Adventures of the HV20 part 1
By S Simmons. Filed in Editing, HV20 |
I had been wanting to buy a video camera and my wife was open to the idea as well. I’m an editor, filmmaker and video guy but I was always borrowing a camera so I needed one of my own. My brother-in-law Gary is an automotive journalist and asked if I would like to accompany him to the 2008 International Motor Press Association’s test days and shoot video of the many road and track tests that he would be conducting for his website thegarageblog.com. Video and cars are two of my favorite things to I said hell yea. And this was the perfect opportunity to buy a camera.
Since there is no Scarlet as of yet and I couldn’t get my wife to agree to the multiple thousands of dollars for a Panny HVX200 or Sony XDCAM EX I settled on the Canon HV20. It is old school HDV tape-based but it is a battle tested camera with a dedicated following, tons of accessories and the ability to (with a little work) produce some great images. Canon had just come out with the HV30 but I found a great deal on a refurbished HV20 via Amazon retailer OneCall. The reseller had a good rating so I pulled the trigger. The camera arrived minus the AV cable that plugged into the power brick (which I picked up at Radio Shack) but it did have and extra battery!
I wanted to outfit this little thing enough to make it seem somewhat professional but yet make it easy to travel with. The first accessory was an external mic, the Rode VideoMic. It attaches to the hot shoe and is a huge improvement over the internal mic. Second was a cheap Fig Rig imitation I found on eBay (there are tons of them). It is only made of plastic and didn’t take too well to my bending to make the cam fit with the mic attached but it is 100% better than holding the cam with it’s strap. I also grabbed a monopod that I didn’t use much since it didn’t fit into my backpack. Finally a lens hood from Fotodiox outfitted the camera for the road. I borrowed a wireless mic from a friend and grabbed the batteries and wall charger from my Canon Digital Rebel XTi (thankfully they happened to be compatible which I didn’t know) and I was ready to shoot.
But first I needed something to carry this stuff in. I had a hard camera case but a backpack would have been easier in that it’s on my back and leaving hands free when running around the track. I tried out a Canon brand photography backpack but settled on a Lowepro CompuDaypack. It’s light, comfortable and has a great combination of pockets into which I was able to fit the camera and all of the accessories (minus the monopod), carry it on the plane and tote it around the race track without it feeling too obtrusive or in the way.
The first day of the event was held at Split Rock Resort in Lake Harmony, Pennsylvania. It involved testing off-road vehicles on the resort’s ski mountains as well as road tests of the other cars.
The second day was a track day at the Pocono raceway. The track tests utilized the race track’s infield road course that included one turn on to the back stretch of the permanent oval and a long straight where you could easily reach triple digit speeds.
The camera performed very well. You can see in the photo above the imitation Fig Rig and what it looks like being handheld. It’s certainly not a steady as a Steadicam but it’s much more manageable than just holding the HV20 via its strap. And believe me when I say that you get a lot of questions and comments when shooting with a rig like that. Especially at an automotive event when it looks like your camera is mounted to a steering wheel! I have to say that for capturing content for web video I can’t imagine a much better rig than this. It’s compact enough to fit into one backpack and will still capture a 1080p image. Now it captures that via a stream on HDV tape so there is a multi-step process to extract the 24p image but once done it looks great. I’ll be making extensive use of Smoothcam and Magic Bullet Steady to smooth out some of the footage. Even with a fake Fig Rig it’s difficult to hold a camera steady while drifting in an Infiniti G35 or flying down a race track at 150 mph while strapped into a Shelby GT500 KR Mustang … but it sure is fun. Next year I’m going to take some kind of wind-shield suction-cup camera mount and a tiny flash based camera to get the on-track POV footage so if there are any shooters out there with suggestions please leave them below.
It was great fun to get out of the editing suite and work around one of my favorite things, sports cars. While I didn’t get a ride in the Audi R8 I did get to go out in one of my favorite cars, the Lotus Exige S. As we were flying down the track at around 120 mph I totally forgot about the downside of shooting all this video. When I get home I have to edit it!
Sunday, September 14th 2008 at 4:57 pm
Hey, I used a track-tested a Stickypod, made by a guy local to Denver. I used it with an HVX200 on the good as well as an old handheld down on the lower door. This was done at a NASA event in Pueblo…great stuff! I got the pro setup: http://www.stickypod.com/
Sunday, September 14th 2008 at 6:56 pm
This trip was a pretty big experiment for both of us. We did very little planning and yet seemed to find a groove in our reviews fairly quickly. I think it was the beginning of a great team!
On the equipment side, I’m certainly no techie, but I had a couple of observations. The camera rig was light as hell and surprisingly easy to cart about. There were lots of comments from people about the rig as well. The wireless mike Scott borrowed was easy to use, just so long as one remembers to remove it from the seat belt. It will be interesting to see how it handled the wind noise when we shot with the windows open.
Wednesday, September 17th 2008 at 11:14 pm
Did you have problems with rolling shutter? That’s something that has always worried me about this camera. I’d imagine it would be a big problem if you were filming while riding in a fast moving vehicle, no?
Thursday, September 18th 2008 at 1:58 pm
Marcus … I remember reading about the rolling shutter thing a long while back but it seemed to me that so many folks were using this thing and doing some good work with it then it must not be too big a deal. I haven’t seen it crop up on the car footage but I’ll keep an eye out.