HVR-Z1P First impressions
 

I had a look at the Z1P this week at a sony launch in Oz and was very impressed. I will have to wait till January to put a tape through one but first impressions are great. Love the fact that you can shoot in HD yet feed out DVCam so you can future proof your originals but still work with existing systems.

Hi, can you give us anymore information at all about it?

Im still waiting for a final impression from anyone.

Hi Davi

They are talking about Z1 not FX1....Z1 is not even out yet


Thanks

I had a look at the Z1 yesterday, It has two shooting modes 50i and 60i and 3 frame rates 24,25, 30. It's 1080i and the footage looked pretty good, not quite a f900 but pretty good. It has an HD analog out adapter and a 16:9 flipout viewfinder as well as a blackand white one in the back. The footage looked pretty good, they were displaying it on what appeared to be 24p. I spoke to the guy about the issues I had heard about with mpeg-2 (in specific artifacts being caused by too much information wiht motion or shots witha lot of action in them - I refer you to the NBC olympic swimming broadcasts) The sample size is 1080 by 1444 so it does some math magic to get 16x9. He said that there are limitations as far as mpeg-2 go but he heard no complaints at dvexpo (in la) and when they projected the image very few people had anything negative to say. I was almost convinced until he bumped the camera and for a split second I saw a whole bunch of blocks (er mosaic?) on the screen. this was only for a split second but it leads me to think this is something that is much more suited to cine-style and sit down interview stuff, not (as my company wanted to use it for) a POV cam for action or something along those lines.

Also someone on this forum kept commenting about PsF (progressive segmented frames) and I think there may be some sort of misunderstanding going on (either by me or them) because I believe the z1 and f1(?) are true 1080i. PsF was developed because the bandwidth to do 24p with 1080x1920 was simply to great to ship out via HD-SDI so it was done via 48i but not true interlaced more upeer half fields and lower half fields or uh... segmented frames. It is my understanding that the z1 does not do this only interlaced frames. That's my impression. ANyone else who was at the bandpro open house or dvexpo may be able to fill in the blanks better then I.

I will be need to picking up 4 Z1s in Febraury or March if Sony meets my expectations for this camera. I hope not to be disappointed.

If and when I get it, I will be doing a comprehensive testings to make available on my website or perhaps Chris could host. I will be making final impressions soon enough!

Harish, its the Z1 NOT the fx1. As I said I haven't had a chance to put a tape through yet but going by sonys footage it is very good.I will be able to give you more in January.

George

Thanks George,
I am almost determined to buy the Z1