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MillimeterReview: Panasonic AJ-HPX3000
Nov 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Barry Braverman
Rugged, high-performance 10-bit camcorder offers HD shooters a new choice.
When you work with very high-resolution cameras such as the HPX3000, the choice of optics is more important than ever. Lens models with Chromatic Aberration Compensation (CAC) profiles offer a clear and significant advantage.
Chromatic Aberration Compensation
With HD, the quality of one's camera optics impacts images more than any other factor. It's worth bearing in mind: Chromatic aberration (CA) is the principal reason that cheap lenses look cheap, and so it is imperative — with the advent of increasingly high-resolution imagers — that shooters grapple with the chromatic shortcomings of their lenses. Addressing the issue in the HPX3000, Panasonic has implemented Chromatic Aberration Compensation (CAC), which applies a generalized CA correction from a stored library of lens profiles (see digitalcontentproducer.com/cameras/revfeat/
hd_reveals_all_07012007 for more on CAC).
As of this writing, the HPX3000 supports eight CAC lenses from Canon and Fujinon; the lenses' associated LUTs were uploaded to the camera at time of manufacture. To evaluate the impact of CAC, shooters can use the pixel-to-pixel feature in their monitor, then switch CAC off by unplugging the lens from the camera body. It is imperative to zoom through the full range of a lens, because minimal correction if any is applied at the wide end of the zoom range. At full telephoto, however, the applied correction can be dramatic. It can transform an ugly cyan-fringed scene into something much more pleasing and free of artifacts.
As additional CAC lens profiles become available, shooters will be able to upload these files to the camera via the SD card slot.
Eight CAC lenses are currently available for the HPX3000:
- Fujinon HA22X7.8BERM-M58
- Fujinon HA22X7.8BERD-S58
- Fujinon HA16X6.3BERM-M58
- Fujinon HA16X6.3BERD-S58
- Fujinon HA13X4.5BERM-M58
- Canon HJ22ex7.6B IASE
- Canon HJ17ex7.6B IASE
- Canon HJ11ex4.7B IASE
