Wood Duck HD Video with Sony HX1
 

I fortunately had my HX1 on my full steadymount rig, when I found a pair of Wood Ducks in a heavily-wooded and shady stream, late in the afternoon today. I shot this at full zoom with 640mm. I was pleased how well the HX1 caught the drake's color in this low light. The smart autofocus held tight on the main subject, even when he was mostly obscured by intersecting vines and leaves. A photo I took of him and his mate was done with a slow 1/10th-sec. shutter. I included another photo of a Mallard I took nearby, in slightly brighter light. There are many other HX1 videos of wildlife on my Vimeo album.

Go to my Vimeo album at the link on my Signature line and this video is currently on the first page. http://www.vimeo.com/user458315/videos There seems to be an embedding glitch with DV Info and Vimeo, that won't let me post the specific link. Be sure to click the full-size logo at the right end of the progress bar and turn off the scaling feature in the upper-right corner.

If you register for a free Vimeo subscription, you can download the full video file, for better image quality. This was uploaded unedited in the camera format of AVC at 6 Mbps, except for short sections trimmed at the ends by the Sony PMB program.

Beautiful footage, love the photos, they are very clear and colorful. Same gos for the video and what an amazing AF, just one thing, it's shaky so you need to use a tripod and a good fluid head IMO.

I agree with the first comment that a tripod is absolutely necessary for video work with a long telephoto. I usually even use a tripod when taking stills photos with a telephoto lens.
Cheers,
Ofer

It's cool that you can get this quality footage from your HX1. Many people post videos like this here, which are cool for testing out cameras and looking at wildlife, but I would suggest shooting a couple of angles (it looks like you were able to take stills from different angles, so why not shoot some more video?), and editing a sequence with a few cut-aways.

This is a great test shot, but with only a little more effort next time you can produce a short sequence that will have much more impact.

Keep up the good work.