Railfan Technology > HC-X2 Global Shutter?

Hello
I am looking at getting the Panasonic HC-X2, mainly for recording trains. As you can imagine, rolling shutter effects are a big issue with recording trains. The screen can turn to jelly when trains pass. The HC-X2 is advertised as having an "electronic global shutter" but I have been told that it is a gimmick and that the footage displays characteristics of a rolling shutter. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

-Nathaniel Nagel

You need to post this question on DPReview or PetaPixel.   That is where the questions go to be answered.

westcascaderail Wrote:
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> The screen can turn to jelly
> when trains pass. The HC-X2 is advertised as
> having an "electronic global shutter" but I have
> been told that it is a gimmick and that the
> footage displays characteristics of a rolling
> shutter. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

There's at least one test footage on YouTube by a user named masguapoako. Use "Panasonic HC-X2 global shutter" and you should be able to find it. I'm convinced from the footage that it's not a gimmick.... but trains move faster, so you might not be convinced.

However...

I have a ~9 year old JVC camcorder, consumer grade which has an undocumented feature when shot in low light. I still use it to this day to post videos here on TO. I just looked at all my night + ambient light footages and it is global shutter (no motion distortion) at the sacrifice of sharpness and more video noise. During the day, motion distortion (diagonal when lines are supposed to be perpendicular) is clearly noticeable. Both day and night footages are of trains that move between 180-200 mph.

So it IS possible for CMOS sensors to act in global shutter mode, and that was 9 years ago. In other words, electronic global shutter is not a gimmick.

I also have a Panasonic consumer grade camcorder that's ~15 years old with 3x CCD sensors (guaranteed global shutter), and I got it cheap secondhand. I bought it specifically to beat the rolling shutter problem. So this is a topic I've researched before.

Just an educated guess, but it seems contemporary camcorder's electronics (specifically, sensor data processing) have gotten so fast that electronic global shutter with CMOS sensor is now possible, at minimum sacrifice to video quality.

Anyway, continue your research with my comments in mind. ~$3000 is a big commitment, and you don't want to mess it up.

You might consider renting to check it out for yourself. Try lensrentals.com