kalucki@charm.UUCP (John Kalucki) (11/23/85)
Grrrr. We bought a Panasonic PK-958 video camera with a 8500 (I think), portable video deck about 5 months ago. It works great. I have used Sony 1810 single tube cameras, which are pretty nice, but too grainy, and various 3 tube cameras, mostly Hitachi's FP-15, yet I was delighted at the overall performance of the camera. I was quite busy at the time we bought the camera, so I never got a chance to put it through its paces, I mearly fired it up and taped a few minutes out in my back yard. Once school was out, I began to use it a bit, and became addicted to it. The TV station I work for uses Sony 1810's for ENG, with a KCS (3/4") Sony deck of sorts. Along with a good tripod, 5 lead-acid batts, 3 KCS tapes, assorted cables, etc.; the load would kill 2 crew members in an hour. One week the ENG stuff was down (tape jammed in one deck, both cameras all messed up, etc.) and the Governor of our State (Gov. Tom Kean) was coming to open a section of I-78 in our viewing area. I naturally volunteered to use our home VHS deal, and bump it up to 3/4" to edit the deal. This happened to be the hottest day of the summer, with the sun beating down, sans clouds for miles around. Well I was dissapointed at the color (resolution was pretty good) in the very bright light. The sky would be blue along the top of the trees, but would change abruptly to white. Grrr. Ok, so it was only a ~$700 camera. I could live with it. The color was no winner (no looser either) when played back on the deck, but when I copyed it to 3/4, the color was much better. (sharpness didn't suffer at all) WHY???? The staff loved the tape, and the setup (see above), and the station might purchase a 1/2 inch set up for when ENG goes down, and for the new people who can never seem to get the color just so, or keep moving objects in focus... But we are a bit puzzeled about the color improvement. When recorded in bright light the colors wash, bleed, change tones in large areas with the same solid color, but do none of these things on 3/4". I haven't seen our video guru for a while, so I came here. [=-------------------------------------------------------------------------=] [ -John Kalucki @ Physics Research @ Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ ] [ ...!ihnp4!charm!kalucki ^^^ ] [---------------------------------+ ^^^ ] [ You expect me to have the same | Its really Berkeley Hts., NJ, but ] [ opinions as a company that does | me? Complain? Never! (So, you thought ] [ know where its buildings are? | the transistor was invented in Murray ] [ ;-) ;-) ;-) )-; ;-( ;-) | Hill. Silly person!) ] [=--------------------------------+----------------------------------------=] -- [=-------------------------------------------------------------------------=] [ -John Kalucki @ Physics Research @ Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ ] [ ...!ihnp4!charm!kalucki ^^^ ] [ (This was all done on my own time) | ] [---------------------------------+ ^^^ ] [ You expect me to have the same | Its really Berkeley Hts., NJ, but ] [ opinions as a company that does | me? Complain? Never! (So, you thought ] [ know where its buildings are? | the transistor was invented in Murray ] [ ;-) ;-) ;-) )-; ;-( ;-) | Hill. Silly person!) ] [=--------------------------------+----------------------------------------=]