Thanks again to the guys over at Cleveland Camera Rental for letting us take the Panny HPX-250 out for a ride. After taking a couple days to acclimate ourselves to the new menu features and some new settings, we put it to use at a shoot at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey for client Jet Aviation. The shoot involved an interview and b-roll of some of the staff in and around the plane terminal. We brought over our regular color settings from an existing SD card and setup was very quick.
It’s remarkably easy to focus now with the newly enhanced on-board monitor and EVF settings which are widely customizable to varying degrees of frequency adjustments. The only focus options we miss on this camera is the ability to toggle the EVF completely off or on just to be able to reference some shots against the current settings. Why no EVF toggle as an option for one of the four customizable presets? We would also like to see the “focus-in-red” option carried over from the AF100 as an option for those of us used to using that feature for sharp focus adjustments.
The biggest physical change in this model from it’s predecessors is the intergration of an iris ring instead of the bothersome iris wheel which has been a part of these Panasonic cameras dating all the way back to the time of the DVX lines. Our hope is that Panasonic integrates the iris ring into all of their cameras going forward. In the age of DSLR and interchangeable lenses, the standard should be an iris ring instead of the annoying, hard to reach wheel. Kudos to Panasonic for listening to their customers and improving their lines on a consistent basis. We are huge fans and loyal customers for that reason!
Here’s the finished product from the shoot at Teterboro Airport:
http://youtu.be/UeLexFvXd1o?hd=1