p2 demo day
Today our station was visited by Panasonic sales reps, hoping to sell us on their next-generation news camera: The DVCPRO P2.
As luck would have it, I was assigned to go shoot with the camera for the day, as if I owned it. So my reporter and I loaded into the news van, along with one of the Panasonic reps, and made TV magic. The guy sorta followed us around while we were shooting the story, but kept back out of the way. I felt like I was on a date with the camera, and he was the ever-watchful chaperone. (And, he totally didnt catch me making-out with the P2.)
I do like the puzzled look on his face when I left his sight, and then came back a moment later with my wide angle lens attached to it.
Some of my favorite features:
The camera had a standard viewfinder, AND a flip out color LCD montior. And, while it would probably take me less than a week to destroy the monitor - it was still a nice feature.
The camera 'records' on PC-slot sized cards, and can hold five of them. When you're done shooting, you just pop out the disk, plug it into the computer, and you're editing. There's also a PC-slot in the top for a future wifi transmitter.
The card slots, and media are truly the future digital video recording, but the TWO THOUSAND DOLLAR list price for EACH P2 card is a rough obstacle for stations (and Panasonic) to overcome.
Oh! The coolest feature was the 'recording buffer.' The camera is constantly recording and buffering, so that when you hit the record button it buffers back to up to FIFTEEN SECONDS before that. I like to think of it as the 'holy crap!' button. As in: you see something amazing/insane/terrible, and can hit record button the moment after you realize what you saw and say 'holy crap.' The camera has to be pointed in the right direction, of course.
Anyway, at the end of the day I felt like the mother at the end of "The Good Son". With each arm she held the two boys from falling over a dangerous cliff. Does she drop her evil-yet-flesh-and-blood son (Macaulay Culkin), or her distant-sweet-natured nephew (Elijah Wood)?
As luck would have it, I was assigned to go shoot with the camera for the day, as if I owned it. So my reporter and I loaded into the news van, along with one of the Panasonic reps, and made TV magic. The guy sorta followed us around while we were shooting the story, but kept back out of the way. I felt like I was on a date with the camera, and he was the ever-watchful chaperone. (And, he totally didnt catch me making-out with the P2.)
I do like the puzzled look on his face when I left his sight, and then came back a moment later with my wide angle lens attached to it.
Some of my favorite features:
The camera had a standard viewfinder, AND a flip out color LCD montior. And, while it would probably take me less than a week to destroy the monitor - it was still a nice feature.
The camera 'records' on PC-slot sized cards, and can hold five of them. When you're done shooting, you just pop out the disk, plug it into the computer, and you're editing. There's also a PC-slot in the top for a future wifi transmitter.
The card slots, and media are truly the future digital video recording, but the TWO THOUSAND DOLLAR list price for EACH P2 card is a rough obstacle for stations (and Panasonic) to overcome.
Oh! The coolest feature was the 'recording buffer.' The camera is constantly recording and buffering, so that when you hit the record button it buffers back to up to FIFTEEN SECONDS before that. I like to think of it as the 'holy crap!' button. As in: you see something amazing/insane/terrible, and can hit record button the moment after you realize what you saw and say 'holy crap.' The camera has to be pointed in the right direction, of course.
Anyway, at the end of the day I felt like the mother at the end of "The Good Son". With each arm she held the two boys from falling over a dangerous cliff. Does she drop her evil-yet-flesh-and-blood son (Macaulay Culkin), or her distant-sweet-natured nephew (Elijah Wood)?
6 Comments:
lol, looks like a fun toy. :)
(just ran across your site on ORblogs and I'll definetly be back again)
A collegue of mine is leaving to join a station that is migrating to P2. I don't really like them... the multiple cards seem to fiddly. I've tested an XDCam, and it seems like the next-gen camera of choice.
Which "format" did you shoot? DV, DVCPro, or DVCPro50? Can stations get away with shooting the DV quality (to get more time out of the P2 card) or does look too consumery? It would be nice to shoot everything in DVCPro50, but at only 8 minutes a ($2000) card...
We were shooting at DVCpro 25, rather than 50. Our production cameras at the station are DVC50 (for high gloss commercials), but for news we can get away with DVC25 - i guess.
Score. See, this is what my former overnight editor wants; he was hired to bring everybody over to non-linear editing ('stead cuts-only DVCPRO) and when management decided to hold off for a few years he split for a completely unrelated job in the nonprofit sector... (and this was also after he got p*ssed off too much by the shoddy work schedule. Oh, and I forgot the evil management)
I've been eager to get my hands on the p2 ... or anything that makes us truly tapeless ... but at 2k for a card I don't think it's going to happen in small market newsrooms for quite awhile ... 20 bucks for a tape is enough of a hassle.
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