New York City-based cinematographer Ed David says he has hung up is HDSLRs in favor of a new camcorder for his work for Lifetime Networks. Among others his assignments have encompassed shooting a series of promos for Lifetime in which women were interviewed about the network’s movie offerings. David has made the new Panasonic AG-AF100 large imager HD cinema camcorder his go-to camera on commercial shoots. David says “The moiré and other image degradation inherent in DSLRs are simply not an issue with the AF100. The camcorder is excellent in low light and produces a really nice clean image with the prized Panasonic colorimetry with plenty of room to do good grading in post.” “It’s a tremendous time-saver to be able to record sound straight into the camera ” David says. “I like the AF100’s classic form factor: it looks like a Bolex to me. It’s lightweight with low power consumption and it’s easy to pick up and shoot with it especially if you’ve worked with an HVX200 P2 HD handheld. The LCD monitor shows huge improvements in resolution and daylight display over earlier Panasonic camcorders.” “With an HDSLR you never know what will happen in post ” he says. “With the AF100 I know I can tweak luminance shadows and highlights if desired. And the AF100 affords an image sharpness that you can’t get with an EX1 in combination with a lens adapter. Having to use a lens adaptor with the EX1 requires an insane amount of light and softens an image.” David says that has alternatively shot 1080P at 24Mbps or recorded uncompressed 4:2:2 output to a nanoFlash solid-state drive. The various AF100 projects have been edited in both Avid and Final Cut Pro; working with AVCHD is seamless he says. Ed David www.kittyguerrilla.com
