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Sony HDR-FX1 - report on my first project
I shot a rock gig to start with to get a feel for this camera. At nearly five pounds, I don't expect to be able to hand-hold it for very long without the $300 brace (which I don't have) so instead I bought a general purpose tripod and took a rather static approach. I'm viewing this project as something of a test, however it turned out quite well and provided a lot of useful answers to questions I'd been wondering about.
I used a regular Mini-DV tape, not the special 63 minute Sony HDV tapes (which appear to be just high-spec Mini-DV tapes anyway). I didn't suffer any dropouts, but if I start to I might invest in the high-grade tapes for "events" like this. Regular tapes, plus regular cleaning, make more sense for experimenting. After all if I get a bit of a dropout filming something I can film again later, it's less of a big deal.
Taking a $3400 camera to a punk rock gig in Manhattan made me a little nervous - I don't even have a case for it yet - so I put it in a plastic shopping bag and just took VERY good care of it!
On the other hand, something so big is a little unusual in such circumstances, especially on a tripod. When people came and stood right in my shot I just tapped them on the shoulder and pointed to the camera. They mostly moved like they'd been stung. I had no right, of course, but if they hadn't even seen the camera and didn't mind moving, well then it worked out. The one person who wasn't so impressed turned out to be half of the headline act - Gil Mantera's Party Dream - whoops, sorry! I'll have to make it up to them...
One thing I have struggled with on these types of shoots is the volume level. Basically these gigs are too loud to record on the built-in mic of my other camera, the DCR-TRV70, so I've had to use a decent quality plug-in powered microphone.
My first question was how is the manual sound level control on the FX-1. So far my answer is "mixed". I used the manual dial and the onscreen levels to adjust the sensitivity, but firstly it's not clear how high the peaks should be - all the way across? Half-way? Maybe this is in the manual, but I haven'd found it. I took a guess and set them to peak at about 75%, but from the soundtrack I ended up with, I would say perhaps this was too high. Next time I will probably try again with my external mic, but anyway my results were :
But I know this not the interesting bit. Audio recording isn't going through quite such an unheaval as the transition from SD to HD and 4:3 to 16:9. The big question is : what's the picture like?
It'd be nice to just post samples, but I haven't shared my results with the band yet, and since they haven't approved any video for release anyway, I'm not about to (but I'm working on it).
The answer though, is this : The picture quality of the Sony HDR-FX1 is absolutely freaking amazing. When I plugged the camera into our Sony TV and played it back for my wife and some guests, everyone was astonished. Colors, detail, lack of low-light artifacts. It has to be seen to be believed. It's kind of unbelievable. I'm glad I did the right thing, I bought one to find out for myself, because trying to be 100% certain it's a good buy by reading the web is a bit like learning about beer from chemistry textbooks. I made a "normal" DVD and I am thrilled with the results (not the audio, my camera-work or editing, but just the sheer image quality). For a rock gig in a tiny venue on the Lower East Side (small, cramped, poorly lit), it's beyond good value for money.
And now some "tech notes" for the truly interested.
These figures point to some of the downsides of the "HD Revolution". My laptop struggled to import the footage, running at 1/4 - 1/8 real-time speed. I'm sure that can't be good for the tape drive in the camera.
When I opened up iMovie with the resulting monster 19GB file, it complained that I need 1GHz cpu for HD (my powerbook is 867MHz). Doing very basic editing of the footage into chapters for each song worked perfectly well, but then when I output to iDVD, the rendering literally took all night. I had to put my laptop on a wireframe cookie cooler that I have, as I was afraid it would break (again) from getting so hot.
Some stuff is a bit more sensible though. For example, it is not actually necessary to own a high-def TV to start working with high-def footage - we don't for instance. When I connected my camera up, I just used the composite video cable, and it "just worked". Clearly it just puts out a non-high-def, but still widescreen signal, and the TV had no problem (Sony WEGA 32-inch).
I'm sure there are people who have put off "going high-def" until they can get an "end-to-end" solution, but in my view there is no need. My workflow is all regular definition for playback, but the extra definition is not impossibly intrusive and I am able to start accumulating raw footage in HD. As time goes by, I'll get the HDTV for living room playback, the "high-def Mac" for editing, and the HDDVD or Blu-Ray burner for making high-def DVDs, but by then my daughter will be a few years older and the bands I'm filming could be famous (or retired and flipping burgers) - I wont be able to go back in time and re-capture high-def versions of past events, and in the meantime, I'm getting better results in regular definition anyway.
High-Def : The Time is Now!
More links : CamcorderInfo.com
posted at: 00:03 | path: /movie-making | permanent link to this entry