Panasonic HPX3000

[Alfeo Dixon SOC]

Hey everyone,

 

I got ten weeks on the Panasonic HPX3000. Any thing I should look out for or special needs? Tried to get the vfgadets handle for low mounting, but its not available until late summer. Are there any other aftermarket handles out there?

 

Does it output both HD and Composite at once?

 

-Alfeo

[Robert Starling SOC]

I got ten weeks on the Panasonic HPX3000. Any thing I should look out for or special needs? Tried to get the vfgadets handle for low mounting, but its not available until late summer. Are there any other aftermarket handles out there? Does it output both HD and Composite at once?

 

Hi Alfeo: I just did the new (in rehearsals) Cirque du Soleil / Criss Angel show opening sequences/illusions with a HPX3000 last Saturday. It does output HD and SD at the same time right out of the side.; absolutely.

 

It's a very straight forward video camera. We had two packages; one "Panavised" with their logos and the other not branded with Panavision logos. Probably the only odd thing about our setup was we were using Zeiss DigiZoom 6-24's on both cameras which made it super front heavy. The AC had picked a lightweight mattebox but no lightweight rods. The mattebox bracket we had hangs down below the rods and plate which inhibited me mounting my dovetail plate as far forward as I would have liked to. As you'll see from the photos below we even mounted the Preston on the back to get some weight back there. Overall the camera was not that heavy and I could have added a battery to the rear but decided not to. Power-wise I ran the rig for nine hours that day on a total of six Powercubes (3 sets of 2).

 

Sorry the photos are a bit sketchy. Email or call if you have any other questions.

[Cody Slack]

More info on this cam would be great. Maybe some matrix settings or altering of master gamma to achieve certain looks ?

[Alfeo Dixon SOC]

matrix settings or altering of master gamma to achieve certain looks ?

 

Welcome to the boards Cody,

 

Although most of us don't really get into the settings to establish looks and all, I'm sure there are a few shooters that can give you more info. From my experience, it seems to be just like the Varicam's menu's and setup. It also has the SD card which you can load and save settings from and to the camera, very useful for multi camera jobs. For some reason my B-cam would often loose its settings. Again, this is only me being nosey to see what the AC's where doing.

 

What I did love was the different outputs as Robert pointed out. HD-SDI, feeding the folks back at the village from the rear 'Video Out' BNC. Another two outputs on the side, 'SDI' which I ran to my monitor and 'Mon Out' which I sent to my Archos and Modulus for anyone that wanted to watch on a handheld NTSC receiver. One thing I didn't get right until later in the show was the correct setting for the NTSC signal for my Archos. It looked good for the wireless feed, but not for the 16x9 of the Archos.