Sony NEX-VG10 AVCHD E-Mount Lens Camcorder

[Robert Young]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

... what we really need to find out is how the sensor performs and if it's clean and handles gain well, only hands on will tell that story...

Looking closly at the VG 10 shot "Bali" short that is posted earlier in this thread, it has some very good low light footage. Some of it was shot with faster lenses (f 1.8), but still, what I see certainly implies that the camera is probably going to be up to the job. It's hard to imagine that Sony wouldn't use the same technology for low light that has been such a winner with the 520/550 series.
We'll see...

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Jay West

Ron wrote: "Yes I agree Robert. Of no interest to me almost the exact opposite of what I want for stage stuff. I want large depth of field, smooth motion and low light performance. It appears to have none of these features!!!"

The specs given us for the stock lens have all the downsides that Ron listed.

No, not really. It will not have smooth motion, but it will have EITHER good low light performance OR large depth of field - depending on the lens chosen.

The stock lens will give dof comparable to a 1/3" camera wide open, and similar low light performance as well. Put a fast lens on and you'll get shallow depth of field and much better low-light performance. (But don't expect to get such a lens with a large zoom ratio.)

[Jay West]

This is in resonse to Robert's post about the lux ratings and there have been a couple of intervening posts by Robert and David. This doesn't go to their latest comments.

What I've found over the years is that Sony's lux ratings are useful for comparing Sony cameras, For example, my HDR-HC1 was rated down to 7 lux while my VX2000 went down to 2 lux, and knowing those things, I had a pretty good idea of how well an NX5 or an FX1000 would work for me. So, when I see the VG10 with an 11 lux rating from Sony, it raises big questions in my mind.

But it does not answer any of them, which I think is the point that Robert was making.

Re the CX550 -- the manual's specs give a base rating of 11 lux but then there is another spec for the camera's "low light" mode (activated with a button on the side) and that mode has a 3 lux rating. Many of the low light pictures I've seen from the CX550, as well as what I myself have shot with it are made using that low light mode and, to my eye, it yields very good results.

For Kristian: It is really hard trying to decide between a camera you think is suitable and one a few months down the road that might (or might not) be be suitable for much less money. This camera won't even be shipping for at least a month and a half, and we do not know anything about lens kits at this point.

But, if you can wait two or three weeks, we'll probably be getting more details about what the other lenses do and what comes stock and what does not. We'll have a much better idea of how things actually work. Somebody will get hands on with this camera. You will get a better idea whether the less-expensive VG10 will be as suitable for the kinds of things you do as the FX1000 you are looking at.

If you need to get a new camera right away, your questions about recording times make me wonder if you might not be better off looking at the AX2000 rather than the FX1000. The AX is only about $300 more than the FX. If you want long recording times with an FX, you would need an MRC unit which is more than double the price difference between the FX and AX. If you are not getting an MRC for the FX1000, you would be limited to the 1 hour time of HDV tapes. The AX2000 runs two 32 gb cards in tandem/relay which would give you almost 6 hours of recording time if long recording times are important to you. (You can use the less expensive 16 gb cards, swapping out a full card while the camera continues to record to the other one.) On the other hand, by the time the VG10 starts shipping (assuming it will have a lens kit suitable for what you do), the 64 gb cards may be down to a more affordable price, and that would give you nearly 6 hours of 24Mbps recording time,

I do get that the attraction of the VG10 is that it may be $1500 less than the AX/FX cams that seem to have the features you want. SO, the question is whether you need a new cam right now or can wait a few weeks to feel more comfortable with a decision.

[Robert Young]

Originally Posted by Jay West

...Is that because the video makers chose that style or because that's how this camera works with everything? If the latter, then this camera is absolutely out of the question for me, too. Maybe Sony made this thing to be THE camera for the indie film makers and the other folks who really like the film look and film-type shooting styles?

The shallow depth of field is due to a combination of f-stop and chip size.
Works exactly the same as a 35mm still camera- an f-1.4 plus a 35mm frame is going to give a very shallow DOF. f-8 plus 35mm frame will give an extended DOF. These characteristics are enhanced by the focal length of the lens as well- extreme Tele= shallow DOF, Wide Angle=greater DOF.
So, with the APS chip, shooting f-1.9, moderate focal length lens= shallow DOF
APS chip + high f-stop= extended DOF.
There is no question that the Bali movie was illustrating the shallow DOF capabilities of the cam, (because that's usually not possible with small handicams- it's unique to the VG )but certainly you can shoot with greater DOF as well, and quite easily so.

[Jay West]

I don't disagree about the foregoing, I just think it is too early to tell if this is a camera can easily work well for everybody. Clearly, it seems likely to be aimed at the folks who happily use DSLRs and film-movie techniques. But, how well will it work for event shooters like Ron, Kristian and me?

I like the way Dave put it: is this a video camera optimized for DSLR still shooting?

Will it record at anything other than 30p which might not work so well for shooting dancers in performance? (That's the "smooth motion" Ron was talking about a few posts back.) So, how well does it's 60i conversion work? It might be splendid, it might be middling acceptable to some and not others. At this point, we all have concerns and opinions (and suspicions) but none of us have gotten our hands on one to see what comes out.

And just so nobody mistakes my points for dogmatism, my point about the specifications is that the early ones raise questions and concerns for event shooters but don't provide answers. What we need is somebody to get hold of one for review as Adam Wilk did with the NX5. Until that happens, there isn't enough info for anybody like Kristian to make a purchase decision.

[David Heath]

Will it record at anything other than 30p which might not work so well for shooting dancers in performance? (That's the "smooth motion" Ron was talking about a few posts back.) So, how well does it's 60i conversion work?

Jay, it's misleading to think of it as a "conversion" to 60i (which is more properly now referred to as i30 - the convention was changed to always refer to frame rates) and I think you are assuming that will give a motion look equivalent to 1080i/30 - it won't. What we are talking about is psf - "progressive, segmented frames" - which is a way of carrying a true 30p signal over an i30 system. But the motion rendition will still be exactly the same as 30p.

Psf is exactly the same as how films have been shown on TV ever since TV first started. Hold the frame in a gate, scan the odd lines, scan the even lines (without moving the film!) then onto the next frame. (OK, it's more difficult with 60Hz in the US, I know...) And the televised film still had the movement of film, even though it was a standard NTSC or PAL signal.

[Jay West]

Obviously, its time for me to learn the new vocabulary. But I'm a little confused by it.

My HDV cams shoot what used to be called 1080i/60 but that is what we now call 1080i/30, right? So, what is the proper term for what used to be called 1080p/30? Is that still "30p"? I get that psf is different, but does that really make a difference in how smoothly rapid motion is reproduced? Or, like so many other things, does it depend on each manufacturer's implementation? Or is what psf does just like movie projectors which hold a frame and use shutters to flash the light through twice?

[Robert Young]

Originally Posted by Jay West

Obviously, its time for me to learn the new vocabulary. But I'm a little confused by it.

My HDV cams shoot what used to be called 1080i/60 but that is what we now call 1080i/30, right? So, what is the proper term for what used to be called 1080p/30? Is that still "30p"? I get that psf is different, but does that really make a difference in how smoothly rapid motion is reproduced? Or, like so many other things, does it depend on each manufacturer's implementation? Or is what psf does just like movie projectors which hold a frame and use shutters to flash the light through twice?

Your HDV cam shoots true 60i- it records the odd lines first, then (it's now a fraction of a second later in time) the even lines. If you put these two fields together, they do not make a progressive frame- they are offset by time. This is the origin of "interlace artifacts" and why it requires sophisticated software to satisfactorily "deinterlace" the fields into acceptable looking pseudo progressive frames.
As near as I can tell, the VG10 actually records a progressive frame and then, after the fact as it were, splits that frame into 2 fields- just as in the example of prepairing a movie for broadcast TV- called psf.
When you view true 60i, the motion is very smooth because you are playing back 60 different moments in time (fields) per second. The psf "60i" is playing back only 30 moments in time per second- it looks exactly like 30p. The fact that it is divided into 60 fields is irrelevant, and with fast motion, fast panning, etc. can have a bit of a "juddery" rendering of motion.
Those of us who love the motion of 60i tend to notice and object to this appearance. Those who love 30p/24p work around it and aren't bothered by it.
Most ordinary viewers don't notice any of this- in that regard the entire topic is a little esoteric.
Without question, if you are shooting a basketball game, 60i or 60p looks better, but for most stuff, IMO, it verges on the academic from the viewer's point of view.
As was just mentioned, the Sony CX 550 does have a 3 lux "low lux" setting. I don't use that setting and just FYI the CX 550 low light samples posted earlier were all shot with the "standard" settings, rated at 11 lux.

[Dave Blackhurst]

Even without the Low lux setting the CX550 wide open does pretty well in bad light, but if you want to see how the f stop affects things, turn on the iris control, and zoom in... you can see both the iris closing down, and the light sensitivity dropping, rather significantly IMO. This is where clean gain (and that is something the R CMOS seems to handle very well in the XR and CX cameras) could come into play, and until we see some real world tests, we won't know what this camera is capable of...

I did see some footage shot by engadget (IIRC) at a Sony show that looked promising - their mini review was interesting, as they at least got hands on a working camera.

Honestly I'm a little nervous about the 30FPS or whatever, I've got a couple Sony P&S that used 30p and I didn't like the way they handled motion all that well, although I'd venture 99.8% of people would have found the footage acceptable, and more likely "excellent". This goes back to the challenge of creating a camera that is both an excellent still and an excellent video camera... there's always some compromises from my experience, although the performance may well be more than "acceptable", as has been the case with Video DSLRs. As the first camera to "go the other way", but with a dedicated sensor apparently developed with BOTH in mind, this should be an interesting product even if it's a flop (which I doubt, I suspect they'll sell a gigantic boatload of these).

As a "closeup" and "glamour shot" camera with a CX550 or two for cutaway, I am already pretty sold on this camera, presuming Sony doesn't come up with something in an SLR format that fits the bill, the announcements on those new toys should be hitting shortly.

[Graham Hickling]

Maybe I need to relearn my vocab too - my understanding was that complaints about progressive "judder" were complaints about pulldown (i.e. repeating frames to deal with 24P on television and DVD). There is no pulldown with 30P and so I don't see why it would judder with an appropriate choice of shutter speed (although there will be greater motion blur and thus less perceived sharpness).

[Robert Young]

I agree that pulldown introduces even more problems, but, for example, with an EX1 set for 30p, and even more so if set for 24p, I can do a fast pan and see the jerky/juddery motion in the LCD monitor as I'm shooting, and also when I playback in the camera, and certainly with playback in the NLE. I think it is purely a function of the slower frame rate. It was seen even more dramatically back when a lot of web video was 15 fps- any movement looked "jerky" or discontinous.
Proper shutter speed, slower panning, & other cinema tricks of the trade help a lot, but it is probably consensus that 60i or 60p renders fast motion more smoothly than the slower frame rates.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Jay West

Obviously, its time for me to learn the new vocabulary. But I'm a little confused by it.

You're not the only one. The approved format used to be

{no of lines}/{frame or field rate}{interlaced or progressive}

- so the second number would be frame rate if progressive, field rate if interlaced. So 1080/30p and 1080/60i would both have 30 frames per second.

A few years ago, the bodies reponsible for setting standards agreed to change nomenclature so that the second number always referred to frames, never fields. To show the new nomenclature was in use, the format was altered to become:

{no of lines}{interlaced or progressive}/{frame rate}

so the above examples become 1080i/30 and 1080p/30. Unfortunately, the change seems to be taking a long time to happen, and the old style is still in wide (if decreasing) use.

Does that help?

My HDV cams shoot what used to be called 1080i/60 but that is what we now call 1080i/30, right?

Yes.

So, what is the proper term for what used to be called 1080p/30? Is that still "30p"?

Yes.

I get that psf is different, but does that really make a difference in how smoothly rapid motion is reproduced? Or, like so many other things, does it depend on each manufacturer's implementation? Or is what psf does just like movie projectors which hold a frame and use shutters to flash the light through twice?

In terms of motion rendition, psf and p give exactly the same effect. Try looking at Progressive segmented frame - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Kenny Pai]

Hi Professors,

Sony has issued a good PDF to explain Progressive.

http://www.sony.ca/hdv/files/white/H...ive_Primer.pdf

[Ron Evans]

Originally Posted by David Heath

You're not the only one. The approved format used to be

{no of lines}/{frame or field rate}{interlaced or progressive}

- so the second number would be frame rate if progressive, field rate if interlaced. So 1080/30p and 1080/60i would both have 30 frames per second.

A few years ago, the bodies reponsible for setting standards agreed to change nomenclature so that the second number always referred to frames, never fields. To show the new nomenclature was in use, the format was altered to become:

{no of lines}{interlaced or progressive}/{frame rate}

so the above examples become 1080i/30 and 1080p/30. Unfortunately, the change seems to be taking a long time to happen, and the old style is still in wide (if decreasing) use.

Does that help?

]

The problem with the approach is that it gives no indication of temporal motion. 30P, 60i, or 30P in 60i are all 30 frames a second. 30P and 30P in 60i will look much the same but 60i will be a lot smoother since it has twice the effective frame rate. Camera for 60i is actually exposing at 60 frames a second but only recording fields. Sony put the 30P in 60i since for playback on a TV it cannot be 30P. Choices come down to1920x1080P24, 1920x1080 60i, 1440x1080 60I or 1280x720P60 for Bluray.

I have several Bluray discs of concerts that I am sure were shot with a combination of 30P and 60i cameras. Very annoying to me since I hate the motion artifacts of slow frame rates.

Ron Evans

[Graham Hickling]

So what's the "proper" usage of Psf? 1080psf/30?