I guess I waited for a pile of other folk to test this, before I went for it. But even now, even after Philip Bloom did his tests, I still have little understanding of what the numbers mean.
So what have I gained? I no longer have a recording time limit imposed by EU regulations, but rather one imposed by the FAT filing system max file size of 2gb. Bumping up the bitrate of the video recording has had a massive impact both on the dynamic range of the image, as well as the file size, so I am now limited to a few minutes in the hefty MJPG format, however I can also capture the full range of greys on a Kodak grey card with little effort. Here is an example:
And here is another wee thing showing what the increased range can do. Annoyingly I spent many hours trying to export this without loosing my shadows, and failed with all codecs. So the raw footage is still far superior even than Final Cut’s Intermediate Codec can handle (what does one do with footage from a RED?)
Music is by Lipsync for a Lullaby: www.myspace.com/lipsyncforalullaby
So, in essence, yes, it is a rather amazing thing to be able to turn footage that was already miles superior to that of the Sony HVR A1e into footage that seems to out-do my copy of Final Cut Express 4.
More shall follow….
