So I’ve had these two long enough to play with them a bit and take some side by side footage. The Sony is their recent foray into the compact, self contained, HD POV video camera market dominated by GoPro. GoPro has such a strong hold that the name is becoming a verb among the action sports crowd, “Are you going to gopro that?” “I hope you were goproing that!” So it’s interesting to see what one of the big electronics names brings to the table.
I’m going focus on how it stacks up against the GoPro.
First is the form factor, it’s narrow vertical similar to the Contour as opposed to the broad flatter front face of the GoPro. It closer approximates the lipsticks cams in mounting position, good for side positioning, more challenging for top, bottom, or front positioning. It relies on 1/4×20 standard photo tripod hole mounting and in a nice touch has the index pin hole to prevent spinning if the mount has that provision. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. You don’t have to use a proprietary mounting system, you can select from a myriad of types of video, camera, binocular mounts you can find. Disadvantage is it tends to be bulkier than the GoPro mounts. But advatange is that the bulkier mounts tend to be more solid. Been having problems with the GoPro shifting with off road conditions on bicycle, no matter how tight I make the thumbscrew.
At the time it came out, the Sony compared favorably to the GoPro HD2 in size. The Sony has built in WiFi (if you get that model) while the GoPro 2 needed an add on accessory back that added a good amount of thickness and bulk. The HD3 has remedied that with built in WiFi and is thinner than the HD2 without WiFi.
Somewhat related to the form factor is the control layout and case design. Both use a clear polycarb outer case for waterproofness and mounting. The Sony access is through a removable front panel. Retained by a latch that has a safety lock, similar to what is now found on the GoPro HD3. The door comes completely off and is retained only by a woggly tether that easily pops loose, the GP is hinged along the base but the hinge has a slot so you can pop the door loose if desired. I’ve already dropped the Sony door once in the dirt, not good. The Sony comes with only one waterproof curved lens door, other door/lenses are seperate accessory. The GP HD3 lens is now flat so a seperate underwater lens is not needed, and it comes included with the open back door.
The Sony when in case only has access to one button, the start/stop. The GP has access to all it’s buttons. This usually isn’t a problem, unless you want to change settings in the field. You can hook up through WiFi to your smartphone app to change some settings, and then you run into a little quirk with this arrangement, you have to press the start button to turn it on to connect the wifi, but when you do it’ll start recording already. Oh, and you can’t erase a file from the unit, you can only do a card format and erase everything. So you end up with all these little useless video files, not a major problem but it’s annoying.
Sony labels the two mikes in the front of unit to proclaim it’s stereo. Unfortunately they couldn’t have picked a worse place for a camera intended for action use which will likely see fast movement. I got the accessory “enhanced” audio door which has openings for the mic, but that does nothing for the fact that the front placement rams air into the mics. Sony maybe reasoned that in camera audio is rarely used, but I’ve found it’s nice to have. Sure you could run a seperate audio recorder, but that’s more gear to deal with. You could run an external mic, if you could plug one into the jack in the base of the Sony. Not with it in the case though, unless you take things in your own hands and drill an access hole yourself through the case. The GP HD3 audio has been impressively improved. Maybe it was tweaking the mic position and case design, I also think they’ve done a bunch in DSP processing. The GP doesn’t have the water proof membrane, but if you run with the open back audio door, you can get some decent usable audio even in motion.
If you pull the unit out of the case, having the seperate prev and next buttons in addition to the main start/stop makes navigating the menu system pretty easy. I still often press wrong buttons on the GP two button system. The start and stop tones are pleasant musical tones, but too soft. The GP is simple rude beeps, but easily heard. There is only one small hard to see record on indicator on the rear. The GP has LEDs on four sides with options to run two or no LEDs.
The battery and memory are accessed by a slide and flip rear door. It’s a bit too easy to slide the door open when you have the unit out, but that’s a minor quibble and rarely a problem. The battery has a bit of an odd arrangement where it sits in a plastic cradle which then slides into the camera. This was done so you could use an older Sony battery in it if you use the other cradle designed for it. To me the cradle is another little fiddly bit to deal and fumble with out in the snow. The one thing with the cradle is it provides a little pull tab in order to pull the battery out. Provided you have enough finger nail. The GP HD3 has changed to a battery door with a locking lever instead of relying on tenacious friction, which required tenacious monkey grip to change batteries. The Sony uses either MemoryStick Micro or thankfully Micro SD. The GP HD3 has switched to Micro SD also. The slot on the Sony because of it’s dual compatability will allow a micro SD card to be inserted the wrong way, again not a huge problem, but can be annoying.
On the curved bottom of the Sony (people complain that you can’t stand it up because of that, not much an issue for me as I’ve never used it to film without the case) under a somewhat annoying flap cover is a micro HDMI, micro USB, 1/8 mic in jack, and proprietary Sony connector. The GP HD3 still retains mini USB which I have millions of cables, I actually had to go and buy a micro USB for the Sony, but no big deal.
In functionality it does lack some found in the GP. Interval/time lapse mode has less choices, there is no still mode, there is no spot metering mode, there is no upside down mode. None of these are deal breakers, but are annoying. The Sony does feature up to 120 fps enabling 4x slo-mo which the GP HD3 silver cannot do, you need to go up to the Black edition for that. The Sony also has SteadyShot image stabilization. It’s done digitaly in software so if you use it it cuts down on your image size and thus your angle of view, but it works.
The WiFi works, somewhat. The connection with my iPhone is spotty and if you’re more than a few yards away you can pretty much forget about it. When it is working, live image is impressively fast, very little lag. The WiFi app on the GP HD3 has improved it’s lag time a lot too. The Sony WiFi settings are hard set into the unit, you cannot change it so you need to remember the complex random password printed in the user manual, or hook up through USB to a PC and read the document in memory of the camera. The GP WiFi range seems better, the dedicated GP WiFi fob is actually very nice, it’s range is better and is more practical than a smartphone in the field.
In operation I’ve been running into a very annoying situation, fogging. I’ve run into with the GP too, but not to this degree. Close up the unit at home, go outside and get onto the bike and a mile later it is starting to fog. We’re talking Hawaii here, the temperature difference is tiny. I’ve finally bought the anti-fog packs, Sony’s pack costs slightly more than GP and only comes with two, but Sony claims you can use them up to 200 times. They’re little fiber packs kinda like dessicant packs in your nori so I think they will not become chalky like the GP ones can. Haven’t tried one yet. There are no instructions on how to dry them, I guess will have to just try. I wonder if you can microwave them, finding an oven can sometimes be a challenge when travelling. If travelling I imagine can get creative and try hair dryer or clothes iron.
Another issue that has come up is a rather loud rattle when experiencing some vibration. A POV action cam experiencing vibration? Never! I suppose if you’re trashing the audio then this is not a problem, but again it is nice to have some original soundtrack available. I’ve determined it is not the external case, it is internal to the camera. It’s not the battery. Search online brought up someones fix. It turns out it is the LCD screen. I’ll detail my fix in a another post.
And finally we come to image quality, probably the saving grace of the Sony. It’s hard to make out any differences in image resolution between the Sony and GP, they look pretty equavalent. The Sony white balance is colder than the GP and looks a little more natural, except for blue in the sky and oceans is kinda amped up because of this shift. The Sony seems to pull back highlights a little more, but it’ll still blow out bright areas. Sony touts the Zeiss optics, I can’t detect a whole lot of difference under good lighting conditions, except that the Sony is prone to a lot more lens flare. Sony also touts better low light performance. but honestly less stinky poop is still stinky poop. Where the Sony wins is IS and perhaps a consequence of the image processing involved, resistance to “jello” effect. All CMOS sensors that we see are victims to this because of the way the “shutter” works. You’ll see it in footage when there’s alot of motion and you’ll see weird wavering in the image. Lots of motion, in a POV action camera? Never! It’s still horrible in the HD3. It’s worst at highest HD, so I don’t use it. This has got to be my one pet peeve. It seems to be becoming so prevalent that it’s acceptable? The Sony seems to do a pretty good job at combating this. You’ll still see it when motion gets severe, but it’s controlled pretty well. I wonder if the Sony is oversampling frame rates, buffering frames and doing some magic. Hey, the the GP HD3 Black is using a 12mp Exmor R Sony sensor, I wonder if it’s any better?
So what’s the verdict? A good first effort, but did the Sony engineers bother to take a close look at the competition? All the little annoyances add up to negate the price difference. The only strong reason to go with the Sony is the IS and the better anti-jello performance, which actually is a pretty strong case. After fixing the rattle and trying the anti-fog packs, we’ll see if it’s worth living with it’s shortcomings.
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