Steve and his Sony DCR-VX1000 Digital Camcorder!
Last updated 12/18/96
Update!
I ended returning my cameral to Frys. The main reason was the tape dropout. In the few weeks that I had the camera, I noticed 4 instances of dropout and I felt that for $4,200, that was too much money to spend for existing tape technology.So, overall:
- Tape technology (6mm) needs improvement
- Would like a 20x optical zoom (Digital zoom was grainy)
- Would like a manual zoom (to save on battery)
- Auto focus was too slow for close up items (like a model railroad)
- No macro focus, could only focus at about 6 inches or farther
Day One
I finally did it. I broke down, spent the big dollars and bought my first camcorder. Being as that I waited so long to buy one, and being as that I am a Geek, I had to buy what I thought would be a nice camera.This page will describe my impressions of the camera from a geek with too much money point of view. It will also describe my likes and dislikes. Please don't ask me if you should buy one of these cameras, as I have no idea what is best for you. :)
I won't go into the specs, you can get those from their web page.
Overview
The Sony DCR-VX1000 is a totally digital cameral. All of the data, video and audio, is stored digitally. This means that the quality of the image remains the same from tape play to tape play. What remains unseen is how long before tape dropouts cause the codec to drop a frame or two.
Quality Control
Out of the box my unit had one "defect," a large piece of dust in the bottom half of the viewfinder. No, its not a dead pixel, as the dust does not stay in a static location when you move your eye around. I took it back to Frys and exchanged it for one with a working viewfinder. After I got home, however, I noticed the tape door mechanism was jammed. Back to Frys.This time we tried all of the features, and this box looked brand new whereas the second box looked like it might have been returned.
After 3 days the third camera is still working.
Drop Out
One of the things I did not like about Hi-8 was the dropout after 4-5 passes. With my father-in-laws camera, we would start to notice a lot of white pixels everywhere.The vx-1000 is completely digital and each frame is compressed to store more data on the tape. The compression routine has compression "blocks," which are the units that are compressed down to smaller data.
After about 20 passes on the tape, I've noticed 2 frames in 9 minutes that have dropout. In the first instance, two places on a face were blotchy, making it look like a skin cancer of some sort.
In the second case, the entire block dropped out to black.
In my humble opinion, this is the biggest drawback to these and any camera that uses a small tape media. The DV tape is 6mm I believe and is therefore more subceptible to media problems.
Sony claims that the media is over engineers to reduce wear and dropout and that the camera uses good error correction to deal with this problem. If so, I hate to see what happens after 100 passes.
User Interface
The user interface is not the best in the world. For example, there is no way to delete a stored photo entry from the casettes build in memory. It appears that you can delete the entries by recording normal video over the photo, but I have not been 100% lucky with that apporach.The camera has two sets of step fwd and reverse and to be honest,I still have not figured them out.
Video Quality
OK, I am no Rob Hahn and aside from the drop out, the video quality is amazing. Given the proper lighting, the picture image is as sharp and steady as I have ever seen. For $3,800, it should be!In low lighting, the image can get grainy, as it can when you zoom past 10x which involkes the digital zoom.
Cost
Be prepared to shell out the bucks for the vx1000. The camera itself as of 11/21/96 was $3,799 at the Campbell Frys. 60 minute Sony tapes are $25 and the Panasonic brand are $20. The lithium ion battery, which lasts 30 minutes of heavy "vtr" use is a whopping $170 bucks. Ouch.
© Copyright 1997-2002 Steve Riggins. Graphics by Andrew Duncan.
