Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Darren, I don't think Mark was trying to approach this with an 'attitude'. His posts were the result of frustration. My posts too have had an edge to them, particularly with one poster, for the same reason.

Our frustration comes from not just this forum, but others where the AX100 is constantly attacked for reasons we know are not valid. The mistakes, biases, and malicious motivations that result in these posts make us want to knock our heads against the wall. It's always the camera that's blamed and rarely the person asking "am I doing something wrong, as nobody else appears to be seeing this".

Hopefully most of the "OE" issues (operator error) have been ironed out. :)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Mark thanks! I was looking in the wrong part of Windows 8. However, your guess was partly right, it is a Macbook Pro running Win 8 under Bootcamp.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Yep, i don't think he meant to have an edge either, many times on forums people don't realize how what they write might sound and come off to others. Making them aware of it is the only way they'd ever know.

Even our resident italian fellow who had trouble understanding the mic port, obviously had a language barrier. That, and you never know just what a persons age is on a forum, so as head-banging as some posts might be, it's never a bad idea to be polite, or just to ignore altogether if the frustration is just too much.

and yea, 70 pages is a thoroughly beaten dead horse. would be good to bury it and separate into targeted threads.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Camera glitches happen far, far, far less than user error or ignorance. You can look it up (and this thread is a prime example) or talk to any tech support personnel - the first thing they always hear is that there is something wrong with their device. So why assume what is improbable?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Darren,

It has long been Sony's tradition that the thing you get when zooming in IN the Active OIS mode is extra (or digital or Clear Image or whatever) zoom effect as the result of cropping and re-scaling of the optically-zoomed image frame. It just comes with Active OIS. No need to look for any physical or menu button.

I have this same thing on many of my older Sony Handycams but they somehow didn't call it Clear Image Zoom in the old days. If you don't like digital interpolation, the only choice you have is stick to the Standard OIS.

You can read my posts a few pages back on this same thread and you'll understand this.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

one of the challenges here is that there are subtle differences between menu/display/feature implementations between Sony models (and of course some major feature/spec differences).

The RX's (10 &100/m2) have one way of implementing things, and it's apparent that the AX takes a few different directions, more in line with older Handycams, at least in some respects...

It's a little bit easy to get confused if you happen to have a couple different Sonys floating around, and it's annoying when there are these little annoying variations...

I'm sure this is a result of different "teams" developing cameras, but it wouldn't hurt if there was a consistent feature and menu set....

Things like the LANC implementation that varies between the RX's and the AX for instance are a royal PITA, as using a remote becomes an interesting/frustrating exercise...

If Sony was listening, a "unified" menu/accessory/MULTI jack/MiS and display method would be "really good"!


Just an idea for those looking for "cheap" HD displays - Seiki makes a 39" 4K TV, a tad big for the average desk, but I scored a lightly used one, and for the bang/buck ratio, it's worth a look. Figuring you can get the equivalent of 4x 1080 screens on one display, maybe the real estate issue isn't really THAT bad!

Now to put a new 4K capable system core together - any suggestions on ways to save on budget?? Thinking i7 4770K, a Z87 motherboard with built in 4K capability, and 16G RAM to start... Probably add an SSD for speed, but old HDD's may need to suffice for now....

Let's all hit Chris Hurd up for a "4K" forum section, with all the brave souls stumbling forward into the great unknown with AX100's, GH4's and whatever else is "affordable" 4K!

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

One thing I think worth noting, is the 4K implementation of CIZ. I feel in terms of image degradation, it's better than a similar implementation in HD. Since there are 4X as many pixels for the system to play with, the softening of the image is less noticeable. Yes you can still see it, but I find it less objectionable.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Thanks Wacharapong, though active OIS on its own wasn't quite the issue at hand, as i'm aware of traditional active OIS and its side affects, what i wasn't aware of is that they added the clear image zoom into the overall optical zoom range instead of putting it at the end with a marker to indicate the end of the optical range and beginning of the ciz range(as it was in other cameras such as the RX10)

CIZ in more recent sony cameras such as the RX10 is an indication of a separate, extra zoom range which was not at all connected to the active OIS. and in this case they combined it with active OIS for some reason, i suppose they figured with that extra reach should come extra stabilization since the standard ois isn't terribly amazing.

If i understand what you've concluded, you're thinking is that they are just calling the aftereffects of active ois(extra reach) CIZ. I tend to think otherwise, since at the long end you're getting 50% more range, and i've yet to hear of an active OIS that has an aftereffect of 50% cropping.

For what it is, it works and looks pretty darn nice, but yes indeed, not quite an optical equivalant

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I'd insist on an SSD, think of all the random read/writes over those large file sizes.... SSDs can be had a .50cents per gigabye. a terabyte is a few dozen hours of footage to scratch on. And it's one of the longer term investments you can make these days, they may continue to up the speed, but most are doing half a gig per second both ways, which should remain beyond usable for quite a few years

and ram is the other cheapo upgrade, double down to 32gb. especially if you're on adobe, which seems to have a limitless hunger for ram

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I'd go for a raid array of HD's with a dedicated raid card, you"ll need plenty of space for certain 4k codecs and with several HD's chained together read and write speeds won't be a bottleneck + you"ll get much more space for the same money compared to ssd.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

i'll take your raid and raise you a tape drive!

oh wait, that would be silly...

I still have a serviceable raid10, been reliable as a rock, Going the raid route just introduces a few more points of potential failure and you really need to carefully select your components, SSDs have gotten cheap enough that i'm moving scratch/projects to SSDs with regular HD backups. and for my uses works a treat. then again, to your point Noa, if i had actually kept the BMC4k, i'd have upgraded and be primarily using the raid. can't beat the price to gigabyte ratio of disks

bit off topic,

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I have had my AX1 since November now and edit mainly with Edius Pro7. Like AVCHD the load is on the processor not hard drive and although I can get Edius to play just about realtime on my system it is not always consistent. Vegas will not play unless preview resolution is down in the half draft mode. I will be looking at the 8 core processors when they come out later in the year or even save up for a dual Xeon system.

I have a simple 500G WD Black boot, a 500G WD Black for temp files and then storage drives. System is i7 3770K, 16G RAM WIN7. The system will run 4 AVCHD streams multicam from a single 7200 2T WD black and also the AX1 files are on this drive too. Data rates for AVCHD or XAVC-S are not a problem and are a fraction of the hard drives transfer rate capabilities. The transfer rate of a normal 7200rpm drive is 10 times that of a 30P XAVC-S file. If you are limited in drives then multiple accesses can slow down. I still prefer having multiple drives

Backup storage is another issue though. I shoot my AX1 at 60P 150Mbps so files are large. Normally a show with 4 AVCHD cameras is about 80G max. If I substitute the AX1 for the CX700 and XR500 I remove about 40G and add in over 150G !!!! So close to 200G for a 2 hour show with 2 AVCHD cameras and the AX1.

The reason for the AX1 is to learn how to crop and pan a 1920x1080 image so that I can gradually reduce the number of cameras I use. As I get older I do not want to stand up for 2 hours either and would be nice to get to the point where I use just one 4K camera and do all the effective multicam in ediitng. For some time I have used LTO3 tape backup and this is still fine but am thinking of upgrading to LTO5 to maintain LTO3 compatibility and lower cost and increase tape size.

Certainly all the family video is tape backed up as well as on my Synology NAS. Some finished projects are also on the NAS too for quick access.

Ron Evans

Sony FDR-AX100
 

Recent AX-100 Shots with camera in NYC

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Do be aware that SSD's and the majority of solid state media will degrade over time. Charge leakage from the memory cells will eventually cause data corruption if the data isn't refreshed periodically.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

The Camera Store has a review that may be of interest. .

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

^ Except for their really poor white balanced shots taken with the AX100. Pink snow and purple skies are not indicative of the image quality of the camera.

It's funny, for a site that does some nice in-depth reviews, they have some of the poorest shot videos you'll see. This is not just the AX100, but I've seen it with other cameras they've reviewed.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

He touched on something that drives me nuts about my AX100....the location of the "focus expansion" button.

We rarely talk about it here. The button could not possibly be in a worse place. If I'm holding the AX100 in my right hand, I literally need to reach around with left hand and press it.

How that button was placed in the design blue prints, survived Sony management meetings, made it's way through all the field testing processes and survived final Sony approval....is mind blowing. WTF?

Sony,..please give us a firmware update like you did with the NX70 and allow us to assign the "photo" button to operate the focus expansion function. You have done this before, please do it again.

I would love to start some kind of online petition.

Does anybody else feel the same way?

AX100 fans unite!! ;-)

CT

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Yes Cliff, couldn't agree more. I can only assume that the Sony engineers are blessed with 3 hands. One for holding the camera in their right hand, another for steadying it and dialing in settings on the left side and a third for that focus assist button.

Three hands will work every time.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Or a tripod. Shooting closeups in 4K is very critical of focus especially when the subject is close. Hand holding with manual focus may not be the best choice. Add to that a frame rate of 24P and the video may not be so good to watch !!!!

I thought the review was quite good. The thing that was obvious was how much sharper the AX100 clips were compared to the camera shooting as the main camera !!! On my Dell 24" I didn't see much of a problem with the WB of the AX100 clips.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Ron, I'm using the Dell 4K 24" and the WB was horrible. I checked on an Ipad and it was pretty much the same. Skies had a decided purplish hue and the snow was tinged pink.

It looked to me like both his exposure & WB were off. I don't think they do a great job with their video samples at all. The GH4 was another one that could have looked better. I like their reviews, but their samples...not so much.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I have two 24" Dells and a Viewsonic VT2300LED and looked fine on all of them for the AX100 clips and main camera was overexposed a lot of the time though. I think the camera was operated by a substitute for the shoot though. I spotted 2 very short pieces with warmer colour for the snow but still white/cream , actually much like it is here depending on time of day, but sky on my monitors is solid blue with white clouds.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

That is odd Ron. Each 4K Dell comes with its own factory calibration, so I know it can't be too far off. I've watched it on 2 different monitors and the rendition is similar. The contrast between the camera that shot the review and the AX100, in terms of color is pretty stark. Obviously I'm not talking about the stark difference in detail and sharpness which is to be expected. Snow on the camera doing the review is white and some of the AX100 scenes have a pinkish cast in spots.

The sky color is also distinctly different between the two cameras. I know with my AX100 I never get those kinds of purple skies or tinted whites on the snow.

Anyone else seeing this?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

My Dell's are not 4K Dells just normal 1920x1200. I have even watched the clips on my other computer with a 15" Phillips monitor same response. Yes there is a little colour shift for the snow but not bad enough for me to worry about on a Youtube playback and living in Canada does depend on the time of day and where the sun is as to how snow looks. Sky though is blue on all of them with definitely white clouds. Difference between the cameras is clear and supports the view of shooting 4K for 2K. Playback was at 1080 for the Dells and for the 15"monitor 720.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

FDR-AX100 Manual (56 pages).
There's also a User Guide, which I was not able to upload. (204 pages). Both available at the link:

Sony eSupport - FDR-AX100 - Support

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Just watched Camera store vid on 2013 Nexus 7 which has a very accurate screen and definitely noticed some purple skies etc. But overall it didn't bother me too much. Decent video considering they were using a sub. Pretty impressed with the ax100 footage, will keep an eye on this one.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Mike, there are many examples of AX100 footage that are far superior to what was shown in that review.

Don't be bothered by the purple skies in the review's sample footage, something was rally whacky with their WB setting.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Is the person in that review not a salesperson for a camerastore in the first place? I don't mean no disrespect but he probably is better at selling camera"s, I noticed something off as well in their sony rx10 review which I didn't experience with my camera, they have the luxury of testing about anything that comes into their store and eventough they seem to know what they are talking about I would not take their videos as a actual reference on how a camera performs, for general info ok but there are more uservideos out there that better show the capabilities of this camera.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Here is a video with plenty of sky on a partly cloudy day. It was not post-processed. If you see purple skies, do not get the camera:


I do not sell cameras for a living.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

The fine tree branches in the distance can be made to go a little purple by just a small tint difference on the monitor. Is that what you are all seeing ? Like Noa and am more interested in what they say about operation or features than the video for any of their reviews. Don't always agree of course !!! Personally I would discount Youtube videos and rely more on downloaded original files from Vimeo. So many issues get introduced in editing and encoding which may be the case with the tree branches affecting the look of the ski around them. I have just gone through the video again and see colour smearing around those branches that I am sure was not there in the original 4K files !!! This could be the cause of the purple look.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

The fellas at the camera store put together some pretty good videos, but they are indeed from a store, so it's unlikely they'll really get into the really unsellable parts of the camera. they do at least point out some things they don't like.

And it's always possible those poor looking shots they had it in full auto. i know, not an excuse, but it would make sense seeing as with the default settings, i found the thing tends to meter overexposed

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

The AX100 definitely overexposes in auto mode in daylight. I use AE shift to control it, when I do not use full manual, and it is always at least -.5 ev.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

That's true of all the Sony cameras I have !!

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

+1

Yup, the AX100 does tend to over expose just a hair. AE -..5 EV does the trick.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

What shoe adapter have I to buy if I like to use a third party (non Sony)?
I have written to Sony and they have just answered there is not any adtapter shoe.
For esxample if I need to use a light (non Sony) what have I to buy precisely?
Thanks

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

This is from Wikipedia on the new Sony MIS on the AX100:

"In September 2012, Sony announced a new ISO-based 21+3 pin Multi Interface Shoe for use with their future digital cameras and camcorders of the Alpha, NEX, Handycam, NXCAM and Cyber-shot series. *This quick-lock hotshoe is mechanically and electrically compatible with a standard 2-pin ISO-518 hotshoe,* but electrically compatible with the previous Auto-lock Accessory Shoe with extensions, so that passive adapters ADP-AMA and ADP-MAA allow to use digital-ready iISO flashes on new cameras and some new Multi Interface Shoe equipment on older cameras, while providing compatibility with standard ISO-based equipment as well."

Why do you think you need an adapter?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

On Alpha cameras, (or new Cybershot like an RX10) you can simply connect anything with a standard shoe mount. No problems.

On the AX100 and other Handycams now, Sony "sunk" the shoe into the body. They then added and left and right "notch" into the shoe blades. This blocks the direct use of a standard show connector. (like a Rode mic or any non- Sony LED light) Unless you want to cut "notches" into your mic shoe connector.

Sony products all if a "gap" in the middle of the left and right shoe blades allowing Sony products to "drop-in" and lock to the AX100 sunken shoe mount.

Yes, it's evil. Yes, you need an adapter to rise the shoe up an inch so you can plug a standard ISO device.

Yeah,...it's shady and sketchy on Sony's part. But I guess Sony accessories are a big business for them and they want to protect it.

CT

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Here you go! I just purchased one off Ebay last week as I needed it for this weekend.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/913242-REG/sony_adpmac_shoe_adapter.html

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I have this light and I will need to use it with AX100:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/312AS-Bi-C...item2a3a222878

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

OK, I will buy it. Thanks!!

PS: out of curiosity: is it the same shoe adapter?
http://www.ebay.it/itm/ADP-MAC-SONY-...item35cde37cb5
Can I buy it too?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Is it possible to add a shoulder strap on AX100 with some trick?

I read strange writings on NP-FV100 batteries.
On some sites I see 3700 mAh and on others 3900 mAh. I attach some links but they could be many discordant links:
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-NP-FV100-Rechar...s=Sony+NP-FV100
http://www.ebay.it/itm/Genuine-Sony-NP-FV1...=item1c399e8acb
www.sony.it/electronics/batterie-videocamere/np-fv100
Is a genuine Sony NP-FV100 3700 mAh or 3900 mAh?