brucecleveland
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Mar 25, 2008, 8:54 AM
Post #1 of 22
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Sony Z7U Review
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I thought it might be helpful if I posted a few random thoughts of what I think about the new Sony Z7 video camera. Keep in mind that I have not really shot a wedding with this camera. I did help a friend out and did some shooting at a Restaurant show and shot about an hour and a half of video. Overall I really really like this camera. The handheld shots are going to be more stable because of the weight and balance of this camera. Most of the controls are placed very well and easy to get to. The one control I don't understand is the audio control. I don't understand why they put a plastic door over it with a magnet, so when it gets closed it makes a click that the camera will pick up. Not sure why the door is there and it would probably be ok without the door there. Also the control knobs I think are going to be hard to adjust and see what you are doing. It feels good to hold it, although twice as heavy as my PD170. The Z7 seems to be much more manually control oriented than the 2100s and 170s. Once you switch the manual button on, you must be sure to manually control everything else on the camera, or they will make the normal auto adjustments. Found this out the hard way. I had manual iris on and made sure to manually control shutter speed, locked it on manual 60, but did not do the same for the gain. So the gain compensated for my iris adjustments and left me with mostly grainy video. I love the size of the iris adjustment and the fact that you can make adjustments in small increments. Not sure yet if I like the lcd monitor up where it is.
Now for the stuff people have been complaining about. The first thing is the rolling shutter, caused by the use of cmos sensors instead of ccds. This I feel has been blown way out of proportion and gives people that are not making the jump to HD one more reason to just wait. I do not feel this issue is going to be resolved anytime soon though, so it might be a long wait if you are thinking about cmos cameras. Next is the auto focus issue. Some people are not happy with the speed of the auto focus and think it is not only very slow, but doesn't seem to want to lock in on anything. I have to say that I have not had this issue, but I always felt that the 170s and 2100s were pretty slow as well, compared to the GL2s that I graduated from. The big issue everyone is complaining about is the play in the zoom ring when the lens is set to servo mode. Servo mode just means that the zoom motor is engaged. The amount of play on my camera is a quarter of an inch or so. Although I really don't think this is going to be a problem for me, I did call Sony and make them aware of the problem. For that much money, this is just sloppy assembly. I have been just shooting to CF card and can see no problems so far. Seems to take about 15 minutes to copy 75 minutes of video to my computer via a firewire card reader.
The low light video seems pretty good at 0 gain. I still say it is as good as the 170s, but some people will argue with that. Overall I like this camera alot and do not regret my investment. Most of the things people have been complaining about were things that I would never have thought of myself. So are they really problems then? Probably not for me. Either I am just easy to please, or I am trying to defend my big purchase.
Bruce
"Always over my head, but not quite deep enough to drown."
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