A year ago I sold my Panasonic HVX 201 after a disappointing relationship. I struggled with the expensive media and was never impressed with the picture quality, low light or atrocious LCD. I sold it to buy a Sony EX1 which as many people know I believe is a fantastic camera. Everything the HVX wasn’t.
Panasonic recently released two new P2 handheld cameras. The HVX200a/201a and the HPX 170/171. I managed to borrow the HPX to test it out to see how much better it was than my old HVX.
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Hi Philip,
Thank you for the review and nice footage. I think it’s worth mentioning that a 16Gb P2 card in 720/24PN mode records 43 minutes of footage with no loss of quality.
Hey there,
good review – but may I add:
The option to switch the focus ring to an iris ring is extremely useful for me. I have the Letus Extreme, and when I’ve focused on the ground glass I can just flip the switch and never have to worry about it going out of focus. No more duct tape!
The switch from 4 pin firewire to 6 pin is great because the 6 pin is lockable. So if you have a harddisk to capture your video it won’t disconect.
It is true that you can backup straight to a firewire harddrive, but the HVX had/has this too.
Though the new chip makes up for some of the noise of the old HVX, I’ve found that it has a problem with chroma noise – but it is still a big improvement.
Casper
Phillip,
Thank you for the review of the camera. I’m wondering about a couple of things:
1. This may sound like an odd question, but what camera was used to shoot you sitting on the beach with the camera?
2. Given that I’m watching this over the internet, highly compressed, can you be a little more specific about the image quality? We all know the HPX170 has less resolution than other camcorders, say the Sony EX1 for instance. Do you feel that despite that fact, it generates a credible HD picture? Can it compete with the EX1?
Thanks once again for the review and lovely footage.
-Russ Johnson
We use the camera on school to and it works great!
The HVX200 could also back up direct to Hard Drive.