Sony FDR-AX100

[Darren Levine]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

I'd go for a raid array of HD's with a dedicated raid card, you"ll need plenty of space for certain 4k codecs and with several HD's chained together read and write speeds won't be a bottleneck + you"ll get much more space for the same money compared to ssd.

i'll take your raid and raise you a tape drive!

oh wait, that would be silly...

I still have a serviceable raid10, been reliable as a rock, Going the raid route just introduces a few more points of potential failure and you really need to carefully select your components, SSDs have gotten cheap enough that i'm moving scratch/projects to SSDs with regular HD backups. and for my uses works a treat. then again, to your point Noa, if i had actually kept the BMC4k, i'd have upgraded and be primarily using the raid. can't beat the price to gigabyte ratio of disks

bit off topic,

[Ron Evans]

I have had my AX1 since November now and edit mainly with Edius Pro7. Like AVCHD the load is on the processor not hard drive and although I can get Edius to play just about realtime on my system it is not always consistent. Vegas will not play unless preview resolution is down in the half draft mode. I will be looking at the 8 core processors when they come out later in the year or even save up for a dual Xeon system.

I have a simple 500G WD Black boot, a 500G WD Black for temp files and then storage drives. System is i7 3770K, 16G RAM WIN7. The system will run 4 AVCHD streams multicam from a single 7200 2T WD black and also the AX1 files are on this drive too. Data rates for AVCHD or XAVC-S are not a problem and are a fraction of the hard drives transfer rate capabilities. The transfer rate of a normal 7200rpm drive is 10 times that of a 30P XAVC-S file. If you are limited in drives then multiple accesses can slow down. I still prefer having multiple drives

Backup storage is another issue though. I shoot my AX1 at 60P 150Mbps so files are large. Normally a show with 4 AVCHD cameras is about 80G max. If I substitute the AX1 for the CX700 and XR500 I remove about 40G and add in over 150G !!!! So close to 200G for a 2 hour show with 2 AVCHD cameras and the AX1.

The reason for the AX1 is to learn how to crop and pan a 1920x1080 image so that I can gradually reduce the number of cameras I use. As I get older I do not want to stand up for 2 hours either and would be nice to get to the point where I use just one 4K camera and do all the effective multicam in ediitng. For some time I have used LTO3 tape backup and this is still fine but am thinking of upgrading to LTO5 to maintain LTO3 compatibility and lower cost and increase tape size.

Certainly all the family video is tape backed up as well as on my Synology NAS. Some finished projects are also on the NAS too for quick access.

Ron Evans

[Rodman Bourne]

Recent AX-100 Shots with camera in NYC

Sony FDR AX100 New York City 4 10 2014 On Auto random Clips... Brian Culberton City Light - YouTube

[Alister Chapman]

Do be aware that SSD's and the majority of solid state media will degrade over time. Charge leakage from the memory cells will eventually cause data corruption if the data isn't refreshed periodically.

[Ron Evans]

The Camera Store has a review that may be of interest.

Sony AX100 Hands-On Field Test - YouTube

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Ron Evans

[Ken Ross]

^ Except for their really poor white balanced shots taken with the AX100. Pink snow and purple skies are not indicative of the image quality of the camera.

It's funny, for a site that does some nice in-depth reviews, they have some of the poorest shot videos you'll see. This is not just the AX100, but I've seen it with other cameras they've reviewed.

[Cliff Totten]

He touched on something that drives me nuts about my AX100....the location of the "focus expansion" button.

We rarely talk about it here. The button could not possibly be in a worse place. If I'm holding the AX100 in my right hand, I literally need to reach around with left hand and press it.

How that button was placed in the design blue prints, survived Sony management meetings, made it's way through all the field testing processes and survived final Sony approval....is mind blowing. WTF?

Sony,..please give us a firmware update like you did with the NX70 and allow us to assign the "photo" button to operate the focus expansion function. You have done this before, please do it again.

I would love to start some kind of online petition.

Does anybody else feel the same way?

AX100 fans unite!! ;-)

CT

[Ken Ross]

Yes Cliff, couldn't agree more. I can only assume that the Sony engineers are blessed with 3 hands. One for holding the camera in their right hand, another for steadying it and dialing in settings on the left side and a third for that focus assist button.

Three hands will work every time.

[Ron Evans]

Originally Posted by Ken Ross

Three hands will work every time.

Or a tripod. Shooting closeups in 4K is very critical of focus especially when the subject is close. Hand holding with manual focus may not be the best choice. Add to that a frame rate of 24P and the video may not be so good to watch !!!!

I thought the review was quite good. The thing that was obvious was how much sharper the AX100 clips were compared to the camera shooting as the main camera !!! On my Dell 24" I didn't see much of a problem with the WB of the AX100 clips.

Ron Evans

[Ken Ross]

Ron, I'm using the Dell 4K 24" and the WB was horrible. I checked on an Ipad and it was pretty much the same. Skies had a decided purplish hue and the snow was tinged pink.

It looked to me like both his exposure & WB were off. I don't think they do a great job with their video samples at all. The GH4 was another one that could have looked better. I like their reviews, but their samples...not so much.

[Ron Evans]

I have two 24" Dells and a Viewsonic VT2300LED and looked fine on all of them for the AX100 clips and main camera was overexposed a lot of the time though. I think the camera was operated by a substitute for the shoot though. I spotted 2 very short pieces with warmer colour for the snow but still white/cream , actually much like it is here depending on time of day, but sky on my monitors is solid blue with white clouds.

Ron Evans

[Ken Ross]

That is odd Ron. Each 4K Dell comes with its own factory calibration, so I know it can't be too far off. I've watched it on 2 different monitors and the rendition is similar. The contrast between the camera that shot the review and the AX100, in terms of color is pretty stark. Obviously I'm not talking about the stark difference in detail and sharpness which is to be expected. Snow on the camera doing the review is white and some of the AX100 scenes have a pinkish cast in spots.

The sky color is also distinctly different between the two cameras. I know with my AX100 I never get those kinds of purple skies or tinted whites on the snow.

Anyone else seeing this?

[Ron Evans]

My Dell's are not 4K Dells just normal 1920x1200. I have even watched the clips on my other computer with a 15" Phillips monitor same response. Yes there is a little colour shift for the snow but not bad enough for me to worry about on a Youtube playback and living in Canada does depend on the time of day and where the sun is as to how snow looks. Sky though is blue on all of them with definitely white clouds. Difference between the cameras is clear and supports the view of shooting 4K for 2K. Playback was at 1080 for the Dells and for the 15"monitor 720.

Ron Evans

[Mark Watson]

FDR-AX100 Manual (56 pages).
There's also a User Guide, which I was not able to upload. (204 pages). Both available at the link:

Sony eSupport - FDR-AX100 - Support

[Mike McKay]

Just watched Camera store vid on 2013 Nexus 7 which has a very accurate screen and definitely noticed some purple skies etc. But overall it didn't bother me too much. Decent video considering they were using a sub. Pretty impressed with the ax100 footage, will keep an eye on this one.