Sony HC1

ChuckS

ChuckS

Veteran
I went to Best Buy yesterday and they had a Sony HC1 consumer HDV camera on display so I played with it for about an hour. It was very impressive. :laugh:

The picture quality was amazing, it didn't seem to suffer as much softness when you panned or there was fast motion in the scene as the FX1. However, I could only shoot indoors and they only had it plugged into an HD LCD monitor. I tried to get them to let me plug it into a Sony HD CRT but the manager of the TV department wouldn't have any of it.

The color fedelity was amazing. Again, in that environment its difficult to isolate the camera from the monitor etc., but I imagine the quality of the image is a result of CMOS vs CCD. Its a 3Mp CMOS which I believe is significantly more than all three CCD's in the FX1.

For the price - ~$1800, its probably worth getting one to test with before making a significant investment in either the Z1 or the HD100.

Anyway, it is well worth a trip to your local Best Buy to look at it. If anyone has any hands on insight I would like to hear your impressions. :engel017:
 
Were you recording to tape and then replaying the footage?

If not, there shouldn't be any digital softness due to artifacting. You would need to record to tape to see this issue.
 
I used an FX1 (not recording to tape) and there was massive artifacting when I waved my hand around. (It was actually kind of a cool effect.) I'd bet this one works similarly, it's just hard to notice since pans are blurry anyhow.
 
The HC1 has quite a few fans, I believe Douglas Spotted Eagle wrote a quite positive review about it. And the price is sure right -- I think it streets at around $1600, right?

The CMOS chip is very interesting. On the downside, the camera uses some sort of (I believe they call it ERT) "electronically rolling shutter" -- apparently it can lead to some interesting picture artifacts, such as the image bulging or "leaning" on a horizontal pan, or stretching/squeezing on a vertical tilt. That plus a dearth of usable manual control leads me to admit I haven't paid much attention to the camera since it's primarily a consumer cam, but it's been a very popular topic on other boards (such as DVInfo).
 
It's definately a consomer camera and I'm not trying to position it as anything other than that. I'm also not sold on HDV but I like the idea of starting to experiment with HD. Spending ~$10K on the HVX200 or $6500 on the HD100 makes for a fairly expensive science project, spending $1600 on a consumer HDV camera I can experiment with and take to Hawaii on vacation... :cheesy:

I'm just hoping that the image quality is comparable to the FX1 so I can make the coolest home video's on the block. :thumbsup: I'm not sure what I'll learn but I think I'm going to purchase one. :beer:
 
I agree exactly. I think the HC1 is priced right, and from the buzz I've seen on other boards, it looks like it'll do well.

Some people have said the image quality definitely rivals the FX1, others are not so convinced. I think just the basic idea of having a CMOS sensor in it is most intriguing.
 
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