Upcoming Sony Hx9v as a top camcorder - Page 8

My wife took some truly excellent shots at the zoo today with the HX9. I'll stand by what I've said before, in many situations the stills taken by the HX9 are every bit as good as the GH2 and in some cases (exposure) a bit better.

Of course the HX9 can't begin to approach the performance of the GH2 with pancake lens in low light. Not even close.

Unreal good shots Dave, just wonderful. No matter where I go with this thing, I've never had more fun shooting. I never enjoyed using manual controls as much as on the XA10. I can't even tell you why! Maybe it's the bottom line results?

You should go to the Central Park zoo with the fam and take the G10. It's a blast. We went to the Bronx zoo.

Yeah, granted I've only shot one thing so far but in the same light, low, the 720/60p of the gh1 (and probaly gh2) with the pancake lens looks much better than the 1080p of the hx100v.

Anyways, just got home and the wife has been with the kid all day so I'm on duty. Will upload later.
I'd love to shoot now while the light is good but the wife would wonder what camera it is! She do far thinks the g10 and the cx550 are the same. Has never seen the gh1 or the nx5u. If she ever cleans the closet I'm toast.

Well, my passion would be greater if I was getting paid or this! I am not, so I need to be reasonable. I hope for your sake Canon is cutting you some deals, or at least allowing you to be the poster child for them on this forum. "insert sarcasm" I however do agree with you on the G10/XA10. I spend most of my money on my Audio and HT, with 3 boys all under 12 I have to pick my poison.

Ok. Just shot some very good looking footage with the hx100v. After last night I wasn't expecting too much. But in auto mode in the club last night it showed the little moon symbol so whatever it did in that twilight mode just didn't look very good. I just used landscape, shot the ESB out my window at 3 different zoom lengths and it looked great. I live a mile and a 1/2 away and on the full 30x zoom you can make out individual people 80 something floors up on the observation deck. Pretty wild. Rendering now.
I guess with good light it can look very good.
Will link when live.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcP2u8tGWPE

Ok here it is.. Indulge me with my synth noodling.
Anyways, look pretty good. I shot this out the window real quick sitting on the little tripod shooting grip. The wind 9 floors up is pretty good so you will notice some slight shaking. that is just the wind hitting the camera. On a proper tripod, this would look rock steady. Anyways, I thought it looked good.

I concur, video looks great. So are you keeping it?

Thanks. I really wasn't expecting much so I didn't break out a proper tripod and go downstairs. Tomorrow I will.

Yeah. I think I will keep it. I was pleasantly surprised.

Well it onlly took 4 hours but I'm happy with the results. The problem is the walls and sheets/comforter on the bed are off white and beige so they overexpose easily. My wife practices in the bedroom as the bright orange rug in the Den really messes with the camcorders WB settings nevermind the pastel yellow walls and screaming orange book shelves!
So the bedroom is pretty ideal for shooting and I settled on
F3.2
1/60 shutter speed
-8dB Gain
4,300 Kelvin

Light walls and my wife's skin is brown so it was a nightmare because when you zoom in it throws everything off. We needed a setting that she could use to practice by herself with.

The basement is easier but has very white walls and 4' flourescent lights. So it's fun to WB in there.

I think the HF G10 will do the job nicely. But if it wasn't for the manual settings I'd be screwed.

Now my P&S works pretty good for YouTube but looks like crap if you throw it onto the big screen.

Iwas hoping this Sony P&S would work but it looks like it won't. If I see it in Best Buy I'll give it a try.

Low light is the real problem for most camcorders or P&S cameras with a video mode.

I've seen those videos already I'm just concerned as to accurate reproduction of color and movement in low light is problematic at best.

I will upload the candle video later. It's off topic for this thread tho so I'll put it in another thread.

Yup, I told you it would do better in good light. My wife and I just reviewed the HX9 shots from the zoo on the 60" plasma and frankly we were disappointed. When the shots were good they were excellent, but the failure rate was quite high.

Most of the failures came when she was either fully zoomed or pretty close to fully zoomed. She tends not to hold the camera particularly steady, but not being able to brace the camera as she would if she had a VF, makes it that much more difficult. There were also periodic issues with over-exposure that we didn't see with her shots in Italy. I think some of that was due to the fact that in Italy she was generally shooting at wide angle and the lighting was generally pretty even. The zoo was more demanding from an exposure standpoint.

She also said quite often how she couldn't track this animal or that bird because of the LCD screen. I know fully what she's talking about and it's why I cringe at any camera that doesn't have a VF. It was a factor in my souring of the NEX5. When you're trying to track a bird that's buried in a tree and you just have an LCD in bright sunlight...well, good luck in finding your subject.

I actually told her she'd be better off with either the GH2 or, if she wanted a lighter camera, the 100! I showed her your video Dave and she thought it was pretty good. She was also disappointed her shots didn't come out as well as my videos. We looked at the videos first...probably a mistake.

She'll also have to understand that low light is not the forte of the 100.

Yeah. It has it's limitations. And after g10 footage? Yikes!

Anyways, just through together a rough edit of one of last nights tunes with the g10 and cx550. Will take a couple hours. I left the g10 shots completely as is. A first for me. They look great. Tweaked the 550 a bit just to match the g10. Won't be perfect but we shall see

Dave, how is the VF on the 100??

I'll post a couple of clips from the XA tomorrow

Hiya Ken Just checked. It is usable. Looks similar to the cx700. 4x3. Low res

Thanks Dave. Another low res 4:3 screen on a Sony that shoots 16:9. What's up with that Sony????? They waste so much screen real estate with letter boxing on what starts out as an already small LCD. My wife shoots stills in 16:9 so that we can watch it on the HDTV uncropped, so even shooting stills she'd get the letter boxing. I guess it's more understandable on a still cam where more people probably shoot 4:3 or 3:2, but at least if the LCD were bigger like the GH2. This really may not help her issue of locating small or fast moving subjects.

I think we better see the cam before ordering it. I know that was another turn off for me with the CX700. If she doesn't like it, she may just stick with the GH2. I'm not sure who else makes a similar light weight digicam.

It's definitely because the default for stills is 4x3 and that's what most people will likely use the camera primarily for.

Dave,

After doing some more testing this morning I found the Sony does do a good job if you have it set correctly. The re-focusing issues really doesn't become an issue, unless it is really low light, like your night club movie of the band you took. The HF G10 does a splendid job from the good videos I have seen from Ken, Steve and yourself, and I will most likely buy one at some point. But till then, I will try to master this unit as I got it for just over 3 bills because of rewards zone points at BB, plus as Ken pointed out and that I noticed right away it takes decent still shots. So Ken I am erasing my thread I just posted to you! Ken you are correct no where near the camera of the GH2 but, then again not in the same class. It is light weight and does very well in dim light and bright light situations via 1080p/60p and takes decent stills! Ironically I had it boxed up this morning ready to take back, but I pulled it out of the box and shot more videos and stills and tried different settings and was impressed with what I saw. I will post some videos later.

But Dave, go figure why they'd do that in the CX700, an HD camcorder.

Agreed. THAT makes no sense. But they also dumbed the build quality down from the 550. Worse LCD, cheaper feel

One candle test. Started with EV of 0 then stepped up to +2. Not much difference in that amount of light; it is more noticeable with a little more light. It filmed in Twilight mode in Intelligent Auto.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Hln47CPZI


Added bright light clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9X6JQ31biI

At first I was going to return it, but I decided to tweak it more. For low lighted situations it only lost focus for about 2 seconds during a 2 minute clip. Plus it was walking from one lighting situation into another. Pretty nice device considering what it can do for its price point!

Some noise and softness in the low light clip and some misfocusing, but not too bad.

The bright light clip looks a bit blue to me, but I see a WB shift towards the end of the clip when it looks a bit better. All pretty typical Sony issues that I've had many times before.

What's key for my wife getting this is the VF and still image quality. She won't use the video much since that's my 'job'.

Hi Ken, I really like the still images it produces. They look good on my 61" DLP. Going to a couple of town squares tonight and do some clips and see how it turns out. Don't like the fact that you are very limited as to what can be done manually. Really wanted a camera that took good stills AND good video. Was ready to get the Lumix GH2 but for $399 I wanted to give this a shot. Will see how the shoot goes tonight but I have no expectations that it will come close to some of the low light videos I have seen of the GH2.

May also wind up keeping the Sony for the stills and getting the XA10 or just getting the GH2 with a couple of lenses and sending the Sony back. Just have to wait and see.

The stills look great when you look at them as a whole picture but if say on your monitor you open it to 100% you will notice some oddness. Actually looks like an impressionist watercolor. Could be the default settings with sharpness, color, NR etc. Buy my gh1 stills at 100% look better and much more natural.

It looks like nothing happened when you adjusted your exposure.
Was that F1.7 or something else?
I used F1.8 on my HF G10 to get good low light and I wasn't on a tripod, just handheld.
What dB was your gain set at and what was your shutter speed?

Ken,

I would highly recommend the Canon G11/G12 or Nikons P7000, both mid-sized and still larger pocketable cameras that take excellent still shots. Both have view finders and decent ones, bottom
picture was taken by me on a shoot in New Mexico with a Nikon P7000, great place to take pictures and film I might add.

Dave,

Sony tends to crank up there contrast in still shots, hence a bit of tweaking. Outside shots this unit does very well, inside it tends to add too much contrast which gives it a tad over exposed look. But for me, it is the video
why I am buying this, and the auto focus is not that bad, especially when you start shooting with it.

jazzcat: I am with you as I want the GH2, but can't seem to find anyone selling them at decent prices, I figure I would use this Sony for now till a HF G10 and or the GH2 become more reasonable via price that is. The whole Japan Earthquake has a lot of retailers cranking up the price
on these units.

There are no adjustments for any of those settings. You are severely limited and have to rely on the camrea's Intelligent mode or a Scene mode. I call the gain setting the EV value. It didn't do much but it does when there is more light. I tried some new videos with several settings (Intellegent, ISO - which you can't set - the camera does, and Twilight. I saw no appreciable difference with any of those different modes. Cranking the EV vakue did make a difference in light level with no extra visible noise at any setting.

Yes to that. Can't find one reasonable either. Fixin' to go to a town square and do some shots at night and see what happens. Will post later or tomorrow.

Cool, can't wait to see them!

I will upload some video as well, I took some as there were some storms rolling through here again! But if your going to be doing shots, like Dave's Bat Cave shots at that night club I wouldn't get your hopes up too high. This Camera does well in dim lightly but found it to not work so well in very little light. We are talking about a $400 and or less fixed lens camera, so to compare it to my other DSLRs/Camcorders is far from fair.