View Full Version : After 3 weddings and a concert


Bruce Reynolds
March 20th, 2008, 11:04 AM
Great camera in low light and I only use a 15 watt light. Great to have CF card or tape for backup. Now the promblems, want stay in focus when in automatic, just slowily panning the dance floor it drifts bad. I like to shoot in auto as I'm use to the FX1 with no trouble in auto and it's faster then me.
Looking at the Cf cards on short clips--lots of times during bridal prep and photo sessions I shoot short clips of 5-18 seconds. A lot of these --I stopped counting at 20--have black digital blocks for the 1st second or 2, some clips start off green then the picture comes on. My friend in Laurderdale has 2 Z7Us and has the same trouble with the cards and focusing. He counts 6-18 frames of blocks on the bad clips. He has Edius and it will play these but I have Adobe and it crashes. I can play them by just clicking on the clip in the folder and can see the blocks. The tape is fine. Now I'm hearing Sony knows of the focusing promblem on the 1st batch of cameras and also the ghosting trouble. Ghosting was very bad on the concert I did when the conductor it moving his hand real fast and the bows on the violins players are blurry. Was this camera worth twice as much as my FX1 to get better low light???? still debateable. Would like to hear someone elses thought on how theirs works, maybe mine is a bad one??--Bruce

Robert Bec
March 20th, 2008, 03:48 PM
did you notice a rolling shutter problem then the photographer was using the flash

Bruce Reynolds
March 20th, 2008, 04:08 PM
lots of flashes going off but video was fine, maybe the camera has to be pointed at the photographer, I'll try that this weedend

Chad Dyle
March 22nd, 2008, 10:45 AM
Same here on the flashes. I haven't noticed any problems at all. I can also agree with the blocked/colored first frames of each clip on the card. Its easy enough to work around when editing, but another step to do.
As for focusing, I have noticed that the focus issues tend to me more during the zoomed in. I've shot a couple of weddings with it (Z7U) and when the bride is walking down the aisle, I have to keep her perfectly in the middle. I'm sometimes shooting at an angle and this is difficult. I've also noticed that if someone is wearing a sparkly (its a wedding) dress, that it might jump the focus.
I hope Sony realizes that this was a problem with the first batch and does something about it.
On another note, the CF card saved my butt when I had a bad DV tape that after 5 minutes of recording decided that it was finished ;)