Hvr-v1 opinions
 

Hey, I guess I'm just looking for your opinions on this camera so far, for those of you who have one or got to play with one. I can't seem to find a shop around here that has one. Been wanting to get one for a while. Ive only found a limited number of sample clips but that wouldn't be the deciding factor. Just looking for general input I suppose.

Thanks a lot.

Dan

In case you didn't see this, it's worth a look: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=90234

BTW, the V1's a great little cam. If you do lots of run 'n gun stuff, you'll love it.

It would be perfect with one stop more low light sensitivity. With that said, I am quite pleased with mine.

As someone who quite extensively tested both the Canon A1 and the Sony V1, I'd add that - in spite of Adam Wilt measurements in favour of the A1 - I don't find the Sony any worse low-light performer. I must admit I never had both at the same time, but have plenty of test shoots of exactly the same scenery to compare.

I'll add my 0.02c worth about low light use of the V1;

I'm currently shotting a documentary about a bodybuilder preparing for a competition in several months. This has meant shooting literally hours of footage inside a not-very-well lit gymnasium at 24P. I'll post some of the footage on my web site soon, but I must confess to being pleasantly surprised by the results. Sure, it's a tad grainy in a few places, but absolutely usable. The only problem I've encountered with a low light situation where the results were borderline has been when shooting in a dimly lit restaurant. In retrospect I probably should have shot with DV and uprez'd it.

Overall, the results from the cam have been excellent, and the DR60 is a lifesaver. I wouldn't hesitate to get a second device for backup.

Greg

Thanks for the responces. Ive been wanting another camera (have hc1) for a while now. The other day when I posted this I decided to buy the camera. Too bad B&H didn't ship it to me yet :( Looks like they are going on a 10 day break for easter too.

Thanks again.

Greg -
Can't the v1 gain be boosted up a little more then the a1 and still create a usable image? Will that equal out the difference in low light perf between these 2 cams?

Joe,

Both cameras show significant noise when gain is boosted above 6 or 9 db. For the Canon A1 it is the nature of CCDs and High definition video as the S/N ratio suffers as the resolution increases. For the Sony V1 it is the tiny 1/4 inch chips. It would have been nice if Sony put in 3, 1/3rd inch CMOS sensors, and then I think the low light sensitivity would have been to most everyone's liking. But looking at the two in low light, I don't see much difference from one or the other. The canon is maybe a bit noisier, but also shows a sharper image in my opinion. I suspect that's because of Canon's near full HD CCDs.

PS - In the past CMOS chips were noiser than CCDs. That is no longer true. With the new technology, CMOS sensors are less noisy than CCDs in high definition. That is why they are starting to show up not only in consumer camcorders but also professional camcorders. Also, with the new technology CMOS low light performance is similar to CCDs. That is when comparing similar size sensors. Thus, in my opinion, it is best to look for a high definition camcorder with CMOS sensors.

It's called Passover.

What John said, plus my own experience is that the fast-to-set "hypergain" setting provides unusably grainy results in a real low light setting like the one I described. At 12 db, you better had a good reason for shooting it (like an alien landing on the white house lawn) for the grain to be acceptable.

True - I find gain at 6dB almost unnoticeable, at 9dB - acceptable; anything above you need special reasons to tolerate.

Thanks ya'll for the input. Low light performance is the only thing that was giving me a headacke trying to decide what to buy. I'm leaning toward the v1 and think it will do ok in available light at church. For receptions I can always add light.

V1 is a nice little camera, good in form factor, smart placement of some buttons.
It is also a marketing example of our days: don't make a product too good, leave room for improvement - in the next model and keep on selling...:)

V1 would be really great with:

- larger lens
- more wide angle
- bigger sensors
- more light sensitivity
- no debatable picture quality (PAL version)
- more dedicated (or assignable) controls

For $2,000 more....

I agree 100% Lee..but like with every camera..there are tradeoffs.

we keep searching for that perfect cam......

I'm interested in knowing how the autofocus is on the camera compared to the PD170. I'm looking to upgrade my gear. I do a lot of run-n-gun type work and use autofocus for a lot of my shots (quick pans, zoom out while tracking an object, etc...). Will the V1 be ok for this?

As a side note, I currently have an HC1 camera and the autofocus doesn't seem to be that great with fast movements.

Keep zoom below Z60 (a 12X zoom range) which is about a 450mm tele -- AF works perfectly.

So, it will hold focus pretty well when I'm zoomed in at a 12x zoom and then pan & zoom out while tracking an object as it comes closer?

Since the title of this thread is "V1 Opinons" Can the V1 be used out of the box for interviews without the use of a wide angle lens? I'm acustomed to using the sony wide angle lens on my PD170 but can sometimes make due without it if I'm in a rush. Or, is it suggested to widen the field of view?

Also, I plan on mixing about 1/2 of my shots with video from 2 HC1 cameras. Would it be best to shoot in 60i for all of the cameras, or shoot in 30p with the V1 and shoot 60i with the HC1 and deinterlace in post? I'm getting ahead of myself, but I'd like to start thinking about my workflow.

Thanks!

John, your question is difficult to answer, depending on the movement of the subject and whatever is in the background.
As a general rule, yes...pulling back and tracking the subject should stay in autofocus. If there is highlighted motion in the background, it can fool the autofocus, there is no guarantee with autofocus, ever.
As far as out of the box interviews, absolutely. Wide is nice, but not necessary. I do wish the V1 had greater width, but it's not a dealbreaker for shooting interviews by any stretch.
I'll post some pix when I get home. We shot a bunch of interviews in very tight area a couple weeks ago with just stock lens, no wide adaptor.
I'd recommend shooting 60i all the way through, depending on the NLE you're using. Some tools deinterlace better than others.

Another big plus with the V1 for those of us doing production, are the presets. They work very nicely and you can preset zoom, focus, color, etc, for certain situations you find repeating often.

That is a HUGE plus for anyone using Steadicams, cranes, or just tracking pans! If you can program it, you don't have to worry about anything except composition/framing. We love these type features. Plus, if you have 2 V1's, you can save the current setting on one cam to the flash chip and copy it to both cams. That is very nice.

Now, if that lens was just a tad bit wider, there were a few more presets and the HDMI uncompressed output went to the DR-60 HDD as Cineform files...we'd die happy...

Question for Douglas Spotted Eagle
 

Douglas, this is a off thread, so forgive me. Stick it somewhere else if it's too far off...

We're setting up to pump the V1U's HDMI uncompressed output through a Intensity card to HDD, using the Cineform codec. Since the reasoning is to preserve the output for future "bluray/HD type productions" as well as downrez for SD DVD's today, I can't for the life of me see why we'd want to save as anything other than 1440x1080i. It's not as nice for up-downrezing, but in your opinion would it be worth the price dif for the upgrade to Prospect to uprez to 1920x1080i instead of Aspect's 1440x1080i?

Somehow, I just can't seem to get my brain wrapped around a reason why 1920 vs 1440 would be better. Am I missing something? Is it better for up/down rezing?

The main advantage of Prospect is 10bit accuracy, it's so important for any post-production needs (CC etc). I think it's the main reason for you to upgrade. Besides, it's far more easy to manipulate with a square pixels..

BUt I believe maybe the new upgrade to Aspect is going to be 10 bit...? So, if that is true, are there any other benefits with our workflow?

They are still noisier. It's just masked by noise reduction algorithms.

I have had mine for 5 weeks. I am an amateur who has big dreams so I bought my first real camera (to me at least) . I took some shots at home on the beach in San Diego and it looks great. I shot into the sun as it was setting with a pier and people in the foreground. No washout..it looked great.
However I plan to make a snowboard dvd of Backcountry snowboarding and I have filmed 3 days on snow and I dont have anything I like. This has to do with white balance , AS , and zebra but Im working on it. IF my snow shot would have looked like my beach shots I would be in love, but as I said it is me and not know much about filming, but I will get there.
I wrestled between the Cannon A-1 and this one. After a lot of reading I chose this camera because most of my uses will be fast motion and I concluded the cmos would be better than ccd.

"This has to do with white balance , AS , and zebra"

White balance is so easy to control on the V1 it's silly. You can just put it on daylight mode then dial the temperature up or down to your liking.

What is AS? Auto-shutter? Turn that off. I have and never will use auto-shutter. Auto-iris is fine as the depth of field doesn't change radically on these cameras. Gain during a daylight shoot should be on manual and probably set to 0db unless you are trying to introduce noise as an effect.

Zebra bars are your friend. Try setting them to 100ire during your snow shots and let a fair amount of the snow go to zebra bars. Check to make sure there is still a bit of detail in your shadows. Exposure should probably be set on manual whenever shooting in snow or your subject will become underexposed as the camera tries to compensate for the snow. The best place to start would be to point the camera out at your scene and make sure there is still a bit of blue in the sky but let the snow and clouds get some zebras. There is actually still a bit of detail just above the zebras, so you aren't totally killing the detail on the snow if it is slightly overexposed. At that point, you should still be able to see details and color on your subject. Once you have set exposure properly, you can just leave it unless your daylight changes or you move into an area with more shadows.

It is possible to use auto-exposure during a scene like this if you adjust the AE SHIFT in the menu. You will probably want it to shift upwards a few notches so it will expose your subject properly and let the snow overexpose somewhat. The V1 is probably great in snow as the overexposed snow won't bleed into your subject so much.

Not true. Mikko you are getting caught up in old CMOS technology. Actually it is the CCDs that are masked by noise reduction algorithms. Of course, I'm pertaining to high definition where it has been reported that there is a 3 dB increase in CCD noise per octave in video frequency.[1] In other words, as the resolution increases the S/N ratio suffers for CCD imagers. CMOS-based imagers, on the other hand, use pixel-based amplifiers in their imaging system-on-chip architecture. The pixel-based amplification can appropriately set the signal bandwidth so that there is no longer need for external 30 to 33 MHz filtering for HD cameras.

This factor reduces the relevant noise bandwidth from tens of MHz for CCDs to tens of kHz for CMOS imaging SoCs. This significant advantage holds even for HDTV and UHDTV cameras, so that the dominant noise can instead be set by the reset noise of the specific pixel design. Conversely, the read noise of a large format CCD is often dominated by the output amplifier’s thermal noise. This is especially true after CCD video bandwidth is best doubled to perform correlated double sampling without compromising CCD MTF. Instead, however, the analog video bandwidth is usually constrained to minimize the noise at the expense of resolution.

Designers of CMOS-based sensors reduce noise while eliminating the classic noise vs. resolution trade because the pixel-based amplifier’s bandwidth better matches the imager sampling frequency. The CMOS output buffer’s noise is usually negligible.

In practice, therefore, CMOS can circumvent the “3 dB per octave” increase in noise that is experienced with CCD sensors and the associated degradation in camera S/N. Several CMOS manufacturers have now shown this basic trait.



1. K. Mitani, M. Sugawara and F. Okano, “Experimental Ultrahigh-Definition Color Camera System with Three 8M pixel CCDs,” SMPTE Journal, April 2002.

ok, here's a question.................

I have a PD170 that i'm gonna upgrade and i had planned to choose a z1 but the V1 is starting to interest me (dunno why yet, it just is!).

But, my main concern is the low light condition. I do alot of Weddings but do not use a light at the reception.
Before you ask.............NO - this has never been a problem. I'm a very candid videographer and offer a more fly-on-the-wall type approach to filming which most of my clients love and that's kind of why i don't use a light. Yes, at times it does create a fair bit of noise but none of my clients have ever been fussed by this.

So would a V1 be in any way suitable for use at a reception with no light? It's really only the dancing scenes that i'm worried about as most reception centres seem to dim the lights quite by quite a bit.

Thank You for the input Marcus. As I say Im just learning. In fact with the zebra I was doing the exact oppisite. Setting it to 100 and trying to remove all the bars by using AS which is AE shift (sorry for the confusion) I set it to -3 to keep from wshing out the snow(wanted to leave some detail) it makes the scene darker than I like so I will put that back at zero., the white balance I set to daylight and a plus 2 to keep it from looking blue. Got home and watched it on an HD tv and it just looked like another dv camcorder ( big dissapointment) .
I didnt feel it was right to ask questions here but I really do thank you. This will take some time for me as I have only had consumer camcorders up till now. Also my shoot islike this: climb 6-8 hours with big pack. Shoot 5 minutes on the run as my friends (subjects ) continue to climb at their pace , cacth up , shoot again , drive home 7 hours put it on the TV and check settings. Very slow process. Im thinking I should spend a day shooting at a ski resort just so I dont have to climb so fast and I can shoot several hours instead of several minutes.

Please disregard this post. I thought the original post was new and this topic has already been well addressed. Sorry about the inconvenience.

One thing to consider with the V1 is that it handles video up to about 110 IRE. Let the snow go slightly over the 100% mark and you can easily use the correction tools in your NLE to compress the dynamic range back into the safe range. This will give you brighter midtones and better overall luminance balance.

Just a thought...

Chris

Quote "So would a V1 be in any way suitable for use at a reception with no light? It's really only the dancing scenes that i'm worried about as most reception centres seem to dim the lights quite by quite a bit."

Ryan, I used a VX 2000 for years and now have a FX7.

I do not personally find the picture siutable for low light reception work without a light. On the Vx 2000 we only used sony's 10 (or 20) watt light and have now found we have had to go to the new bigger Sony light to get a reasonable picture.

I too regard myself as a "fly on the wall" videographer, but no-one seems to care about my light.

I have a subbie who uses a Z1 and his picture in receptions I think is VERY similar to mine, nothing is like the old VX/PD series I'm afraid.

I guess you should rent one to try it out!

Cheers Vaughan

yeah i ALMOST got my hands on one for the weekend but some other [edit] rented it before me..................bugger! Was so looking forward to doing a full-on review of it.

Vaughn, are you using the new Sony HVL-LBP LED light?
If so how do you like the throw on it?
Too shallow or good?

Hi Michael,

If you go back to March 21st on this forum (page 2) you will find some photos I put up showing the Sony HVL-LBP LED light's throw.

Having three different options, diffuser, normal and focuser lenses, is just terrific, and has helped counter the four lux minimum of my FX 7 quite a bit.

However, this is a bad morning to be asking me, as I've just finished looking at the footage of a reception in a very dark hall with dark wooden beams and panels everywhere and no bounce, with very little lighting.

It's not nice!!!!!!

Cheers Vaughan

Quote "So would a V1 be in any way suitable for use at a reception with no light? It's really only the dancing scenes that i'm worried about as most reception centres seem to dim the lights quite by quite a bit."


Ryan,

In my opinion the V1 would not be good without a camera light in a dim setting.

Simply put the V1 does not perform well in low light. Unfortunately, jamming all those pixels on the tiny 1/4 inch CMOS sensors hurts its light sensitivity. The V1 shines in normal light and in its progressive 24p 1080 mode. The camera drastically starts to lose resolution as gain is added, especially in the progressive mode (1080 24P). My guess is Sony uses some sort of NR to minimize the grainy look in low light situations. Anyway, in my opinion, the best low-light HDV camcorder is the Canon XH A1. It is reported to have a bit over a stop advantage when compared to the V1. The Canon also looks cleaner in 1080i (subjective), but looks softer in 24F (again subjective) compared to The V1's 24P. If Sony only used their larger 1/3rd inch CMOS sensors and native resolution like the XH A1, then, I believe, they would have had something. I do prefer the look of the CMOS chips over CCDs.

I don't think the V1 could go without additional light. I think a little creativity could allow the V1 to get a good image in fairly low illumination. A combination of a mild on-camera light and some communication with the event coordinator or facility manager could easily have the V1 producing nice images. Let's not forget that there are still people using the XL1 series of cameras and those are even worse in low-light than the V1. The V1 also has a benefit that I think people overlook. It retains good color at high gain. In addition, the progressive shooting at 30p with 1/30 shutter looks fairly good since there is still a full 30fps as opposed to the PD/VX cameras that switched to 15fps when going to 1/30 shutter.

Here are some settings to consider when shooting with the V1 in low light:

30p with 1/30 shutter

Black compensation: compress

Color saturation: +3 as the intense colors make things seem brighter

Cinegamma: OFF It kills a lot of light.

Gain: 12db with an absolute maximum of 15db. 18db is a big jump in noise.

Sharpening: at times when less noise is more important than detail, reduce sharpening to de-accentuate noise.

Iris: fully open. That means shooting wide as a zoom will decrease aperture. Get your butt closer to your subject!

I also think there may be something that can be done in post. Since the underlying image of the V1 beyond the noise is so good, a noise-reduction algorithm may make a nice difference. The noise on the V1 is so..."predictable?" in it's pattern that there might be a way for software to compensate. If this ends up being true, reducing sharpness may not be a good idea since noise pixels would need good isolation.

Have you guys noticed how clean and square the noise pixels are? They are so defined and obvious that it just seems like they could be replaced with preceding information. They also seem to appear at any given pixel only once per several frames. It's like a noise charge builds up in a pixel and it just lets go every once in a while. Beyond the noise pixels, there is still a nice colorful image. My VX2000 almost completely dumped color as gain increased. Even worse, it turned everything a urine-yellow color. It may have had more sensitivity than the V1, but gain had a more unpleasant impact on the image.

Terrific post, Marcus!
Hope to see you soon; we're shooting end of may/first of june in your neck of the woods.

I don't mean no offence, but you're almost quoting Adam Wilt's article. I have thorougly tested both cameras you're mentioning, and can assure you first-hand that the V1 is not noticeably worse a low-light performer than the Canon. Yes it gives a bit darker (more natural) picture, but where I was getting spots of grain with the A1, the V1's picture is still clean - up to 9dB of gain. Also, in spite of Adam Wilt's measurements, the perceived resolution of the V1 does not drop - at least not below 12dB.

Of course it needs lighting in extreme situations, but so does Canon. If the V1 progressive picture is "worse" than the Canon's, it's somewhere quite else: lots of fine detail in full light and with high sharpness.

Also, I can't agree with Marcus' advise to increase colour in low light - quite the opposite, as intense colours increase chroma noise.

All are VERY good suggestions. The test for sensitivity, even when standardized, is useless with today's DSP based camcorders. The simple claims of 1 lux less sensitive or evem 1 stop, mean nearly nothing. Even Adam's resolution tests do not tell you what you really want to know:

1) What happens in near full black?

2) What happens to color in the shadow areas?

3) What happens in the brighest levels of a dim situation?

4) What type of detail is filtered out? Fine detail? Edge detail? Color detail?

5) What does CMOS noise look like? What does gain noise look like?

6) Will the EYE notice the noise or ignore it? I often go back and see noise that I never saw when actually watching the brighter content.

7) Is the monitor calibrated for 0IRE?