CAMERA as GOOD as the SCARLET ??

[Jeff Kilgroe]

yI took a good look at NEX-5 yesterday, took some footage and brought home, then started to see it on the monitors. It's the same as EOS, the footage look great on the built in small monitor, but as soon as you display them on the decent full HD monitor, you would start to see the moire and more judders than should be.

Yeah, the video is the same line-skipped, aliased crap. I think the NEX-5 has superior low-light compared to the 7D, it definitely does for stills. Anyway, I bought the camera for stills use. The crappy video mode is just a bonus.

It's probably the greatest small single lense digital camera with full-hd video feature, but I'm going to see what Panasonic will do the next. Of course I'm talking about these being my pocket camera, my main camera would be fixed lens Scarlet.

Pass on the DMC-G2 and DMC-G10. Truly dreadful still image quality and the video isn't any better. Maybe they'll do better with the GH2?

Not sure what to think of the VG10... If it demosaics in-camera with good down-scaling before compression or output, it should produce a nice image. If it line-skips like the NEX-5, then I wouldn't waste my time with it.

I've got two Epic-X cameras coming my way, so there's little chance of me buying a VG10 or any other HD video camera anyway. If I do, it will be the fixed-lens Scarlet, but I think once I have the Epic-X cameras, I'm going to hold my breath and wait for the EPIC 645 and Scarlet FF35 before I buy anything else.

 

[Graham_C]

Jeff,did you pass by the `hackable ` Gh1 Pany on route to the NEX-5?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Jeff,did you pass by the `hackable ` Gh1 Pany on route to the NEX-5?

Yes, I did. The only reason to hack the GH1 firmware is to get the higher video bit-rate. But it's still the same line-skipped, jello video. Improved, yes it is, but nothing I personally have interest in. I actually bought the DMC-G2, which is newer and supposedly improved over the previous generation, including the GH1, for stills. They added an ISO 6400 setting, but overall the picture quality was not improved and I returned it because I felt overall image quality for stills use was severely lacking and the low-light performance was terrible. Too bad because I really liked the camera and the m4/3 format. I just had higher expectations for the price tag. I also looked at the Olympus E-PL1 and E-P2.

The NEX-5 was a much better fit for me. I initially passed it up because of the Sony label (yeah, short sighted on my part) and because most people seem more interested in its video abilities for some reason. Turns out, it's one very impressive compact SLR-style camera.

Here's an image straight out of the camera, no adjustments. Shot hand-held with the 18-55 kit lens @55mm. ISO 800, 1/250s F5.6

100% crop. This is what ISO 800 looks like from this camera... No de-noise or any post tweaking applied. The little bit of noise we see here is mostly from the JPEG compression for posting the images and I even went pretty high quality with that...

 

[Michael Olsen]

Jeff, for a brief minute I thought you were posting stills taken from the NEX's video and was really shocked!

Regardless, that is some impressive performance.

 

[Graham_C]

Looks like a great little camera Jeff,how have the found the video fuction?..

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Looks like a great little camera Jeff,how have the found the video fuction?..

High ISO performance for video is good. Seems to have a bit less shutter skew than the 7D. Otherwise it's comparable to most other DSLR systems in this regard. Which means it really sucks. The aliasing and moire from line-skipping is really bad, just like on any other DSLR, perhaps even a bit worse than what Canon is doing. I really did not buy the camera for the video ability. I haven't shot more than 2 minutes of video with it.

I kinda diverted this thread, which wasn't really a good topic for around here anyway. Truthfully, I should shut this thread down -- this is RED USER not NEX USER. Besides, there's lots of NEX-5 video starting to pop up all over the web anyway.

Anyway, in keeping with the procedure around here, I am going to shut this thread down. There's some NEX discussion over at the dpreview.com forums. If any of you have specific questions about the NEX-5 for stills or mounting Nikon, Leica, Canon or PL-mount glass to it. Feel free to contact me privately. Don't contact me with questions on the NEX-5 video... I frankly will not be a good resource for it since I have little interest in shooting video with the NEX-5.