On the Sony TRV-900 vs. VX-1000...

Tracey Craig kindly lent me her newly-acquired
Sony TRV-900 to check out. I own a TRV-9 and
two VX-1000's. Much to my surprise, the 900 looks
quite different from the 9 - it is wider, longer,
and with different control layout.
The instruction book is Sony's usual opaquely-
written tome. Fortunately, most items on the
camcorder are well-marked, and easy to figure
out without the manual. A little confusion is
possible, though, when using the buttons on the
rear in conjunction with the selector wheel.
In general, the camcorder is pleasant to hold
and control. The focus ring is large, but the mic
is somewhat covered with the hand while it is
being used, making recording while manually
focusing difficult. Manual focus is fairly easy,
using the viewfinders. In this sample, the normal
VF settings for color balance, saturation,
brightness, and contrast are close to what I see
on my TV, making these finders very useful. (The
TRV-9's panel gives little useful information
except framing, and the 1000 VF can be set up
pretty much to taste, as can the 900 finders.)
I've never been happy with the color image of the
TRV-9, so there is no contest here. Between the
900 and the 1000 there are noticeable differences,
especially in color bias, making it difficult to
mix footage unless the 1000 is biased considerably
toward blue. The auto white balance of this sample
of the 900 tends to be quite blue. Selecting a
balance preset improves this considerably, but
the image is still more blue than the 1000.
Without a comparison, the 900 looks good.
Sharpness differences between the 1000 and 900
(with sharpness tweaked up a bit in the custom
menu) were very small, with some difference in
the image character noticeable when the 1000 was
run stock. Both camcorder lenses were surprisingly
good to the corners wide open throughout their
zoom ranges, but also surprisingly, the corners
improved relatively little with stopping down. As
expected, overall image quality went down at the
smallest stop (f11), with best overall image
quality from about f2.8 to f8, with the peak
around f5.6. (I recently checked out one of those
mega-buck Canon lenses for a pro camera, and the
overall image quality was similar to that of the
1000, except for slightly better edge performance
throughout. Though the corners were better, they
still were not excellent until the lens was
stopped down some. The high price gains one
better edge performance, better zoom control,
much better manual focus control, and constant-
focus while zooming - but not better image
quality over most of the frame area...) Both
this 900 and one of my two 1000's remain in
focus when zoomed.
We come to the one BIG advantage of the 900:
low light ability. There appears to be almost
a two stop advantage for the 900 vs. the 1000
for equal picture brightness in marginal light.
At maximum gain (both set to "-3db") in minimal
light with the shutter speeds at 1/60, image
quality of the 1000 at f1.6 was about equaled
by the 900 at f2.8 - wider, and the 900 picture
brightened compared with the 1000. Even at
maximum gain and widest stop, the 900 image was
useable and free of excessive noise. This is
impressive...
I tried both the large Kenko .5X made for the
1000, and the new smaller one made for the 900.
The larger one performed better in the corners,
and the smaller one did not vignette on the 900.
For infinity subjects, using WA converters
compromises image edge quality (best at f11,
useable at f5.6), but these can serve well for
interior work (good by f2.8, excellent by f5.6).
I did not play much with the sound, but the
auto-level sound of the 900 was free of noise,
somewhat "full" in tonal balance, and louder
than the 1000 (and it occasionally appeared to
clip); the 1000 sound was more "nasal", was
slightly noisier, and noticeably lower in level
(using the built-in mics [and I have a thick
windscreen on the 1000's mic]). The 900 mic is
sensitive to wind, and it would be difficult to
screen.
The 900, with its progressive-scan feature, makes
better-quality stills from moving subjects than
the 1000.
I had no trouble transfering footage from the
TRV-900 to my computer, using the DPS Spark
FireWire card. I edited about 8.5 minutes worth
of footage in Premiere 5.1 and returned it to
tape in the NTSC TRV-900 using the Spark ver.2
software, also without problems.
Overall, both the TRV-900 and the VX-1000
are excellent camcorders, with the right mix of
features (both also have excellent stabilizers
and good AF...). With particular characteristics
in side-by-side comparisons, one camcorder can
show up the other slightly, but except for their
very-low-light ability (and maybe the custom
picture settings available on the 1000...), there
is no clear "winner" - I like both, but would
have problems mixing footage from the two without
tweaking both the the color bias and the sound
balance (internal mic) of at least one of them...
Darn, Tracey prolly wants this TRV-900 back...! ;-)