Boyd Ostroff
January 30th, 2005, 02:16 PM
My March issue of DV Magazine arrived yesterday and has a review of the FX1. The review is mostly favorable - he rates it 4.5 out of 5 (and rates the XL2 the same in a companion review). The magazine cover proclaims "SHOOTOUT: Sony's first 10080 HDV camera vs. Canon's pro DV camera. HDR-FX1 and XL2 compared." Well unless I missed something in my quick scan-thru of the magazine, there isn't any "shootout," just separate reviews of the two cameras.
Wilt calls the FX1 the "VX-1000 of the high-definition world." His nitpicks include control placement (esp the push to autofocus button), the relatively low resolution screen and viewfinder, and limitations of the expanded focus and peaking systems. He was impressed by the vertical resolution but disappointed with the horizontal resolution which he said caused horizontal aliasing on fine vertical details (he has a similar complaint with the PD-170 evidently). He notes that the camera appears to be from 1.5 to 2 f-stops slower than a PD-150.
He was very impressed with its DV mode and said it was as sharp as the DVX-100 or XL2, but again suffering from horizontal aliasing. One interesting thing that he pointed out is that slow shutter speeds in DV mode benefit from the image scaling. 1/30 shutter speed is acheived by tossing out one of the fields, but this is done before scaling to 720x480 so the result is that almost no resolution is lost. The thing I personally found interesting here is that it effectively gives you one more f-stop in DV mode, by shooting at 1/30 (or 1/25 PAL).
Nice write-up, but no big surprises either...
Wilt calls the FX1 the "VX-1000 of the high-definition world." His nitpicks include control placement (esp the push to autofocus button), the relatively low resolution screen and viewfinder, and limitations of the expanded focus and peaking systems. He was impressed by the vertical resolution but disappointed with the horizontal resolution which he said caused horizontal aliasing on fine vertical details (he has a similar complaint with the PD-170 evidently). He notes that the camera appears to be from 1.5 to 2 f-stops slower than a PD-150.
He was very impressed with its DV mode and said it was as sharp as the DVX-100 or XL2, but again suffering from horizontal aliasing. One interesting thing that he pointed out is that slow shutter speeds in DV mode benefit from the image scaling. 1/30 shutter speed is acheived by tossing out one of the fields, but this is done before scaling to 720x480 so the result is that almost no resolution is lost. The thing I personally found interesting here is that it effectively gives you one more f-stop in DV mode, by shooting at 1/30 (or 1/25 PAL).
Nice write-up, but no big surprises either...