My open letter to Sony about camcorders
Jan 23 '03 (Updated Aug 20 '03)
The Bottom Line Outlines several qualities to look for in a camcorder. Unfortunately they are not as widespread as they should be because manufacturers often choose to maximize gimmicks - not video quality.
Dear Sony:
I would like to convey my opinion (shared by quite a few fellow video enthusiasts that I know) about your camcorders. We see two alarming negative trends in the newer Sony MiniDV digital camcorders:
1. Indoor ("Low light") performance of the camcorders does not improve and often actually gets worse with the next generation products (probably due to smaller sensors with greater pixel counts, resulting in much smaller individual pixels). Such small pixels, besides inferior low light performance, also have a worse dynamic range, resulting in a harsh, contrasty looking footage. Decreasing sensor sizes also widens depth of field, making it harder to capture the main subject in a way that minimizes background clutter.
2. Angular coverage at the widest angle zoom setting (shortest focal length) is lost - a case in point is TRV950 that is worse than TRV900, and PC101 that is worse than PC9. New lenses sometimes sacrifice aperture, distortion, wide angle coverage, and light falloff, to get a big zoom range. Using a wide angle attachment to gain back some of that wide angle coverage is a very bad option as these attachments (even those priced hundreds of dollars) add significant barrel distortion, light falloff, flare, and sometimes other aberrations.
As a result of these trends, in this day and age, my colleagues and I feel deprived of video tools at higher end consumer and prosumer level, that improve on the basic video quality of the older versions of camcorders, rather than merely add gimmicks, often at the cost of sacrificing some valuable aspects of core video quality (mentioned above) to provide these gimmicks.
It should be entirely technically feasible to create a compact camcorder with
* a large (1/3"), low pixel count, CCD sensor (that has a good balance between light sensitivity and vertical smear control), possibly with a 3CCD version available for more $$$
* a lens that does not trade off wide angle coverage, aperture, or lack of distortion, to get an otherwise unattainable in a given price, zoom range. If it has to be a 4x or 6x zoom range as opposed to 10x, so be it, but the widest zoom setting in 35mm camera terms, should be 30mm (with very low or no barrel or pincusion distortion) - not 40 or 50mm as is often seen today, and the aperture should be f/1.4.
* balanced mike inputs
* progressive scan 60fps (480p), 30fps, and 24fps modes - useful not only for film transfer, but (much more applicable) DVD creation, whereby progressive scan, especially 24fps frame rate, footage, allows MPEG2 compression to create a much higher quality / lower artifact video at a given bitrate (vs. interlaced footage), or fit more footage in a given DVD space without sacrificing quality.
I am hoping you could take these points under advisement. I personally believe that the video community needs all these points implemented in three camcorders:
1) A VX2000 class and form factor semi-pro camcorder. Ideally, with the interchangeable lens this time, with telephoto and fixed focal f/1.0 lenses available besides the included with the camera wide angle zoom (say 30mm-150mm f/1.4) - in 35mm film SLR camera terms.
2) A TRV-950 form factor camcorder, also taking into account all the above points. Non-interchangeable lens should still be 30mm at the widest; OK to have variable max. aperture. To conserve space, balanced mic inputs may need to be wired as 1/8" mini phono TRS jacks (ideally with settings to reuse same for mono or stereo non-balanced mics and to have or not have phantom power).
3) As compact a MiniDV camcorder as you can make, while still taking into account the above points. OK to have a manual (non-motorized) tape loading (i.e. perhaps a manual locking lever to thread the tape once inserted), if it makes it more compact, simple, and solid. To maintain compactness without sacrificing wide angle coverage or aperture, OK to have only a 3X zoom range (30mm-100mm) - a screw-on 3X telephoto adapter accessory lens could be made available.
I feel, there are enough innovations possible that can entice people to buy a new camcorder - features that supplement, facilitate and enhance, rather than sacrifice, its key video quality aspects. For instance, you could have
* a bluetooth wireless digital microphone adapter built in,
or
* 802.11 wireless streaming (preferably in Windows Media or RealNetworks or QuickTime format),
or
* a detachable (wired or wireless) touch-sensitive LCD monitor panel (that would have camcorder controls so one could control frame focus point and zoom, etc., without shaking the camcorder even on a lightweight tripod),
or
* a component video out & optical digital audio out, for high quality playback
or
* an optional enhanced DV tape recording format, that would utilize today's compression algorithms that are leaps and bounds beyond the aging DV compression, and faster processors, to more efficiently store audio and video information on DV tape than the current / baseline DV codec. Ideally, support for up to 1080p HDTV format, would be desired, but at least, [1] capability to record multiple (5.1 or 6.1) channels of audio in 24 bits & 96 KHz fidelity (ideally up to 32 bits & 192KHz) in place of the current uncompressed 16/48 stereo audio track, plus [2] actual tape recording / playback capability to reproduce 720x480 pixels (as opposed to approx. 450 lines real-world mini DV tape resolution), with NO color subsampling - i.e. 4:4:4 format. Please further develop the data redundancy measures, with redundant segments physically spread on tape perhaps as much as 3" apart, allowing recovery from even relatively severe tape flaws and dropouts.
Please, no more gimmicks (like an overengineered digital camera capability) that do not provide adequate results anyway compared to even cheap contemporary digital cameras, yet force you into design tradeoffs that make video quality worse in several ways.
If your advertisement and marketing departments would then be called upon to promote the value of such camcorder features as low light performance, wide angle lens coverage, narrow depth of field, low lens distortion, and wide dynamic range/non-harsh-contrast video, so much the better!!
Sincerely,
Alexander
January 2003
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Epinions.com ID:
karasa
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Member: Alexander Karasev
Location: New York, NY
Reviews written: 23
Trusted by: 12 members
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