HV10 vs HDR-FX7 ... HDV isn't all the same...

[Joe Busch]

I guess it was hard to notice at first, but I started to realize now that the image off my HV10 was no-where near as sharp as my HDR-FX7...

http://lousyhero.com/videos/sj.jpg
http://lousyhero.com/videos/epicprev.jpg
http://lousyhero.com/videos/epicprev2.jpg

Are from the HDR-FX7

http://lousyhero.com/videos/ghetto.jpg
http://lousyhero.com/videos/bgp2.jpg
http://lousyhero.com/videos/sweet72.jpg

Are from the HV10

They were all resized from 1920 x 1080 snapshots from Vegas 8 (Best/Full) all were all deinterlaced from 60i to 30p...

Just interesting to see that there is a pretty big difference, at first I thought it was mainly more manual features and a bigger camera when I upgraded. I thought it looked sharper, but then thought it was placebo cause I just spent $2500 on it... heh... (That was over a year ago)

Anyways, I've seen a lot of people grabbing the cheap Sony/Canon cameras with the concept that it's HDV and it looks the same as other cameras too...

[Martyn Hull]

It looks like color differencs to me,my FX7 and SR12 are too close to call regarding sharpness with the FX on the middle setting so unlike the SR 12 it can be turned up sharper,my SR 12 wins on color.

[Ron Evans]

My SR11 gives my FX1 a good run for the money and I prefer it most of the time. When light conditions get difficult the FX1 wins but only because the controls are just not there on the SR11. I for one wish Sony would make an AVCHD version of the new FX1000 with hard drive and memory stick.

Ron Evans

[Joe Busch]

Color can be adjusted, and I doubt a sharpness setting is going to make that big of a difference, really look at what's in-focus...

Maybe the HV10 just sucked... haha...

[Martyn Hull]

Well as i prefer my SR 12 TO fX 7 i hate to think what the new canon hg21 would do to it [FX 7]as from all reports its picture surpasses the SR 11/12,i can see sony getting left behind.

[Tom Hardwick]

Originally Posted by Martyn Hull

i can see sony getting left behind.

Well that's an expression you don't often hear.

[Meryem Ersoz]

first of all, the canon always shoots flatter image than a sony. sony warms and saturates their out-of-the-box images. canon's settings are intentionally flat, so that you can push the images in post-processing. so part of the difference you are seeing is in color saturation and warmth. unprocessed canon footage is always cooler than unprocessed sony footage.

regarding sharpness, i wonder are you shooting the HV10 with manual controls? because if you're manually controlling one camera and auto-focusing the other, then of course one will look more fine-tuned than the other.

i have an FX-1 and an HV10 and have been able to match them closely, but not without post-processing the footage.

the better question to ask is not whether one camera is better than the other - they are different - but more to the point, is how can you implement and match them both to their best effect?

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Joe Busch

but I started to realize now that the image off my HV10 was no-where near as sharp as my HDR-FX7...

From what I can see on the image it's not a focus issue but contrast and saturation that makes the biggest difference between the 2 camera's.

[Tripp Woelfel]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

From what I can see on the image it's not a focus issue but contrast and saturation that makes the biggest difference between the 2 camera's.

That's true with my HV10, HV30 and my XH-A1. If I drop the brightness and contrast down a notch in the preset, it will come fairly close to the A1 in any kind of reasonable daylight.

Not to criticize your skill, but the HV10 is a real bear to focus manually. There's no easy way to get the silly switch to move slowly. Once it's right though it's very good. I do not notice any focus issues on the HV10 or HV30. It's only the nut behind my camera that's out of focus.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Tripp Woelfel

I do not notice any focus issues on the HV10 or HV30.

Now I see I used the wrong word, I meant that there were no sharpness issues between the 2 camera's from what I could judge :)
The fx7 seems a bit unnatural to me

[Joe Busch]

All of that footage was post-processed (The later stuff with the FX7 was more drastically)

But the HV10 footage looks softer, like it was shot at 720p and up-rezzed to 1080p...

That's the way I see it...

Look at any of the lettering in any of the early stuff compared to later stuff, you can make out the fine/sharp text in the FX7 footage, but even big stuff is soft in the HV10 footage...

[Alex Humphrey]

before you went to post, did you have any green still in the sony footage? It (on my monitor) seems to be gone but present in the Canon? Also I'm sure the lens is the $2,000+ sony is better than the $700 Canon regardless of the CCD/Cmos chips.

[Joe Busch]

Actually most of my Sony stuff looked de-saturated...

I got a 3007WFP-HC which saturates more than most monitors out right now. So it's harder to compare, but no I don't notice any-more green. Although I doubt I did the best job touching them up :)

[Meryem Ersoz]

i still think this is a misleading comparison.

1) if this material is post-processed, and this is not an out-of-the-box comparison, then why didn't you do a better job of trying to match the footage in terms of the color - it isn't that hard.

2) still no answer on the question of how did you focus these two cameras - are these both manually focused? that is the only way that a fair comparison could be made. the HV10 looks as if it was shot on auto-focus, in which case the camera's focusing mechanism is going to flatten the tableau and soften the images, instead of creating the shallower DOF evident in the FX-7

the FX-7 looks like it was focussed manually - no camera is going to produce a sharp foreground and a blurred background on auto-focus, like we see here.

i think if you focused both cameras manually -- and did it properly for both, you would have a different outcome

[Tom Hardwick]

Originally Posted by Meryem Ersoz

the HV10 looks as if it was shot on auto-focus, in which case the camera's focusing mechanism is going to flatten the tableau and soften the images, instead of creating the shallower DOF evident in the FX-7

the FX-7 looks like it was focused manually - no camera is going to produce a sharp foreground and a blurred background on auto-focus, like we see here.

You show a basic misunderstanding here Meryem. Focus - whether it be auto or manual, has no bearing whatsoever on the depth of field you get in your final footage. The only thing that affects that is chip sizes, focal length, focused distance and aperture used.

The EX1 does just what you say can't happen - produce 'a sharp foreground and a blurred background on auto-focus'. So too does every camcorder out there, even 1"/6 chipped machines.

tom.