Recently Panasonic gave me the opportunity to test the new Varicam 2700 P2 camcorder. It has been an amazing experience with a truly amazing camera. With a small crew we tested various aspects of the camera. We shot test charts, made rough MTF measurements, shot lit scenes, tested motion rendering and offspeedshots, and tested dynamic range in outdoor settings. I am going to spend time here recounting the technology, aspects of the camera, my opinions and test results. But overall, this is an amazing camera that is building on the strong inertia of the P2 workflow. I will also use the HVX200 and HPX500 for comparison references to help show what you get for the additional cost.
Many thanks to Aileen Goodin, Joe Cicchesi, Edwin Herrera, and Kris Opala for their help with the testing. Thanks to Smash Studios (www.smashny.com) for the use of the studio).
In summary, the camera is a true professional level and quality camcorder with the functions you would expect to have at that level and especially at a MSRP of about 40,000 dollars. In some sense it feels like a P2 back was added onto the back of the old varicam and then functions were added instead of a true melding of the functions(more detail on this later). You get the best of p2 that you are used to from other cameras in their series. You also get all the professional controls that you would be used to at the higher end. The camera creates stunning imagery and has a large amount of recording formats and choices. It includes some functions to help you in a pinch (DRS for example). But, it should be said that is it a LOT more camera than the HPX500 so don’t expect to walk up to this camera with experience with the lower end Panasonic cameras and be ready to roll. As I always tell everyone, test in advance, not on set. You will be happy you did.
Physical
The camera weighs in at just under 11 pounds without lens, battery or viewfinder. It feels very good on the shoulder balancing very well – seems more comfortable than the HPX500 perhaps due to its extra weight. The camera looks like a hybrid of the hpx500 and the varicam. Most of the buttons on the front end of the camera are the same as the HPX500 with a few notable exceptions. The rear of the camera has the monochrome display of the Varicam with a similar layout of controls. And right in the middle is the P2 controls including the navigation buttons and the LCD.
All controls are well thought out and where you expect them to be especially if you are familiar with the other Panasonic cameras. All controls are either recessed, protected or difficult to accidently jar. There is a dual door on the smart side of the body so you can access only the camera controls that are there or both those and the P2 controls.
Front side layout
Below you see an image of the buttons near the front side of the camera. You have more options to assign to the user buttons such as Variable Frame Rate, Dynamic Range Stretching and others that pertain to specific function in this camera. There is syncro scan buttons which allow you to change the shutter angle and also change the frame rate in Variable Frame Rate mode for over and undercranking (Available only in 720 mode). There is also separate volume for alarms and for monitoring. There is a dedicated button to flag shots for a text memo. Finally you will see that there is 2 charts of options for the filters which allow for color filters and ND filters of ½, ¼,1/16, 1/64 – thank you Panasonic for the ½ ND filter.
The front layout of switches is nearly identical to the HPX500 except for the menu jog wheel and buttons. You still have the same shutter and white balance control(although you can dial in color temp via the menus).
Rear Right Side controls
Below you will see an image of the rear side controls. Towards the top is the VTR (playback etc) functions which are available under a plastic door. Then you see the familiar Varicam Monochrome display with audio levels, timecode and battery levels. To the right is the audio level controls and below that is audio assignment controls. Below there are 2 plastic doors. The see through door houses timecode and more audio controls and the opaque door houses the p2 menu controls. The audio controls are sufficiently confusing to recommend taking some time to see all the combinations of monitoring and assignment you can have.
Right (dumb) side of camera
On the right side you have you P2 door which holds 5 P2 cards and has a great locking system. Below are connections for HD-SDI out, SD downcovert, Genlock and Timecode in and out. Along with another HD-SDI connection in the rear of the camera you can output to 2 HD Monitors. Note that there is not component output on the camera. So you will need an HD-SDI onboard monitor which means for the Panasonic BT-LH80W you will need the optional HD_SDI board.
On the rear of the camera you have DC power in and out, 2 XLR inputs, audio output, Remote and 6 pin locking firewire.
The top handle has tons of screw mounts so you will have no problem mounting whatever you need. One thing I missed is the record button on the handle that is found on the HPX500. I found myself going to hit record there many times only to remember the button isn’t there. After the 50th time I think I learned.
Menu control
There is a split of the access to the functions of the camera. On the HPX500 the same controls are used to navigate in P2 thumbnail mod as well as the camera settings. On the Varicam the P2 thumbnail buttons only work for that part of the functions of the camera. The camera menus are only available via the menu button on the front of the camera along with a jog wheel for selection also found on the front of the camera. The difference between the 2 menus is even apparent in the font used with the cameras settings using the font from the Varicam and the P2 menus using what you expect from the other cameras.
The camera control settings are split into user menus and system menus. The former is accessed by one push of the menu button and the latter by holding the button for 3 seconds. There is a lot of overlap of function between the users menus and systems menus. The system menus has the detailed paint and deeper, less often accessed functions. Specific menus will be put into a separate writeup. I sometimes felt that some functions where in the wrong set of menus but I suppose that I would become used to that as time went by.
The P2 controls are found mid camera and have the same 4 way buttons along with a button to switch to thumbnail mode and a menu button to access the menu in thumbnail mode – but remember you cannot access the camera controls with this button. One other important change is that you cannot play a clip by using these buttons. You need to use the VTR buttons found near the top under a slender plastic door. If you are used to the HVX200 and HPX500 you will find yourself pressing the top p2 key to play with no result often until you retrain yourself.
Viewfinder
The HD viewfinder is just a gift after using the HPX500 SD viewfinder. High resolution and large image area are just splendid. You also now have 2 zebra settings that you can use (unlike the HPX500 which only had one). In addition the frequency chart focus assist that was on the HPX500 is vastly improved. There is a small box in the center of the frame so you actually know what area is being measure for focus. And probably in part due to the higher resolution of the viewfinder the graph has a lot more detail allowing for easy and faster fine tuning of focus. Just make the graph move the most it can to the right and the image area in the box is in maximum focus. The only downside is the graph now covers more of the image in the frame which might irk some shooters. But due to the HD viewfinder you may find yourself using the peaking to focus more often anyhow.
DRS
Dynamic Range Stretching is a cool feature to help you get more latitude out of the camera. When you turn it on you will see what looks like a brightening of the whole image which at first looks like some highlights get clipped. But by analyzing the frame and using different exposure in different areas more latitude is brought into play. You can then stop down a bit to control highlights but you will now retain more detail in the shadows. I don’t see using this in a feature film scenario since your shooting situation is so controlled. But this will be great and very useful for Doc and ENG work.
Codecs and Recording formats
The camera records in DVCproHD and AVC-intra (at both 50 Mbs and 100 Mbs) and can shoot at 720 and 1080 resolutions. You can see the literature for the camera here (LINK) for all the formats in terms of frame rates and combos but I wanted to highlight some things here. You first choose the system setting which is the resolution and recording framerate. So you can choose 1080 60i or 1080 24PsF or 720 24P and so on. This setting is called “System Mode” and requires a camera restart when you change it. Then you choose the recording codec. So you can choose DVCproHD 60i or DVCproHD 24Pn or AVC-Intra 100 24Pn and so on. This setting doesn’t require a reboot. And you can only choose the available recording formats for the system mode that you are in. So, for example if you choose 1080 24PsF as the system mode you will not be able to choose any of the DVC recording formats since that is not an available frame rate in DVCproHD. One other note to be aware of is that there is a “Camera mode” setting that is used only when you choose 1080 60i as the system mode and DVCproHD 60i as the recording format. This mode allows you to choose 60i, 24P or 24 PA – and this is required because 1080 60i is the only framerate available at 1080 in the DVCproHD codec. So since it will record with pulldown you need to select the camera mode. This should be familiar to those who shoot with the HVX200 or HPX500 but just are in different settings. This setting in ONLY found in the system menu and resets when you leave the applicable system mode and come back (to 60i) so this is an easy setting to miss when you are moving fast – take caution. Note that there are no Standard Definition recording formats available on the camera at all.
So you have full availability of all DVCproHD modes to maintain compatibility with workflows that exist for that format. However, you will likely want to shoot in AVC-intra when possible. It has a 100Mbs bandwidth which is the same as DVCproHD 1080i but with much better compression technology realizing a much better picture. Not all editing systems support it yet but they are all ramping up. Obviously the Panasonic tools do support it (P2 viewer, P2 CMS etc). So as always, please test you full workflow from shooting to finishing before arriving on set. I am sure some people will get burned by not being able to edit the ACV-intra footage simple because they didn’t test and that shouldn’t reflect poorly on the format in the world of instant message boarding.
One very cool thing has to do with dual recording to P2 and firewire out. On the HPX500 and the HVX200 if you were shooting 24P native to P2 card you could not also output via firewire. However, on the 2700 there are no pulldown options in 720 – so you are always shooting 24P native (when shooting 24 frames/sec). However, the stream is still sent over the firewire which means – yep – you can record native to P2 cards and have a backup streaming out the firewire to a laptop, firestore or other applicable device. This maximizes P2 record time and allows for an instant hard drive copy if your shooting scenario allows for this setup – very cool.
The camera also has all of the one shot, pre record, intervalometer and other functions you would expect from a camera in this line. I won’t go into detail here about this as it appeared there were no surprises here.
Variable Framerates
As with the HPX500 and HVX200 variable frame rates are available in the 720 modes of the camera. You have all frame rates from 1-60 available. As can be expected from the original Varicam you can ramp(change) the frame rates while shooting allowing for some cool Matrix style effects in camera. TO do this you need to enable VFR on one user button. Then you click the button which turns it on. Then you click the jog wheel in the front to enable it. Finally the synchro scan buttons on the side change the frame rate. Using the buttons you will only achieve some very rough ramping. However with the remote unit it reacts much quicker to a physical knob allowing for much finer control.
Audio
While both DVCproHD and AVC-intra allow for 4 independent channels of audio, it appear that the camera really only allows for 2 independent inputs (perhaps 3). There are 2 XLR inputs in the back (line, mic and phantom powered) and one input on the front. It may be possible to route the 3 to different channels but I didn’t have time to test this. I suspect that the camera has the great audio circuitry as their other lines of cameras. Essentially you have all the settings that you have in the HPX500 for each channel including limiters, headroom, lowpass filters etc.
Imagery
Okay – so the most important question is how does the image look. And the answer is truly amazing. Now the camera sends full Raster (1920x1080) 4:2:2 10 bit out of the HD-SDI connection. And we compared that visually to the subsampled 8 bit that the HPX500 sends out. To be completely honest I was hoping they would be in the same neighborhood since I am an HPX500 owner. Well, they weren’t. the Varicam has so much more of a creamy velvety falloff into shadows and even more so into highlights. When switching between the 2 cameras on the Panasonic BT_LH2600 HD monitor there was no competition. The Varicam was (and should at the price) vastly superior.
Now we have to remember that what is seen on the monitor is precodec and I haven’t had a chance yet to completely review the recorded images in both DVCproHD and AVC-Intra so I suspect the differences will be a “little” less. But that remains to be seen. I will also be analyzing the resolution and MTF tests of the recorded images to get some hard numbers and all of that will be in a separate writeup. In addition I will be posting some of the test footage once I sort through it.
Summary
It’s a wonderful camera and can serve many purposes. I am looking forward to adding it to my arsenal. The biggest question will be is it worth the $40,000 vs the $10,000 for the HPX500 (in addition to the extra cost for Viewfinder, HD-SDI board, ACV-Intra Option). That will depend on who is paying for the camera and what you will be doing with it. The HPX500 is a truly astonishing camera AT ITS PRICE POINT. But the HPX2700 is undeniably a true professional level camera with superior controls, imagery and features. If you can afford one, I say get it.
