Posts Tagged ‘photo’

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Saturday, December 25th, 2010

Problems with Sony HDR-CX100 quality..?

- I've only had this camera for 2 months now...and the quality has seemed to have recognizably decreased since then. Indoors...the quality is simply unacceptable, and outdoors it surely doesn't show its full capacity. all my settings are on auto...i think. How can i improve the quality of my camera vidieos?

Since we can't see what you can see, we can only offer general suggestions...

Try to not use the camcorder handheld. Tripod, chair, rock, table - invest in (or make) a shoulder mount system (like a SpiderBrace).

Learn the white balance - and use it - especially for indoors.

The HDR-CX100 is a mid-level consumer camcorder. It has small lenses and imaging chips - and it compresses the video a LOT. The small lenses and imaging chips will not do well in low light - turn on the lights or use a video light (or a bike light). The high amount of video compression does not do well with fast action.

When outdoors in good sunlight, increase the shutter speed. Generally, auto will get the shutter to 1/125 second in sunlight. Up the shutter speed to 1/500 or 1/1000 (if that does not darken the image). The resulting video will provide for much better slow-motion playback or less blurry still frame grabs.

The CX100 has varying "quality" levels. High quality will be less compression and less recording time. Lower quality increases compression and recording time. Less compression is better video. Be sure it is set to high quality.

Auto focus does not do well in low light - it cannot select anything to focus on, so it focuses on nothing and the result is... video that is out of focus.

There's more, but these are the normal "low hanging fruit" items to tackle - remember, we can't see what you see...

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