Panasonic and Apple are joined at the hip in promoting the new Panasonic HVX200 DVCPROHD Camera. Here are some notes on that camera, and two others. Look for future newsletters to cover the new $9,000 Cannon HD Camera.

Please take the time to click on the link to the right, and View the NETFLIX descriptions of my films, and if you are a member...please rent them...you don't have to even watch 'em...send right back...just remember to give them a Five star review...thanks. Have fun making DV, and hope to see you in San Francisco for one of our workshops.

If you are planning on working on any narrative project, commercial, music video, or something that will end up on Film....then this is the camera for you. It will not come cheap. By the time you buy the camera , batteries, P2 Memory cards and portable FireStore Drive, we are talking about close to $9,000.00. One gig of P2 memory will store 1 minute of DVCPROHD. Current Cards will store 8 minutes of HD 60i and 16 minutes of HD24p.

There are real issues of backing up media recorded on these. Unlike HDV, which record to tape and can be archived oin the original master tapes, When Shooting with Panasonic's HVX200, you have to "wipe the drives and Cards clean" before recording on them again. These P2 cards are only temporary storage Vehicles for your material.

This involves dumping the P2 Cards and drives to your computer. What if your Hard Drive fails?..and your "original Footage" is blown-away? You don't have any tape back ups because this Flavor of DVCPRO HD can only be recorded to disc or cards. There are not alot of options until Blue Ray and HD-DVDs appear on the scene for easy archiving and copyying the P2 Cards and drives .....DLT's and other high end storage solutions are around, but mostly in high end production suites. You can not record onto these P2 cards via FireWire from Final Cut Pro. Currently, there is no write-to P2 Card solution with the HVX200 and Apple.

In some cases, depending on the HD Size and Frame rate, the quality of this camera's HD is better than Sony's HDV format. Interesting enough...when the new HD DVDs and TV Stations start broadcasting and playing in HD...most will be using the Sony and JVC HDV compression.

The Panasonic HD camera has serious issues for Documentary filmmakers with big shooting ratios. Even the portable firewire drives that work with this camera (Firestore has 100gig portable drive), This footage will also need to be archived, and the logging process is much different than HDV tape. The way these cards work..you actually capture everything on the card or drive, then decide what to keep. This can gobble up ton's of memory and slow down your edit process. Most filmmakers view their footage first, then decide what to capture...here it is the reverse. This could create capture and logging issues if you shoot hours and hours of footage.

The Bottom line: Narrative filmmakers, Music Video, Commercials and people planning to transfer to film. this is an amazing looking , high quality HD camera that seems to work perfectly with Apple's Final Cut Pro Solution. It also shoots in Standard DV, recording DV to minDV Tape.

The surprise in the HD world is this new camera from JVC. I remeber the old JVC KY2000 color camera and what a cheap peice of $&&#@ it was. I never thought JVC could make a great camera, but it seems from all the testing that most people like this camera. It has a real 16X zoom lens, with a real focus and exposure ring, that is much easier then reaching over to the side of your Panasonic or Sony to raise the Iris. There is no Auto Focus on this camera. Most people suggest bringing down the Detail setting in this camera to -8. It has real 24p, the cool film look everyone went crazy for in the Panasonic 100A. XLR professional audio imputs are helpful. Camera runs $5,100. You will need extra or third party bateries that could add another $1,500. (JVC is giving away a long lasting battery and IDX adapter until the end of March 2006.

The real lens, and the ability to rest this camera on your shoulder, plus the good reviews from sources I trust, suggest this might be the high end HDV camera to use for current documentary projects

Sony HD Camera. Nobody ever got fired for buying Sony.

The two Sony cameras that seem to gain all the praise, cost between $3-6,000. The FX-1 is a rock solid HDV Camera, and looks great for the bucks. A perfect first step, low cost HDV camera. Unlike the JVC, it has auto focus, which may be an issue for some of you. The Z1U is a fine camera for $5,000... The question is...do you buy the Z1 or the JVC Camera at that price point. The reviews seem to leaning towards the JVC Camera. But what if you only want to spend $1,400- $1,600?

Sony has the HDR-HC1 which uses a CMOS chip, similar to thse in your cell phone. They are approx $1,400, small consumer cameras that one of my students is very happy with as an introduction to editing and playing with the format. It suffers a little in low light, but I always recommend using a diffussed sun gun in low light situations. The camera has exposure zebras, but unfortunlaty the only way to control the exposure is with the Shutter. That will help darken the picture. At a cheap price, to get real HDV on your computer in all it's 16X9 Glory, this might be the best low cost solution for affordable personal filmaking. Of course the revolution is on it's way, and there will be many brands of nice consumer HDV stuff availble in a blink of an eye. I suggest adding a beachTek to this camera and good mics.

I am so pleased to announce the following awards and official selections of DVworkshops.com students:

Barbara Grandvoinet of San francisco won a Best of Festival award at the 2005 Berkeley Film Festival for "Pas de Deux". She first learned basic Final Cut pro with Aron Ranen and studied Advanced FCP with Kevin Monahan here at DVworkshops.

Billy Brown from Nashville Tennesse just won a 2006 Telly award for one of his recent productions.

Carl Russo from San Francisco. His film Baby Pepper" has been accepted at nine film festivals in such cities as Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, Edinburgh (Scotland), and Melbourne (Australia). In September, 2005, It screened it at the Milano Film Festival in Italy. Carl was a former famous underground Radio Host before picking up the camera.