Sony NEXVG900 Full Frame Interchangeable Lens Camcorder Video Camera with 3-Inch LCD(Black)

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Price: $3,298.00    

Product Feature

• World's first 24.3MP Exmor(TM) full frameHD CMOS Sensor Camcorder
• Uncompressed Full 1080 HDMI® output in 24p/60p/60i
• Includes LA-EA3 lens adaptor for full frame A-mount lens compatibility
• High contrast XGA OLED Tru-Finder(TM) EVF w/ eye sensor
• Quad Capsule Spatial Array Surround (5.1) microphone

Product Description

Sony®NEX-VG900 is a world� �s first 24.3MP Exmor � full frameHD CMOS Sensor Interchangeable Lens Camcorder with an uncompressed Full 1080 HDMI® output in 24p/60p/60i. Includes LA-EA3 lens adaptor for full frame A-mount lens and a high contrast XGA OLED Tru-Finder� EVF w/ eye sensor. In addition to a Quad Capsule Spatial Array Surround (5.1) microphone and direct Iris/Gain/Shutter, zoom and Peaking manual buttons. For a more in-depth look, check out the Sony® Interchangeable Lens Camcorder comparison chart.

Sony NEXVG900 Full Frame Interchangeable Lens Camcorder Video Camera with 3-Inch LCD(Black) Review

This camera is wonderful and frustrating at the same time. It's the first and only dedicated full frame interchangable lens camcorder with a NEX e mount that can accept virtually any lens (via adapters), from Sony A mount to Canon, Nikon and even Leica M lenses. I wanted to dive in and immerse myself in all the full frame glory. But I can't fully do that and I'll explain why.

First, why this camcorder COULD be an amazing game-changing tool that would blow all DSLRs out of the water: That gorgeous full-frame sensor and the e-mount which allows the use of virtually any 35mm lens ever made, including not only any SLR lens in existence but even Leica rangefinder lenses, all in a dedicated video form factor with unlimited recording time that doesn't require a ton of rigging and add-ons just to make it work. Good low-light performance? Check. High dynamic range? Check. The ability to achieve razor-thin depth of field, lovely bokeh and precise subject isolation? Absolutely. It even has focus peaking and zebra, total manual exposure control and both auto-gain and auto-shutter speed options.

All this would be so revolutionary if Sony had not implemented the camera with such a half-baked feature set. For instance, you can only control brightness; you cannot control contrast, saturation, or sharpness in any way. There is no way to set exposure compensation +/- when shooting in auto exposure mode. You have to go to manual exposure to change brightness from the default, and then if light conditions change you have to continually compensate. There are no "scene files", preset or otherwise, to set the "look" of the footage--it doesn't even offer the basic "creative styles" found in much cheaper Sony NEX cameras such as portrait and landscape (except for some gimmicky "Picture Effects" like Toy Camera and Posterization). The default image coming out is a bit soft. It's not quite as soft as the Canon 5D Mark III but very similar -- it's still not true 1080p sharpness like the Panasonic GH2/GH3 or even a typical prosumer camcorder.

The AVCHD codec is not a professional quality compression codec. It's only 24 mb/sec which is less than broadcast standard and does not hold up well to grading in post, especially if you didn't nail the exposure exactly right when you shot the footage. Panasonic and Canon have already moved away from AVCHD and into the more solid h.264 MOV codec for their DSLRs but Sony remains in the past with this highly compressed consumer grade codec on what is supposed to be a semi-professional video camera. Although it's way less convenient than simply recording in-camera, you could solve many of these issues by recording uncompressed footage to an external recorder, and do all the adjustments in post. But what a pain and expense.

Still, I could accept ALL of these issues, if not for the one thing that prevents this camera from shooting high-quality film-like footage, and that's the bad moire and aliasing artifacts. Any object with repeating horizontal lines or patterns suffers from that distracting shimmering effect known as moire, and angled straight lines have the "jaggies" known as aliasing. These artifacts make what is otherwise gorgeous, rich full-frame film-like image quality into an obvious cheap home video look. On second thought, even cheap small sensor home video cams don't exhibit these artifacts. Moreover, when you use the camcorder in APS-C "crop mode", the moire and aliasing get even worse. This is because the APS-C mode is not even a separate dedicated video mode; it's merely the same full frame footage that has simply been been cropped and enlarged, and like a digital zoom, it's ugly. The APS-C mode footage isn't even as good as video from Sony's NEX cameras. To get anything acceptable out of this camera you need to use it in full-frame and then the catch is that you lose continuous auto-focus. That's right: even with the included Sony A mount adapter and a "supported" Sony A mount lens, there is no continuous auto-focus when shooting in the full-frame mode.

The technical reason for the moire and aliasing artifacts is called line-skipping. That means that the camcorder is not even sampling all of the pixels in the 6000x4000 sensor when shooting video. The CMOS imager isn't read out in its entirety, only a certain number of lines is read out and then converted into 1080p. It's not true, clean 1080p footage because it doesn't always work out perfectly mathematically when skipping those lines. That's why the image is not sharp, crystal clear 1080p and that's why the moire and aliasing problems occur. Sony didn't have to do this; the Panasonic GH2/GH3 for instance utilizes ALL the lines and then sub-samples down to 1080 in a process called binning, which is essentially pixel averaging. The Canon 5D Mark III eliminated most of the aliasing by using a 5760x3240 sensor that works out better mathematically as a 3:1 ratio -- but Sony didn't do this either. They simply took the 24mp sensor from the A99 and stuck it in a camcorder body with poorly implemented line-skipping. What's more, low light performance takes a hit as the sensor is collecting significantly less light information than it is capable of.

So Sony gives us this full-frame sensor camcorder, and then only samples a fraction of the pixels on it! What a waste. You only get to sample all the pixels if you take a still photo. The photos come out great, by the way, but I thought this was a camcorder. This is hardly a convenient form factor for stills photography although I have been using it that way with rangefinder lenses. Even though you can use Leica M or Voigtlander rangefinder lenses to take great 24mp photos for a fraction of the cost of a Leica M9, it looks and seems weird doing it, especially in public.

I'm purposely being harsh with my two star rating on this camera to send a message to Sony to wake up and FIX THIS moire issue. In many situations, such as when shooting in nature or shooting a model or actor with a soft background, the moire and aliasing may not rear its ugly head. But if you want to shoot any type of city scene with buildings, brick walls, wood grain, repetitive patterns on clothing or upholstery fabric, or and other scenes with straight lines, this is going to be a definite problem that is not removable in post.

Is Sony marketing this to consumers or professionals? If it's a consumer camcorder then Sony should provide at least one full-frame auto-focus motorized zoom lens. If this is supposed to be for professionals then the image quality falls short. As it is, this is neither, because no consumer wants to focus a camcorder manually all the time, and no pro will accept the aliasing issue. This was a fantastic idea and I wanted so much to love it. I do like the form factor a lot and the big sensor "look" of the footage has so much potential, but I think Sony rushed this out of the gate without optimizing the camera for what is was made for (video) by kluging a still photography sensor into a camcorder body. Unlike the FS100 which was designed from the ground up as a camcorder this was not and that's a big disappointment.

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