Sony action cam

arigold · June 2012

Not sure if this counts as spam or not, but Sony are bringing out action camcorder

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/27/sony ... -hands-on/

nicklouse · June 2012

not spam but certainly not asking for buying advice are you

bluechair84 · June 2012

Interesting... I've always liked Sony's cameras. They take very good pictures. But it's all about the resolution and frame rate. I'm interested in what it'll be able to output. For now, the HD footage from my Kodak is well good enough.

YeehaaMcgee · June 2012

bluechair84 wrote:

But it's all about the resolution and frame rate.

No, it isn't - but people believe it is, so they keep pumping out the "high" resolution crappy cameras.
What really matters is the sensitivity of the sensor, and enough storage so that you're actually capturing some detail.

Even the expensive GoPros suck in wooded areas. Out in the open, where there's plenty of light, great, but I've never seen a good quality video once the rider heads under the cover of trees, where it all becomes a blurry pixelated mess.

bluechair84 · June 2012

Ok yeah, I agree that action cams have all sorts of issues such as iso and reaction times (isn't storage just a matter of the memory card you put in?). But there's nothing worse than trying to watch the videos people were bandying about from those cheap little Muvi copies because of how pixelated they were, even in broad daylight. And if you're into action cams, then developing your editing skills and making use of slowmo is a good thing to develop. From my own experiences, 720p60 is the best place to be, and then I agree with you that camera makers should concentrate on iso instead of 1080p to get better footage.

YeehaaMcgee · June 2012

By storage, I mean the codec used to save footage.
There's no point having all the bells and whistles if you're going to massively compress things into a tiny format, throwing away any semblance of quality.
I'm fairly sure that a GoPro camera could potentially offer pretty good quality video even in low light, if only it used less, or ideally, no, compression.

bluechair84 · June 2012

Ah, codecs still confuse me. I still haven't gotten the grasp of the relationship between codec and container. My understanding ends at AVCHD but I've heard that you can get better quality footage by choosing the standards carefully. I think this summer when I coe back from the Alps I want to learn more about it to continue developing me editing skills. I suppose as memory card technology increases to handle higher data transfer rates, you could get away with larger, less compressed files - isn't that a major bottleneck for HD footage at the moment?

YeehaaMcgee · June 2012

bluechair84 wrote:

I suppose as memory card technology increases to handle higher data transfer rates, you could get away with larger, less compressed files - isn't that a major bottleneck for HD footage at the moment?

Yep, like I said earlier.
Uncompressed broadcast quality standard-def video looks better than the "HD" you get on SkyHD - but takes up a lot more space.

bluechair84 · June 2012

YeehaaMcgee wrote:

bluechair84 wrote:

I suppose as memory card technology increases to handle higher data transfer rates, you could get away with larger, less compressed files - isn't that a major bottleneck for HD footage at the moment?

Yep, like I said earlier.

Where did you say this? Transfer speeds being a bottle neck to file size and thus quality was a new point.

YeehaaMcgee · June 2012

Ah my mistake - when I read "memory card technology increases", I read it as "memory card capacity increases" - which tallies with what I'd mentioned earlier.

bluechair84 · June 2012

well, looks like class 10 will be superceeded soon enough as Toshiba apparently have a card that will write at 90mbs :shock: Maybe we'll see cameras take advantage of this by giving you a choice of compression levels; quality vs quantity.

YeehaaMcgee · June 2012

It's size that's the main issue.

chazkayak · June 2012

Ok your both having your own little conversation about Codecs and sensors.......what about reccomending some good cameras that you think must be better than the aforementioned Go Pro etc .

Theres no point talking pixels cmos, storage , codecs unless your going to come up with the evidence to back it up ie the camera that does what your on about.

bluechair84 · June 2012

Panasonic GH3 - would be high on my list of cameras to take out riding, but you'd only want to do stood panning shots, not head mounted shots.

YeehaaMcgee · June 2012

chazkayak wrote:

Theres no point talking pixels cmos, storage , codecs unless your going to come up with the evidence to back it up ie the camera that does what your on about.

there isn't a camera that does what I want - they're all fu**ing terrible, so I won't waste my money on any of them.

Sony action cam

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