I did some quick shots today that are posted as a 2:30 min short.
Shot as HDFX:24 mbs, all shot with monopod or handheld.
I tried to get a variety of lighting, contrast, color, motion, etc. The sky was really hazy today, so the muted blue is not the camera's lack of "punch", it's actually volcanic pollution (vog).
The last shot in the reel is a night shot of distant town lights- it's really just to see the blacks to check out the noise level.
Nothing was tweaked in post, The raw AVCHD was transcoded to Cineform.avi for the edit, exported to Flash 720x400, 3K kbs stream.
The footage definitely looks a little more awe inspiring directly from camera HDMI to HDTV, but the 720 Flash gives some idea of what the CX550 can do.
This is a new link- the color is a little better on my server:
http://www.irondocvideo.com/Sony%20550%20Mainframe/Sony%20550%20Mainframe.html

Thanks! I have been considering the Song CX550 for doing dance recitals. However I have been waiting to read some detailed reviews and possible comparison to the Canon HF S21. This 2:30 video you made available is very helpful in getting an idea of how if does in contrasty light (especially the city lights and the sunset).

I am definitely leaning toward this camcorder.

My impression is that both the top end Sony and Canon consumer AVCHD cams produce amazing HD imagery & just keep getting better.
Probably couldn't go wrong with either.
Definitely the Sony low light preformance has hugely improved since the SR-12 model.

Hi Robert

I have posted a question on your earlier thread regarding the testing, before seeing this one... Sorry for that. So you think that the Canon HF-S21 and the Sony CX 550 are pretty much comparable?

Thanks.
Senad

Not to push in too much, but a lot of sources would suggest the Sony excels at low-light low-noise performance and has the best stabilization in its class out there, while the Canon maybe edges it out in bright-light filming. But there haven't been any formal reviews of the Sony 550 yet so this is largely based on prior year performance coupled with postings from people who have the camcorder already.

I have no personal experience with any of the Canons, but there are plenty of Canon enthusiasts on this forum. You should be able to find many first hand reports.
I think the specs are similar and certainly both Canon and Sony are at the cutting edge of this technology. I expect that their latest top end cameras have more similarities than differences.
I think there is no "best" camera. Users have different needs & will select the camera that most fits their requirements.
For example- if 30p/24p is critical, you'll go Canon; if native 28mm wide angle is critical, you'll go CX 550, etc., etc.
In terms of HD image quality, all of these tiny new cameras are simply awesome!
You can't miss...

It's not an easy choice. I like to shoot progressive. It's a + for the Canon. Also, I live in a PAL land (read EXPENSIVE). I could get away with the 24fps offered by Canon on US models if I buy one in the US. Furthermore, I could use the 30fps to produce a mild slo-mo. None of these would be possible with the Sony and I would have to buy it in Europe.

In the other hand, I have WA adapters for my HV-30 which won't fit on the HF-S series Canons because of that ridiculous 58mm barrel around a tiny lens... Those WA adapters could be used with the Sony camera, with a 37-43 step-up ring.

The better low light capability of the Sony is also appealing. I hate to see the grain and the noise in the shots taken at the "magic hour", which used to be the case with the HV-30.

Finally, I need both the long end of the zoom and the extreme wide angle for the scenery. Maybe a combination of a CX 520 with a telephoto adapter and a CX 550 with a wide angle adapter would do? That way, I could cover a range from roughly 16 -1000 mm in still photography terms... But it won't be progressive :-/

Why they just don't make one camera that has it all? (sigh)

Keep in mind the 550 probably won't "need" a WA - at around 29mm, it's pretty wide, where the Canon will be a narrower field of view. But you'll pay the price on the tele end of the new lens range with the Sony...

If low/bad light is a regular shootign condition, the Sony should be the best choice, although it's too early to say if the Canon (or for that matter the Pansonic 700 series) has caught up. The other strong point is the image stabilization, which again depends on your shooting conditions. Your idea of picking up a CX500/520 on closeout for the long end might not be so bad, as it should be comparable to the CX550 and even smaller and lighter, should make a nice "pair" if you shoot multicam.

Robert, it must be a real struggle to shoot under the hellish conditions in your locale. :-) Just kidding, I am soooo envious....

But seriously, I was most impressed by the indoor room shots; I'm assuming that was normal room light and not treated....really remarkable for a consumer camera. And the night shot was impressive too - the night sky completely blended in with your webpage's black background, at least on my monitor. Saw no aliasing or banding at all there.

These Sonys are mighty impressive; I'm a Canon HF series fan, as I have an HF100, but it can't compete at all in the low light arena; ambient daylight coming in the window looks good, but nighttime lowlight indoor shots just won't cut it compared to what you have.

Geoff
None of the shots were tweaked in post. Furthermore, however the shots looked to you as Flash 720x400, they looked even better in raw HD.
The indoor shots used existing room lights only- in some shots they weren't even all turned on.
Starting with the Sony XR 520, the low light/low noise performance took a huge jump from unacceptable to acceptable. The CX 550 seems even a bit better.
A shot that is simply a "little dark" can be adjusted in post, but a shot that is full of noise is hopeless. For my purposes (mostly travel docs for the small cams), the low light capability is a critical feature.
The native W.A. allows me to deep six the heavy W.A. adaptor that was perminantly on my SR 12, XR 520, and leaving me with a camera I can actually stuff in a pants pocket.
Relative to 16 mbs, the 24 mbs data rate gives me much more digital headroom for editing, and, I'm hoping, better quality images in the final delivery format- BR, DVD, Flash...
There are several really good small cameras out there, but the CX 550 seems to cover just about all of my personal bases.

Nice!

Just so I'm clear, when you guys say "W.A." adapter, is that another term for DOF adapter? Wide Aperture?

WA=wide angle, as in: an add on lens to get a wider field of view

Doh! Should've caught that, thanks.

Thanks for both the initial write up and the video. I have only 1 question: I'm assuming that the camera has manual control over the external mike input, but cant find any info on this on the Sony website.

Can you confirm this and is it easily accessible?
Thanks.

presuming it uses the same menu system as the CX500V (probably a fairly safe bet, although the 500 doesn't have external mic inputs), it has normal and low options for the mic, not a full manual level control, and it's somewhat deeply buried, although you can assign 6 buttons to a "personal menu" that comes up in one touch, and that would make for a little faster access to the sub menus.

Thanks for both the initial write up and the video. I have only 1 question: I'm assuming that the camera has manual control over the external mike input, but cant find any info on this on the Sony website.

Can you confirm this and is it easily accessible?
Thanks.

The menu item is "AUDIO REC SET" and is easy to find by just scrolling down the main menu.
The choices are indeed just LOW and NORMAL.

OK, does the manual indicate any db level assigned to these setting? I do a lot of field recording using an external mike.

More I forgot to ask..does the audio levels appear in the lcd and/or viewfinder while recording, and can the audio AGC be turned off?

Really appreciate the answers as there's very little info on this anywhere that I can find.
Pete

no, and no, AFAIK. Your primary "indicator" would be monitoring through headphones I'm afraid.

It's a lot to ask for on one of these pocket monsters to have advanced audio capability, although it's possible that the new small Panasonics and Canon have these features? I know Sony tends to simplify and intelligently automate functions, where the others leave a few more controls exposed.

Frankly if audio is critical, a dual system with a dedicated digital audio recorder is probably a better chioce, sync in post.

Thanks again Robert.

I'm going to switch from an HV-30 to one of the new AVCHD cameras and I'm looking at this cam and the Canon hf-s11 and Panny 700 also.

I'm going to assume that the hf-s21 will have the levels, etc. as the hf-s11 does. I've got this camera dedicated to u/w use, and using SD cards instead of tape is really nice.

Yours was the first post on the Sony and it certainly sparked my interest. I do have a digital audio recorder (H4F) but having the capability to also record with my Rode videomic at the same time provides a nice backup.

Thanks again.

OK, does the manual indicate any db level assigned to these setting? I do a lot of field recording using an external mike.

More I forgot to ask..does the audio levels appear in the lcd and/or viewfinder while recording, and can the audio AGC be turned off?

Really appreciate the answers as there's very little info on this anywhere that I can find.
Pete

One possibility - that the Low mic ref level turns off the AGC. I filmed fireworks with the auto-zoom mike off but the Normal mic ref level. Someone pointed out that I should have disabled the AGC so the background music continued to be heard fully when the loudest fireworks went off. The "Low" level is listed as something to use for grand sounds such as a concert, so it could be that it has some kind of overall volume filter to avoid distortion at really high volumes, but otherwise does no AGC up to that level?

This is on a CX500V - I suspect the CX550 works the same way.

You could always attach the small BeachTek unit to the bottom of the cam for more audio control, but if you can't turn off the camera AGC it might not accomplish all that much for you.
I think that audio is not the strong suit of these teeny cams, but if you are using a good mic, maybe, with some editing in post, it would be good enough.
Interesting idea about the Low Mic Ref/AGC. Could it be true???

The "Low" level is listed as something to use for grand sounds such as a concert, so it could be that it has some kind of overall volume filter to avoid distortion at really high volumes, but otherwise does no AGC up to that level?

This is on a CX500V - I suspect the CX550 works the same way.

Now ya got me interested again! I've been using the hv-30 and the audio can be adjusted with a shuttle button and it works very nicely with the Rode mic.

My (nice) problem is that both the Panasonic TM-700 and Canon Hf-s11 cameras aren't out yet so I'm dealing with only assumptions that they'll be like their predecessors. Both of em have manual audio controls as well as auto, agc, etc. On the Sony, It would be nice to know if it works as you say it might.

I guess I'll just wait until they come out and someone reviews them that doesn't also sell them.

Might be a good mate to your S11, if you can share accessories.

...
On the Sony, It would be nice to know if it works as you say it might.
...


Sony Support could probably tell you if you phrase the question to cover all the bases of interest. Certainly whether or not the Low mode applies AGC or when would not be something secret...

I'm going to send something off to them today and if I get a response I'll post it. Your comments on the camera have really got me interested in it.

UPDATED: Just finished talking to Sony support. They said the audio agc is not turned off at any time. Just the audio input ref level is altered. Even using a Beachtek the ambient sounds would be amplified.

Kind of a bummer considering the other two cameras have this option.

The camera handbook says "LOW" records the ambient level "faithfully". Although it may be just an AGC reference level, if you change the level to be low enough, it may be for practical purposes the same as turning it off (?). I don't have this camera, but I'd be curious to hear from those who've tried this.
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MICREF LEVEL (Microphone reference level) You can select the microphone level for recording sound.

> NORMAL Records various ambient sounds, converting them into the appropriate level.

> LOW Records ambient sound faithfully. Select [LOW] when you want to record an exciting and powerful sound in a concert hall, etc. (This setting is not suitable for recording conversations.)

p.78, Sony HDR-CX550V Handycam Handbook 4-170-534-11(1)

Robert, compared to the CX500, would you say this is a upgrade in video quality or just features?

Personal opinion since the person you asked hasn't responded yet: 90-99% upgrade to features and 10-1% upgrade to video quality. Remember that the CX500V was released only about 1/2 year before the 550 and has very similar specs including the same sensor chip.

Changes that arguably represent quality improvements:
1. The EIS for filming while walking sounds like it was improved.
2. Ability to film at 24Mbs - might be useful in very specific cases.
3. I-Auto may produce better quality video for the range of cases where it applies. But I suspect that range is narrower than people think, based on reading the documentation about what it turns on and off.

I'm not counting the wide-angle lens as a "quality improvement" because I'm projecting it's a change in specs, not a change in performance. That is, I'd expect a CX500V with the good Sony wide-angle converter mounted to produce video of quality equal to the native CX550V filming the same subject.

Similarly, some people might argue that adding a few new "manual controls" allows for better-quality video, but I'm a bit skeptical about that. I think the manipulation of light going on inside the computer chips here is way more sophisticated than in analog cameras and camcorders. That is, I'm a little concerned that using manual controls a lot is actually equivalent to "dumbing down" the camcorder - 180 degrees away from what it used to be with analog devices where the human judgement was generally superior.

regarding whether video quality is better in auto or manual, I think this is very dependent on the operator and the scene, and I suspect that for the majority of the people, in the majority of situations a good auto mode is better overall. However, I have had situations where auto-adjustment (on other cameras) drives me nuts.

For example in a theater where there is a couple waltzing: she wears a bright colored dress and he is in a dark tailcoat. They are turning around each other and when she is towards the camera, the camera thinks "bright colored dress! must turn down exposure!" and then a few beats later, the dress is eclipsed by a black coat and the camera thinks "too dark, must increase exposure!" and this goes on and on. Because of the constant auto-exposure shifts, the background brightness of the video goes up and down repeatedly, which is very distracting, and also hurts image quality because so many bits are used up encoding the bad news that every pixel in the scene is changing brightness. That specific problem is much reduced by selecting a "slow" mode for exposure AGC, on cameras that offer that option, but in a theater you have all kinds of intentionally artificial lighting situations that the camera tries to "correct", with often disappointing results.

Note: this is "in general", I don't actually have the CX550. I do have a HDR-XR500 which I almost always use in auto mode, and it works well, but I haven't tried a theater show with varying lighting. I had the problem above (ironically enough) with a HDR-FX1 set to full-auto mode.

Robert, compared to the CX500, would you say this is a upgrade in video quality or just features?

I just finished shooting a lot of low light/night shot clips this weekend. I'll try to get them together over the next few days and post a short video.
I think the improvments over the XR 520 are:
1) I do think the low light images are cleaner
2) Autofocus seems quicker and more accurate
3) the OIS is noticably more effective
4) the "auto" features seem equally excellent on the two cameras
5) I'm sure that the 24 mbs data rate confers some downstream benefits, but casual inspection of the raw footage doesn't reveal much obvious difference from the XR 520. Something might show up with complex motion capture, but I haven't specifically looked at that issue.
6) The extra manual controls are nice, but I haven't actually needed to use them so far. The touchscreen "spot exposure/focus" seems to cover most of the situations where the standard "auto" needs tweaking.
7) the native wide angle lens is a huge feature for me personally, others may have little use for it.
8) It really is small. Many times over the weekend I actually dropped it into my front pants pocket.
Basically, it's a lot of small improvements, but I can definitely say that I'm more than satisfied to replace my XR 520 with the CX 550

Quote: "The footage definitely looks a little more awe inspiring directly from camera HDMI to HDTV, but the 720 Flash gives some idea of what the CX550 can do".

Thank you for posting this sample footage, Robert. It shows detail in shadowed areas and remarkable steadiness in what I guess are the handheld shots.

Have you seen the footage projected by a good video projector onto a medium-sized screen? I am just wondering whether a small-theatre audience would accept the quality in a documentary film. Like the surfing films, underwater films and skiing films of years ago, shot on 16-mm film and projected by the film-maker in various town-hall theatrettes to a paying audience of people interested in these sports, or in documentary subjects such as model aircraft or airshows.

Look forward to seeing your low-light sample footage.

Andrew Gyles

Quote: "The footage definitely looks a little more awe inspiring directly from camera HDMI to HDTV, but the 720 Flash gives some idea of what the CX550 can do".

Thank you for posting this sample footage, Robert. It shows detail in shadowed areas and remarkable steadiness in what I guess are the handheld shots.

Have you seen the footage projected by a good video projector onto a medium-sized screen? I am just wondering whether a small-theatre audience would accept the quality in a documentary film. Like the surfing films, underwater films and skiing films of years ago, shot on 16-mm film and projected by the film-maker in various town-hall theatrettes to a paying audience of people interested in these sports, or in documentary subjects such as model aircraft or airshows.

Look forward to seeing your low-light sample footage.

Andrew Gyles

This camcorder gives amazing footage. Over the years I have attended the Banff film festival, featuring mountain adventure and mountain culture films. Many of these films are shot with camcorders that can not capture what the CX550 can do, and the audiences love them. What counts at these types of screening is presenting footage and a story that the audience cares about. Having said that, you will not have to make any apologies to the audience for the footage from the CX550.

Thanks for your reply, David. It confirmed my feeling that enthusiast audiences watching a documentary do not expect to see the same level of picture quality as audiences in a commercial theatre.

I'll look at the CX550, and also at the Canon HF-S21 if it is released soon.

Andrew Gyles

Dam, wish I would have waited... but couldn't pass up the CX500v at B&H for the 7 C notes.

Your CX500 should produce video that is extremely close to that of the 550 with only a few exceptions:

1. 550 focal lengths favor wide angle, 500s less so. I suspect that using the appropriate wide-angle or telephoto converters on either cam to emulate the other make this difference academic unless you never use converters. That is, I think this is a matter of convenience as opposed to quality.

2. The "filming while walking" stabilization on the 550 may be a notch better than that on the 500, but all other stabilizations should be the same. The CX500 was the pioneer in this area so it's where the true improvements kicked in.

3. Some fast-moving subjects filmed at the higher bitrate may look better than ones done on either cam at the 16/17 Mbs bitrate. I personally have never really been able to see the difference in example clips posted online but I'll credit that it might be there in some clips for some people.

4. The iAuto mode on the 550 may outperform the auto settings on the 500 but I suspect this will be a very limited difference that has been somewhat overhyped in the marketing. That is, I think the scenarios where this might be true are many fewer than the advertising implies. The auto settings on the 500 have seemed highly effective to me.

Otherwise, these two cams are far more alike than different in terms of actual performance.

I agree.
I have the XR 520 and the CX 550- Tom's right on target.

The camera handbook says "LOW" records the ambient level "faithfully". Although it may be just an AGC reference level, if you change the level to be low enough, it may be for practical purposes the same as turning it off (?). I don't have this camera, but I'd be curious to hear from those who've tried this.
---

MICREF LEVEL (Microphone reference level) You can select the microphone level for recording sound.

> NORMAL Records various ambient sounds, converting them into the appropriate level.

> LOW Records ambient sound faithfully. Select [LOW] when you want to record an exciting and powerful sound in a concert hall, etc. (This setting is not suitable for recording conversations.)

p.78, Sony HDR-CX550V Handycam Handbook 4-170-534-11(1)



I wonder if something like the JuicedLink DT454 would work. It is meant for DSLR camera's and is supposed to be able to turn off the AGC.

Hey folks - I am really happy to be posting here, the site is a bastion of good information and I'm starting to get my filming and production wings on a few small jobs.

I've got a Sony CX550ve and am adding the LetusMini and canon FD lenses to see what I can come up with image wise (ordered today so hopefully by next week).

I had a play with the nightshot and it was pretty funky, but not used it in a 'film a story' mode or similar yet - YouTube - Nightshot on off on off zooming at tree alien | CX550 test (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmUs5TEXQlo&feature=related)

Also done an active stability test Cycling one-handed in the rain (http://www.youtube.com/bravocharlietv#p/u/5/eGL-eVyYyYg), some shots at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, a bit of shooting in the rain which I thought looked nice > YouTube - Aliens at the National Gallery of Victoria, heavy rain and trams | Sony CX550 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ecz_sN2rCU&feature=related)

I've learnt a lot already reading the board so heres to many years of knowledge and capturing some good stories :) Always up for a coffee so if you're in Melbourne say hello, otherwise I might just get to Burning Man in the US come September :)

Just about to press the button on Mr Jobs and get a macbookpro with finalcut.. mmm a lifetime of PC use.. yell out if I should cease and desist, working with AVCHD etc