Is it a DSLR with pretensions of being a video camera? Or the reverse? Sony’s new NEX-VG10E combines the best of both worlds... or does it? David Smith checks out this new offering from Sony.

High-end DSLR cameras have been found lurking on the sets of TV commercials, indie films and even the TV series House. The reason is simple: they have full-frame image sensors which allow them to capture images with extremely narrow depth of field. As a result, actors’ faces can be artfully separated from the out-of-focus background and it is possible to pull focus from one character to another, in a manner beloved of feature film cinematographers.

The other reason DSLRs have gained favour is that, compared to full-frame video cameras such as the Red series, these still cameras that can shoot HD video are ridiculously cheap – less than one tenth the price of their video counterparts.

The downside of using DSLRs for video is that they are superbly designed ergonomically for shooting stills. The grip design and placement of controls have evolved in all recent DSLRs to make holding and operating the camera a breeze. However the ergonomics of shooting video are fundamentally different and in a curious twist, there are now many companies offering DSLR-to-video conversion kits that include microphone holders, redesigned handgrips and matte boxes.

Sony took a different approach with the NEX-VG10E. They have taken the excellent 14.6 megapixel  CMOS APS-C image sensor – as used in some of their still cameras – and packaged it in a very neat handycam body. The result is a camera combining DSLR-style narrow depth-of-field with video camera ergonomics. A very interesting offering indeed! To add extra spice to the deal, the camera comes with an 11:1 interchangeable zoom lens, a four-capsule stereo microphone array, and the convenience of AVCHD recording to memory stick or SDHC card.     

Overview

Out of the box the camera looks classy, with a black body and very solid looking shiny metal zoom lens. It is slightly larger than many other handycams, which I have argued for years is a great advantage. Video cameras can be too small to have sufficient ‘heft’ which makes for shaky hand holding. Not so the NEX-VG10E. This camera has the same feel and ergonomics as the brilliant PD-150/170 series which were always a delight to use. This one weighs in at 1.3kg  compared with 1.8kg for a PD-150 or a whopping 2.7 kg for a Z-1P with wide angle adapter.

The NEX has it pretty much spot on!

Fig 1 A classy camera with zoom extended

The hand grip has a textured rubberized coating and is extremely comfortable to use. The main controls are well placed and – thank goodness! – the power/record switch is the same style as in pro cameras and not the dinky little ones used in smaller handycams. There is no zoom rocker, with focus and zooming controlled independently by separate rubber-coated rings on the lens. Both rings offer pretty much perfect resistance to movement making smooth zooming and focussing really easy. There is one proviso, which is that the focus ring requires a lot of turning to achieve a long pull focus. This makes fine focussing extremely precise, but can make pull focussing tricky.

The e-mount lens extends physically by a massive 700mm in going from wide to tele and this inevitably makes the camera quite front heavy. This is offset by the fact that you’ll use your left hand to support the front while making adjustments to zoom and focus as required. Overall this is a very comfortable camera to use in video mode and the design is excellent for hand holding. The front element does not rotate when zooming so a circular polariser can easily be used.

Fig 2 Sharp detail at wide angle

 

Fig 3 Same shot showing excellent detail at full telephoto

The camera features truly excellent optical image stabilisation such that, even at full tele, it is easily possible to capture stable video without a tripod. Coupled with reasonably accurate – but fairly slow – autofocus, the camera can be used very successfully in point-and-shoot style videography.

The viewfinder and LCD screen are both extremely high quality, vastly superior to, for example, those on the little Sony A1P. The image in both is crisp and clean and features a useful ultra-fine grid dividing the screen into thirds. It’s so fine it’s almost not there, but it can be very handy for framing.

An innovative menu system

It’s the menu system in this camera that really shines. I love having the full control of numerous functions right at my fingertips and so my Z1 is paradise. Touch screens have always left a little to be desired (notable exception the Sony MC50) and making rapid changes to settings, as is often required in a professional situation, is difficult when you have to negotiate a multi-level menu system.

Sony has implemented a whole new approach in the NEX-VG10E and it’s brilliant!

Fold out the LCD screen and there’s a very simple panel, featuring eight labelled buttons and a central selector wheel. The buttons take you directly to their stated function, or else they function as standard cursor keys, making navigation through menus very simple and precise. So you use either buttons or wheel to navigate to the item you want, then press the wheel to select it. But it gets even better.

Fig 4 DSLR-style virtual program wheel

For years now, DSLRs have featured a rotating knob that lets you easily select from a range of presets such as P for full auto programming, S for shutter priority, A for aperture priority and so on. Although there’s no physical wheel, Sony have used this metaphor and provided a virtual wheel that appears in the viewfinder when you press the “Shoot Mode” selector.  Move the selector knob up or down – or use the cursor buttons – and the virtual preset wheel rotates on screen. Because it’s set up exactly the same as on a DSLR it’s instantly familiar.

Fig 5 Dedicated function/cursor buttons and selector wheel

The eight buttons have the following assignments:

MENU – self explanatory, and also serves as a “back” button in some menus

DISP – toggles screen information on or off and can also include a histogram

ARROW – takes you directly to playback mode for videos or stills showing thumbnails of all available clips

WB – white balance selection with options ranging from full auto through daylight, tungsten etc to full manual.

GAIN – Rotates from AUTO up to +27dB in video mode or up to ISO 12,800 in still mode – yes, that’s 12,800! And yes, there will be grain at that level.

FOCUS – switch between AF auto and M manual, as well as “DMF” in still mode, although I couldn’t find any definition of what “DMF” is supposed to do.

EXPOSURE COMPENSATION – self explanatory

FINDER/LCD – allows you to switch to finder while keeping the LCD panel open

Although the “virtual wheel” can be adjusted by either the selector wheel or the cursor keys, the cursors are better because the selector wheel is a tad too sensitive and easily slips across too many options. This would have been a problem if you didn’t have the option of using cursors but SONY helpfully gave you that better option.

Interchangeable lenses

This feature alone sets this camera apart in the world of handycams, with SONY α e-series lenses available as follows:

e series lens	Focal length	Aperture
SEL 18200	18-200mm	F3.5-6.3	Supplied
SEL16f28	16mm	F2.8
SAL50m28	50mm	F2.8 Macro
SAL70400G	70-400mm	F4.5-5.6

Additionally, the LA-EA1 adapter allows you to use the entire array of Sony α lenses.

Supplied Software

The supplied Picture Motion Browser (PMB) software installed flawlessly and worked reliably to rapidly ingest video and still images from the camera. The software has numerous features for helping to organise and rate your clips and stills. It also allows you to display files by shooting date, or even by shooting location in Map View.

The resulting AVCHD clips played back smoothly on a 64-bit computer using Sony Vegas Pro 10 64-bit. On lower spec computers it would be desirable to transcode to an intermediate format for editing as AVCHD is primarily a delivery format, imposing large CPU and memory demands during playback.

The camera in use

I found the NEX-VG10E to be very pleasant to use as a video camera. Startup time is rapid and the ergonomics are excellent. The supplied lens is not especially wide or fast. At its widest it is 35.4mm, similar to the 32.5 of the Z1 (35mm equivalent focal lengths). This barely scrapes into the normal definition of wide angle lenses, which typically range in 35mm terms from 28 down to 17 or 18mm, before moving into the fish-eye range. The upshot is that your first extra purchase will probably be a wide angle lens.  

The minimum aperture of 3.5 is definitely a bit on the slow side, even with the huge extra gain available. With minimum illumination of 11 lux (compared with 3 lux for the Z1) you will need to boost the gain in low light situations. I found that gain increases up to about 18dB did not produce a noticeable increase in noise so the Exmor processor is doing its job well.

Thanks to the heavy rainfall this year in Melbourne, our garden is alive with insects and spiders. I managed to capture footage of an orb-weaver with both the Z1 and NEX-VG10E  and the comparisons are interesting. There’s no doubt that the NEX records images faithfully throughout the zoom range but when images from the Z1 and NEX were compared side to side, the Z1 wins out. During my years as a zoologist, we used to use the fine veins in insect wings as a simple way of checking the resolution of our microscopes. In this case the fine spider web and also the even finer hairs on the spider’s legs provide an extreme test of any camera lens. The moving images from both cameras on full zoom were good, even when hand held, but better when on a sturdy tripod.

The Z1 did have the edge in resolution, with fine hairs on the spider’s legs clearly visible. In the case of the NEX, the hairs had a slight fuzziness to them and there were also some small jaggies on the spider web threads. Having said that, this is a really extreme test. If you were shooting a broadcast documentary on spiders, you’d use the best camera you could afford. All the same, for a quality home movie on orb spiders the NEX would do a great job!

Audio recorded with the inbuilt microphone array produced clean stereo sound. There’s no camera or zoom motor, so there’s no motor noise, even when zooming. The stereo image was excellent, with bird calls placed realistically across the field and car engines moving with the image across the screen. This would seem to be a very useful device for recording stereo atmosphere tracks, much as I currently use my Zoom H2.

For professional use there is a shotgun microphone available which plugs into the cold shoe on the handle. Control of audio level is, however, limited to a single level control and there are no level meters. Although there is a mini-jack for mic in, there is no line in, so feeding audio from a mixer would not be possible without attenuating the signal first.  

Using it as a stills camera

I was interested to see if the NEX-VG10E, which is essentially a 14.6 megapixel DSLR wrapped in a handycam shell, would work as well as a stills camera. The short answer is ‘no’, for purely ergonomic reasons. Technically the camera can shoot great still images. The colour is rich and the depth of field can be adjusted through a wide range from shallow for portraiture, to deep for landscapes.

 

Fig 6 Orb spider shot hand held on full tele

 

Fig 7 Fuchsias showing narrow depth of field

Unfortunately, although the camera fits the hand brilliantly for video, this arrangement just doesn’t seem to work for carefully lining up stills. It has a lot to do with the position of the shutter button, which is just not as easy to control as on a DSLR. I was quite surprised to discover this difference – I hadn’t realised how beautifully designed my Pentax was for accurate use of the shutter button.

When shooting stills it is essential that you use the fastest SD or Memory Stick card available. For SDHC cards Class 4 is the minimum. Anything slower will produce unacceptably slow post-shutter processing times. With the right card it’s very responsive.

In a way, if DSLRs are compromised for use as video cameras, then the NEX-VG10E is compromised in the converse way. I seriously wonder if the NEX-VG10E could have been designed with a grip based on that of a DSLR, but with all the other handycam ergonomics.  Maybe THAT would be the best of both worlds?

Fig 8 A well built camera

CONCLUSION

The Sony NEX-VG10E is an innovative incarnation of the APS-C sized image sensor in a handycam housing. The build quality is outstanding and the size and weight of the camera suit hand-held shooting very well indeed. Image quality is excellent, as is stereo audio from the four-capsule on-camera array. The exceptional menu system with cursor buttons and selector wheel is a delight to use. As handycams go, this is quite expensive but with great performance, separate zoom and focus rings and a vast array of interchangeable lenses available, this camera represents excellent value for money.

Vendor:                                  Sony Australia

                                               www.sony.com.au

 

Price:                                      $3,499 (seen on the street for $2,700)

 

AusCam Ratings

Performance:                         9

Documentation:                     7

Features:                                8

Installation:                            9

Value:                                    8

Help:                                      8

 

We Liked:                              Menu system and dedicated buttons, build quality, excellent video ergonomics, image and sound quality

By David Smith

Dr David Smith is a physiologist-turned-film maker. David was Associate Producer of the IMAX feature Australia Land Beyond Time and was Senior Researcher on the ABC TV series Nature of Australia. He wrote and hosted David Smith's Earthwatch on ABCTV and was 'resident zoologist' on the Don Lane and Bert Newton Shows.

In 1987 David set up his company, imaginACTION pty ltd (www.imaginaction.net.au) and has sinced written, directed and/or filmed numerous documentaries and educational multimedia projects. He has also written six books, including two Penguin eco-thrillers. Over the past five years David has moved towards medical and health-related projects, including trauma surgery, schizophrenia and emergency medicine.

David is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts and a professional member of the AFI and has always been keen to share his knowledge, especially with young budding film makers. David can be contacted at david@imaginaction.net.au.

 

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