HC1 viewfinder is cropped?
 

I think the HC1 viewfinder (and LCD) crop the sides of what is actually being shot. I mention this because I have a Century Optics Fisheye, for which I made a short petal hood. (I lost the one it came with.) When shooting, the hood did not appear on the LCD or viewfinder, however, after capturing the footage and viewing on PC, the lateral lobes of the hood were visible. It would appear to be about a 5% crop on the sides.

I'm sure that's the case, as it is with virtually every consumer and prosumer camcorder. The only exception that I know of is the Z1 which has the "allscan" option to show the full frame.

What is the purpose of this cropping? It seems like it would hinder good framing when you record.

Well I guess that question should be addressed to Canon, Sony, JVC and Panasonic because most (if not all) their cameras do this (which is known as "overscan"). I suppose their argument would be that all consumer TV's also exhibit a similar amount of overscan, so they're trying to be "WYSIWYG"....

FYI, the A1 has the allscan option as well.

Cool, I didn't realize that. I find it very useful on my Z1.

Just wondering why this cropping is called overscan? If it's cropping, doesn't that mean things are cut out, and hence "under"(scan)? Or is the scan referring to something else?

It goes back to the CRT days Alex. The electron beam scans across the phosphor on the face of the tube. With overscan the beam is sweeping across an area wider than the face of the tube, so some of the image doesn't show (it's scanning over the edges). In the case of underscan the electron beam doesn't scan as wide as the face of the tube, so you see the full image with a black border around the edges.

question
 

Hey Boyd, when you go into allscan mode on the Z1, does it shrink the image on the LCD and in the viewfinder??? On the A1, when I hit allscan the image shrinks a bit with a tiny black border, but you can clearly see the field of view has widened.

chris

That's exactly what happens on the Z1. You get the full image with a black border around it.

But this black border, even if you can see it on the LCD/viewfinder, isn't actually recorded right? You won't see the border in the NLE?

No, the point of the black border is to let you know that you're seeing the entire image inside of it. Going into allscan mode has no effect whatsoever on what you're recording. It's just another way to view the image on the LCD and viewfinder.