First hands-on impressions of the TX1
After reading a few reviews, downloading hard to find 720p video examples off the web and still not being a 100% sure about this camera, I decided to take the plunge and buy one anyway, to see for myself.
They are not available in the UK nor the US it seems at this stage, so I headed to eBay Hong Kong and picked one up there for a decent price, £300 (~US$590) including a 4GB SDHC card, postage and a few extras.
With the Easter break and a damaged first shipment it took much longer to arrive than I would have liked, but it finally came today and was duly unboxed with great anticipation.
My first impressions are that it is a great little happy snapper and a very serviceable 720p camcorder.
It is absolutely loaded with features, 10x zoom, anti-shake, a phenomenal macro mode, and contrary to many reports, it can record HD on 'normal' SD cards - rather than the vaguely described 'fast' cards mentioned in the documentation. I managed to record HD on a 1GB Ultra II Sandisk SD, and a 4GB Transcend Class 2 SDHC card.
The reports of it being a bit of an ergonomic nightmare are somewhat true. It's boxy and can be fiddly. It would probably get a bit tiresome for long video recording sessions, but it's more than passable and given the pocketability, I am not complaining.
The menu system is pretty intuitive and anyone with an EOS will be right at home. There are scads of manual settings available, including ISO, AF lock, AE lock, 3 metering modes, exp compensation and white balance, but oddly no Tv/Av modes or true manual mode for individually setting aperture and shutter speed. Long shutter speeds over a second are available. Given I am a DSLR user and will probably use this mostly as a P&S and casual camcorder, I am OK with this.
Some other nice to have features include the ability to set an away timezone date stamp when travelling, face-detect, auto-rotate, panoramic stitch assist, and selective colour modes where you can single out a particular colour and have everything else B&W, or swap one colour for another for a shot or video. There's also whole bunch of other image tweaking settings and auto-picture modes available.
Stills quality is typical for a point and shooter. As for the 720p video, it's pretty good all things considered. There's no point trying to compare it with any of the current crop of tape and disk based HD camcorders, that's just not fair. But when comparing it to the MPEG-4 based digicams that double as basic camcorders, it's leagues better.
Zooming is nice and quick, but it can hunt around to lock focus at the far end. This can be helped by a half tap of the shutter button as if you were taking a still (which you can whilst recording). In bright light, it's not really a problem at all.
Given the form factor of this unit though (it's tiny), again I am OK with this. I'm not planning on making an HD film on it, more likely a few minutes here and there of each place I go on holidays, and the odd family or other event so it should be fine.
Having owned a sizable and very lovely Mini DV camera for years (and one that has sat in the cupboard for most of my travels) I am more than happy to have something that can slide into my pocket and come out as and when I feel like it, rather than lugging a big camera bag around with extra tapes, batteries, lenses etc - in addition to the DSLR! Better still, if I can get my other half to slip this in her bag, that leaves me free to take stills whilst she gets a few minutes of video here and there without us both getting around like pack mules.
In the next couple of posts I will add photos and some sample video. Stay tuned.
5 comments:
Matt,..this blog is quite a service. I like the fact that "ordinary" uses and questions are answered such as the SDHC card thing and your response to me that, Yes,...the TX1 can be operated with the right hand. Since that was my main concern, I have only one other question right now.
Do you find the small screen to be satisfactory for it's purposes? The screen on my Canon A710 may as well not be there for outdoor use, though it is okay for indoor reviews.
I will likely shoot in 640x320 mode, at least initially, so I assume my picture will fill the screen.
Thanks, Matt!
Hi Jack,
I reckon online collaboration by owners of a product is a very cool way of getting the 'real' picture of what a product is like - something you definitely don't get from the marketing guff and most times is hard to glean from reviews because they skip over the small stuff.
The LCD *is* small like everything on this camera. I am used to a massive 3.5" LCD on my Optura Xi (MVX3i) so this came as a bit of a blow and I was dubious. But I used the TX1 in direct sunlight the other day and I'd have to say it was fine. Direct sunlight is not the friend of most LCDs, but the LCD on the TX1 has a matte finish rather than a glossy one, so it tends not to reflect as much of the surroundings - like your face!
In short, it was better than I expected and better than my other point-&-shooter (Casio EX-Z750) which also has a big screen.
If you shoot in 4:3 mode it does fill the whole screen, and unlike my Xi, when you shoot in 16:9 mode it adds black bars to the top and bottom rather than squashing the wider frame into the 4:3 LCD.
Cheers, Matt
Thanks for this blog!!!!
I am thinking about buy TX-1.
I need CAM for family shoots.
But I have SD (not HD) wide 16:9 DVD recorder and TV.
Is possible to shoot movie in Standard Definition in 16:9 format?
NuClear, it isn't possible to shoot 16:9 in SD format, but it'll play back on your TV no worries by using the included AV cable. That cable uses an SD formatted output from the camera, so will be acceptable by both your TV and DVD recorder.
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