DIGITAL VIDEO TEST

Sony's Digital Handycam DCR-VX1000

DOX spoke with a variety of professional camerapeople and filmmakers about their experiences working with the Digital Handycam DCR-VX1000, and compiled this list:

What's good?
* Image quality, in terms of focus performance and especially colour, is much better than Hi8 or S-VHS - astoundingly good, in fact. Unstable edges are now a thing of the past. The likelihood of drop-outs is significantly lower than in the analogue systems.

* The Steady-Shot system (optical, in Sony's case) is amazingly good and can be most usefully operated with a free hand (provided you've got one, that is!).

* In the future transferring onto non-linear editing systems will be possible without digitising, encoding and decoding

* Of course, the main advantages should not be forgotten: the camera is small, handy, light - and extremely reasonably priced.

What's bad?
* The LCD colour viewfinder is the biggest problem. Due to weak resolution it is practically impossible to see the focus. This disadvantage can be a total nuisance when shooting under low light conditions.

* The compact zoom lens, like most consumer lenses, has the major drawback of being only electronically driven (no mechanical/manual use). This makes focusing - already a problem because of the viewfinder - even more of a problem. Since the lens also has no scale display, it seems that it is best used by alternately pushing the Autofocus ON/OFF button and the infinity button. Refocusing by turning the focus ring seems to risky while shooting, since the viewfinder is so unreliable. Still, the autofocus delivers relatively good results when selectively used.

* The zoom leaves much to be desired in the wide angle range. In narrow spaces it is difficult to frame a large aerea, as the angle is too small.

* The framed image does not always correspond with the viewfinder, and should definitely be tested so that it can be compensated for during shooting.

* The camera microphone just does not stand up to DV's high-quality sound recording ability. Using an additional high-quality microphone is highly recommended.

What's good to know?
* It is advisable to turn down the sharpness in "Custom Preset" - by one unit when the final product is video, and by two when it is film. The extremely pushed sharpness of the digital handycam was designed to make DV look as sharp as possible when shown on consumer monitors. For professional use, and especially when the end result is film, this sharpness is too high and leads to not-so-good results. But don't worry: even with lessened sharpness, DV is still sharp enough.

* It is recommended to turn down the sensitivity in "Custom Preset" by about three dB, to reduce noise.

* Also recommended is turning down automatic exposure ("Custom Preset") by 1-2 levels.

* The digital zoom should definitely be turned off to prevent its being used by mistake. The loss of quality is too big: only use the optical zoom!

DOX #10 / December 1996

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