Given the sheer volume of image correction tools in the Canon XH A1, the slightly better out-of-the-box performance of the FX7 is ultimately beaten back. While the picture looked cleaner, it also had more noise. In conclusion, our testing showed that the HDR-FX7 has a tendency to saturate colors and increase sharpening more than the Canon XH A1.
FX PHOTO STUDIO HDR FULL
At a +3 setting, the colors are still not as strong as they are in Cinematone, which puts the Cinematone saturation levels are at approximately +4 or +5 on the Color Level scale. See full resolution color charts of bright light and low light performance here. This might act as a good counterbalance to the Cinematone colors if you want to shoot in that setting. At -3, the picture is actually pretty close to what we saw on the Canon XH A1 in automatic. The Color Level is defaulted to 0, on a scale of -7 to +7 (with an additional setting of -8 for straight black & white). This lacks the fine level of the control that the Canon XH A1 offers, but it’s a good, rough way to make adjustments. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to way to play with color saturation: the Color Levels tool in the Picture Profile menu. These increases also boosted the noise, which became that much more apparent. The contrast was also boosted, with the whites getting whiter and the blacks getting darker. With Cinematone on (and the Contrast Enhancement in the default on position), the color saturation increased a great deal. The FX7 offers one, which appears to emulate Gamma "Type 1" on the V1. Again, even with the Contrast Enhancement feature turned off, edges were sharp as a tack.Ĭinematone is an interesting feature, a gamma shift supposedly meant to emulate film tones. It also has to do with the higher contrast than the XH A1, which gives a greater apparent resolution. This is partly due to the ClearVID CMOS chips, which boast increased resolution due to the 45 degree angle of the pixels. It looked notably sharper than the XH A1, even with the Contrast Enhancement turned off. The second main element to the FX7 picture was sharpness. It has clear consumer-leaning tendencies, where strong colors are equated with "good" colors, because they require no post-production color correction. Of course, there are a number of ways to tweak the color, but this auto mode performance may dissuade some pros who will be turned off by the baseline saturation increase. The FX7 was also able to produce a cleaner, more differentiated transition from green to yellow than the XH A1, though we liked the yellow tones better in the Canon. It has the deep blues that run through nearly every Sony consumer camcorder on the market. This is the trademark crowd-pleasing color performance. The saturation levels are distinctly higher in auto mode than the Canon XH A1. In less well lit shooting environments, we found the Contrast Enhancement to press the blacks, curtailing the lower end of the dynamic range. The whites ran marginally higher with Contrast Enhancement on, but the blacks read more or less the same. It was difficult to find the difference between the images. We ran tests with the feature on and off, experimenting with different looks. This is set to default in the "on" position. Everything else was in the factory preset position, except a feature called Contrast Enhancer. We’ll try to come up with some conclusions later. So much of it comes down to personal aesthetics. JVC owners swear repeatedly that their GY-HD100’s look better than anything on the market. Sony users sleep with their FX1 and Z1 tucked under the blanket. While we know of no survey to indicate just how many indie producers use 24P, our anecdotal experience suggests that most shooters are firmly encamped in their manufacturer’s pocket. Sony countered by stating that sales of the FX1 were strong despite not having 24P. The mode was maligned by some filmmakers, who instead opted for the Panasonic AG-HVX200 for their 24P fix. Also of peaked interest was Sony’s abandonment of the CineFrame mode, which mimicked 24P. Canon’s XH A1 does offer native 16:9 chips in a 3-CCD array. Neither the FX1 nor the FX7 have native 16:9 chips, and therefore must stretch each pixel horizontally. The larger chips promise better low light performance, but the higher resolution of the FX7 should make for better performance in bright light. Much has been made of Sony’s 3-CMOS array, which at the time of announcement was the first to offer such a system. The effective pixel counts equal 1.037 MP in 16:9, and 778K in 4:3. Each sensor offers a gross pixel count of 1.2 MP (1440 x 810). The Sony HDR-FX7’s imaging system is composed of three 1/4" CMOS sensors.