The "in-out" TRV900 is quite a camera all things considered. Road tests have complained about fiddly buttons dotted all over it, but when you've got a package containing a VCR, a movie camera, a still camera and two viewfinders down to those dimensions, something has to give.
I don't mind the teeny buttons. What I do mind is the fact that the "push-to-focus" button makes an audible click every time its pressed, and this button is right at the front of the camera, just above the microphones.
I'ts a great feature - autofocus at the push of a button, locked focus untill you push it again. Evey camcorder should have one, and on the 900 it's in exactly the right place, right under your thumb as you cradle the camera.
But to have it's use recorded onto the soundtrack every time you push it? Is this sensible/desirable? Other switches are silent, why should this one be designed with such an over-centre click, Sony?
tom hardwick
I own a TRV900 as well, and I have to admit that I have found very little wrong with it at all.
As I've not used this feature yet I can't comment, but are you sure that there is no way to turn the bleep off..? There is on most other functions, even down to the red-light on the front.
Thanks for pointing it out though, I'll have a play now and test this out.
Andrew
No no Andrew. It doesn't make a beep, it makes a mechanical CLICK, and it's this that gets so effectively and disturbingly recorded.
Crazy really, because Sony use absolutely silent switches at the rear of the camera fo toggling white balance, exposure, etc, and use a nearly silent (why not completely silent?) switch at the front for the ND filter.
tom
You are right, this does all sound extremely unlike Sony who seem to have put so much thought and experience into the rest of the camera.
Andrew
I don't know... they decided to put the eject button for the floppy disk adaptor on the bottom of the camera, so that I have to take the camera off my Steadicam any time I want to get stills on floppy. And they carefully positioned the hand-strap on the side so that it usually catches the -- uh, what *do* you call that bit you slide the tape into? -- when you eject a tape. And they put the progressive scan setting on a menu, which is a pain when switching between video and stills. And they made the LCD display crop off about 5% of the image at top and bottom.
As much as I love the camera, it does have a number of annoying little faults which they should have sorted out before selling them.
Of course there are design compromises, but you can record to tape and THEN download to floppy. OK, you don't want to.
But I agree about the menu access to the progressive scan and the audio level. I'm one of the world's haters of menu-within-menu systems, yet am the first to admit that for a manufacturer it makes the kit MUCH cheaper, as well as smaller and probably most and more significant, more reliable.
Let's not forget that in a package the size of the TRV900 it is absolutely gob-smackingly amazing what they've fitted in there. Remember some other poor souls have to drag around a docking station just to be able to monitor sound! Can you believe it?
I shall be interested to check out this screen masking you talk about, Unicorn. Seems strange when it's so easy to display every imaged pixel - what's the point in masking? To get the mic in shot like Channel 5 films?
Haven't noticed my cassette door catching the side strap. And isn't the supplied hood most excellent? Fits and masks the lens to a tee, it's just that filters fitted inside the hood tend to defeat the hoods effictiveness a great deal. Filters fitted directly to the filter thread of the lens (which I'd love to do for mechanical insurance protection) don't allow the existing hood to be reapplied. Clever design here - the hood is so effective in it's designed position that it'd vignette when screwed to an added filter, so the designers have disabled the function.
So many clever design ideas. Design compromises, too, but overall it's the camera to beat, and I bet all the other manufacturers know it.
tom
No, the Steadicam folds up under the camera when it's not in use, so it never has to come off, even when using the camera as a VCR while editing; when I had my old Hi8 camera I think I removed it about three times in eighteen months, now I have to keep taking it off just to get at that button. Most laptops have the PCMCIA eject right next to the slot, so I don't know why they couldn't put it there.
Yeah, the docking station was one reason I chose the TRV900 over the DX100; I shot a promo documentary last year with my Hi8 and a DV camera with no headphone socket and half the time we discovered on playback that the DV camera hadn't recorded anything for some reason (e.g the boom op forgetting to switch the mike on!) or the sound was bad, which we'd have noticed instantly if we'd had headphones on it.
The LCD isn't masking pixels, it's physically too small to display a proper 4:3 aspect ratio; it just displays the middle 90% or so vertically. I shot a short movie on it last week and ended up with the FX guy's head in the bottom of one shot for a split second because the LCD didn't show him (but the viewfinder does, on playback). I had the camera so high up above me that I had to use the LCD.
My tape-thingy catches the hand-strap about 75% of the times I eject it without remembering to pull the strap away; maybe it's somehow connected to being on the Steadicam so the strap doesn't drop down as low as they expect it to.
When I'm using the floppy disk adapter I just pull it out there is enough to grab onto. I have been doing this for many years with the laptop which has a redundant eject button and does the same thing. I imagine you need to use the eject when you are using the memory stick. The eject button to my knowledge had no locking or release properties it just pushes it out. I'm sure someone at Sony can confirm this.
By the way I recently used the trv900 along side a vx 1000 on a job and the 900 beat it hands down.
I didn't notice any significant cropping on the LCD display against my tv set.
Gary