Sony NX5U and Panasonic HMC150

M

Mark Von Lanken

Well-known member
I have an NX5U on loan for 48 hours. I was doing some comparison footage with my Panasonic HMC150 and the footage from the NX5U looks really soft. Both cameras were in 1080/30p in the highest quality mode, all manual...focus, WB, f/stop, gain and the Picture Profile/Scene File was set to neutral. I doubled checked everything and even reset the camera, but nothing helped.

The Sony looks out of focus. I used both Expanded Focus and Peaking to focus the Sony. Focus looked very sharp in both the LCD and an external monitor. Focus came out on both cameras around 6 ft. I took focus on the Sony from 4.5ft to 7.5ft in .1 increments, just hoping to find the focus spot. I brought that footage into Edius and never did see a spot where focus looked sharp.

Has anyone else experienced this? Last year I compared the Sony Z5 to the HMC150 and the images looked really close, but the NX5U isn't even close. Since the Z5 is HDV and the NX5U is AVCHD, I expected it to look even better than the Z5. Any ideas on what I could be doing wrong?

http://vimeo.com/9783117
 
Thank you for this comparison Mark... For a moment, I was considering this camera for my wife and her videos... I'm glad I didn't, It looks like I'd be pretty disapointed with the results.
Len

It was great meeting you and Trisha in Austin.
 
I think he tried eveything, how's it look coming straight out of the camera into an HDTV? Perhaps something is going wrong on the software side in your editor (though, it's just 24mbps avchd, nothing new).
 
I have never experienced a backfocus problem, but this sure looks like what I have seen others describe. Take a look and see what you think.

This camera is just on loan for the weekend, but if I would have just put out $9000 plus on a couple of these, I would be very upset and disappointed.

I am going to shoot some footage tonight at a wedding reception and I guess I will have to use auto focus. I have never shot a reception in all auto focus, so we will see how it goes.

http://vimeo.com/9788720
 
Xian Messerschmidt said:
There is some raw NX5U footage posted on this site...

http://www.nx5u.com/

I wasn't terribly impressed with it myself.
Click to expand...


Huh. I thought it looked pretty good for raw footage. It isn't like the subject matter for any of it was all that impressive to begin with. It'll take a little while for people to get out with their new cameras to capture more interesting stuff.

Just ordered mine yesterday, so hopefully I'll be posting some myself . . .
 
Xian Messerschmidt said:
It didn't make me want to sell my HMC-150 is all I meant.
Click to expand...

Oh, sure. Well, they are in the same class of camera, so should be comparable. Wouldn't expect one to totally blow the other one away. If I already had an HMC150 I wouldn't be running out to buy an NX5U either. Since I was already in the market for a mid-level pro camera, I weighed the two against each other, quality, options, price, and all, the NX5U narrowly pulled ahead of the Panny for me.
 
Xian Messerschmidt said:
You might want to take a look at this thread...

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=200126
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've been following Adam's issue there. Seems to be a problem with a defective FMU128 flash unit rather than a bad camera. No one else that I've seen has been able to duplicate his problem, and he has no issues shooting unless he uses that flash unit. Sony is replacing the unit for him, so we'll see if that fixes it. I suspect it will.

Also there's a backfocus quality control issue someone else had, which I'll have to look out for. All stuff to be expected on a first batch, but I'm not too concerned. They are not problems with the NX5U per se, but rather with individual units.
 
Hai Mark, I believe it I read something in a German review that the default sharpness of this camera is very low. I haved play with this camera for one day and after setting de sharpness a little higher the footage looked great.

Marco
 
Hi Marco,

For my testing, I kept both cameras in their stock settings. I have Scene Files that I like to use with the HMC150, but since I was not as familiar with the NX5U, it would be unfair to test various Scene Files from the HMC150 to Picture Profiles on the NX5U.

The soft images you saw on my test footage was from a back focus issue and adjusting the sharpness setting would not fix that. If I get another NX5U to do a more complete review of, I will play around with the sharpness settings. Thanks for the tip.
 
Thanks Superfresa66. I am working with a guy on uploading a low rez preview as well as a full size high rez version so you can download the files and really see what is going on with the cameras.
 
Do you have a Sony rep in the area? This sure looks like some kind of either operator error or equipment (lens) problem...There's some assumptions we are making but it's rather too stark a difference to be that all Sony's are this bad. It's possible it's a defective lens. If nothing else, I would return the camera, and send along this video.
 
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