Cinematographer Luke Geissbuhler takes the SDX900 for a "road test." Photo by: Carlino/Gooch

The discussion below followed an ultimate real-world road test conducted by Abel Cine Tech and New York-based Offhollywood Digital. The two companies collaborated to shoot a commercial spot for Volkswagen in order to try out the refined production path made possible by the new SDX900 DVCPRO 50 camera.

MM: Is the SDX900 really the best solution for anyone who wants to achieve a film look? Is that why there's been so much interest in this camera?

Peter Abel (PA): We're interested in any equipment that aids or expands the storytelling capability of the filmmaker. In my opinion, the SDX900 does just that. And it does it better than any low-cost camera developed since the Aaton A-Minima. In fact, it does it better than any standard definition digital camera we've ever tested. We're finally able to recommend a standard definition digital video camera that we feel won't be a creative compromise when compared to shooting film.

Mark Pedersen, Director (MP): Just prior to starting Offhollywood Digital, we tested the Panasonic Varicam high definition camera, which we fell in love with. After testing that camera and realizing its potential, we felt there was a real opportunity to carve out a niche by specializing in Panasonic formats. We were aware of the specifications of the AJX900 for some time before a prototype camera was even available. They seemed too good to be true, so we were extremely eager to see how the camera would perform. We were knocked out by the performance. This camera and format are going to make a very, very big splash. The integration with Final Cut 4 is fantastic, and it makes for a super-cost effective work-flow available to the everyone.

Tom Edmon (CEO, Heavy Light Digital): The SDX900 fills a really valuable gap in the market. Increasingly, for digital origination, I've seen filmmaker clients gravitate toward HD or mini-DV-with nothing in between. I've long been an advocate of standard definition if you're planning on a film-out, but it's difficult to get filmmakers to use Digi Beta when they can rent HD cameras for roughly the same price. And documentarians have to be able to afford to buy their cameras. The SDX900 addresses these criteria.

MM: Why did you feel the Volkswagen spot would be a good test for the camera?

MP: Well, the rationale to shoot a Volkswagen spec commercial was based on several factors. We started with the parameters of shooting something with a lot of movement to see how much of a cinematic look we would get in standard definition 24p. We also knew we wanted to shoot daylight exterior, because a lot of DPs like to say that digital formats don't hold up well in daylight, and it is really easy to carefully light an interior for a "test shoot" and skew the results. We also wanted to do something "low concept" so the emphasis was on the image, not the content. Then suddenly we thought-couldn't this camera be the perfect thing for shooting commercials? A broadcast camera which natively captures a film look!

PA: In a sense, the Volkswagen spot was a proof-of-concept for us. We were interested in seeing how the camera would perform in the hands of accomplished filmmakers on a project that would otherwise call for film or HD acquisition. What better than an automobile spot?

The camera itself is only one element of what made this shoot so exciting for us, and so timely. At the same time they debuted the SDX900, Panasonic was introducing FireWire boards for a couple of their DVCPRO50 decks: the SD930 and the SD955A. This would give filmmakers the capability of capturing video directly from their deck, in real time, without needing to purchase a third party capture card for their edit system. On top of this, Apple's release of Final Cut Pro 4, with its DVCPRO50 codec, was only a few weeks away.

Needless to say, we were very interested in seeing this project all the way through the post and editorial processes. If all the equipment described actually performed as promised by its manufacturers, then we would experience improvements, not only in quality, but in editorial time, as well.

TE: We make a lot of presentations to people about to shoot their films. We've followed Panasonic's forays into electronic cinema closely, and suspected that this standard-def camera would come in at a price point (either purchase or rental) that would fill the gap between mini-DV and HD. The SDX900 offers much higher image quality than mini-DV, thereby filling a huge hole for those theatricals and documentaries that really don't need to be shooting HD.

MP: And we didn't really know what to expect. We knew the 24p would give us a "film" motion, but coming from film backgrounds, we were pretty skeptical that the results would blow us away, because, after all, it's a standard definition camera.

MM: How do you prepare for a project that has no budget and is relying on beta versions of equipment to work?

Jesse Rosen, Engineer (JR): When the prototype SDX900 arrived from Panasonic, I had about a day to get familiar with the camera. I spent some of that time in front of charts with a light meter and waveform monitor getting a feel for what the different gamma modes do and the rest getting a handle on what might be operationally different about this camera and developing a basic look for the shoot. It certainly would have been nice to have more time, but since I knew that this piece was going through a color-correction stage in post, it wasn't necessary to get as polished a look as would be necessary on some other projects.

MP: Gill Richardson, who owns a company in Florida called Runnin' Shot, donated his top-of-the-line camera car for the exterior day of the shoot. Gill and I became good friends after working together on the feature film Super Troopers, which featured a lot of car stunts and driving sequences, and he wanted to help out. He arranged for Michael Lindgren of Cinema Resources Motorsports to donate his time and drive the rig and grip for us. Having someone with as much experience as Michael would make things run like clockwork. We would be shooting with available light and a total crew of eight.

MM: What did you think about the camera's performance?

Luke Geissbuler, Director of Photography (LG): I'm pretty familiar with Panasonic's other 24p camera offerings, the DVX100 mini-DV model and the VariCam HD Cinema camera. In fact, I've shot three recent features with the VariCam: Justice, Season of Youth, and Mail Order Bride. In each case I used the VariCam with external paintbox control (the AJ-EC3 camera remote control unit), which is perhaps my favorite aspect of the camera. It really lets you use the system to its fullest extent. Paintbox control essentially lets you call up color saturation and swing the dial around until you get the unique look you want. The menus are deep, and you get in and out of them more quickly with the paintbox option. I was delighted to learn that the same ECU plugs into the AJ-SDX900.

Specific to the Volkswagen shoot, I was pleased with the SDX900's performance-even though, given time constraints, I didn't engineer it myself. I look at the SDX900 as a NTSC version of VariCam, a niche I really like. I was pretty happy with the images; in contrast to the DVX100, the SDX900 is a little heavier, not a tank, but with a nice balancing weight on your shoulder. Again, the paintbox is totally instrumental in getting an actual look. If you're willing to dive into the controls and menus, you can surgically affect different parts of an image.

MM: Was there anything that the camera delivered that you didn't expect?

LG: I liked the Pre-Recording Board option, which automatically stores up to 15 seconds of audio and video in memory when the camera is in standby. This should work especially well for documentaries. And I appreciate the fact that, with the inclusion of the DVCPRO50 codec in Final Cut Pro 4, you can do 24-frame editing from the SDX900 render-free. Compression has seemed to be the new problem in editing, so it's great not having compression upon compression.

JR: I was surprised by the amount of latitude of the camera. In my initial tests I found that I could reproduce a 10-stop range of brightness without clipping. I was also surprised that this was possible while keeping a very natural-looking image.

LG: We did the shoot with all natural light, not even a bounce. To my mind, highlights are a limitation of all video cameras, but we dealt with the highlights on this shoot pretty well. The shadows, on the other hand, were amazing. We were able to keep the noise level way down. I was very impressed with the camera's color rendition. The car was an odd pastel yellow, almost cream. I worried that it would look white or lemon. But with no tweaking, we got the exact color.

MM: What general camera settings did you use and how did you arrive at them?

JR: The camera was set to the "24p Advanced" mode with the vertical detail set to "Progressive" since these are the best settings for editing in 24p and outputting to film. The gamma was set to "Filmlike 2," which maintains the greatest amount of highlight detail. I left the look of the camera relatively flat to provide the best raw material for color correction later on.