Filming weddings & stage shows

Answer:
In weddings and stage shows, you’ve picked the two most technically challenging situations that a video camera can ever face. With extreme contrasts of dark and light – not to mention often wildly varying colour balance for the stage shows – these are very tricky situations.

First of all, let’s look at image stabilisation. I presume that filming weddings you have to take the camera off the sticks and move around (not during the ceremony itself necessarily but capturing the rest of the day). Therefore you will be handheld for much of the time and requiring good image stabilisation to compensate for inevitably less-than-rock-solid shots.

In that respect, the x920 has the Canon well and truly beaten; there is no contest. The x920’s stabilisation is superb and can be turned on an off with a simple physical button press on the side of the camera. In fact, it even outclasses the much more expensive Canon HF-G30 (although only just).

For that reason alone, you may find the x920 is your better bet for weddings, despite being a “consumer” camcorder and therefore not giving you the professional look that you might prefer.

As you have explained, stabilisation is not relevant for the stage shows due to using a tripod so let’s turn to the issue of exposure and dynamic range.

Both camcorders offer a histogram and zebra bars to assist with exposure – this is critical if you don’t want to “blow out” all the detail in the wedding dress whilst still retaining as much contrast in the image as possible.

Whilst the Canon permits you to set the zebras to either 70% or 100%, the x920’s are fixed at 100% ie as a clipping indication.

This is not the advantage it might seem for the Canon however, because its histogram is irritatingly hidden away behind several on-screen button pushes and disappears as soon as you’ve set the exposure or press record. In contrast, the x920’s stays on screen whilst recording and, even better, has the option of a spot exposure meter in the centre of the screen so you can easily check specific elements of a scene for exposure.

Whilst Tubeshooter would never normally advocate autofocus (and this is where the Canon has the advantage, having separate focus and exposure wheels thereby retaining manual control of both), the Panasonic is pretty good so by switching Autofocus ON and having the lens ring controlling exposure, you can easily get good-looking shots quickly.

Or, if you’re feeling bold, you can use the x920’s lens toggle to switch between manual exposure and focus but you’ll need to be dextrous and swift, since a wedding scenario presents you with little time for adjustments.

One other great plug for the Panasonic in the hand-held arena is its on-screen level gauge and auto adjustment of slightly offset shots so everything should look level with the horizon!

For the stage shows, we haven’t directly tested either camcorder in that scenario but suspect the Panasonic will do better as its low light capabilities are greater than the HF-G25. The aforementioned exposure tools will also help dramatically in ensuring the brightest aspects of the image do not get blown out more than is necessary (and, alas, some overexposure on parts of the stage will be almost inevitable if the rest of the stage is to be brought out from the darkness)

Therefore we would recommend the x920 over the Canon. Of course, if things really take off for you, we’d recommend stepping up to a “pro” level camcorder such as Sony’s PMW-150 or PMW-200, the latter of which has replaced their legendary EX1R which was widely renowned for its low-light and dynamic range capabilities.

If that’s a bit rich for your blood, then Panasonic’s AC-AG90 would be an excellent and (relatively) inexpensive but pro-looking camcorder which boasts all the good features of the x920 but additionally has separate control rings for focus and exposure, which is incredibly helpful in live filming situations such as the ones you describe.