HV10 vs HDR-FX7 ... HDV isn't all the same...
 

I guess it was hard to notice at first, but I started to realize now that the image off my HV10 was no-where near as sharp as my HDR-FX7...

http://lousyhero.com/videos/sj.jpg
http://lousyhero.com/videos/epicprev.jpg
http://lousyhero.com/videos/epicprev2.jpg

Are from the HDR-FX7

http://lousyhero.com/videos/ghetto.jpg
http://lousyhero.com/videos/bgp2.jpg
http://lousyhero.com/videos/sweet72.jpg

Are from the HV10

They were all resized from 1920 x 1080 snapshots from Vegas 8 (Best/Full) all were all deinterlaced from 60i to 30p...

Just interesting to see that there is a pretty big difference, at first I thought it was mainly more manual features and a bigger camera when I upgraded. I thought it looked sharper, but then thought it was placebo cause I just spent $2500 on it... heh... (That was over a year ago)

Anyways, I've seen a lot of people grabbing the cheap Sony/Canon cameras with the concept that it's HDV and it looks the same as other cameras too...

It looks like color differencs to me,my FX7 and SR12 are too close to call regarding sharpness with the FX on the middle setting so unlike the SR 12 it can be turned up sharper,my SR 12 wins on color.

My SR11 gives my FX1 a good run for the money and I prefer it most of the time. When light conditions get difficult the FX1 wins but only because the controls are just not there on the SR11. I for one wish Sony would make an AVCHD version of the new FX1000 with hard drive and memory stick.

Ron Evans

Color can be adjusted, and I doubt a sharpness setting is going to make that big of a difference, really look at what's in-focus...

Maybe the HV10 just sucked... haha...

Well as i prefer my SR 12 TO fX 7 i hate to think what the new canon hg21 would do to it [FX 7]as from all reports its picture surpasses the SR 11/12,i can see sony getting left behind.

Well that's an expression you don't often hear.

first of all, the canon always shoots flatter image than a sony. sony warms and saturates their out-of-the-box images. canon's settings are intentionally flat, so that you can push the images in post-processing. so part of the difference you are seeing is in color saturation and warmth. unprocessed canon footage is always cooler than unprocessed sony footage.

regarding sharpness, i wonder are you shooting the HV10 with manual controls? because if you're manually controlling one camera and auto-focusing the other, then of course one will look more fine-tuned than the other.

i have an FX-1 and an HV10 and have been able to match them closely, but not without post-processing the footage.

the better question to ask is not whether one camera is better than the other - they are different - but more to the point, is how can you implement and match them both to their best effect?

From what I can see on the image it's not a focus issue but contrast and saturation that makes the biggest difference between the 2 camera's.

That's true with my HV10, HV30 and my XH-A1. If I drop the brightness and contrast down a notch in the preset, it will come fairly close to the A1 in any kind of reasonable daylight.

Not to criticize your skill, but the HV10 is a real bear to focus manually. There's no easy way to get the silly switch to move slowly. Once it's right though it's very good. I do not notice any focus issues on the HV10 or HV30. It's only the nut behind my camera that's out of focus.

Now I see I used the wrong word, I meant that there were no sharpness issues between the 2 camera's from what I could judge :)
The fx7 seems a bit unnatural to me

All of that footage was post-processed (The later stuff with the FX7 was more drastically)

But the HV10 footage looks softer, like it was shot at 720p and up-rezzed to 1080p...

That's the way I see it...

Look at any of the lettering in any of the early stuff compared to later stuff, you can make out the fine/sharp text in the FX7 footage, but even big stuff is soft in the HV10 footage...

before you went to post, did you have any green still in the sony footage? It (on my monitor) seems to be gone but present in the Canon? Also I'm sure the lens is the $2,000+ sony is better than the $700 Canon regardless of the CCD/Cmos chips.

Actually most of my Sony stuff looked de-saturated...

I got a 3007WFP-HC which saturates more than most monitors out right now. So it's harder to compare, but no I don't notice any-more green. Although I doubt I did the best job touching them up :)

i still think this is a misleading comparison.

1) if this material is post-processed, and this is not an out-of-the-box comparison, then why didn't you do a better job of trying to match the footage in terms of the color - it isn't that hard.

2) still no answer on the question of how did you focus these two cameras - are these both manually focused? that is the only way that a fair comparison could be made. the HV10 looks as if it was shot on auto-focus, in which case the camera's focusing mechanism is going to flatten the tableau and soften the images, instead of creating the shallower DOF evident in the FX-7

the FX-7 looks like it was focussed manually - no camera is going to produce a sharp foreground and a blurred background on auto-focus, like we see here.

i think if you focused both cameras manually -- and did it properly for both, you would have a different outcome

You show a basic misunderstanding here Meryem. Focus - whether it be auto or manual, has no bearing whatsoever on the depth of field you get in your final footage. The only thing that affects that is chip sizes, focal length, focused distance and aperture used.

The EX1 does just what you say can't happen - produce 'a sharp foreground and a blurred background on auto-focus'. So too does every camcorder out there, even 1"/6 chipped machines.

tom.

no, that is not true.

it depends on how you frame the object. you can deliberately create shallow DOF with an HV10 on auto-focus, but you have to make conscious choices about how you are enabling the selection of the object by the camera's auto-focus.

you can't just frame it up squarely and start shooting away, and expect that you are creating the same DOF that you can create manually -- or getting a complete understanding of how that camera can be focused -- or, therefore, its sharpness.

i actually posted some examples of this, when i first purchased an HV10, and i would direct you to those, chris has already removed them from the server. in other words, you can manipulate the HV10's auto-focus to rack focus two objects separated in the foreground and the background by manipulating how you direct the camera's focusing mechanism, but this has to be a deliberate choice and a deliberate manipulation - these are subtle manipulations.

it doesn't happen automatically, and it does not happen if you place an object in the middle of the frame and start shooting away with auto-focus.

when a camera "hunts" in auto-focus, it is trying to determine where to put the focal plane, so to say that focusing has no bearing on creating the DOF is not correct. because if you do that manually, yourself, or by subtly manipulating the camera until it gets it "right," then you can create a shallow DOF effect. but if you aren't forcing the camera to "see" the object that you want, then the camera will decide the focal plane for you, and it won't necessarily calculate it according to what is in the foreground - hence the "hunting" while it tries to figure it out...

moreover, if you're auto-focusing, you're typically giving up control over the aperture, which is, as you say, one of the main particulars in creating a shallow DOF, as you point out, tom, so the camera's auto-focus is less likely to create this effect.

anyway, the question is whether the sharpness of the cameras is apples to apples. are they both focused manually. is the aperture set the same. etc.

my suspicion -- and only joe can say -- is that we are looking at apples to oranges....

i'll put this another way...

here's a bit of footage that i shot when i first purchased an HV10, just mucking around, nothing fancy.

Internet Archive: Details: HV10 in the Desert

(it somewhat suffers from softness due to old flash compression technology, but i did not compress it, archive.org did...the quicktime doesn't look soft...)

to get the 1st shot required opening up the HV10 aperture and manually focusing the camera -- even the most subtle manipulations of the auto-focus could not have generated this shallow DOF effect.

no camera could do this on auto-focus - at least not remaining locked down.

so to say that focusing has no bearing on creating shallow DOF seems confusing to me -- of course it matters where you place the focus....

C'mon Meryem - I say it with a smile but if you're in a hole, stop digging. I use autofocus a huge amount in my run 'n' gun work, and I *never* give up control of the aperture, it's always locked down. As is the shutter speed, gain and white balance.

What you're saying is if the camera auto focuses on an unintended plane then you won't get the dof you had aimed for, but if the intended object isn't sharp in the frame then dof variables are the least of your worries.

tom.

what i'm saying is that i don't get soft images such as these when i manually focus an HV10.

what i'm saying is that my FX-1 and my HV10 can be matched pretty well in the post process, and the HV10 is sharp when you focus it manually.

maybe the FX7 is a big improvement. i don't know, i've never used it.

I was thinking maybe you purposefully desaturated the Sony to look like CHILDREN OF MEN, since in my experience with similar Sony cameras, Sony always had rich vibrant greens compared to any other similar camera. The Canon's usually are a little more subdued color (as seen in your other canon pics) Sony more contrasty and brighter hotter colors. I found JVC and Canon to be similar with maybe Canon being the most subdued.

It didn't look like a dark day or particulary overcast. Was it? Did the Cmos not do as well for color when it wasn't bright daylight? Just spitting in the wind with those questions. There is definatly more to play with in post with the Canon, but the out of box snappyness of the Sony can't be denied either.

Specifically looking at the SJ is a better comparison to the Canon stuff, I think I might have boosted the saturation in that too... heh...

Which was only adjusting levels to make black's look more like blacks and not greys.

And to the other guy, both were shot with auto-focus, but with the FX7 I will frequently use auto-focus to get the right player in focus, then switch it over to manual focus to keep it at that point, then adjust the frame accordingly. But I would lock the exposure/shutter/wb etc. down, basically I was using manual focus with a "push for autofocus" button... but in reverse, it was auto-focus until I hit the manual button to lock it (much easier for me because the manual focus button was closer to my pointer finger the way I was using it with a cover to protect it from paintballs... sorta...

http://lousyhero.com/videos/epicprevhd.wmv
http://lousyhero.com/videos/epicprevhd2.wmv
http://lousyhero.com/videos/epicprevhd3.wmv

Are some examples of what the FX7 stuff looks at 1080p... I don't have any of my canon stuff in anything but 720p unfortunately...

http://lousyhero.com/blaze/dvi/fx71.jpg
http://lousyhero.com/blaze/dvi/fx72.jpg
http://lousyhero.com/blaze/dvi/fx73.jpg

http://lousyhero.com/blaze/dvi/hv101.jpg
http://lousyhero.com/blaze/dvi/hv102.jpg
http://lousyhero.com/blaze/dvi/hv103.jpg

Some more 1080p screen caps... straight from the cams...