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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I am a long term Canon user and my current stable of camcorders includes a HV20 and HV40 both of which I prize for their extensive manual controls, their HDV recording, and the use of tape which acts as an natural archival mechanism.
The PJ790V was an exciting departure from my normal routine, and I used it exclusively on a recent trip to St Louis, MO to watch my son's high school robotics team compete at the Robotics World Championships. Over 3 exciting and exhausting days, I put this camcorder through its paces.
Here are my thoughts.
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This is easily one of the most comprehensive camcorders I have ever come across in over 25 years of videography.
In an embarrassing abundance of riches it combines:
1] an astounding amount of internal memory (96 GB. Really.)
While the jaw-dropping 36 hours recording time is only achievable on the lowest quality setting; even at full 60p HD you get a still-awesome 7 hours. See below for notes on Recording Modes.
2] a wide and fast Zeiss 10x zoom lens (26-260 mm/F1.8-3.4)
3] mind blowing optical image stabilization technology. At the Robotics World Championships, I shot hand-held, indoors, at full zoom from the nosebleed section of the Edward Jones dome and the images were still spectacular, with hardly any camera shake (except for wild pans in my excitement.) Check out footage in the first comment below this review. This is unbelievable OIS quality.
4] built in 100" projector(imagine that!) with a 1.6' throw distance and WVGA resolution (854x480)
5] a microphone separated from its body to avoid the camera noise that plagued my HV20
6] Navteq-supplied GPS for most places you are likely to visit including North America, Europe, Japan, and Oceania. Unfortunately, it does not do navigation, traffic, or weather :)
7] PlayMemories Home software lets you trim, split, and combine videos; grab frames for stills; and to share your creation. I found it to be a very intuitive video organizer/editor and great for when you can't be bothered to load up a full editor.
Some minor quibbles:
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1] The touch screen takes some pressure to register. I initially thought I had a bad touch screen!
2] The zoom rocker has a perceptible delay when the camera is first turned on, which is distracting when you need to get going quickly at a sporting event.
Conclusion:
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This is one of those cameras that you can simply start using, right out of the box. It is that intuitive. I was blown away by its SteadyShot system the image stabilization is truly best in class. When you view the clip in the comment below, remember that this was shot by a tired and excited parent, whooping like a kid, in indoor stadium lighting, often at full zoom. The focus is sharp, the images are clean, and the microphone clearly captures the videographer's very vocal enthusiasm. At its highest PS video quality (see Recording Modes section below), you get stunning video that needs to be seen to be believed.
Add in its clear and bright LCD that I could easily use even in bright daylight; elegant design touches such as the USB cable integrated into its hand grip; the attention getting lens hood; and reasonable power consumption (even the tiny NP-FV50 lasted me an entire day), and you have a winning performer.
I'm more conflicted by the presence of the GPS and projector features that are great attention grabbers, but ones that I'll probably never ever use.
Happy Memories!
Must have accessories:
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1] The NP-FV50 needs help especially if you are on vacation. Check out the NP-FV70 or NP-FV100 instead.
2] BC-TRV charger I hate to leave camcorder charging overnight so this travel charger is very handy.
3] VMCUAM2 USB adapter cable lets you back up your videos to an external hard drive without needing a computer
Recording modes:
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Sony uses video quality abbreviations PS, FX, FH, HQ, and LP that I'm clarifying for others who may be as confused as I was:
There are 4 aspects to recording video bit rate (the number of bits captured per second, in Mbps), the number of pixels in each video frame (full HD 1920x1080, or 1440x1080), frame rate (the number of frames recorded per second), and whether these frames are interlaced or progressive (whether each frame is captured in full, or whether the odd rows and even rows are captured separately.)
For highest quality capture: pick the highest bit rate, the highest number of pixels in each frame, the highest frame rate, and use progressive mode.
For the HDR-PJ790V this is [PS] quality up to 28 Mbps, 1920x1080 resolution, 60 frames per second, progressive.
The downside? All those bits take up a lot of disk space, reducing available recording time. Switching to FX or below, causes more aggressive compression that can cause compression artifacts in fast moving scenes.
My advice: stay at PS. Why compromise on quality? Just pack a external drive, and clean up space as you go.
Now, I'm done :)
Postscript: And, the East Ridge Robotics Ominous RaptorS? They ranked 20 out of 100 teams in their division (Newton). The kids had a great learning experience and the parents cheered themselves hoarse. What could be more fun! Next stop for the team the MN state championships in May!
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