Sony FDR AX100 UHD 4K

Andy the P5 previews look great but when viewed at 100% on single frame it is no where near the same quality as the normal original. There is a lot of noise when looking at the frame view.

Well I didn't have to look very hard at the still frames of the second shot to see the "that which I call not beautiful" noise and compression stuff, but will admit that the moon shot looks good. I really don't want to sound snide, but I guess it depends on what you call beautiful. And it's not that YOU aren't beautiful ... : )

At any rate, interestingly, I find it more objectionable when sky and plants and birds. You have created two shots here that allow the codec to look its best, being that a huge percentage of the frame is black, without motion. My first examinations of cropping into it were with shots such as this, (following) and were really not so pretty except for minor crops due to the lots of motion and detail.

I guess, to be fair, "Your mileage may vary", and it depends on the shot detail and motion content.

Yeah - there is some noise. However that can be cleaned up for example with red giant cosmo on the skin, or denoise in general. (I knew I forgot to do something on these) - particularly cosmo - it would make me look so much hotter. :) In any case the Gulls and Eagles shot above shows lots of color noise in the darkened tree areas. That can easily also be fixed using some of the denoise tools. But zooming in, I can see what Miz is talking about. Yes, this would be a tough clip to process at HD 100% crop method.

This is one of those things where it becomes handy to know the camera's shortcomings so as to modify our behaviour to make it look best. I'm finding for some stuff it look just brilliant, but using the FS700 in situations, especially like the one above, actually results in better actual resolution --- the AX100 here is trying to resolve the trees through the blue haze, and it can't, so the IQ is fragile. Naturally noise reduction can either help in this case, or it bollixes up all the detail in the birds. Sure wish I could turn down the Color, contrast and sharpening. It would make it tons easier on the overworked codec and I could use the much bigger brain of my computer to add those back in later. Selectively.

My little AX100 just got its first examination from a security guard.
"Is that that a video camera sir?"
Errr, yes.
"Well no video - stills fine just no video".

Here is a full review from one of our very experienced and professional shooters Alister Chapman. - This is one of the few people that I listen to and trust:

Sony AX-100 Review by Alister Chapman

And here is another on exposure tricks and tips:

Alister tricks on AX-100 for exposure settings

And last but not least on focusing tricks:

Focusing tips and tricks

Well done reviews. Here is his focus instructional video;


FOCUS

He is right about over exposure, in fact several of his sample videos blew the whites out and were over exposed far too far.

He was reading the Sony manual on the use of only SDXC cards for 4K. I have been using the SDHC UHS-1 cards and have taken over a thousand 4K clips with absolutely no problems. Re-format to exFAT before the first use and no issues. I've used SanDisk Extreme Plus SDHC 32 Gb 80MB/s and 95MB/s and have never had a problem.

He also said he believes the sensor was designed for photos. If this is the case it was a terrible design. The photos are not very good at all. The video is excellent. I would have a hard time using the photos for anything professional.

Good reviews.

Yes he stated that the sensor was a sensor originally designed for photo type cameras, but nowhere does he even get close to saying to use it in this camera for that purpose. It is not a terrible design as he never talks about taking photos. He was merely making a point of the sensor size relative to such a camera and price of this camera. This is a video camera. Who cares about the photo quality? Alister is an expert on Sony products and gets contracted by Sony to do many trade shows with them. Considering that he works and owns many very high end cameras from Sony as well as this and gives this a proper review and explanation, I listen to him regarding usage before anyone else. I seriously doubt he was merely reading the manual as he has full access to the engineers at Sony.

He does a good review, just adding to it somewhat so people won't be mislead.

Not arguing Andy. Just stating that ( he thinks it was designed for photos, wonder why Sony didn't tell him) it is not a good photo sensor for those who like dslr that do both video and photo pretty good. If a photog thinks they will get a great video camera and a good photo camera this is not the one. Agree he did not say it was a great photo camera but would make people believe it takes good photos because it was designed for photos.

His video was on the VIDEO side of the camera so just to add the Photo side is not very good. Maybe he'll review the photo side someday but why? It's a video camera ;)

Well explained video.

The price of AX100 dropped in Europe too, from €1950 to €1719 within a month. This is certainly more attractive to GH4 to lot of real video shooters..