Sony HDR-TD10 3D-Capable Camcorder - Page 44

Wow. Best Buy online store is advertised for $1499. The cheapest I can find online is about $900.

I went to one BestBuy accidentaly, found they have them for $899, few days later came back, wanted to take a closer look, but TD10 it was gone. I asked sales, they checked their system (not BB.com) but their internal DOS OS or something, it showed that svereral BB stores 50 mile radius had them available for $599. Those units brand new, not the returned ones. One unit is at BB Mishawaka, MI; other in Calamazoo MI or something.

Hi again guys, been a while, hope things going well for you all. I still have my TD10 and ready to video again, looking to get a bluray. If I'm going to use PMB and burn AVCHD 2.0, imagine it's still recommended to get a Sony Bluray player. Can I presume the newer models S790 and S590 will work fine?

Thank you and best regards,
Dan

Probably, but I do have a word of caution about the ability to play back 3D Blu-ray file sturctures from DVD media. I've owned the Sony 480, 570 and 580 3D players, and they all played back such discs. I use them a lot, since I do frequent tests of 3D Blu-ray iso files created in Vegas (since DVD discs are cheaper than blank Blu-ray discs.) The Sony 590 does not play the discs at all. I replaced my 580 with a 590, but had to return it because that capability had been removed. I bought a Samsung instead, since they do play back such media. The 590 probably will play AVCHD 2.0, but someone will have to verify that.

Thanks Joe, will stand by for other comments and you confirm caution and appropriate research before getting the newer player. Looks like it best to stick with a Sony BRay player, as previously discussed.

Best regards,

Looks like the $599 ones are no longer listed on those store's websites as clearance items. Also looks like that clearance price was limited to the Midwest region. On the West Coast best I could locate was one for $899 and several other stores had higher clearance prices. The dot.com website no longer offers the TD10 for shipping so you have to search to find a BB that still has one in inventory - most don't. Anyone know if you find one at a store that you cannot drive to whether the stores will ship clearance items directly to a customer or otherwise send one to your local store?

Don has posted, appropriately, a video he made using the TD10 in the Youtube Home Video thread. Those of you interested in the TD10 should view it to see how the camera performs run n' gun:

http://youtu.be/9ZiBZSUrPQE?hd=1

Here are my comments:

I downloaded the 1080p version of the video and watched it on my LG 3D monitor in both 3D and 2D. In general it was great to see all the color, and I liked the way the camera moved and scenes were set up to exploit depth or popout. I actually liked the ceiling shots among the best, which must have been difficult to shoot given the backlighting, but they were well-exposed and despite being distant, had depth.

But there are in evidence many of the problems that frustrate me with the TD10, and 3D issues as well:

1. Many of the shots are overexposed, with lack of color saturation (e.g., 4:21, 3:48). Some of this is due to limited dynamic range. The TD10 in auto mode overexposes in bright light and that seems to be in evidence here sometimes (far from always). I am constantly fighting this when I use the TD10, using the exposure ring. The close-up flower shots were all well-exposed with excellent color (even lighting).

2. In many shots, the limited dynamic range is in evidence (e.g. 7:08). There was evidently horrendous harsh uneven lighting conditions during the day, and the result is many hotspots or vast parts of the scene overexposed.

3. Relatedly, the shots at night had much better color - the TD10 is really good in dim light, and if the lighting is not so harsh, as in the daylight scenes, the color is nicely saturated. The scene pair where you go from the daylight shot to the nightime equivalent is interesting in itself, but also shows the difference in overall light balance.

4. The inability to fix exposure sometimes hurts - in one shot, with red and yellow flowers (9:21), the camera moves a fraction of an inch and the whole scene gets darker (because more of the bright yellow flowers were in the scene, causing the iris to close). In many slow pan shots, the exposure changes as the light changes, resulting in a lot of the shot being either overexposed or underexposed dynamically. Of course if the exposure is fixed, there would still be a problem as the light changes (the wb changes also, because the light source changes). I just avoid scenes with changing light. They don't look good in televised sports events either, where thay have the best cameras, when the shot moves from shadow to bright light. But the problem is worse if the camera has limited dynamic range.

5. The 3D was nice, but, and this is a big but: the many close-up flower shots of course had pop-out but almost all had severe window violations - the objects in front of the frame were almost always cut off at the bottom of the window. The only one that worked well - no wv - was the oval with shoe-pair centered and in front of the frame, since there is no stem support in view that is cut off. But in one shot, the camera moves towards the shoe/oval and slightly cuts off the bottom of the oval that is in front of the window (2:54), so another wv. Looking at flowers in front of the window with their stems cut off by the window frame results in headaches - it violates the physics the eye is used to. Many shots like this. The penultimate close-up of the framed picture (not the last one, which is very nice) also has severe wv.

I did not get a headache, and I enjoyed the video - the color overall and the third dimension were impressive. A fun tour.

Do you have a sense as to whether any of these limitations have been overcome in the TD20? Has anyone here found a compelling reason to get the TD20 over the TD10?

I would bet the limited dynamic range is related to the small sensor (1/4"), which has not changed. But this is speculation. There are no more manual controls in 3D than in the TD10. But supposedly, the TD20 is sharper, although lack of sharpness is not a big deal with the TD10 in my view. Window violations are not the fault of the camera, of course.

"lack of sharpness is not a big deal"
Sorry, i don't agree with you. Even my years old hdv canons can record sharper pictures! The TD10 sharpness is ok in 2D, but somewhat lower in 3D from my experiences.

You don't have to be sorry! I agree with you, the camera is less sharp in 3D than in 2D (I think this is true also for the Z10000, but it is a lot sharper than the TD10 or TD20) and less sharp than many 2D camcorders, certainly than the TM900. I am just saying that in 3D, the sharpness issue is not that conspicuous.

OK, agree
I think all of this is because the possibility of change the parallax, don't you think?

That's an interesting thought - you mean that the frame is shifting over the set of pixels when parallax is changed. But I think the sensor has many more pixels than are needed for 1920x1080, so there should be no reduction in resolution - plenty of room to shift around. One reason may be the bitrate per view is lower on average in 3D than 2D - 28Mbps for one view in 2D and the same bitrate for two 1080i views in 3D (although there is use made of one view to compress the other in MVC, which results in more efficiency).

I don't know for sure, but i think because of lower bitrate we have more often macroblocks especially when fast motion is present. But this resolution loss is also visible with static scene, where the bitrate is more than enough.
This is also with photos: say you have two pictures, one is 2 megapixel, the other is 1 megapixel, and you scale down to 640x480. From the 2 megapixel version you can get sharper downscaled picture.

Yes, bit-starved action can result in macro blocks. But the bitrate requirement also depends on the complexity of the scene - some static scenes require more bits than others. If there is a lot of detail - e.g., blades of grass, leaves on trees - more bits are needed. So, a lower bitrate can lower "sharpness" or detail even for static scenes. Higher megapixel sensors can in principle resolve more detail in still shots; same point.

Mark- Thanks so much for your detailed review of the Bellagio Spring Gardens in 3D.

Couple of comments now to satisfy your curiosity on some of the points you made-

The TD10 was put in IA the entire shoot which lasted about 30 minutes for the daytime and about 15 minutes for the evening shots. I did not have a lot of time because I was on the way to the fountains which was my main goal that day. So, your assessment of run and gun style was dead on! The evening shot was done as I returned from shooting the evening fountain performances. In both cases I took time to do an auto calibrate of the 3D setup the TD10 offers just outside the Conservatory in the lobby near the fountain before beginning to shoot. I also shoot everything with x.v. color enabled and most of the time use a UV filter, either for UV or to just protect the lens from water splashing. The lens filter had to be cleaned off several times for the fountain shoot. In one shot with the bridge, I had lens flares as I was shooting in the direction of the sun.
I made no color balance, brightness, contrast, or gamma adjustments to any of the shots in post, all were as the camera recorded them.



Brightness and washout of the shots: First of all there were no shots that were done in manual exposure, everything was in I.A. mode. Lighting did vary but the sun light coming through the roof was pretty constant location. What you observed in some of the shots was a shadow cast over the stage I was shooting by the windmill vanes as it rotated. I rather liked the effect so I used the shot. Even the evening shots had varying lights in motion in the ceiling that caused some movement of the light intensity.
Normally in bright sun I use manual exposure, especially for lock down shots and always like to back off about a half stop to a whole stop for high noon light. So we do agree that the TD10 tends to wash out the color in bright sun. It must be a Sony thing.
Portions of the image get washed out while others are properly exposed, as in your dynamic range reference. Actually I have several 2/3" 3 chip broadcast cams here and they all suffer this problem. This has some rather technical explanations dealing with CCD and MOS chip technology that I don't care to get into here but the bottom line is simple- this is an area that film still has superiority over video. Maybe you recall I cut my teeth on 16mm a few decades ago so I know just a little about this first hand.

Window Violations- Yes, lots of them throughout but what I tried to do is shoot it in a way that worked for my large 110" projector screen and even though the WV is still present, in my HT, the images often fill the room all the way up to where I can reach out and put my hand behind the image, such as the Red Iceland Poppy. A bed of flowers fills from 2 ft in front of me to well behind the wall an effect I wanted to achieve. Personally, I don't worry much about WV as long as the shots are not jarring or causing headaches. Thanks for your comment on that. I think WV's are more bothersome to some people as they are watching on a smaller screen that does not fill the visual periphery.

Sharpness of the video- Remember that this is not a true 1080 x 1920 on YT because it is rendered SBS HALF. The detail and image quality are sharper on my iso rendering for Blu Ray.

I'll be reviewing the specific time references you pointed out later but wanted to just clear up any guessing as to how I shot this and what the environment lighting conditions were.

Thanks, Don.

Panasonic also overexposes in bright light - the 3D1 and the Z10000. For the former in bright light I shoot at -1 ev (indoors even -2/3 ev). For the latter I gave up on autoexposure outdoors!

The only camera I have used that is spot on outdoors in autoexposure is the Sony 5N (which also has the best dynamic range of any consumer camera for video I have seen). The Bloggie 3D actually does not overexpose as much as the TD10, whatever it's other limitations.

We need to shoot 16mm cams in tandem for the best 3D! But then someone will say 40mm is better.

I just came back from France, worked 2 weeks with TD10, and i can say for sure, that unfortunately almost 80% of the shots needed to down the exposure 1 or 2 value with the knob. Then hold the knob to select 3D depth setting, adjust a little bit, and finally hit the 2D display button to see the actual recording in bright sunlight So it was not easy...

I also have two HX7V cameras in video mode (for far objects), and with it i can set AE shift! For example -0.7 worked well in many situation. No overexposed aread but still auto exposure. Don't understand why a real videocamcorder not has this function..

The perplexity is worse - for the TD10 in 2D mode, you do have AE shift, not to mention shutter priority, manual wb, etc. These are shut down in 3D mode.

Nice video, Don. The panning and zooming was slow enough for my eyes to stay tracked in 3D. You might want to slow down the titles, however. It was hard to read "Recorded in Apr 2012". That part of the image got a bit busy and just about the time my eyes settled down on viewing the text, it was fading away. It might help to put a solid background behind the text to minimize the depth difference with the letters.

The shots of the Bee looked quite flat. Were you zoomed near max? The TD10, as I recall can zoom 10x in 3D. It might be better to limit zoom to less than 5. I expect distant objects to look flat, but with high zoom, (apparently) close objects tend to look flat as well.

As for the comparisons to 2D and 3D sharpness, can't the TD10 record 2D at 60p? If so, it might turn off the low pass filtering meant to minimize interlace flicker. I know that my Z10000 looks much sharper in 60p mode (alas, only available in 2D).

It would be great if we could manually turn off 60i filtering. It was only useful for CRT displays and almost nobody watches those anymore. LCD and plasmas have their own way of dealing with interlaced video and, I suspect, don't need a softened image.

My opinion of Bellagio Garden video:

Even though I watched the rendered YT video sbs half, the colors are awesome. I also like the I.S. knowing that Don hand-held the TD10 the whole time.

I do agree with overexposure. The TD10 has a difficult time adjusting when lighting was changed in full I.A. mode.

I also watched the majority of it again in sbs 2D mode and noticed that the right lens has a higher exposure compared to the left. I'm not sure if this is done on purpose for the 3D effect.

Thanks for sharing Don. I enjoyed it.

I do not see a difference in exposure between the two sides in general; sometimes this can happen with a light source that is on one side or another though.

dwhite601-

Yes, the titles were added as an afterthought and both my wife and I don't care for them. They will be replaced on my BD version but I haven't decided what they will be yet. I have editor's block on it right now as I'm in the middle of a Family Disney video with several long segments mixed with a bunch of clips, probably will be another 90 minute video. Also have started Valley of Fire which will be mostly SBS TD10's in 24p mixed with a few TD-10 clips in 3D 60i. The IO of the SBS shots there will be a range from 6" to 26" depending on the size of the scene. The Bees you commented on are about 40 ft away so they are technically outside the 3D range of the TD10. I rarely go beyond 5:1 zoom without a tripod as I'm not steady enough at my age.

In case you're interested I used an AVCHD "render as" to m2ts in SBS Half 1080 60i x 1920. The Bit rate was at 16000. Its a cleaner render for YT but that upload was 1.376 GB Took awhile to upload but I think this is much cleaner quality than my prior practice of using wmv for YT.

Mark I have not seen that either but I can tell you that when I was experimenting with the circular polarizer, the filtering effect can never be the same for both cams as the filter is not concentric on either lens. This was an issue I had to tweak each time in post. Today, I go with ND and only use polarizer when absolutly called for due to glare and reflections. Also, my sync Lanc device cannot synchronize the manual exposure master to slave. I have to do that on each cam by eye too when shooting SBS. I think Wolfgang bought a better sync system that costs double what mine did so his may handle that. I'm waiting for his review.

Your video looked quite steady. I've been using a monopod, but recorded last weekend's Renfair on a tripod for the first time. I find that I'm becoming more sensitive to camera shake. Perhaps that's due to camera motion being more obvious in 3D. Or maybe it's because I'm viewing on a larger TV these days.

Recording on a tripod had one interesting advantage, my hands were occasionally free to take 3D stills. Fortunately, nobody complained about the tripod. I try to keep a low profile so people don't get annoyed with me.

In the past 2D world I rarely, if ever used a monopod since my cameras were normally 20-25 pounds. But since moving to the TD10 for almost all my work these days the monopod goes with me most of the time since I can hang it off my belt. It also is normally allowed in many places where using a tripod requires a permit when shooting video, NYC-Manhattan, Washington DC and some public events even here in Jacksonville. In Las Vegas I was stopped at the Stratosphere hotel when I tried to set up a tripod. As long as you are aware of the restrictions... Fortunately, in Disney, they don't mind and I've even set up my SBS bench for some presentations.

I think that is a nice video. Don, have you done this shooting with your sbs-rig and your two TD10s in 1080 24p, or have you done it with one TD10?

Even when we shoot with the TD10 in 3D mode we can adjust the overexposure a little bit - I think the backlight can be adjusted here.

The other point that I would like to point out is that the divergence is significant in some part of the shooting - what increases the danger of ghosting especially if that is paired with high contrast. I do not know yet how far that takes place here really, since I have not seen the video on my HDTV yet.

But with both the Z10K and the TD10 we are able to mininimise that risk if we shoot with parallel axis. Can be done if we adjust the convergence with the Z10K to C99, and with the TD10 to +oo. The disadvantage is that we have to adjust that then in the postproduction for sure, but the horizontal adjustment tends to be small when we shoot with paralell axis.

I'm a complete amateur at photography and am enjoying reading comments of some of the very experienced people in this thread!


Overexposure is certainly a problem. Attached is a Left frame [I used VirtualDub to move to the frame I wanted in the mt2s file; and Gimp to scale to 50% size] showing a startled wallaby or kangaroo. I took this at a moment's notice with the TD10 in 3D mode with automatic settings, and at around x8 zoom. The camera had had time to settle down but the patches of white fur of the marsupial are obviously overexposed.

I wouldn't normally want to tamper with a newly acquired camera but is there likely to be a hidden service menu that a user could access to reduce the default exposure level?

Hello All,

I've been shooting with my TD10 for 6 months - no problems really, although it does take more time and effort to realise good 3D - exposure setting is tricky as the 3D viewfinder is so dark - really need an external monitor...very togh in sunlight. I just shot some material and have found that the "Right" eye is not focussed correctly - either manual or auto. If I set the exact focus on the left stream the right is out, and if the focus is correct on the right, the left is soft. Factory reset and Auto 3D lens adjust, although finalising correctly, makes no odds - looks like a visit to Sony -

I must say I find the detail from this camera pretty good - as I'm more into softer filmic looking, less "popping" 3D animation style - more natural, but 3D all the same - I've been experimenting with slo - motion 3D and Magic Bullet Looks with some pretty good results so far.

I never have any exposure shift errors, with the right settings you only need worry if the gain kicks in during low light - watch out for the auto white tracking producing vague changes in colour balance though, a pity you can't go full manual white in 3D mode.

There's a Twixtor 3D slomo test on my blog, poor quality from youtube I'm afraid, but there's a link to a SBS mp4 within the blog - feel free to download, Twixtor does pretty well.

Paul :-)

Wolfgang- The Bellagio videos (both) were done with a single TD10 in IA mode all the way! Gardens was all handheld and the Fountains made use of a monopod. When it comes to 3D parallax, I find that over engineering this during the shoot leeds to lost opportunity with the shot, especially with documentary and event shooting. In the Gardens video, the the shot picks were done to eliminate anything I saw that went out of focus, extreme loss of detail due to overexposure in a key part of the shot, or a person getting in the way too close. When I shoot, I like to feel "I have the shot" and worry about the technical stuff later. I rely on the camera's auto capability in most of my run and gun shooting. The most frequent use of manual is, when I have the time, to put exposure in manual. Normally this is done with my SBS shooting with the twin cameras. By its physical nature, this SBS system does not permit run and gun shooting, yet often I have far more shooting locations to do than time allotted. Therefore I make compromises in precise engineering the shot here as well.

Also the clips in the Gardens and Fountains videos were not adjusted in post for color correction, and contrast/brightness. What you see there are clips right from the camera, that is what the TD10 does in full auto mode I.A.

Today, in viewing 3D on either my projector or my Vizio 32" screens, I rarely see ghosting. However, when I do see it it frequently is from a low budget movies or when I decided to put the TD10m in manual 3D mode and monkey around with the 3D parallax control.
I find it better to make sure the auto calibrate is working just before a shoot and then rely on it to make the shots work. This gives me the freedom to just shoot away and focus my attention to looking for unique shot opportunities. In SBS shooting with wide IA, the story is a bit different in that here, I pick my IA based on the stage sizer and near objects in the shot, then I tweak the horizontal offset in post after keyframing a setting with auto correct. I set the horizontal offset so that the clip does not punch my vision around and wear me out while viewing. It must be comfortable to watch along side the adjacent shots. Wide IA is far more work to get right in post than a single TD10 in auto mode. Now that you are getting into this, you will discover the work in edit increasing ten fold!