Sony HDR-TG1 4MP High Definition Handycam Camcorder with 10x Optical Super Steady Shot Zoom (4GB Memory Stick Included) | List Price: $899.99
Discount Price: Too low to display
|
Brand: Sony
Binding: Electronics
Features: - Features 1920 x 1080 full HD video resolution
- A slim, lightweight pure titanium camcorder body
- 4.0 megapixel still image capture; Face Detection technology for video and still images
- Includes a 2.7-inch Clear Photo LCD Plus display
- Comes with Super SteadyShot image stabilization, plus a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens
Great HD video camera in your pocket. Beware of AVCHD limitations. [Posted on 2008-05-28]
I have this camera and a Canon HF10 so I'm going to lift some of the AVCHD-specific stuff from my HF10 review.
I bought the HF10 for it's super-fast focus when shooting my kids' sporting events. I bought the TG1 for it's superior portability. I'm happy to say both are awesome cameras. One big negative for the Sony camera is that 16gb of memory (Memory Stick Pro Duo Mark 2) costs 2.5 times as much for this camera as it does for the HF10 which uses SDHC. That's a complete rip off but no other HD video camera fits in your pocket like this one so that's the price you pay for portability. Battery life is another price you pay but I got every video I wanted, in great quality, from the beach this past weekend and had plenty of battery and memory to spare. If you're going to film long events this is not the camera for you. In still camera terminology think of it as pocket point-and-shoot and not an SLR.
This is a fantastic camera but people need to have more realistic expectations of what to expect from AVCHD. It is a highly compressed format so using this camera in low-light conditions is going to produce pretty "grainy" results. In good lighting AVCHD output from this camera can produce some really great looking results in HD but don't kid yourself into thinking you're going to get professional HDTV quality. This is a point-and-shoot.
This is a great camera if you use a Mac but you will probably find it very frustrating if you use a PC...
I use both Macs and PC and I have to tell you that you that PCs suck for AVCHD - you will waste a lot of time and pull your hair out. I'm sure PC video software vendors will address this eventually, but seriously folks if you want to do this the easy way get an Intel-based Mac (caveat: only Intel based machines using Leopard support AVCHD) and use either iMovie or Final Cut Express 4. Both of these programs (iMovie 08 and FCE4) just LOVE this camera (and Canon HF10 and hard disk-based Sony AVCHD as well) and they work like a charm. Video making has never been this easy. FCE4 lets you mix AVHCD, HDV and SD video on the same timeline and save in whatever format you want so it's worth the $200 if you want to do that or have more exacting control over your videos. It is basically a (lightly) stripped-down version of Apple's excellent professional video software (Final Cut Pro) and it is very good. For most home videos iMovie 08 (which comes in iLife 08) will be just fine. No, better than fine. You will LOVE how easy it is to create great movies with iMovie 08 and how easy it is to save them in a variety of formats and sizes and share them with friends and family. It is a piece of cake to edit movies in iMovie 08 and then put them on a Mac Web Gallery (at up to 960x540 which is higher than DVD quality) for family members to see or dump them out on a DVD (using iLife 08's iDVD) for your family members who are less tech savvy. You can even dump them out to 1080p Quicktime movies if you desire. I enjoy sticking movies of the kids on my wife's iPhone so she can show them to her friends.
I've had no problem transferring the movies directly from the camera but you do need to have the camera plugged into the AC to do it. You can avoid plugging the camera into your Mac to transfer the files by getting a memory stick reader. You can get a Transcend M5 reader here on Amazon for under $10 and it works great with the Memory Stick Duo Mark2 cards.
The video camera is just acting like a USB reader when you connect it to your Mac anyway - it is the file layouts that the software recognizes. When read in and converted to Apple Intermediate Codec at 1920x1080 they will balloon in size. If you want to store the raw video in a more compressed way you can simply copy the root directory of the card to another directory and copy it back again later. If you're working with AVCHD you need to buy the biggest hard drives you can afford. 60 minutes of video will use up something like 50Gb of storage on your Mac when converted to 1920x1080. If you just want great looking home video to show on your HDTV, but don't want to go broke on hard drives, Apple offers to import the movies at a slightly lower resolution (960x540) which takes up a LOT less space with very little drop in quality. I have been making home videos and showing them on an Apple TV at that resolution and they look stunning. The quality difference between that resolution and full HD isn't that big of a deal.
If you want to try to get truly professional-quality video you should avoid AVCHD cameras and stick to the HDV format concentrating on cameras with larger sensors. But this is great camera for HD home videos at a great price.
The user interface on this camera is better than the Canon HDF10 for reviewing your video but sucks for adjustments on the fly. Adjusting exposure manually is a pain in the butt and the UI for it obscures a lot of the picture. I wish they had added a dial or button set for adjust exposure and/or backlighting control on the camera. In bright light the screen gets washed out enough that it is hard to tell if your exposure is really that great or not but I did find a neat trick. In bright sunlight the screen is easier to see if you tilt it at an angle forward rather than trying to keep it straight up and down. This is where a viewfinder would really help. But these are minor nits because the camera does a good job at exposure control on its own.
Still photos absolutely suck on this camera. Get a proper still camera if you care about stills. This is true of all of the video cameras - don't count on them taking decent stills unless you want to use them at very low resolutions. They're going to be better than the camera on your mobile phone but that's not saying much :)
As I said earlier this is a very compact point-and-shoot camera that shoots HD video and for that it's excellent. The beautiful thing about this camera is that it fits comfortably in your pocket. No other HD video camera out yet (as of 28-May-2008) can make that claim. For that reason you'll probably take it with you more often and pull it out for a quick video here and there. To me that makes it worth the price of the expensive memory cards because your memories are priceless - especially of your kids growing up.
Good portability [Posted on 2008-06-03]
Good portability, don't expect very bright high quality images since it's small lens.
Comparing to Sanyo Xacti HD1000 better in stabilizer, Sanyo is totaly un acceptable.
One little tip for people having problem with AVCHD Intall Media Player Classic ( google it to find it ) it's a 5.5 MB file then just change the file extension from .MTS to .mpg it worked on my Windows Media Player on Windows Vista.
But the play back was the best and not the actual quality was playedback by Windows Media Player. But it's good just to review what's been recorded, Sony Vegas 8.0 and Pinnacle editing softwares can recognize the format.
Great Video camera to take along, bad still pictures [Posted on 2008-06-05]
I bought this a week ago, and the best thing about the HDR-TG1 is the size and shape, they fit in my front pocket and I can take it any where I go. The reason I bought this camera was for its size and portablity and HD and it perfectly matches my requirement al though I was thinking I could use this for all purposes including still images but the still images are not good.
Pros:
Size, and Shape
Great user interface both the front buttons as well as the on screen
Great Video footage but not as good as u see on HD TV broad casts
Great charging and connecting to the computer, u dont need to charge battery seperately hence its always ready to use
Cons:
Bad still images, horrible in low light condition
Sony should have supplied the HDMI cable, and the compnent cable they applied is too small, and I had to buy an extender switch to connect to my 65inches TV
The provided software is useless, its so difficult to even trim video, u can as well throw it away, al though there are not much choice for the AVCHD format. I tried convert the Video in mpeg but it does not play on quick time or Windows Media player, I think I may be missing a codec, but it has no way to save on standard codec, hence I cannot put videos on web as mpeg.
Small, but soft video and dull colors. [Posted on 2008-07-07]
I recently bought the TG1 and Sanyo HD1010 and posted a comparison clip on Vimeo.com
Overall, I found the image stabilization to be very good, but the video had muted colors and looked less detailed than that from the Sanyo.
Here are some things I really liked about the camera:
-built in lens cap
-slightly smaller size than Sanyo HD1010
-high quality metal body (titanium)
-matching case (extra cost)
-5.1 audio recording
-memory card plays directly on PS3
Here are thing I didn't like:
-Memory sticks are very expensive compared to SD cards, I found around 4x the cost
-The battery life is rather short, only around 45 minutes (vs 120 min).
-AVCHD are difficult to edit, can not be easily uploaded to Vimeo or Youtube without first editing on the computer. Sanyo's MP4 files can be uploaded directly.
-No in camera editing ability, can not even join or cut parts of clips
-Not able to record at 1080p
-No external mic or headphone jack
-Touchscreen has small buttons
-The menu structure is confusing
-No printed manual / comes on CD, I couldn't even find it online. My Macbook Air has no CD drive.
-It sometimes does not save the setting changes if allowed to power down on it's own. You have to press the power button after you are done making setting changes.
-No remote control included. Makes it difficult to watch clips on the TV unless you have a Sony Bravia TV which can control the camera.
-HDMI cable not included. It uses a mini HDMI cable as well.
-HDMI port is not on docking station, Mini HDMI on camera, so you have to plug it in every time instead of just docking it.
-No ability to change volume while playing a video on the camera. You have to exit out and go into a menu to adjust the playback volume.
-Playback screen only shows three thumbnails at a time, I couldn't figure out how to show many thumbnails at once.
TG1 size is great and video is good [Posted on 2008-07-22]
I just picked this camera up and found the video to be very good. I'm running an XP machine and I'm able to upload the video and play it fine. I've heard folks say you need a fast and powerful machine to run the huge files but I have not had any problems with that. I already figured the video quality wouldn't be as good as other products out there buy my opinion is what good is better quality if you don't have the camera with ya? This puppy will fit in your front pocket.
The image stabilization and zoom are great. It focuses very well on moving objects and clarity is good. Digital picture quality is useless with this camera. One other big negative is Sony doesn't ship you the HDMI to MINI HDMI cable so you have to go find one. These are not cheap. If you go to best buy expect to pay $75 min. If you want to play HD from the camera to you HD plasma you'll need this cable or a converter.
They are not easy to find either.
Low light video seems to be ok and better than other products I've tried.
In general it's the smallest solution with good video I can find.
Click here for more details and discount information...
|
){kind=link}