However, the current sub-$240 price for the Wi-Fi-enabled AS15 is good for what you get, and none of my complaints are so serious that the camera would not be worth considering if it does what you need it to do.The battery's been scaled down, so longevity is reduced slightly, but the camera's now splash-proof, so you don't need a waterproof case when shooting mountain bike treks or trips down the slopes. Even its video, the one area where I'd expect Sony to shine, is pretty average and that's not improved by a mediocre lens (regardless of what name is attached to it). During use, though, there are a lot of minor issues that keep it from being as good as models from other manufacturers. Like I said at the beginning of the review, the Sony Action Cam makes a good first impression. If you're going to want audio while you're shooting, you'll need to buy the two-pack of housing doors, find another mount that exposes the mics, or work out a DIY solution. Blown up on a larger HDTV, though, the video is less impressive.Īudio quality is very good, but as mentioned earlier, you basically lose use of the built-in mics once you seal up the included housing with the waterproof door. Viewed at smaller sizes on a computer screen, a lot of these things are not as noticeable, and if your main goal is to share your clips online, the Sony's not a bad choice given its price and features. Also, there is some visible color banding in images of blue skies. Perhaps most disappointing for me are the lens flare and the amount of chromatic aberration (purple fringing) around high-contrast subjects. Exposure is generally good and transitions smoothly when conditions change, though highlights easily blow out. Colors are oversaturated, but that seems to be standard for action cams. On the other hand, with complex scenes or fast movement, you will see plenty of artifacts and lose a fair amount of detail (the maximum bit rate is 16Mbps, which is about average for POV cameras). The Action Cam handles motion better than the Bloggie models ever did, though things look nice and smooth. When shooting scenes with little movement of the subject or the camera, video is reasonably sharp and detailed without looking crunchy. The video from the Sony Action Cam reminds me a lot of the video from Sony's old Bloggie minicamcorders. On the upside, I did drop it several times and even though the back door cover popped off, it easily went back on and the camera kept working. Not the end of the world, but the body is particularly slippery and with no edges to really hold onto, the bare camera is pretty easy to drop. The buttons aren't accessible through the waterproof housing if you want to do anything other than start and stop recordings (a single press of the record button turns the camera on and starts a new recording), you have to take the camera out of the housing. The small LCD on the right side of the body is for viewing your settings and making changes to them using the two buttons to the right of the screen. ![]() There is nothing keeping the camera from sliding out of the case without a door on it either, so if for some reason the lock should accidentally open when the door is on, the camera will pop right out. Similarly, if you want to use the built-in stereo mics, you have to buy the appropriate door or another mount from Sony or find some other way to secure the camera inside the included case while the waterproof door is off. It's great that it's so sealed up out of the box, and the housing has a standard quarter-inch tripod mount in the bottom, so it can be used with a wide variety of available mounts. The housing is waterproof down to 197 feet and has dirt- and dust-resistant seals. Sony includes a shock-proof/waterproof housing and two adhesive mounts, one flat and one curved. That said, it does offer some nice features, especially if you opt for the Wi-Fi-enabled AS15, and video is on par with that of similarly priced models, though it's best suited for small-screen viewing. Whatever the reason, in design and usability the Action Cam falls shy of models both above and below its price level. Maybe Sony was trying to stay below a certain price or wanted the camera to be as small and light as possible. That impression doesn't hold up after use, though. Its first efforts in the category, the Sony Action Cam HDR-AS10 and HDR-AS15 (the AS15 has built-in Wi-Fi, the AS-10 does not), make a good initial impression, too.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |