Another look at the Sony NEX-VG10, large sensor camcorder

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Unveiled by Edouard Maire yesterday, the Sony NEX-VG10 camcorder with interchangeable lenses and based on the NEX format will be on the market as of September for £1500 - £1800, lens included. Taking things in another direction, we wanted to look at NEX-VG10 in the context of the NEX cameras rather than just camcorders.

A camcorder that takes photos or the other way round?

As expected, the VG10 has an APS-C sensor, no more nor less than the 14 megapixel Exmor HD which equips the NEX-3 and NEX-5 cameras.

It offers three recording formats: 1920x1080 pixels at 24 Mbps, same definition but compression at 16 Mbps, and 1440x1080 pixels at 9 Mbps. All these formats are interlaced, which, technically speaking, is an absurd choice (the sensor sends 25 full images per second and all modern viewing devices, whether they be LCD or plasma screens or projectors, are by nature progressive) but justified by Sony by the power of the processor used.

Video is accompanied by Dolby Digital stereo sound, recorded with an internal quad-capsule microphone (the two additional capsule's for reduction of ambient noise) or with a stereo mic socket. A headphones out allows you to monitor the sound recording.

14 megapixel photos AND great battery life

The VG10 also allows you to take Jpeg photos (not Raw in contrast to cameras) at 14 megapixels, which is the least to be expected given the sensor that's used.

For shooting, the VG10 has a VGA definition 7.5 cm LCD screen, no doubt the same as the one you find on the NEX series - which takes nothing away from its excellence. It also has a high def electronic viewfinder: 1,152,000 pixels.

Lastly, we note that the optional NP-FV100 battery should take continuous shooting time to 5h30, which will be an enormous advantage compared to SLRs and hybrids, which are generally limited to 20 to 30 minutes. You will of course need an adequate memory card: SDXC and MS Pro Duo cards can be used. The battery life of the FV70 that comes with the NEX-VG10 hasn't been given.

The lens

The new camcorder will come with an 18-200 mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. It'll look a lot less monstruous on the VG10 than on the NEX cameras because of the way it's installed as a prolongation of the body of the VG10. It will nevertheless still represent a good half of the total length.

In 16/9 video, this lens will be equivalent to a 32-360 mm, namely a 1.8 crop factor. You can calculate from this that Sony is using an area of 21 x 11.8 mm for video. This is of course smaller than in photo mode (23.4 x 15.6 mm), but extremely close to 35 mm 1.85:1, the widescreen aspect ratio used for cinema.

We should therefore find the same depth of field possibilities, especially as the aperture can be controlled manually (as can shutter speed).

To add to this effect, lenses with the largest aperture will be worth looking at: there aren't many in the E-mounts (such as the NEX lenses and therefore the one on the VG10), but in the Sony/Minolta/Zeiss A-mount range (the Alpha lenses) there are more and you can also get adaptors for other mounts.

The system looks pretty good then. It gives image quality close to 35 mm in a relatively compact system and offers modern auto modes. Of course, it won't give performance on a par with the Canon EOS 5D Mk II. The Canon's 24x36 mm sensor remains an advantage and has, for this reason, been used by more than one filmmaker, but we're obviously talking a good deal less outlay than for the Canon. Plus the VG10 has an 11x zoom.

It remains to be seen if Sony has improved its video mode: on the NEX-5 there were certain moiré issues.

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