Sony 3D Bloggie just arrived

Just received my 3D Sony Bloggie. First off, I want to say that I bought this almost blind as I didn't actually spend much time handling one at the trade shows. I decided to get it because the TD10 I have on preorder is continuing to be backordered and delayed. Plus I did want a small camera to do 3D I could carry like a pocket cam. It came down to Bloggie or the Fuji W3 and the Fuji had many bad reports on video quality.

The 3D Bloggie came in a very small box velvet lined and at first I thought I was sent a wrist watch or piece of jewelry. All that came with it is a bunch of papers on different warranties and a small tri fold for basic instructions; a wrist strap; and USB extension cable. The bloggie had enough charge on the battery to try it oput for a few minutes.

Initial impressions:

The 3D screen is nowhere near the quality on the TD10 but closer to that of the JVC TD1. If you have a JVC TD1 then you will be familiar with the look in 3D and just that the Bloggie screen is a bit smaller is size.

Shooting 3D is quick and easy and the cameras are set up for good 3D on the glasses free screen at distances from 3ft to about 15 ft. Beyond that the Bloggie screen looked pretty flat. Closer than 3 ft. the divergent ghosts began to appear. Conclusion- 3D is best shot at 3' to 15' for impressive depth. I will try it outdoors for bigger scenery 3D later.

Playback was quick and easy to navigate through the few clips I shot.

The Bloggie came charged enough for about 15 minutes of shooting and playback. I now have it plugged into a small USB wall charger.

The Bloggie comes with it's PC application self contained in the camera so you can take it to any PC with a USB port and just plug the Bloggie in and be able to transfer your video for internet social networks upload or save to process later on.

Switching between 2D, 3D and still pictures is a one button simple to do operation. It has a LED light to aid in shooting low light levels.

More to come...

Tony- By Jello effect do you mean the video jiggles? If so I have observed that and I am playing with the clips in Vegas image stabilize and it has little to no affect on the video.

I shot about 20 different clips with a tripod and about a dozen handheld as careful as I could and the jiggle is just real bad. I shot a couple clips in 2D and it was not near as jiggling as the 3D. IMO, this issue makes the 3D Bloggie video when hand held unusable. There is a demo piece that comes embedded on the bloggie and I believe they used a tripod, jib, or dolly for each of the shots. My tripod stuff is quite usable, however. So here's my initial reaction to this first observed limitation. I have one of those real cheap 6" tripods I will have to carry. I need to go in the shop and fabricate a right angle bracket or come to think of it, I have a couple of knuckle mounts I can adapt. The Bloggie 3D has a 1/4-20 socket only on the vertical and shooting in 3D requires the camera be in horizontal or you get an error message.

When I first looked at the clips I shot, I was real disappointed in the sharpness of the image and got a bit concerned this would not mesh well with other clips mixed with the TD10 later on. Then I happened to notice I forgot to take the little plastic lens shipping protectors off. I had been shooting through those thinks taped to the lenses! Talk about ROFLMAO. Anyway with the tape removed the video was not only much brighter, but alot sharper too.

More to come...


Update- Finished the 90° elbow swivel modification to the little tripod. Adds a little bulk but still able to put in my pocket. Plus I made it so it is a quick connect and release for fast setup.

Just reviewed the first set of clips on the big screen and I am surprised how good the clips looked that had the lens covered over with the protection tape.
I am still not happy about the hand held quality on the 3D Bloggie but the stuff on the tripod looks good as I expected for natural light. The 3D effect is quite good with no ghosting or 3D cross talk.

What does surprise me is that I thought the whole idea of the Bloggie was to be a hand held camera for hip, MTV style shooters. Sorry but the technical limitations will just not take the camera moves in 3D. Tripod only, I'm afraid. Want to shoot your kid's birthday party? Better plan on setting up the Bloggie in a good spot on the tripod, turning it on and forget about it. Hand holding is a good way to waste memory and battery.

So far the image quality in 3D I'm seeing is about what I get with my cellphone camera.

I think this follows the old saying you get what you pay for. 2 $125 digital cameras.

Yes, but I'm still needing to learn the limitations of this Bloggie. I'm just disappointed in it's hand held capability.

When I get into shooting my projects, I plan to set the Bloggie up on sticks from a different angle and just roll as I shoot the key shots with the TD10. The Bloggie does have excellent 3D separation on some shots I did with foreground 5ft and distant objects between 40, 50, and 200 ft away. This with no real ghosting on the foreground. That is encouraging. It will still have a purpose, just will avoid any hand holding.

OK here's my attempt at using You Tube 3D I had to renew and link my accounts as I haven't used YouTube in a couple years.

Finally got it working.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHdeB0ra5WM

The video has a variety of clips from micro tripod, to handheld, sunlight to shade, simple to busy subject around my backyard. I have not viewed this video on my Sony Projector, only on YouTube in anaglyph color mode. I also just learned about the 3D tags and I must say that info was hard to find.

So, this is my first attempt with the Bloggie shot this morning at 10:30AM clips were quickly butted together in Vegas and rendered. Then I spent an hour trying to figure out how to do this in You Tube.

Yes, I saw that and wondered why it came out that way. The option to check flip the left and right is in the 3D pull down menu in YouTube. So, you don't need to flip your glasses upside down. But I wonder why the output from the Bloggie rendered in Vegas to link the clips then uploaded needed to be flipped like that.

Frank- Help me understand what you mean by Vertical Disparity.


I plagiarized the swap tag from your Fox with cubs video to fix mine. yt3d:swap=true
It's working properly now.

Tony- I disagree. The sample video looks and feels exactly like a Bloggie video as it has the same level of grain in the picture and same focal length lens. It was a tripod and jib move for the indoor shot and the lighting was very flat and difuse indoors and outdoors was just a bit less sun and less color than I got in my around the pool scenes.

The real problem I have with the Bloggie is the shakiness and lack of image stabilization. I had hoped it had that feature but you need a tripod to get good 3D from the Bloggie. Otherwise, as stated earlier it jiggles.

Lighting is Key for good video. The sample shows the indoor shot with few shadows and very flat lights. I have some really good light kits here so someday, I will set up a three point light configuration and show you what can be done with good indoor lights to include mood shadows. I'm sure you've seen this on TV but maybe not in 3D. What will be lacking, I believe in the Bloggie 3D will be the geometric accuracy of the image due to the tiny lenses vs the large broadcast glass of the bigger cameras.

Thanks. And how did you determine that?

Everything here looks to be aligned when using the tripod. When hand holding the jiggles ( jello as one person called it) sets in and all bets are off for that.

OK. I did figure out how to measure it using a screen grab of SBS, both hand held and tripod. I could select a particular speck in the image and measure its position on the left and again on the right. I see that both hand held and tripod has the left image 12 pixels lower than the right.
Then I took a screen capture of one of Joe's scenes and did the same procedure in Photoshop but discovered his JVC was 3 pixels lower on the left than the right. I repeated for different scenes and the measurement was consistent on both the Bloggie and his JVC. Then I looked at your clip I had on my timeline in Vegas of the parallax test and your JVC was zero pixel difference. I only checked one frame grab.

Next I took my frame grab and cut and pasted the left side of the jpg 12 pixels lower so that it had complete vertical alignment, built a 2 minute clip of corrected and uncorrected segments. Played it back in 3D on a 24" monitor and looked at the detail of the scene. While there was a little blip when the corrected switched to un corrected, I could not see any improvement in the sharpness or color between the two. I'm sure that the farther apart the two images are misaligned, the worse it will get and zero difference is perfect.

I think I could write a script to do a correction for all my Bloggie video but would the effort be worth the trouble?


Edit note- Forgot to say that I was viewing in anaglyph mode but I will redo this on my Sony PJ as the difference there may be significant. Must say that I had hoped for a bigger improvement with the zeroing in on the vertical alignment. You must have very sensitive eyes while mine must be very tolerant. I appreciate you bringing this to my attention however, but now I have to decide if it is worth the trouble to correct it. Hopefully the camcorders costing 6 times as much will be better aligned.

That's the right one but I ordered one last week and what arrived was not a mini. Now I have to decide whether to return it or just keep it. Cheap enough!

Tony- You need to go to your account on You Tube and add the 3D tags so You Tube will display in 3D.

I got the right cables now. At that price I got two, one is 12 ft I think. It will reach my couch better. Haven't used them yet as they just arrived.


I am rendering a shortened version of the video I edited in Vegas all shot with the Bloggie except for the picture of the Bloggie in the end which was shot with my cell phone.

The longer version is on blue Ray and looks very nice as the lighting was very bright.

I should be able to upload it later today.