Camcorder Review:
Sony HDR-FX1 HDV

D. Eric Franks
November 2004

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Government-mandated HD television broadcast standards and the widespread availability (if not affordability) of HD televisions contribute to creating a demand for HD content. While Sony's HDR-FX1 is not meant to compete with $20,000 professional HD solutions, for small shops, local event videographers and elite hobbyists, high-def home video is a reality.

One of the most serious issues with HDV at this date is delivery: How will you (and your audience) watch your HD video? Everyone we know owns a standard-definition television, but very few have HD. We want you to keep that in mind as you read this review and ponder the move to a new format.

From the pictures, you might think that the HDR-FX1 is a modified VX2100: when placed side-by-side, however, you'll find that Sony's first HDV camera is considerably bigger. Hidden inside are quite a few software changes as well, besides the obvious HDV capabilities. Even as a mere Mini DV camcorder, there are quite a few image tweaking options and improvements that we really like over the VX2100. Would these improvements be worth the $1,000 price difference by themselves? No.

In some ways, the HDR-FX1 is critic-proof as far as subjective image quality is concerned. For example, we always test the image stabilization and talk about how responsive it is. Well, the HDR-FX1 lets you adjust the sensitivity of the electronic SteadyShot. Likewise you can perform very fine adjustments on the image, from sharpness to color phase, and get exactly what you want. An artist with an eye for this sort of thing can get whatever style, look or feel that they want out of this camera (combined with good lighting design, of course).

The back of the camera has a Picture Profile button that allows you to instantly recall six groups of image tweaks for various shooting conditions and artistic preferences. Another outstanding usability feature is the P-Menu, which allows you to put your most-most used menu items on a little one-push shortcut menu. There are also three customizable buttons that you can assign to only one of six functions, which makes these only moderately useful.

Another new feature is the shot transition button, which records a macro of sorts to automatically swing a bunch of camera settings between two points. So, for example, you could set up a cool extreme closeup to distant wideshot focus-pull-and-zoom to execute at the touch of a button.

In the HDV mode, the camera shoots a 16:9 widescreen image. It also has a 16:9 anamorphic widescreen DV mode. By default, the quality LCD is a widescreen LCD that crops in from the sides to display a standard 4:3 image.

The HDR-FX1 has a Cinematone Y mode that adjusts the gamma, which sort of makes the contrast and color look a bit more filmy, and a Cineframe mode that adjusts the feel of the frame rate (mostly by adding a subtle motion blur), while not actually shooting 24p. We tried these modes out individually and together and can say that they are aesthetically and artistically appealing at times, but, as we've said before and we'll say again: only film looks like film.

The ATSC HD television standard in the US covers 18 subformats, from 640x480 interlaced (480i) through 1920x1080 progressive (1080p). In the NTSC realm, the HDV format supports three HD picture formats, in addition to the standard definition DV format. The three HD formats are 1080i, 720p and 720i. While the first JVC HD cameras support all three variations, Sony's HDR-FX1 only supports 1080i, which is the highest resolution possible for HDV (1440x1080). With all the talk about film being a progressively scanned medium and Panasonic's 24p buzz, it is interesting that Sony is choosing not to go that route at this time. And, from our hands-on tests of JVC's HDV camcorders, we have to say that we really like the 720p 60fps mode (1280x720), especially for creating really dramatic slow motion effects from high-speed action.