Just got to say:

I had the NX-30 along with me on a major event shoot a few weeks ago, on loan from Sony. Admittedly, I first saw it as a bit of a toy, but that soon changed.

We had an F3 covering the stage and 3 EX3 cameras covering the main action in the audience and I handed my producer the NX30 (totally on auto) to try and catch an intimate, "reaction" closeup of the guest of honor.

Suddenly, they dropped the house lights down to nothing and everything including the honoree was just lit by candlelight and a little spill from the podium.. Everyone jumped to 18db gain, which, on a good day is noisy and a bit ruddy looking, especially getting farther from the candles, but the NX-30 came thru and saved my butt, getting a clean reaction shot of the main guest. Decent color, much lower noise, rock steady image, even in the hands of my producer.

Won't approach an another event without at least two of them in the bag.
Thumbs up, Sony!

Hi Chuck. Any footage you can share?

I've been testing this camera with mixed results. I'm surprised it doesn't have its own forum or sub-forum as it's apparently selling quite well (according to a B&H salesman). I've posted a couple videos on youtube (see below). I like this camera a lot but it has a major flaw -- there is bad chromatic aberration when zoomed in. Objects have green fuzzy fringing on one side and reddish on the other side. At wide until somewhere around 60 or 70% of the way zoomed in there is a gorgeous, sharp and clean image but you can see it show up as you zoom in. It's generally not at all obvious in the viewfinder but is clear and awful on a big screen. Look around the sides and in the corners.

The feature that got so much attention at NAB, a steadicam-like effect, is actually pretty good and one of the videos shows a couple informal comparisons between nothing at all, the normal Sony stabilization and what they call "active stabilization." Would be interested in hearing opinions from others -- take a look.

Charlie

Stabilization Sony NX 30 "Steadicam" effect - YouTube
Chromatic aberration Sony NX30U - Chromatic Aberration - YouTube

Regarding the CA when you approach full zoom, this is something the NX70 suffers from as well, which I curse every time... Looks like Sony haven't learned from that one, or maybe just don't care - maybe they intend most of the use of these cameras fo be wide angle work for documentaries, and tight corners.

Agreed. I have the consumer PJ760E and CX700E models which are optically identical to the NX30 and NX70. I've found the only practical way to deal with the problem is to think of them as 7-8x zoom camcorders. Use the zoom bar on either the LCD or the viewfinder as a warning not to go past the last 20-30% of the zoom length.

At the wide end the lens performance on both cameras is very good with almost imperceptible CAs and very low distortion despite being very wide.

I'm having a little trouble understanding the steady shot settings. What are the appropriate uses of the standard, active, fixed shot, and "off" settings? From what I think I understand the standard setting is for relativly easy movement while using the wide angle, active setting is for robust movement (such as walking around or strapped to a car), fixed shot is for focusing on a single object while zoomed in, and the "off" setting is best for fixed tripod use. Am I even close?

Yes, off is for tripod use meaning there is no stabilization going on, you really need to set it to off on a tripod as the stabilization on the Sony is VERY active, your image will be bouncing around at the end of a pan movement because the camera is trying to compensate.

The difference between standard and active is mainly that in active mode the camera zooms in on the image and you get a larger zoom range (just try it as you can live switch between the 2 modes so you can see the camera cropping a part of the image in active mode)

In active mode you also get a 17x zoom while in standard mode a 10x zoom, I only use the active mode if I really need more zoom but the image does deteriorates a bit in that mode so use with care. I have not tested it but expect the stabilization to be better in active mode as well because there is some extra stabilization going on.

How are the manual controls on the 30? I know there is an assignable knob on the side. If you assign it aperture control, can you still set your shutter at 1/48 and make it stay there?

Has anyone experienced an error message ( e62:02 ) while recording and with the stabilizer mode turned on? the error would not go away until the camera was power cycled on/off.

no errors so far. Be careful with the lens distortion though. When filming groups of people from 10 -20 ft it distorts those closer to the edge -stretching bodies and faces. I set up my to AGC 15db above that noise becomes visible. Also, it loses some focus from time to time. Manual controls are OK.