Last year the Southern Institution of Technology, my most favourite of institutions, purchased a whole batch of Sony A1 cameras to replace the hardy Sony PDX10's. The main reasoning behind this purchase is that Sony no longer made the PDX10, and the A1's were positioned as a replacement. Also, S.I.T doesn't seem to get any non Sony movie cameras for some weird reason. Maybe they have an exclusive deal with Sony, but its unlikely. Anyway back to the subject at hand.
My first impressions of the camera were, "Wow, looks like a little kids cam". Indeed, this appears to be the standard first impression of the camera, whether you are caught in public using it, or attempting to look professional filming for the local schools, which is no easy task with this camera. Its ungodly small, kind of too small to be functional. In order to reduce the size, Sony decided to take almost all the manual controls off the camera, and add them instead to the software accessed by the touch screen LCD. So not only do you get to scroll through neverending menus just to increase or decrease your microphone volume, you get the added benefit of putting your greasy fingerprints all over the LCD display. Nice.
Some other improvements, or lack of them, is the inferior picture quality compared to the PDX-10. The Sony A1 uses a newer CMOS chip, but the sensor size is so extremely small that it actually makes for worse quality, compared with the PDX10's 3 CCD design. Combine this with the smaller lens size, so less light can reach the tiny sensor. Good work Sony, nice replacement.
The other major qualm I have with this camera is the sensitivity of the camera to different environments and tapes. The camera will simply fail to function if there is even the slightest bit of moisture inside the deck, or if the tapes are cold, or basically if the weather or temperature of your location is no less than pristine. This problem also comes up when you are attempting to capture your footage, with the camera producing strange error codes that aren't in the manual, all the while telling you to please eject the tape.
It seems Sony did a really good job on this camera, I commend them. In all seriousness, I hope to never have to lay my hands on one of these pathetic cameras again.
A Month of Reflection
7 months ago
2 comments:
Sounds like they are annoying pieces of crap. Never having used this cameras there isn't much more to say about that.
I will say that I do like the PDX-10s. We've still got two of them, though only one of them is actually functioning so you can't really count the other one. I used one for an extrenal scene in Calvin Island to see how they compared to the VX2000s/PD170 just for the hell of it. I couldn't spot the difference and I'd be very surprised if you could. It's a very different case in night shoots though.
We always get Sony's as well, with the exception of the crappy handycams, as the new Panasonics have Mic jacks and the others don't or something. Not really sure what the handycams are even used for, but we have six digi-8 cameras as well for gods sakes.
Yeah the PDX10 is a pretty good camera, just doesn't have the lattitude to shoot in low light levels. Most cameras seem to have some kind of advantages, except perhaps for the A1. The Z1 on the other hand is a pretty good cam, the only problems I had with that is the automatic gain that cannot be turned off, even if you disable gain completely... Just have to try and work around these kind of things.
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