Wondered if any of you that have used a fx-1 for a wedding could tell me a couple of things. Did you leave the gain on auto and is the auto focus good or does it hunt ? Thanks for your time.

Hi there Mike,

I have read a few times that the FX1 is not the best for auto gain (it stays quite quiet), so i leave mine on manual (always between 5 and 10), and it is absolutely fine. Just double check with headphones or look at the audio file from post-production if you're still unsure.

The auto-focus is superb, and I only require manual focus for those really creative shots. The focus ring turns smoothly, and flicking the switch between auto and manual doesn't make a noise.

Overall, I can't recommend this camcorder enough, it was worth every penny I spent on it.. i'll shortly post some recent clips I've taken which really show it off!

n.b. Wait until you link it to an HD TV, you'll be blown away! It makes going back to normal TV viewing a little weird!

Thanks for the reply. I was wondering about the video gain. Is that something that in a church situation is best left on auto ? I do have this camera and have played around with it but wondered about the gain. The first gig is this weekend so I guess I will find out. I did test my wireless mic and found it looked good at level 6.

I've not used the FX-1 much, but I have used its bigger brother, the Z1. I've seen footage shot on the Z1 that has been gained up to +12db and it looks great. I was rather surprised, especially since it is an HDV cam. Personally I'd keep the gain on manual, just so you have the most control over the image. It's always worked best for me that way.

Hi Mike,

I've only shot a couple of weddings, but my advice when shooting inside the church is to have your camera on manual exposure. The reason is that the lighting probably won't change during the ceremony, so you should be able to find a good exposure setting and stick with it most of the time. (You might bump it up/down a stop when going in for close-ups). If left on auto, you run the risk of the exposure changing during a shot if a background window or light comes into frame - that won't look good at all. You want a nice constant exposure for people's faces.

And remember, to actually get true manual exposure, you have to activate the buttons for all 3 functions - iris, shutter, and gain. Otherwise, the camera will still compensate the values according to its auto exposure metering. (This took me a while to get used to. For me, it's not intuitive for the camera to gain up when I haven't selected any gain!)

As for auto-focus, it depends on how well you can pull focus by feel. It's an electronic focus ring, so you can't depend on it to return to a focus mark (it varies according to how fast you turn the ring). I find it easier to shoot on auto-focus, but if there's a shot where it seems to be hunting (usually on a long lens), I'll flip it to manual. Of course, for any artistic shots where a rack focus is required, you have to use manual.

Hope that helps. Good luck on your shoot.