v1 impressions (mine!)
 

just got my v1 and did a weekend shoot of a local horse carnival / rodeo. here's my overall, first encounter reactions.

a. as mentioned elsewhere in a thread - the sony wa isn't worth the money. but the sheer size of the lens hood raises eyebrows... and perceptions of cost / ability. (that said, it does give that little extra to the shot, at the expense of some barrel distortion. from my pov, they balance each other out).

b. bought an 86mm uv filter, but can't put it AND lens hood on. bloody stupid, thoughtless design. really have to wonder sometimes about the people paid to design this stuff.

c. shot the whole lot on auto - lazy, and not feeling too hot, what with arthritis, a bit of sunstroke, et al. though i did use the pp2 cinema profile after a quick play with my own settings. that's going to be an interesting adventure when i get round to it. i played with the canon a1, and opted for the sony cause it felt much better in my hand (i have small hands), better balanced, and 'simpler' to set up in a hurry.

d. there was some instances of steadyshot 'catching up'. not too many, but bloody annoying when it did. bump, bump!!

e. some pronounced rolling shutter on fast pans, but as it's background i'm not too panic'd.

overall i'm pretty impressed and happy with it. though i really would like to get a uv filter... hate all that glass unprotected.

came home, dumped from camera into 3.4 pc - which will have to do for the moment, but i can see the dual2core looming as a necessity if i want more than cut to cut.

dump all went smoothly in vegas 7.

what do i render timeline out as to get an mt2 file for storage?

i haven't done a print to tape, (waiting for delivery of a sony15), but am wondering would that render straight from timeline like dv?

don't know what's best to 'store' program on dvd for pc access? wmv?

did a camera to dv of same hdv footage, looks bloody spectacular....

and going to do the same from timeline and see how much diff there is. am also going to try shooting some straight 16:9 and see if that looks as goo..

have 2 l-ion 'replacement' (read cheap) batteries that worked very well in the 170, but not in the v1.

happy to answer any questions to those still debating. i might add, i'm not really interested in hd per se, but was told i'd have to shoot 16:9 for national broadcaster....

leslie

you'll receive more responses to your questions if you ask them as questions vs posing them in the midst of a production report with the camera. ;-)

As far as storage format on DVD? I'd archive the m2t's, or use MPEG2 for distribution.
Print to tape is slower, because the file has to render to MPEG regardless of what you have done to the file. Vegas, like most apps, recompresses when using the MPEG format.

I have a Cavision hood on my WA lens and really like it. (But I haven't even seen the Sony WA hood) Ohh and Cavision hood allows me to have an 86mm filter on the lens.

I also can't use my el cheapo big batts that I owned with my pd170 on my V1U. I guess they added some chip to detect non-sony batts.

If you do some real super fast pans then you'll see the rolling shutter in frame grabs, but you might not perceive it in your video. I shoot cars out in the forest, so I usually setup my shots so I don't need to pan super fast and get a bunch of trees that look like they are bending. Motion blur tends to hide most all of it, but you still need to be aware of its limitations.

thanks dse, and mark.

which cavision hood are you using?

leslie

Yup, do tell. What Cavision hood you are using?

Leslie, you say, ''bought an 86mm uv filter, but can't put it AND lens hood on. bloody stupid, thoughtless design. really have to wonder sometimes about the people paid to design this stuff.''

I'd disagree strongly with you over this one. Adding the wide-angle converter adds three more elements and takes you down to focal lengths in the region of less than 3 mm. You now want to add yet another element to the line-up?

Well don't, unless the rodeo churns a lot of dust your way. Every tiny imperfection, every tiny spec of dust will all become glaringly obvious on screen when light strikes that front element in against the light shots. You must have seen it a hundred times, horrible blotches on screen (we're not talking internal lens flare here) that draws attention to themselves - especially if there's a dark background.

At very short focal lengths, keep the number of glass surfaces to a minimum(each filter = two surfaces BTW). It's another good reason to choose a single element wide-converter - less glass is always less flare.

tom.

hi tom,

thanks for the observations, and i do agree with you wholeheartedly, less glass the better, BUT, as you noted, rodeo's and general rural doco's are pretty much dust-bowl affairs at the moment (though we've just had some pretty good rain), so it's more to protect than use as a 'filter'.

and on the 'protection' side alone, i still think the design sucks, after all, other than buying a matt box / cokin style set up, if i wanted to use a cpl on a bright day, there's every chance that i'd get stray light without a lens hood ruining the shot.

but, yes, you are definately correct, less glass the better....

leslie

A matte box is a great accessory, but most of them are pretty pricey.

I've found that a good substitute for the problematic Sony lens hoods is an inexpensive collapsible rubber lens hood. Camera stores carry these for about $10.

I've used this on my TRV-900 and A1U; I'm sure you could find one to fit the V1U.

A lens hood is really only efficient at the wide end of the zoom (the end it must be designed for of course) - for all other focal lengths it's horribly inefficient. But Hoya made a 'collapsible' rubber hood that I used to have on my TRV900. It had three positions - wide, medium and tele, so pretty good as long as you remembered to adjust it along with your zoom.

Rubber lens hoods are invariably circular and are thus even less efficient than aspect-ratio hoods. So I made a 4:3 wire frame for mine that when pushed into the circular rubber hood, made the opening into a rectangle.

The best hood I've come across is the 'shadowed' hood as on the VX2000. The VX2100 had that silly, expensive 'barn doors shutter' built into it that lost you all the shadow advantage. Same with my Z1.

tom.