it never is) I'd rather have a better picture than worse. I don't care about the cost... as long as I get paid I'm happy, and film keeps me employed and the paychecks coming because it provides better results. While it's true that some decent features have been made with DV (28 Days Later most notably), those productions required lots of expensive post work to make them even minimally presentable for commercial distribution. DV's fine for low-budget hacks, but personally I'll stick with film until video shows me something comparable in quality. We'll see what the Arri D-20 and Panavision Genesis have to offer...

Rating:
Summary: CineTech22 is right, but...
Review: CineTech22's information is correct regarding effective resolution, exposure latitude, etc. Film is a chemical process, and the amount of detail that can be delineated on essentially a molecular level on celluloid is staggering, even with 16mm. BTW, DV resolution is 720x480, not 640x480, but your point still is made--WAY less info than film. As far as the focus operation is concerned, there is an aftermarket "follow-focus" rig available to address this, but yes, the stock camera doesn't let you set your focus-pulling marks.


I would contend, however, that you've lost the forest for the trees. This camera DOES spell the end of 16mm as the preferred medium for indie filmmakers. Premium Panasonic DV tapes are about $5/cassette (63 minutes). And are reusable. What does 16mm cost in stock and processing for an hour of footage?

The path to indie glory is no longer only "shoot in 16mm, blow it up to 35mm for festivals or limited release, get discovered". Now we have "shoot in anamorphic DV, release on DVD, get discovered" as the new, much more cost effective option. Another note: DV footage shot on a DVX100a looks great uprezzed to HD, even better than some low-end prosumer HD cams out there, mostly due to its great color abilities.

I have used both the DVX100 & 100a, and have run up against their limitations. Exposure and depth of field are the biggest and require a lot of production compensation to get around--lots of zoomed, wide open aperture shots with heavy ND filtering to get that truly cinematic look.

Still, if you know what you're doing, this camera is fantastic. Audio is superb (phantom-powered XLR's--yeah, baby!!), 24p is beautiful to work with, color is very "film-like", and although it is easy to "bloom" the whites and "crush" the blacks, the range is better than most DV cams, and both can be avoided by indie filmmakers who pay attention to settings and lighting.

Would-be filmmakers who want to go this route need two important accessories: the 16x9 anamorphic adapter by Panasonic (AG-LA7200g), and Barry Green's book/DVD package http://www.dvxuser.com/articles/dvxbook . By understanding the camera's strengths and weaknesses, you can get fantastic results from the DVX100a. If you are an independent fillmaker with a limited budget, buy this camera, the anamorpic adapter, Barry's book, and do some test shots to figure it all out, Then spend the $$$THOUSANDS$$$ you've saved by shooting with the DVX100a and use it for better lighting, production, script doctors, better actors, and more time in post. The result will be far more impressive than 16mm done on a shoestring--a turd that could more easily be blown up to 35mm, but is far less likely to be worth it.

That's my take, anyway. This camera does for independent filmmaking what the Alesis ADAT did for digital audio recording in the 90's--completely "democracizes" the field so that young, up-and-coming creative people can produce work of incredible quality for very little money and absolutely no "studio" control.

So buy this camera, indulge your creative freedom, make your prize-winning indie film, and "stick it to da MAN!"

Rating:
Summary: This is the ONLY option for low budget filmmakers
Review: If you are an aspiring filmmaker, or even an experienced one, DV is a wonderful option! And other than the $100,000 HDDV cameras, you can't find anything that beats this camera, especially when you add on the anamorphic lens, which allows you to shoot in 16:9 without losing any resolution.

Whoever said Sundance doesn't accept DV hasn't paid attention. Last year, over 1/3 of all accepted FEATURE films at Sundance were DV. And the two the sold for the most $$$...both shot on DV. The cinematographer award went to a DV filmmaker (who shot Spkike Lee's Bamboozled, also shot on DV), and was yet a different film than the two big money winners.

My advice is to take a very close look at this camera if you have filmmaking aspirations. DV is the only sensible format. My other advice is to NEVER waste money on film school. Spend that money on making 3 or 4 DV films. You'll learn way more, and may even make something worthy of a great festival like Sundance.

But isn't this supposed to be a review about the AG-DVX100a? This camera blows me away. Blown up on the big screen, it looks slightly fuzzy compared to 35mm, but on a big screen TV, it looks wonderful, and MOST films made by indie filmmakers have a very short and limited release theatrically (if at all). Most are seen on cable or rented at the video store. The DVX 100a shoots in progressive scan. That gives it incredible resolution on a prog. scan DVD player and HDTV. It shoots a 24 frames per second (the same as film) if you have aspirations of transferring to 35mm at some point. And transferring to 35mm is about 10% of the cost of shooting on it, granted it's not the same quality. But if you shoot at 24P, editing software will automatically convert it to NTSC for you if transferring to film doesn't become an option. No issues at all.

This camera will truly blow you away if you compare its quality to that of past Sundance DV successes like Blair Witch, Tadpole, Pieces of April (which won an Oscar for best supporting actress), and Open Water.

Nobody I've ever met that wasn't brainwased from their wasted time and money at film school was ever disastisfied with the quality of this camera. Buy the camera, make a business card that says filmmaker, and go make a great looking film with this camera. You'll be amazed.

Rating:
Summary: Great miniDV, but still can't hold a candle to film
Review: Let me begin by saying that I write this review primarily in rebuttal to the previous review, having taken great offense at the grandiose proclamation that this camera marks the end of 16mm production. I have used this camera on a few occasions (including shooting a side-by-side comparison against an Arri SR2 loaded with Kodak 7218) and, while it does offer superior image quality and more professional-grade features than most miniDV cameras on the market, the simple reality is that no miniDV camera in the foreseeable future can come close to matching the visual quality afforded by film. A few pertinent differences:

Resolution: The DVX100A is restricted to standard NTSC resolution of 640x480 lines. Super16 film shot using a Super 1.78 ground glass (HDTV standard 16x9) offers an effective resolution of 1400x2490 lines. See http://www.cinematechnic.com/super_16mm/resolution_of_super_16mm.html for an in-depth resolution comparison between Super16 and professional HD.

Exposure Latitude: I've seen tests of Kodak Vision2 500T (7218) shot to five stops overexposure and five stops underexposure that still showed information in the highlights and shadows. The DVX100A starts to bloom to white at about three stops overexposure and clipped completely around four. Underexposure performance was similarly unimpressive. For low light shooting the increased grain produced in film by moderate push processing is far less deleterious to the image quality than the degradation introduced by video gain.

Imager Size: The DVX100A uses a 1/3" 3CCD chip, which provides roughly twice the depth of field of 16mm. If you want a cinematic look, greater DoF is BAD because everything is in focus. This robs you of the ability to use focus to direct the audience's attention to pertinent points in your frame. Try doing a focus rack between two characters in a conversational setting using the DVX100A- you won't be able to get either character sufficiently out of focus even with the lens wide open. In this respect the Canon XL2 is a superior camera because its interchangeable lens system allows the mounting of cine-style lenses with superior optical performance.

Ergonomics: Aperture control on the DVX100A is electronic and visible only while looking through the viewfinder. Focus is servo controlled and the focus ring lacks end stops so you can't tell when you reached the short end or infinity without looking in the viewfinder. The viewfinder itself is a video viewfinder that can only display up to NTSC resolution. 16mm film cameras have manual iris, manual focus and a reflex optical viewfinder that lets you see exactly what the lens sees (and allows you to look through the camera without turning it on). Manual controls are better because they give you greater control over the image you're capturing and can be manipulated with finer dexterity than the clumsy servos.

This all being said the DVX100A is a great miniDV camera, improving over the DVX100 with the inclusion of color bars output in 24p mode, better close focus capacity, added color matrix functions and shutter settings. These, along with other useful features like XLR audio input, make the DVX100A altogether a great prosumer camera. Make no mistake, however: this is a PROSUMER camera. While more than suitable for home movies and adequate for documentary or industrial work, the DVX100A does not deliver the performance demanded for truly professional applications. To declare it the death knell of film as an origination medium betrays both ignorance and amateurishness.

Rating:
Summary: Improvement on the 16mm killer DV camera - the AG-DVX100a!
Review: The AG-DVX100 has killed 16mm motion picture camera systems and 16mm film stock except for the die-hard motion picture fans. The bottom line is - do not shoot 16mm or Super 16mm because this camera produces cine images that are better than 16mm and Super 16mm on DV, which means that it is also cheaper because you do not need to buy and process 16mm film stock. If you blow this video up to 35mm the image quality is still better than 16mm film formats.

However 35mm still rules... but the future for digital looks good.

The 'a' version has corrected problems with the AG-DVX100, not to mention adding on a few $$$ more to the price tag, so it looks like you must pay to correct the mistakes that Panasonic made, but I digress... this is still a 1st class DV camera. The corrections are probably major with nearly everything being added something extra to help get that right cine image.

You would also do well to get the AG-LA7200G anamorphic lens so that you can shoot in scope with a squeezed digital image (Just like a real anamorphic lens!)!

Bottom line. This is a top of the range domestic camcorder with pro qualities. 16mm motion picture camera users should use this in their productions instead. It is a waaaaay cheaper and looks better. The cine-switch technology in this camera is based on the same system that Lucas used to film his New Star Wars movies with. Also the PAL version does not have 24 fps but this does not matter because PAL is 25 fps and the difference can not be noticed with the naked eye alone and transfer to film is easy with 25 fps PAL but not so easy with 30 fps NTSC so the NTSC version of this camera can also shoot 24 fps for that. Also this camera is loaded with functions. Keep an eye out for the AG-DVX100 version although because it is the older model, a bit cheaper, but less in functionality but this should be no concern to those who had to shoot on expensive 16mm film equipment with expensive 16mm film stock and expensive 16mm processing and expensive 16mm to video transfers.

16mm is dead because this makes film making so cheap.



Rating:
Summary: Yeah right Kubrick
Review: This is the same old waffle in order to say that you would be better off shooting on 16mm stock. Fine - go shoot on 16mm, buy your $10,000 below par noisy 16mm from Ebay that was made in 1980s, unless you have $50,000 to get a spanking new Aaton, but slightly noisy, your DAT recorder extra and of course the film stock and your cost of development and transfer to telecine and then where does it end up? Being projected on 35mm in local Odean?

Grow up and mix down to DVD if you think your work might see the light of day. If you think a 8GB DVD can hold the resolution of 16mm or 35mm then please go and be the Kubrick with a minimum budget of $100,000 to get your show on the road...

... or shoot with this and mix to DVD... like everyone else is doing... and quit supporting the cine camera monopoly that sets the $50,000 price tag that you lap up.

LOL.

This cam KILLS 16mm production, period.