Sony FDR-AX100

[Dave Blackhurst]

Noa -

You probably will find the AX100 to be good for that, my big debate is whether to keep a PJ760 for handheld use... sort of on the fence, as the magic eyeball is hard to beat, but somehow it's seeming like it won't get much use!

[Noa Put]

I really need to get rid of some of my camera's :) I think my cx730 still hold some value and should be easy to sell but I might hold onto one of them, just to have one backup videocamera that doesn't have that stupid 30 minute recording time as all my dslr's are blessed with that gift.

[John McCully]

I really need to get rid of some of my cameras too, I think :-)

My BMPCC sits in storage. Now it is being offered at half price. I kinda love the thing and every now and again I pull it out of storage, charge the batteries and go at it again, get frustrated, tell myself to sell it and back it goes into the white elephant cupboard.

My EX1, such a 'professional' piece of kit, and likewise it sits in storage mostly because of the size and cumbersome nature of the beast not to mention the noise in low light areas. But for certain uses it is a very fine cam. I should keep it.

The most recent acquisition, the Sony AS100v action cam...how did I live without it! Not that I'm big into action but for when I go sailing; perfect.

And a bunch of Sony HX series bridge cameras worth next to nothing now.

Oh yes, my NEX 5n (I almost forgot about it). Why did I purchase it? Yes, I remember; poor man's FX100...

The RX10 is now my goto cam for most everything. Great image, moving and stills, but I wish it had more reach and much better image stabilization.

Which brings me to the AX100. After seeing what Ken Ross and Mark Rosenzweig, to name just a couple of folks, have delivered with this cam, in particular Mark's recent shoots in China where he shot incredibly steady hand-held stuff that impressed me greatly. No way I can get that with my RX10 but then the man holding the camera might be more responsible for that than the built in image stabilization.

For those of you who have both the RX10 and the AX100 is the AX100 that much better? Seriously? I fear the answer is yes and instead of reducing the number of cameras I have the opposite will happen!

[Noa Put]

For those of you who have both the RX10 and the AX100 is the AX100 that much better? Seriously?

I will know soon enough :) I expect a difference, mainly in detail downscaled to 1080p, I have seen what my GH4 can deliver so have a pretty good indication what "4k" is all about.

Edit: the rx10 is already a very sharp 1080p camera, about the same as my gh3, but a 4K camera when downscaled to 1080p holds more detail which you especially notice on wider shots. I can mix footage from a 1080p camera with 4K footage without seeing much difference but I do have to watch out a when shooting wide with 2 camera's because then the difference is more noticeable. The ax100 is not "that" much better, it can show much more fine detail and it has a better functionality as a videocamera compared to the rx10 which I absolutely need for my work, the rx10 is just a very good 1080p camera. My ax100 will arrive tomorrow, I hope I can take it with me this saturday for the next wedding, just ordered a SDXC Professional UHS-I U3 64GB Kinston card ("only" 97 euro) for it which should arrive tomorrow as well. I should feel right at home using the camera because the menu's and the way you operate it look exactly the same as on my cx730.

[Ken Ross]

Originally Posted by John McCully

Which brings me to the AX100. After seeing what Ken Ross and Mark Rosenzweig, to name just a couple of folks, have delivered with this cam, in particular Mark's recent shoots in China where he shot incredibly steady hand-held stuff that impressed me greatly. No way I can get that with my RX10 but then the man holding the camera might be more responsible for that than the built in image stabilization.

Thanks John. Yes, the last several videos from Mark have been great. I think you develop techniques to hand hold a camera and maximize its inherent stability...or lack thereof. I've seen Mark's videos improve as they've become more stabile. The AX100's OIS is good, but not great. The Active IS is better and only minimally detracts from the resolution of the image. In fact I doubt most people would be able to see any loss.

Originally Posted by John McCully

For those of you who have both the RX10 and the AX100 is the AX100 that much better? Seriously? I fear the answer is yes and instead of reducing the number of cameras I have the opposite will happen!

John, in a word, yes. It was a relatively short period of time after my AX100 arrived, that I decided to sell my RX10. I really loved the RX10 and it's overall PQ. But the leap in PQ with the AX100 is there, and to my eyes, obvious when viewing in 4K. Additionally, as has often been discussed, you get the great advantage of getting a much superior 2K image by down rez'g your 4K footage to HD. This way you get the best looking HD footage you've probably ever seen and have that gorgeous 4K footage waiting for the moment you decided to get a 4K display (or UHD display).

[Eric Lagerlof]

For anyone interested in the audio portion of this camera... It seems that the 'Mic In' jack is indeed mic level only. That said, if you crank down the manual audio input level settings to the 2nd from the bottom hashmark, you can get away with line level inputs without much distortion unless the audio signal has a wide dynamic range. If you use an external soundboard you may want to invest in line-to-mic impedance adapters.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Ken Ross

John, in a word, yes. It was a relatively short period of time after my AX100 arrived, that I decided to sell my RX10.

Don't you think the main difference between the 2 camera's image wise is the extra detail the ax100 can show? Not sure if any other aspect like dynamic range or how the camera's render colors or how both deal with moire and aliasing are that different?

[Eric Lagerlof]

Also, if anyone knows of a handy transforming adapter...?

[Emmanuel Plakiotis]

A subforum for the FDR AX100 is an absolute necessity. This thread is too bloated to have any usefulness but to the very few that follow it daily...

[Noa Put]

I know Chris has mentioned that a subforum was already a bit overdue but I"m sure he will provide that for us shortly.

I just got the camera and to my surprise my old batteries fit and work with this new camera as well! (on the image below you can see the biggest sony battery attached to the camera) That's not like Sony, they often make small changes so you need to buy new batteries each time. I only hope they haven"t build any restrictions in battery use. If I use a generic battery on my older sony xr520's the camera shuts down during record with a warning that the battery is not an original one.

This camera is an oversized handicam for sure :) below photo compared to my cx730. I was hoping I could fit my varavon loupe onto it but unfortunately it doesn't fit and th eflipout screen is also too large, too bad.

[Noa Put]

Ok, I know this it doesn't have anything to do with this topic but it was a reason for some heated discussion a short while back and a reason for this thread to go off topic, about all of that noise has been removed by admin and I was glad because of one person to keep on insisting I would show my current camera's I talked about as he didn't believe I had so many.

Now I am not responding to the image I"m posting below and refuse to start a new pointless discussion and I"m encouraging others to do the same but I don't like to be called a liar and with this I finally want to clear this matter up once and for all and to show my camera's don't exist in my mind only.

The photo does include a picture of a ax100 so it's still on topic :D, I honestly wish Sony and Panasonic would make expensive camera only so I just could afford to buy one :D but I"m selling a few now so I look like a sane person again.

If admin feels this message has no place here and needs to be removed, I"m fine with that as well. The photo was taken with a cellphone so not great quality but I promise, its' not photoshopped :)

[Anthony Lelli]

Originally Posted by Ken Ross

Anthony, I've tried the stabilization built in to Edius and although it's moderately effective, I don't like the loss of resolution that's a byproduct of it. It's not that bad, but I just hate losing anything. Most people probably would find it a worthwhile tradeoff, and it probably is where shake is ruining the clip.

Now to be fair, I also tried Mercalli and was really shocked at how little difference there was between what's built into Edius and Mercalli.

Ken,
what's a good workflow to post on youtube 1hour and 30min footage , from AX100 in 1080? What would you suggest?

XAVCS is fast enough but it stays at 1080 50mbps (can't change anything)
what I'm doing now (thanks to your edius tip by the way)
is to process xavcs (that ends up in a 35GB file) and then use handbrake to bring it down to 3.5GB (I believe that's about the limit you can post on youtube): to do that I have to scale it to 720p, bitrate 5000
what you think?Is using XAVCS as the intermediate for handbrake a good choice?
I mean the quality on youtube is still good (after the youtube processing that brings down a 3.5GB to 1.5GB adjusting I don't know what since the bitrate was already 5000)
anyway thanks to the AX100 even with that kind of massive compression HD looks better than anything Ive been using before (XDcam included).

[Noa Put]

Does anyone know how long you can record with the battery that is delivered with the camera when you shoot in 4K mode?

[Ken Ross]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

Don't you think the main difference between the 2 camera's image wise is the extra detail the ax100 can show? Not sure if any other aspect like dynamic range or how the camera's render colors or how both deal with moire and aliasing are that different?

Yes, image detail, but also a slightly better OIS and what I find to be better colors. The OIS on the RX10 was not particularly good.

[Ken Ross]

Anthony, I'm really a zero on YouTube. Whatever I do post, I post on Vimeo and thus I have very little experience with a good YouTube workflow. I favor Vimeo for its easy download of native 4K files.

Anyone else?

Noa, I've gotten about 90 minutes with the supplied battery.