Wow... Rolling shutter
 

Now I know what people have been talking about. Here's a clip from Senderey Video who said he couldn't log in here and we could post it. Although some nice footage you can sure see the rolling shutter when other camera flashes go off. I was thinking about adding this camera or the Z5 to my arsenal along with the my XH-A1 but now having second thoughts.

Jennifer & Jonathan 11/26/08 on Vimeo

that's it? The tiny effect and you are calling it all off? If you hadn't pointed it out I wouldn't have noticed. Do you think the customer noticed? I doubt it. Or more importantly, if they did notice, would they even care? The effect only last for the length of the flash..

unless you try the camera out then you will realize it's not an issue at all

rolling shuuter
 

I reckon in editing it may be a pain seeing it all the time but I guess we will have to live with it.

Is the rolling Shutter only in HD but not standard Def?

Rolling Shutter will be a issue when you edit slow motion point where photo flash is just flash at the images you like. Normal playback it won't notice at all.

No customer will ever notice this. I have the FX7 and it only shows in slow motion, but in a way its like a "special effect" in the movie clip. Look at the advantages of these cameras and forget about the "rolling shutter" effect.

Stelios

It is a limitation. Like all things it is a case of living with the limitations. You could have a sensor that doesn't have these issues, but it would either cost a lot more, or would suffer from much lower resolution and other issues.

Think like your audience as well. A lot of things that you notice as a shooter and as an editor nobody else who isn't involved in video does.

The time to start really questioning is when the client does.

It's a CMOS issue, not an HD issue.

Points well taken...
I didn't through it out yet, but I'm waiting to see more footage and reviews. Thanks for your input, I wasn't thinking as a customer. The more I thought about it I'm not around flash photography much as yet, but I keep contemplating going back to weddings. I used to take stills back in the film days, very stressful. I'm hoping video is not as stressful.

After watching it again, you're right it was the slow motion where it showed up the most otherwise it wasn't nearly as noticeable.

Scott
Video is much, much more stressful than still photography but much, much more enjoyable!

Stelios

I'm with Scott, and I don't like it one little bit. It's bad enough at normal speed, but in slo-mo it just looks silly only lighting half or 1/3rd the frame.

Yes it's a limitation of the current CMOS state of play. They bring other advantages over CCDs, but in paparazzi situations they falter.

tom.

Rolling Shutter I face the problem sine I get my 1st HDV cam FX7 than V1....all this 2 cam not really good on cmos. Very bad. Even EX1 do have much stronger lighting half or 1/3rd the frame as Tom say.

As I knew Videographer eyes do see much more than those normal eyes. I'm right :)

Cmos cam when is not photo flashing, I can say is good HDV images. Better than Old HAD 3CCD chip. Just to need 2 type of cam. CMOS or HAD 3CCD.

I will go on record saying that I do not like the banding if have seen on some videos. I am not sure a client would notice it, but I do and I don't care for it. I could probably figure out how to hide it in post but it would be better if editors didn't have to figure out how to hide unwanted artifacts. Editors already have too much to do.

But I have noticed on many sample videos that some of the time the CMOS cameras treat flashes just like any other CCD camera. While, occasionally, you get the objectionable band across a frame. I don't deal with flashes in my taping but I am curious if anyone has done any experimentation to try to figure out why it does it sometimes and not others. I have seen a sample of lightning recorded with a CMOS camera and it came out looking great and I have seen lightning shot by someone else with the same model camera and that footage was totally un-usable. Why the difference? Have any of you that are having these problems tried to figure out why it does it sometimes and not others? Is there some setting that could minimize or eliminate the problem? Iris opened up or closed down? Shutter faster or slower? Is it worse or better on auto settings or manual settings? There has to be some reason why it doesn't do it 100% of the time.

Intensity of light and duration.

When the flash constitutes the bulk of the light hitting the sensors AND that flash is shorter than the time required to scan the sensors, then you get banding.

So we need flash photographers to go back to the old days before thyrister controlled very short duration flashes. Then we'd het the whole CMOS chip read out at the higher light intensity.

So are you saying the slower the shutter speed the less likely a CMOS will see this issue?

NewBluFX Video essentials has a flash remover...could it work to correct this?

It might do Jeff but what would it do? Remove selected frames? That would leave horrible jump cuts. Darken them appropriately? Ug. The whole point of a wedding is that's it's a couple in the spotlight of all the attention, their union being witnessed by family and friends. The plethora of flashes is what makes them look special, and I like the effect.

I don't think we can vary the camera's shutter speed Ken - all I'm saying is the longer the flash duration the more likely the entire CMOS frame will be over-exposed rather than just odd parts of it. Thing is modern flash guns give shorter and shorter flash durations in an effort to save battery power and speed up re-cycling times.

tom.

I don't know what it does, Tom. In it's demo it appears to work perfectly. I have intended for ages to download the demo..how that I have a CMOS cam I suppose it's time. (Actually I don't know if there is a demo)

I use NewBlue and I've never had much luck getting the flash remover to work as good as the demo shows. Seems like it softens the flash some but doesn't completey remove it. I really like some of the other tools though.

Tim, I'm thinking if it softens it that it would be better than nothing.

Tom, I actually meant varying the Sony's shutter speed. Perhaps in areas where you know this will be a major issue, a somewhat slower shutter speed might make things a bit better? I guess it would take some experimenting.

Jeff, I think it does help and I use it, sometimes it does remove the flash. I haven't figured out why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and you really don't know until after the render.

Thanks Tim, I might give it a try. I've not had a big issue with flashes, myself. Annoying at times, but not much more than that.

My attitude may change after seeing the effects of rolling shutter. Despite what someone in another thread says about the rolling shutter issue being rubbish, in some videos I've seen it looks pretty bad, particularly in dark environments.

Jeff, in looking at those videos from the one guy who posted on Vimeo, it seems to me the worst case was the slo mo clip. It was probably a poor choice in editing to slow that piece down precisely at the point of the manifestation of the rolling shutter.

But as I mentioned in another thread, I sat my wife down and had her watch those videos and she really didn't notice anything that would have caused her concern until I specifically pointed out the slo mo piece. So my point is that we may notice it, but I suspected most brides/customers would not. It's not particularly beautiful to see the flashes going off with a CCD sensor equipped camera either. Exposure goes to pot there too. So my thinking is that although this isn't 'rubbish', it may be less of an issue than we're making it out to be.

That's encouraging Ken.

What's important
 

There are always pros and cons. I don't like the banding during some of the flashes, but I also don't like the CA (color fringing) on the XH-A1 (which is only noticeable in some cases). I'm curious to see how the HDR-FX1000 does on CA, and also the new XH-A1s. I did some close observations on sample shots provided on a German site; I looked at a small portion of the provided full resoultion screenshots of the same scene, and found that the HDR-FX1000 vs the XH-A1s provided slightly more detail and also had a much cleaner image (especially on a red object). The XH-A1s had more video compression noise in the image. Overall the images were very close, and probably wouldn't be an issue for most people. The FX1000 image was not properly white balanced, but once corrected the colors were equal to the XH-A1s. I plan on purchasing one of these cameras in 2009.

Bob, do you have a link to that German site? That's the kind of comparison I'd love to see.

Well I think I found the site and I see what you mean about the pix from the 1000 and A1S. I do prefer the 1000 and it does look cleaner. The thing that I find confusing about the site, is that when you bring up pix from the A1 and the A1S, they look radically different.

This leads me to believe that the pix from the A1 have a profile loaded and they are not from default settings. If that's not the case, one might feel the A1S has taken a step backwards...at least from the default settings.

The other interesting thing about that site is that although they make no mention of it, one could come to the conclusion that the A1S has higher resolution numbers than the A1 based on their rez charts.

Here's the link for those that are interested, but it is in German:
www.camcorder-test.com

German test site
 

When I open the test site, it gives me the option to expand the number of camcorders compared per page and also has a link in the top section that converts it to English. I suspect that the early tests for the XH-A1 and other camcorders may have been flawed, accounting for the brighter images. Obviously gain or something else was different. Everything more recent seems to be consistent.

Bob, the difference between the A1 and A1S was so dramatically different, it sure made me scratch my head. I'd just bet the A1S was 'out-of-the-box' in its settings and the A1 had someone's picture profile active.

Then there was the issue when I compared the FX1 to the FX1000, the FX1 looked better in the low light tests! Can't be. So after doing more of these comparisons I've begun to question the accuracy of their test results. It's too bad since the ability to compare any 2 cams is great.

Has anyone used a CMOS-based camera like the FX1000 for fast-moving action like ice hockey or figure skating? I'm currently using a VX2100 and record a lot of figure skating shows and while I pan with the skater as they zoom around on the ice the backgrounds sometimes experience very rapid pans.

I'm very curious if the rolling shutter effect will be an issue for me? I'm also interested in whether the auto focus is up to par for keeping skaters in sharp focus against the bright white walls of your typical skating rink.

I'd sure hate to plop down the cash for a FX1000 only to find out it doesn't make the grade when I get it to the rink.

I have the FX1000 but haven't used it for fast moving shots. However my first thought when reading your post is if you do not need HD or 16:9, don't bother and spend the money. The auto-focus on the FX1000 is not nearly as quick as the 2100.

For what you are doing the 2100 is great. I just sold mine and while I'm coming to like my FX1000 just fine, I will miss my 2100 for a long time.

The Panasonic (is it the HD-150?) equivalent to the FX1000 has CCDs and XLRs, I think and if you could deal with the AVCHD might be a better choice. Just something to kick around.

Good points Jeff, but if John stays with Sony he'll have carry-over batteries, chargers, lamps - that sort of thing. And presumably John's moving on because of the VX's poor 16:9 performance.

I moved from the VX2k to the Z1 and find the Z1's auto-focus far better than the VX's, mainly because it has this wonderful focus assist feature (not expanded focus, mind). I bet the FX1000 doesn't have this, but the Z5 sure does.

Hey, this is my 3000th post I notice.

tom.

3000 posts! Wow! well done Tom.

By the way what is the difference from a " Trustee" and an "Inner Circle" guy?

Stelios

Congrats on your 3,000th Tom! I believe the FX1000 has expanded focus, peaking and the ability to over-ride the autofocus momentarily. Not sure if that's what you were referring to on the Z1.

I think the "Inner Circle" guys get paid more! :)

Yes, the 'override' feature is called focus assist on the Z1. I'm surprised to hear it's on the FX1000 as it's not on the FX1 but it is oh such a useful feature.

This feature (AF ASSIST) is on both the FX1000 and the FX7, but not the FX1.