As a professional video producer, as well as a media team leader in my church, I've been watching for the right time to upgrade my video camera to better serve my clients and ministry. I have several requirements that a new camera must fulfill, and just in the last year manufacturers have started producing what I've hoped to find at an affordable price: a high-quality camera with lots of physical controls, professional audio inputs—one that records to reasonably priced flash memory cards. I also wanted cameras that would shoot full 1920x1080 progressive HD footage; interlaced footage is so annoying when you want to use it on the web. Yet another plus is 60P in at least one recording mode.
In this review, we're taking a look at a few cameras that meet these requirements from Sony, Canon and Panasonic. JVC also has an entry in this field that we've previously reviewed—look online for the review of the JVC GY-HM100 Compact Hand-Held 3-CCD Camcorder at www.churchproduction.com/GY-HM100.
As space is always a limitation in writing reviews, I'm focusing on the video quality of the camera and its ease-of-use, and not evaluating the on-board or included microphones.
Here are some features common to all the cameras: At least two XLR audio inputs with phantom power; flash memory card recording media; a decent zoom capability on the lens (18-20x); physical controls for features such as audio inputs, white balance, gain, iris, and ND filters.
I specifically looked at cameras that support relay recording—when one memory card is full, it automatically switches to a second card, and the first can be removed and replaced with an empty card to support continuous one-camera shoots.
Video clips from each camera can be downloaded from churchproduction.com/0411_videocameras
Sony HXR-NX5U Professional AVCHD Hand-Held Camcorder
Sony's first camera in the NXCAM family has an MSRP of $4,950, and was introduced at the beginning of 2010. The camera sports a G-Series 20X lens—the G lenses are Sony's higher-end glass. It records AVCHD video to SDHC and Memory Stick media (I only used SDHC), and supports 1080i at 30 fps; 1080p at 30fps, 1080p at 24 fps; and 720p at 60 fps, as well as several SD modes. The camera has optical image stabilization that can be turned off if desired.
Video outputs include HDMI, HD-SDI, composite and component.
The camera is physically well balanced. It was very comfortable to hold from the top handle and capture nice hand-held motion shots with minimal shake. The fold-out LCD monitor felt adequate in size, and the expanded focus feature doubles the size of the image in the viewfinder to assist in fine-tuning a manual focus.
Manual focus can be temporarily overridden with a push-button to allow the camera to set focus for you and then return you to manual mode—this worked very well.
Images captured at neutral gain settings are excellent; shooting from the back of a 1,500-seat auditorium, I was able to get a waist shot on the worship leader without a problem, and the color looked very natural.
Switching to a medium gain setting (+9 dB) helped improve quality in one low-light situation, adding noticeable but minimal noise to the recorded video. The high-gain setting (+18 dB) added significant noise to the video (which is the case for most video cameras), making the captured images pretty poor, and only usable if you are desperate.
I like the feel of the camera, and the external controls are well placed. I'd prefer the temporary auto-focus button to be located on the back of the camera to make it easier to access, but it really is a matter of personal preference.
Audio inputs had a very low noise floor—it accurately recorded what it is fed.
The wheel control used to change settings, such as shutter speed, is a bit overly sensitive—if you press it hard enough to turn the wheel to change the setting, you'll just as likely fully depress it, causing it to accept the current setting instead of changing the value. This was a little annoying. But, as you're likely to only use this when you're setting up your shot, it may not be a big deal. And there's a second set of menu navigation buttons (instead of a wheel) at the top of the camera that can be used instead.
I initially thought I had found a pretty major issue with the camera. When I copied the media files off the SD cards and brought them into my editor (Sony Vegas), there appeared to be a two-frame gap in the video between each 2 GB video segment (the maximum size of a file on the CD cards), and up to four frames of missing audio. After conferring with a Sony product engineer, I learned that Sony expects you to copy the media off the cards through its content management software included with the camera. This can be done by connecting the camera to the computer with a USB cable, or via an SDHC card reader. The content management software builds a new clip on the PC from the clip fragments on the card(s) and, once this happens, all frames and audio are present. It would be nice if the fragments could be used seamlessly by simply butting them up against each other in your NLE, but that doesn't work—at least not in Sony Vegas. Sony also pointed out that the device manager function in some NLEs, such as Sony Vegas, will also reconstitute the entire clip without dropped frames. I was not aware of this at the time of the evaluation, so I didn't get a chance to try it.
I give this camera gets high marks for image quality and usability for shooting, but it loses a few minor points for having to go through a conversion process to get usable clips that spanned multiple files on the SDHC cards.
Panasonic AG-AF100 4/3-inch Professional High-Definition Camcorder
The AG-AF100 has attracted a great deal of attention since its announcement, and for good reason. Its basic premise is to enable those with a significant investment in photographic lenses a true video capability beyond what DSLRs provide.
The AF100 records to SDHC and SDXC media using the AVCHD codec. Its $4,995 MSRP buys you the camera body; a micro-four-thirds lens (or an adapter plate for other styles of lenses) needs to be added to make a usable system. The review unit Panasonic provided included a Panasonic Lumix G Vario HD 14-140mm f/4.0-5.8 lens with an MSRP of about $849.95.
It shoots full 1920x1080, with frame rates of 60i, 30p and 24p. It shoots 1280x720 at 60p, 30p and 24p. It also has an over-crank and under-crank option, to shoot at 1080p at up to 60 fps, and as low as 12 fps. It's really nice that it will do that at 1920x1080, and not make you go down to 720p mode.
For video outputs, it provides composite, HDMI and HD-SDI. Audio inputs include two XLRs with phantom power. Audio recorded from the XLR jack was quite clean.
This camera does shoot a very clean image. The lens that came with the camera isn't one of the greatest lenses, so it's a little hard to tell what to attribute to the camera, and what to attribute to the lens. Of course, you can pick any lens you want, so what you put on the front end of this camera is up to you.
So let's talk about the end results. Images were reasonably crisp—but would probably be crisper with a different lens. At 0 dB of gain, the picture is clear, with the normal amount of pixel color variations I've come to expect in AVCHD. I noticed this mostly in the blacks. Where this camera really shines is when you crank up the dB settings—at 12 dB of gain there was not nearly the noise level introduced that I often see in other video cameras, and the images were quite clear. I wouldn't have a problem doing a shoot at +12 dB with this camera.
The camera will relay-record across two cards without dropping frames at either file breakpoints or card breakpoints.
This camera has excellent balance, as well. With the optical image stabilization of the lens turned on, I had no problems getting stable, professional-quality, hand-held footage.
The camera features a Focus Assist function, where the edges of the objects in focus get outlined in red. This was truly handy—in fact, essential, as I found the LCD display rather small, and it was very difficult to tell if objects were sharply in focus. However, the Focus Assist didn't work well on objects that were moving—I was shooting footage of a bush with green leaves and red berries, and there was a light breeze blowing. Rarely was I able to get the red outline to show up. Having a Focus Magnification function, where the center of the image gets enlarged on the LCD screen for focusing, would be a nice addition.
Another focusing option available is face recognition. This camera will recognize and track on faces it sees, locking the focus on that face.
Another interesting thing I ran into relates to the Relay Recording. There is one hinged panel that covers both of the SD card slots. When you open that panel, the camera stops recording, which makes it impossible to record more than two cards-worth of video without having to stop recording for a moment. This is disappointing, but presumably something Panasonic could change in firmware.
Something to note is that as this is designed to work with photographic lenses, you'll likely have to reach around the camera and control the zoom ring manually, or get a studio kit that mechanically controls the zoom function of the lens. There are no zoom controls on the camera itself.
This camera would shine in more of a production shoot capacity—where you want the extraordinary video that a DLSR can get and want to use your collection of photographic lenses, but with controls, audio inputs and usability of a “real” video camera. To use this in a live event capacity would require more accessories, such as a larger monitor and a studio kit to deal with zooming the lens. And if you need to deal with lower light situations, this camera would be an excellent choice.
Canon XF300 High Definition Camcorder
The XF300 is Canon's first entry in the flash recording media camera market. With an MSRP of $6,799, it records to Compact Flash media rather than SD cards, and records with the MPEG2 codec rather than AVCHD, which is a bit easier on video editing systems.
It sports an integrated Canon 18x L-series lens, two XLR audio inputs with phantom power, and HDMI, component and composite video outputs. Recording resolutions are 1920x1080 at 60i, 30p and 24p. 1280x720 records at 60p, 30p and 24p. It also supports an HDV resolution of 1440x1080.
What makes this camera different and exciting is that it offers a 50 Mbps data rate, enabling a 4:2:2 color space—no compression of the color information, resulting in an outstanding picture. The downside of this beautiful footage is almost 25 GB of disc space for each hour of footage shot. You also have the option of going with a 35 Mbps data rate, but this limits the color space to 4:2:0. 1440x1080 records at 25 Mbps, 4:2:0 color space.
At 0 dB of gain, the blacks in the video are outstanding—perfectly smooth with no noise or compression artifacts. Colors are excellent. At 6 dB, you start getting a little video noise, but the footage is quite usable. At 12 dB of gain, you start getting into noise levels that are pretty noticeable.
The LCD display is nice and large, and with a “Magnify” function that shows the center of the recorded image at 2x size, improving the quality of manual focus situations. The camera also has a “peaking” option, which shows sharp, in-focus edge outlines in a user-selectable color. And lastly, in autofocus mode, the camera has an option to detect and focus on faces.
The XF300 has two CF card slots, and will relay-record from one card to the next when the card is full. It also will create multiple video files for one take due to the file-size limit of 2 GB in the CF card file system. Breaking the video across files and cards is flawless—no frames are dropped, even at 50 Mbps. And there are no problems replacing a full card while recording to the other card to continue recording non-stop for hours. Audio quality through the XLR jacks is very good with a low noise floor.
I had no problems with any of the XF300's functions—it performed flawlessly. The power switch is a little touchy, so you'll want to make sure you really turn the camera off and don't overshoot into playback mode instead. If I have any complaint, it's with the CF card reader I was using. As the electrical connections with CF cards is through a dual row of pins that get inserted into the card, it was easy to bend a pin in the card reader I bought. And as I only had two cards for my test, and was shooting a three-hour event, I needed to remove the footage from each card as soon as it was full, and return it to the camera. I'd either want a sturdier card reader, or to have several readers with me just in case.
Summary
Due to space limitations, I was only able to touch on some of the features and capabilities of these cameras. If any of these interest you, it is well worth your time to review the manual to learn about the full feature sets. Manuals for all of these cameras are available on the manufacturers' websites.
