October 6, 2008
Retail price $1,600, dock and 4 gig menory card included.
By Aaron Cullen
The Sony "Handycam" HDR-TG1 was used to shoot the "RENO '08" Air Show video. I was pretty amazed at the quality it rendered for such a small camera, it has a fixed Carl Zeiss Lens 43-507mm digital zoom and records directly to an internal 4GB Memory Stick (1hr of HD media) but I purchased an additional 8 GB card to give me an additional 2hrs. The default format is AVCHD 1080i60 and the Handycam has a rechargeable InfoLithium battery, which lasts the whole day of shooting.
After the event was shot by my producer he gave me the camera back in LA and I simply slid the camera on to the base station, then plugged the base station in via USB 2 to my Quad 3.0ghz MacPro Tower and the Handycam mounted on the desktop as "no name".
Something interesting to note that I discovered was the Handycam has to be docked and the AC power plugged into the dock for the camera to go into USB connect mode to your computer. That was the only thing that slowed down an otherwise fast process. Using FCP6 I started a new Apple ProRes 422 project.
I then opened the Log and Transfer window from the File menu and within a few minutes the Sony HDR showed up and started listing all of the clips that had been shot.
Once all the clips were loaded.
I selected the clips and dragged them into the queue.
The loading took about 30 minutes for the hour and half of shot footage. That's it, ready for editing. Its sticker price was $1600 from Sammy's camera but I also bought the wind resistant shotgun mic that mounts on top, along with the 8GB memory card which added an additional couple hundred together. I would definitely recommend this camera if you are short on room and do not want to carry around a big camera or like in my case the producer was the only one going to the event, all he had to do was turn it on and shoot. No focusing to worry about, exposure, tapes, nothing. And it all turned out great. No overexposed or out of focus subjects. This particular show was interesting because of the planes used. A Mustang P51D (JellyBelly) the US primary WWII fighter and a T33 (ASB Plane) from the 50's, both vintage planes. This story is about the youngest air racer in Reno, Steve Hinton Jr. and flying with his father Steve Hinton Senior on this special day.
If your interested in the video please join airshowbuzz.com to see upcoming videos of amazing aircraft!
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copyright © Aaron Cullen 2008
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