The purple haze
As TX1 use becomes more widespread, some people are beginning to report niggles and other dislikes of the camera. This is to be expected since people have a wide range of criteria by which they measure the success or failure of the newest bit of kit on the block, and of course we don't all agree with each other on whether these issues are a major problem or just a minor nuisance.
Something that is generating vigourous debate on forums at the moment is the issue of purple smearing and streaking when you point the TX1 at a bright light source whilst recording video. I noticed this from the outset when using the TX1, and wasn't overly impressed with how it looked, but also wasn't getting too worried about it until I started reading a few strongly worded comments on other sites - now I can't stop seeing it!
I was in New York City on the weekend and it was bright and sunny, with loads of reflections coming off buildings. This is where I noticed it the most. I have a couple of videos where the purple haze is really obvious and quite distracting to look at. But, and it's a big but, I took over 70 clips whilst in NYC and even though 60 of them would have been in bright light, I reckon maybe 3 of my clips have obvious purple streaks, and maybe another 10 have the odd purple artifact, the rest are completely OK.
To my gadget obsessive eye they jump out like the proverbial dog's bollocks, but I used the tried and true spousal test, and she didn't even notice them - I had to point them out, and even then she just said, 'is that because of the really bright reflections?' So in my mind, there you have it. It's not a deal breaker for me, it's just a minor annoyance that's a by product of the technology used in the camera (and not just this camera either).
I am a TX1 fanboy - why would I spend time writing this blog if I thought the camera was a piece of crap? That said I'm not loyal enough to blindly ignore faults with it. Some people are really not going to be happy about this problem, and it'll be enough that they'll send it back for a refund or pass on it all together. That's the great thing about the gadget market, there's so much choice around that we can all afford to be picky.
But in the end, the TX1 has so many more good points than bad, and that's why I'll happily keep using it - that is of course, until I really find something to hate about it, or something better comes along, maybe the TX2?!
10 comments:
> But in the end, the TX1 has so many more good points than bad, and that's why I'll happily keep using it - that is of course, until I really find something to hate about it, or something better comes along...
haha I guess you just have to treat it like a woman :s
ALL CCD technology will do this, I guarantee if you point a Sony or Samsung CCD camera at the sun, a sun reflection of a window or body of water you are going to get SOME sort of distortion, whether it's purple hazing, burn out or ghosting... update... I just did a test on my $4200 Sony HVR-V1U HD 24p video camera, pointed directly into the sun and then plugged it via HDMI into my 52" Samsung 5265F LCD television... lo and behold it looked like crap! :)
Hehe Mark, brilliant! You should post that over on the DPreviews forums to really wind up all the naysayers! (I'm kidding of course ;-)
Totally disappointed with this camera. Firstly, the video footage is rather jerky (although my pc is not that old: AMD Dual Core 4200+, 2 GB RAM, Geforce 6600 256mb). Low light (sunset, indoor) videos are extremely noisy. I would say awful. Samples of Sanyo Xacti HD2 i found on the internet were much better, so i am all upset here. Will have to sell my tx1 on the online auction.
The Sanyo HD2 has a similar problem. When you depress the still photo button half way against the light, the screen goes blue. Doesn't affect the pictures.
Does anyone know if the video compression they use on this camera can be imported into editing software like Premiere or Vegas? On my old Canon SD630 I could copy the video clips straight into Premiere and edit them, not sure if this video compression will allow you to do that???
Oops, never mind, just got the Morgan M-JPEG codec V3 which runs this video great in Premiere Pro.
My honest first impression was that the post by anonymous was troll baiting. But, just in case it was sincere:
If you're getting jerky footage, then you have a problem with either the speed of your SD card or the speed of the computer you're viewing/editing the material on.
I've not encountered this problem whatsoever, and I've got picky tastes about video quality (my other video camera is a Panasonic AG-DVX100). I'm using Kingston 8gb SD cards and editing on a MacBook.
John, my comments were pretty sincere. Spending quite a sum of money for something you didn't like is frustrating. I tried to play the video back on an even more powerful PC (although my computer perfectly manages AVCHD from Panasonic SD1, i doubt that canon's format is much heavier). The results were the same - jerky video. I also checked some footage found on the internet - the same story. Maybe I'm too captious, forgive me for that.
Worked on the design team... this purple haze is due to compact design feature, if not wanting; make black lens hood out of black paper, or plastic, funnel cut and glue or tape should slide off pretty easily to protect mechanism.
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