In Use
Since it was lunchtime when I started taking test videos, I began with this
Fuji apple on my kitchen counter. Perfect rendition. It was delicious too.
For greens, I used this succulent in our
garden. Texture is
good, and the highlights are not blown out.
Here began the surprises. This intense purple
flower is sometimes a bit too strong in digital photos, but not here.
The ability of the Sony to photograph
highly saturated reds blew me away. This was the first time that automatic
exposure gave such a good result with a digital camera.
Yellow is also a tough color, but the Sony did
it well. Look at the detail in the leaf veins.
When the field was all yellow, still no
problem.
Slightly orange blossoms looked gorgeous. This
flower is so beautiful, it looked edible, but I already had that apple for
my lunch.
Our gum trees are now completely red and orange
(November). The
Sony showed it all in glorious detail.
Blue was perfect.
Another surprise. With all the
great results so far, I could not understand why the Sony overexposed my
Safeway vegetable rack test. Detail is good though, and white balance is
excellent. This is a difficult scene with fluorescent lighting. Of course,
setting the exposure manually would have taken care of the problem, and what
this means is that you can't always count on using the Auto setting (for any
camera).
The sound quality was excellent,
due to the high quality condenser microphone. The video tape uploaded to my
PC without issue, using Firewire and Pinnacle Studio 11. The resulting *.m2v
files could be edited in Studio 11 but not in Sony Vegas 8.0, so if you want
to edit your video files in Sony Vegas 8.0, you need to capture them in
Vegas. Note that for playing back in your home theater,
the videos can be burned to a standard DVD in HD DVD format, using Pinnacle Studio 11, and in Blu-ray format (also on a standard
writeable DVD), using Sony Vegas 8.0 (if you upload the files from the
camera using Vegas). About 24 minutes of high definition
video will fit onto the standard writeable DVD media. So, for about $1, you
can have your vacation videos in high definition, playing back on your HD
DVD or Blu-ray player, with Dolby Digital sound.
The camera has a 24 FPS (Frames
per Second) mode, for those who want to have a "Film Look" to their videos
(movies are shot at 24 FPS). However, this will mean that your TV will have
to use its 3:2 pull-down processing, and you will end up with the same
artifacts ("Judder") that you see when you watch a movie on TV.
But, if you do want to make a movie to show at one of the film festivals,
this camera is good enough to do it.
Here is the Auto Iris test. Click
on the photo below to see the video. The iris closes down very quickly.
Like other video cameras, there
is some smearing when the camera is panned across bright points of light.
Click on the photo to see the video. The performance is better than with
previous cameras reviewed.
This is a test I use to see if
there is any vertical streaking from bright lights photographed at night.
The Sony does not exhibit this problem (some cameras do).
Except for the vegetable rack,
the Sony HVR-A1U gave the best photographic results of any video camera I
have tested so far. Of course, it is more expensive than the others, and you
get what you pay for.
Go to Part IV.