Unfortunately that is pretty standard, they soak you for that type of cable (4 pin to 6 pin I think it's called?), but I have boxes of the standard 6 pin to 6 pin variety. They come with every disk drive I buy! I can't remember, but maybe the USB cable has some non-standard connector on the camera end and that's why they include it?

I saw some earlier posts that refer to some built in ND filters in the TRV 950. Does the 950 really have built in ND filters that cannot be controlled by the user??

......Tom?.......

:-)

While we're waiting for Tom to respond from across the pond...

This is correct. Take a flashlight and shine it into the lens, look carefully. On a bright day in manual iris mode, turn the wheel to close the iris. At a certain point you will see something moving in there. You may have to try looking from different angles to see it, but the filters are there. Can't remember but I think there are 3 different ones that drop in and out. They prevent you from shooting at too small an f-stop where the lens wouldn't look so good.

It's odd that Sony never documented these "double secret ND filters."

Thanks, but please clarify for a newbie with limited knowledge of photography and video terminology.

If I'm "closing the iris", aren't I letting in less light? And if that is the case, why would the ND filters jump in? Or maybe you are saying I will see the ND filters move out of the way when I close the iris.

And when you say "too small an f-stop", that means a wide open iris, right? And without the double secret ND filters the image would get blown out or smeary?

Thanks for your patience!

Because at such small lens and sensor sizes, the image suffers from something called --I don't remember what it's called-- but it looks strange. Not only Sony, but other makers of small-sized high-res cameras use built-in ND filters extensivley. The ND filters keep the iris near the "sweet spot", the aperture at which the lens operates it's bests specs.

I am sure Tom can explain it much better.

Thanks. I guess I'd also like to know if there are any issues to be aware of when putting on external ND filters. I've been using an ND filter on the front for pretty much all my outdoor video and it seems to be working fine. I suppose as long as I'm working in manual I should be okay no matter what I put on the front (within reason)

As far as I know there are no ND-filters that would affect autofocus or automatic whitebalancing or autoexposure.

BUT:

Autofocus issues

If you put a lot of filters in front of the camera then the risk of focusing on a filter increases. Keep the filters 1) clean 2) few i.e. close to the lens. The longer the focal length in mm the more filters you can stack.

Also use a sunshade if possible: Raindrops on the lens are irritating. The camera focuses on them in autofocus mode. Use manual and push-auto in rain or use a sunshade to protect the lens surface from water drops.

If your camcorder uses contrast detection for autofocus and you use contrast reducing filters then good luck...

Whitebalancing:

Neutral density filters are neutral. They SHOULD not have any effect on color or they are faulty. Some other filters might affect colors (it might be desired or maybe not).

Autoexposure issues:

Some polarizers (and some other types of filters) might require exposure compensation but it will then be told in the filters manual.

Some good replies here chaps, and sorry I haven't jumped in - too damn busy with the wedding shoots.

The TRV950 is a strange beast. It has a wonderful lens but tiny chips covered in millions of sensors, which are good for resolution at the expense of CCD smear and low-light performance.

The tiny chips mean that very short focal lengths have to be employed. Look at it this way - the very poor wide angle of the 950 is obtained with a focal length of 3.6mm, yet a much wider coverage is provided by the VX2100 with a 6mm focal length. This all comes down to chip size, and the compactness of the 950 sure brings with it some serious disadvantages.

These very short focal lengths mean that diffraction losses become very apparent as you stop down the lens. Diffraction shows up as loss of resolution, and using any aperture smaller than f4.8 will give progressivly softer pictures. That's why Sony pretend that you're stopping the lens down (f5.6, then f8, then f11 and so on) whereas in fact it's locking the aperture at f4.8 and doing this by inserting up to 3 ND filters to soak the light. Often you'll be shooting through 1.7 filters, where the second ND will be only partially obsuring the light path and you'll be shooting through the cut edge of the filter. UG! Very out of focus though.

The 'Auto Shutter' is there because on bright days even with all three NDs (automatically) in place the lens still needs to stop down. This will give you blurry movies, so Sony decided to let the shutter speeds increase rather than let this happen. Shooting at 1/300th sec and f4.8 will give you sharper (but more juddery) images than using 1/50th and f11.

Trouble is at 1/300th sec CCD smear is all too obvious, so Rob Simon has the right idea - use external ND filters to soak the light, and keep auto shutter turned off. Keep any filter absolutely spotless though - focal lengths of 3.6mm have massive dof, and any dust on either side of the filter will be rendered as sharp dots on your footage. Use a GOOD hood.

tom.

Wow! Thanks for the great explanation! I sure learned a lot about my camcorder in that one post.

Glad to be of help Rob. I tested the PDX10 for a British magazine (where the editor is very happy for you to tell it like it is, warts and all). Sony Professional lent me the camcorder for more than a month and I got to know it pretty well. I grew to like it. The 950 of course is just an inhibited PDX10 in reality.

The 950 is amazing value for money, especially when compared to the TRV900, introduced in 1997. This was pre Memorystick remember, when you captured to floppy disc (!) The 950 came in at someting like 70% of the 900's price, yet has far more bells and whistles to blind the punter.

tom.

Firstly like to say hello to everyone really pleased to be a member of this forum.

I envisage shooting a documentary for possible TV franchising. I have 2 950's (actually 940's - 950's without the bluetooth). I didn't really think this camera was good enough picture quality but when comparing to most documentaries picture quality decided it was equally as good as most so will go ahead and shoot with these. Now the question. The onboard audio is not good enough for what i need, so what audio extras do i need to be able to produce broadcast quality sound. As far as sound goes i'm a complete newbie so simplified answers would really be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any replies

It depends on what you will be shooting. But as a general rule if you have a good shotgun kit and a good wireless lav kit (or even better: two lav kits) you can get along quite well. In your case, if there are two cameras, you have the advantage of being able to also get some usable stereo ambience from on of the cams, while using the ther one to record serious audio.

The shotgun kit will usually consist of a "fishpole", one or more windscreens (preferrably the "softie" which is a furry thing for the mic), the mic itself, usually a hypercardoid condenser, a shock mount, power supply (if needed) t provide 48V phantom power for the mic and cables.

The lav kits are a small, usually omni or cardiod electret condenser capsules which can be concealed on the body of interviewees,. They usually come with a clip and a small windscreen. The kits also comprise beltpack transmitters and usually camera-mountable receivers. The better one today are usually analog UHF and some have diversity receivers, an unproven little feature that basically means there are two antennae instead of one.

Because you are using cameras without XLR inputs, you might need an adapter like the Beachtek products.

Thanks for that Ignacio. I have a sony diversity tuner so will look for a compatible clip on lavelier. Beachtek adapter, hypercardoid mic i'm now on the lookout for, Thanks again

There is a Beyer Dynamic shotgun kit which comes with a softie, it seems pretty good, the specs are great and the price appears to be adequate. I have not tried ir personally, but I have user other Beyer Dynamic mics and there are very good. I usually rent a Sennheiser kit or a Schoeps kit, but they are much more expensive.

I have a Sony wireless lav kit which I am very happy with, and it was pretty affordable, but I don't know if you can buy the transmitter and capsule without a receiver.

Just like to thank you again Ignacio and let you know i bought a Sennheiser ME66 , Beachtek DXA-4, a fishpole (well a painters pole to be precise), rycote shockmount plus the softie. Have carried out a few tests and the sound is unbelievably better than my sony wireless kit, which is far better than the onboard mic. Thanks again

Great to be of help Harvey. Sorry for the weird writing. I was in a hurry and when I had access to the 'net again it was too late to fix the typos.

I might have an oppurtunity to pick up a TRV950 for a pretty cheap price.
How much worse than the PD170 is it?
Will it be usuable at all?

I had a TRV38 and it was basically useless in lower light, will the 950 be about the same as the TRV38 (same chip size)

Please let me know

Thanks

Jeff, this has been discussed many times here before. You could try a search, but actually I think the best solution is to just page backwards though the forum. Also realize that the PDX-10 has identical low light response to the TRV-950.

As a basic benchmark, I have a PDX-10 and a VX-2000. My own pseudo-scientific tests indicate that it's 2.5 f-stops slower than the VX-2000.

If you have a good deal on one and the 38 is what you have been working with you will be very happy(my opinion) with your purchase. Boyd has some footage posted at his site so that you can get an idea of what the camcorder looks like as the 10 has the same CCD'S and lens as the 950. If you really want to get the best of low light 1/3" CCD'S make a big diference but than so do 1/2 " and 2/3" even better. It is a good step up from a 1 CCD cam and you will (in all likelyhood) be happy with the 950.
KennJ

The only caveat about the frames on my site is that they were shot on a PDX-10. Sony intentionally crippled the widescreen mode on the TRV-950 such that it doesn't use as many pixels as the PDX-10, even though the CCD's are the same.

Hello all, this is my 2nd post here (1st was in the audio section). I'm getting ready to record a 6 hour symposium away from home, and thus will be renting some audio equiptment on location to help with the project. Although i'm still thinking over options, the rental place (www.hwc.tv) suggests an electro-voice re50 running to a beachtek adaptor on the camera (TRV950). Ok, sounds good to me (podium presentations, BTW). My questions are as follows:

1) will plugging the beachtek into the front mic socket override the built-in mic? I've read that it doesn't... only in overdubbing. I have no mic of my own to test this with.

2) I've read that the default audio is 12-bit (32Khz, 4-channel) audio. Is that bad? Is there a way to change it to a higher quality 16-bit (48Khz) rate?

Thanks all. Sorry for the newbiness. I really appreciate any responses.
Kind Regards,
matt lewis

Plugging in an external mic to the MIC in jack turns off the built in mic.
You can change the recording mode to 16bit from the menu. I think it is under the cassete icon. Same place where you set auto or manual audio gain.

Samuel,
thank you for the reply. Does changing the recording mode to 16bit compromise anything else (if not, why isn't it the default?)?
Thanks again,
matt lewis

You'll definitely want to use 16 bit audio--not sure why it isn't the default. If you are using wireless audio, make sure you have several frequencies to choose from (there are so many interfering broadcasts these days). You might even want to use a simple digital recorder as a backup (in case you get interference). I use an Olympus digital recorder for weddings--works great.

Hi,

I did a two camera shoot with a PDX10 and a TRV950. For some reason, even though the custom presets are the same and the white balance were both on auto, the color doesn't match, and neither does the look of the blacks.

The PDX10 could white balance off a white sheet and the setup was put to 0% IRE.

The TRV950 didn't seem to white balance, so I left it on auto, and I could not seem to set the IRE as there was no option for it in the menu.

In fact, I had trouble finding the IRE setting on the PDX10, how does it turn itself off and dissapear? I've set it in the past.

At anyrate, I'm going to have to do a lot of color correction, and either darken the TRV950 footage, or (more likely) descrease the contrast on the PDX10 footage. What a pain.

The PDX-10 must be set to 0 IRE which is the default for all consumer cameras - you won't be able to change that on the 950.

I don't have my camera here, but the setting is NOT in the custom presets, it's in one of the menus and I believe it's just called SETUP. Look in your manual towards the back where it describes all the menu options.

oh, in that case, then both cameras were set at 0. Still got different skin tone colors. Not a lighting issue. Perhaps because one camera had exposure lower than the other.

Leaving both cameras on auto WB was probably a bad idea since it could (and did) produce very different results. If you can't get them to manually white balance then I think it would have been safer to use either the daylight or incandescent WB preset (icon of either the sun or a light bulb).

Are you sure you didn't set the PDX-10 to 7.5 IRE?.. I think you mentioned that a friend told you to do this in another thread. Of course, different exposure and WB could also account for the problem

Now that I'm home, the PDX-10 setup item is in the MANUAL SET menu (icon shows a little camera with a letter M inside it). Scroll down to SETUP and it will display the current level as either 0 or 7.5

How does that menu disappear?... that's easy. It is only available when in CAMERA mode (power switch in the lower position). If you're in VCR mode then the MANUAL SET menu is not available.

The TRV-950 won't have the SETUP option at all.

I am trying to decide between the Sony 2037 high definition lens and the Raynox hd 2200 pro. for my TRV950. I know Boyd gives great reports on the Sony. That is the direction I have been thinking. The Raynox is intreging because of the front threads for filters. If anyone uses the Raynox lens, I would appreciate your evaluation of it. I also see Sony has one in Black for $189 at B&H, is this a new one?

Thanks
Bob J. Trimmer

yes i think the 'black' versions are very new and just reaching the stores.

Certainly there is a black and a silver version for the wide-angle equivalent.
The blakc one is really quite a lot bigger and heavier.
codes for wide-angle are :
VCL-0737X (smaller silver)
VCL-0737Y (larger black)

I think the telephoto versions will be simialr.
I'd be interested to hear of any performance differences between them but so far haven't been able to read any A/B reviews.

I wonder, are the black ones designed for the HDR-HC1 and HVR-A1 HDV cameras? Not sure what their thread size is...

Sony says that a 128 mg memory stick is the largest one that will work with it, however a reply to a thread on here stated that a higher mg card will work on some cameras, that it had to do with what was available at the time the camera was first unveiled. My question is, is this also true for the TRV950? Thanks for any help you can give me on this.

I currently own a 950 and wanted to get some additional info on the differences between these 2.

I know the PDX10 offers XLR and DVCAM which the TRV950 doesn't offer, what other differences are there?

I'm mainly interested in the 16x9 features as I can't seem to find clear information on whether the TRV950's 16x9 feature is the same as the PDX10's - could someone please clarify this for me? I just can't afford the ding I would take in selling my 950 and my L&M housing, and since the housing will also fit the PDX10, I am looking to get a second camera, but not clear on the other features.

TIA,

There are several other differences (may be forgetting something)...

* The PDX-10 doesn't have the internet connectivity of the TRV-950
* It has a menu item to show you the number of hours the camera has been used
* It doesn't have the flash unit the 950 has
* It has a high(er) resolution black and white viewfinder
* It's black (well, almost black... sort of dark charcoal grey)
* It comes with an additional wide lens hood
* Includes the ECM-NV1 mono microphone
* Has timecode and user bit menu options
* Allows selection of either 0 or 7.5 IRE setup

The 16:9 mode is higher resolution. I used to have some info on this on my website but I just recently purged all the PDX-10 stuff since the camera is getting kind of old now :-) But basically, the PDX-10 uses the full 1152 pixel width of the CCD's in 16:9 mode. The TRV-950 uses a smaller area from the center of the CCD's. See the diagrams on this site; according to the author the TRV-950 uses a 940 pixel width (note these tests were done with a PAL camera): http://www.techshop.net/PDX-10/

I've never used a TRV-950, so I just don't know how much of a difference you would see in 16:9 mode. I can tell you however that 16:9 from the PDX-10 looks very nice, under the right conditions. Wouldn't an HVR-A1 also fit in your housing? That would give you much higher resolution with HDV....

Hi Boyd - the A1U does "Technically" fit my housing according to L&M - the challenge is they are not doing retrofits (Has to do with controls on the touch screen) This comes officially from L&M on Friday.

I would like to go the A1U route as it seems to fit the bill nicely, but I would take a major beating on the housing - it retails new for $3099 and that is not in the budget for the time being to replace after getting the camera - things may change, but not for the immediate future - hence to question about the 2 cameras.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions..

Happy Holidays :-)

I'm beginning to see the limitations of the stock lens hoods for my TRV950's I use for Indie Video Journalism work.

I use a compact 37mm threaded Century Optics .55 wide angle adapter when not using my 950 in my u/w housing and although it does allow the lens hood to be attached, I can't use any filters- hence my question.

What would be a compact, elegant, and yet functional solution for keeping with my approach to shooting - as simple as possible, but as much functionality as I can get - ie; best bang for the buck.

My fist inclination is to look to Cavisions products. Should I go with the Cavision 3x3 matte box clamp on or do I need to go with rails (or 4x4)??? I can't seem to find ANY information relating to my needs on this topic and I have spent the better part of 2 hours searching the forums trying to come up with some sense of direction on this. Matte boxes seem to be one of those accessories that, for what they do, are very overpriced from my POV (I use to work in photo retail in my younger days and know what the markup is on accessories)

What I need is something that will allow me to use at most 2 filters (I own several Cokin P series filters from my still shooting days - including the polarizer) - I don't think I want to go with a bellows setup since they appear fairly fragile and the kind of shooting I do requires run and gun, quick setup, as well as controlled lighting interviews, etc.

I know my cameras are "Old School" but I have yet to find another camera that would meet my needs other than a PDX10 for the price I paid for them - and I am just beginning to make a partial living shooting so my budget is limited.

TIA,

I elected to go with The Cavision 3x3 Matte box, 8mm mini dv rail support with 37-58 and 43-58 step up rings. AM looking at whether to get the Cavision single handle or utilize a third party shoulder mount with this setup.

Finally able to take some images of my TRV950 with Cavision 3x3 Mattebox and 8mm rails setup.

My setup includes 37-58 (standard) & 43-58mm (Century Optics .55 w/a lens) step up rings. When I originally got the mattebox and rails, the center line of the camera was something 3-5 mm off with the maxed out adjustments made - Jason at Cavision suggested a second baseplate to use as a spacer and it works perfect as you can see in these images.

Anyone looking for a mattebox for their TRV950 or PDX10 - I highly recommend this setup. I am using my Cokin P series filters in this as well and can't wait to finally shoot some serious outdoor work now with my grads.

Total cost - Approx $275.00 for everything

Pics below:

Very cool setup! And wow, how did you get all that stuff for under $300? :-)

Hi Cliff,

I took a slightly different aproach.

I took a 49 to 58 Step-up Ring and used silcone glue to mount it to the front of the OEM Lens Hood. That allows all my 58 filters to be mounted.

I then made an Extended Lens hood out of old black VHS hard case plastic, and silicon gluded it to the OEM Lens Hood.

Cheap, easy, and works if all you need to use is round filters.

Pics below.

Harold

Very cool setup! And wow, how did you get all that stuff for under $300? :-)

I purchased the rails and mattebox from B&H (I tried to find them from a dvinfo sponsor first)

Cavision RS-816 8mm Light Weight Rod Support (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=Search&A=details&Q=&sku=310716&is=REG&addedTroughType=search)

Cavision MB385P 3x3 Matte Box (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=Search&A=details&Q=&sku=310700&is=REG&addedTroughType=search)

I had to purchase the extra mounting plate direct from Jason at Cavision - cost an extra $45.00 with shipping.

I was a little off on my total outlay - it is just shy of $300.00

Needless to say, the ability to use my Cokin P Series grad filters and will soon be purchasing a square polarizer from Cavision ($45.00 USD) is very sweet. I am very happy with how this looks and works while shooting.

How on earth can you use Cokin P filters with that Cavision 3x3 matte box?
Sure it can accommodate a square Cokin filter but what will hold it in place so it won`t slip out or won`t be scratched etc.
Sure it can not accommodate any circular Cokin P filters an so on.

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks in advance,
T

How on earth can you use Cokin P filters with that Cavision 3x3 matte box?
Sure it can accommodate a square Cokin filter but what will hold it in place so it won`t slip out or won`t be scratched etc.
Sure it can not accommodate any circular Cokin P filters an so on.

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks in advance,
T

Both of the mattebox slots can hold a Cokin "P" series filter. Specifically the first slot. You have to remove the filter holder frame and then you can slide in a P Series filter (except polarizer). There is a retaining screw on the side of the mattebox that tightens down to gently lock the filter in place. Regarding the Polarizer - I'm going to have to get one of the Cavision Square polarizers to use with the mattebox ($45.00 USD plus shipping).