Great Camcorder
I have had this camcorder for two months now and I could not be happier. The camera is great indoors and out, including low light conditions. The high definition quality is incredible, the best I have seen. I also like the small size and light weight, a definite improvement over the fx-1.
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Very Nice Camcorder
I have owned this camera for about a month and a half now, and have probably shot 20 or so hours of both high definition and standard definition video on this camera. I have taped a wedding and reception on a 120 foot boat, and have generally used the camera both indoors under somewhat low light conditions and outside in both high contrast situations (i.e. taping the family in the snow) and low contrast situations (i.e. typical Southern California greenish/brownish type background with the family as the target).
Without discussion the specifications of the camera, these are my personal observations from a consumer (i.e. non cinematographer's) vantage.
Pros:
(1) The video in 1080i is exceptional. Watching it (both indoor and outdoor shots) on a 37" 720p LCD flatscreen television in 1080i format shows little difference from television broadcasts. The greatest differences I notice are that the television broadcasts have ideal lighting whereas my tapings are under natural light whether indoor or outdoor so they don't look as professional as they could.
(2) The camera is very consumer friendly. You can put it in full auto mode and it generally does an exceptional job taping high definition video. Moreover, gain, white balance, and shutter speed options are really painless and simple to figure out if you wish to set the camera settings manurally rather than having the camera make all of the settings for you (i.e. auto mode).
(3) It isn't very heavy at 3.3 lbs and feels pretty natural. This is true using the NP-970 battery which is supposed to be 8 hours of camera life. For prolonged tapings (i.e. 15 min or more), I use both hands with one hand holding/controlling the camera and the other under the LCD screen. This camcorder is both considerably larger and heavier than consumer grade camcorders and I notice that to get a nice, stable shot over longer periods of time, I need to use both hands.
Cons:
(1) I have taken video indoors at night under lighting conditions as low as 5 lux. 5 lux is equivalent to being about 5 feet away from a typical overhead fan/light combination with four 60 Watt bulbs on. The gain in auto mode at 5 lux cranks up to about 15 to 18 dB at a shutter speed of 1/60 second. This seems to be the threshold where I begin to see a very slight graininess which is obviously undesirable. The contrast of the colors is very good even under these lower light conditions, but the minor graininess is a bit irritating. At 8 to 12 lux (i.e. 5 feet away from 60 Watt canned lighting, 4 light bulbs in a room), the gain is in the 9 to 12 dB range and I do not see any graininess yet the colors are vibrant. I have tried manually dropping the shutter speed at 5 or so lux to 1/30 of a second and while the graininess decreases, the shutter is open a bit too long for motion targets (i.e. people walking around, baby crawling, etc.) Camera steadiness by hand is very difficult at 1/30 frames a second.
(2) In auto mode in a high contrast environment (i.e. people in the foreground, sunlight on the background objects), I have had difficulty getting a stable shot whereby the camera isn't playing with the gain/shutter/white balance to optimize the video. For example, when shooting a person with strong natural back light, if the person slightly moves out of the center of the shot by a natural rocking back and forth (like a mother rocking a baby on her hip), the camera will continually refocus the lighting to the background (dropping/increasing the gain and the shutter) and the foreground as they rock back into the center of the screen. This has the effect of making the target a perfect shot with the background extremely oversaturated vs the person a bit dark w/ the background perfectly visible. I noticed this problem in snow country as well so in high contrast situations, I recommend finding an ideal setting, and then taking it off of auto.
(3) For making standard DVD's from high definition video, since this camcorder doesn't do 24P or 30P, I notice any hand motion or foreground motion creates a very slightly jerky picture. It is not "jerky" in the sense it is unwatchable, but doesn't flow nearly as smoothly as when watching the video in high definition. I believe this is the reason that video professionals don't even bother with interlaced video such as this shoots. This camera only does standard definition and 1080i video so there is no getting around the interlaced shots no matter how you slice it. The HVX200 is the next step up which does 1080i in 24P or 30P (the "P" being progressive rather than interlaced) but it carries a $5k pricetag and is more of a professional grade camcorder than this is. However, if you plan on burning all of your video in the high definition (i.e. blu-ray) format, then this is not an issue. But note that even after you've spent the $400-800 on the blu-ray burner, the BD-R and BD-RE disks are $15+/disk for 25 GB variety and $45+/disk for 50 GB variety.
(4) The camcorder seems to take standard definition video at about the same quality level as a standard consumer based camcorder (i.e. of the $400 or so variety). My prior camcorder was a PV-120GS and I noticed no difference in the video qualities at the standard definition (SD) setting between this camcorder and my prior consumer grade camcorder when making a DVD. The video quality seems to be significantly better when shot at the 16:9 1080i setting, and then letting the video editor downsample the image to DVD quality. Sure, you are stuck with widescreen, but the alternative is a crappy consumer based standard definition video where the resolution and vibrancy of colors aren't that great. It seems to me like Sony placed all of their engineering design emphasis into the high definition recording ability and just sort of included the SD ability as an afterthought.
All in all, I am very happy with this purchase (I bought the camcorder open box for $2200) and the video this camcorder takes in high definition is stunning. However, I would spend more money for one of the camcorders which does 24P & 30P if making DVD's now were my larger emphasis or if I had to produce DVD's for customers for a living from high definition video I shot. I don't even notice the lower light issues downgrading from 1/3" CCD's to the 1/4" CMOS light sensors.
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