AG-AC160 firmware update 1.11, have you done it?

[Stephen Crye]

Hi Guy;

Ok, here goes.

Again, please keep in mind that I wanted to love the AC160. I really, really did. My mission in life is not to buy cam after cam just to harpoon them …

Here is the text description of the YouTube vid I just posted that shows some of the problems; following that is a link to the video.

I suggest watching it 720p or higher. No need to turn up the sound to hear the noise; if you can hear my voice at normal volume then you will be able to hear the zoom servo noise.

—————
I bought a Panasonic AG-AC160 after months of research. I really wanted to like the cam. I was excited when it arrived.

But I sent it back after only a day of testing. This camera has some severe flaws that outweigh the other great features.

Before all the Panny apologists lay into me, let me state that I’m happy if you like yours. But, compared to other cameras I have owned or tested, it is unacceptable. No camera is perfect, but for close to $5K, I expect it to be a LOT better than my good old Sony HDR-CX550V.

Other cams to which I compared it included the Sony NX5U and the Sony HXR-NX70U.

The biggest problem with the AC160: the zoom servos are horribly loud, if any zoom speed other than a slow creep is used!

I had never heard anything like this. Conceivably the unit I had was faulty, but I don’t think so.

The whine was so loud that it even came through on the recordings when using an external mic on a separate stand 6′ away. This made the camera useless for any serious recordings of classical chamber music. It also really bugged me on ENG stuff – whirrr, whirrrrr with every zoom. I’m speculating this cam uses a gearmotor of some kind to drive the lens, where the Sony’s I’ve used have a stepper motor. Puzzled but, just could not stand the whine.

The second biggest problem, one that I only noticed after I sent it back to B&H for a full refund (Love you B&H! The BEST camera shop in the world) was the HORRIBLE vignetting at full zoom. Again, the NX70 and NX5 do NOT have this problem!

The image quality was otherwise good, and the face detection worked well. I had no real problems with the auto-focus, although it was a bit slow at the long end in dim light. Also, I had no objections to the EVF – it could have a bit more magnification, but it is useable. It came with the Barry Green book.

Some things I might have lived with had the zoom been quiet and the vignetting not so horrible:

* The build quality is worse than I had anticipated, even having been warned. The rings felt a bit scratchy, not silky like the rings on a Sony NX5. The buttons are cheap and rattled at the slightest shake. The plastic housing felt thin; taps on the cam created a hollow sound that also came through on the recordings. The bottom plastic base, where the tripod attaches, in particular felt and sounded thin and cheap. I know Panny is supposedly trying to save mass, but it made me want to open up the case and line the housing with DynaMat to suppress the hollow sounds. In general it just felt cheap compared to what I have grown used to with Sonys.

* The handle zoom rocker is not vario. I knew about this before I bought it but it bugged me more than I thought it would.
* Instead of a lever-action dust cover for the lens, there is a misplace-able lens cap.
* The cooling fan noise is audible in quiet environments.
* I had problems with quick white-balance, i.e. when pointing it at a card. The joystick knob when set to one-push did not seem to work reliably. I’d prefer a dedicated one-push white balance button.
* The cam has more noise in low light than the NX5, but not a lot more.
* The manual focus-assist seemed annoying. I never did figure out how to leave the cam in Auto-everything mode and still have full manual focus. I’m sure there is a way, but Panny makes it hard to get to.
* The position of the LCD is not optimal – it needs to be up on the handle.

———

And the link to the vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0k6pt9jAJ0

I wonder if the fact that I am not a pro who makes a living from video affects my judgement. Whereas pros might be willing to live with some flaws, perhaps because they expense their cams or because the company owns them, I just can’t can’t afford to do that. I had to save for over a year and then take out a loan to amass the $5K I want to spend on a better cam than my old and beat-up Sony HDR-CX550V. I just assumed that cams costing 3 to 4 times as much would have a lot better image and audio quality. Also, a big part of my rejections is the fact that the little CX550V is a truly great camera – I really lucked out when I bought it as my first 1080 camera.

In surveying the market, even if I were to spend $30K+, I don’t see anything that meets my requirements. I need a light, compact camera – the AC160 is at the upper limit for mass and size. I need SDHC/SDXC (not expensive CF, P2 or SxS) media. I need a big, fast, zoomy lens. I need flat focus from corner to corner at all zoom levels, with no vignetting. I need a fixed, non-interchangeable lens and a small sensor so that I have deep depth of field. I need AVCHD 2.0 with 1080 60p. I need 1000 TV lines of resolution. I need a vario zoom rocker on the handle, and I vastly prefer a handle-mounted LCD. I need expanded focus. I need low, low coma and low chromatic aberration.

Each of the cameras I have tested since October 2011 (Sony NX5, NX70 and AC160) have come close but had one or two things wrong (different for each one!) that made them unacceptable. If it were not for the fabulous customer service from B&H I would be stuck with an NX70 – I only discovered the inconsistent edge focus problem after I had it for 6 weeks. B&H agreed to take it back, and in gratitude I am their customer for life.

Right now the only cam that might pass muster (that I have not already bought and rejected) is the JVC GY-HM600U – IF JVC gives it AVDHD 2.0 by the time it is out in October.

Steve

Win7 Pro X64 on Dell T3400, MultiTB SATA, 8GB RAM, nVidia FX 570, Vegas 10e (and 11) x64 DVDA 5.2(build 133) Sony HDR-CX550V

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[Guy Mcloughlin]

Hi Steve,

I think you are going to have a very tough time finding any camera that meets all of your requirements, as there is no perfect camera.

I watched your video in 1080p mode, and everything you demo in your video looks normal to me. I own a Panasonic HMC-150 camera that I’ve used for the past 4 years, and overall I’ve been extremely happy with the results I’ve obtained with it.

As a professional I don’t care if buttons rattle as long as they work reliably. The servo-noise you mention seems to be identical with every other Panasonic prosumer camera that I’ve used ( HVX-200, HPX-170, HMC-150 ), and has never been an issue with audio recording, but then I only use the built-in camera mics for reference. For proper audio recording you need different gear, placed off-camera, and positioned to obtain high quality sound. If I was going to shoot ENG style with the mic on the camera, then I would upgrade to a professional mic that is designed to reject camera noise ( like the Sanken CS-1 ), and I doubt that I would ever hear servo noise in my recordings.

I do agree with the flimsy-ness of the plastic base-plate, which I replaced with a solid aluminum base-plate on my HMC-150. Hopefully 3rd party companies will make aluminum plates for the AC-130 / AC-160 / HPX-250 line of cameras.

I also don’t see much of a vignetting problem with the image in your video. Overall I think you are being way too picky with your assessment of this camera. There is no perfect piece of equipment, so it’s up to the film-maker to master their gear, and learn how to work around any small issues that might pop up.

I suspect part of your problems might be from using the camera in auto-mode. Pretty much all professional cameras are horrible in auto-mode, which is why most pros do almost everything manually. ( autofocus can be handy if the light is good, and the subject is suitable for the AF mechanism )

Even learning how to properly set the image controls with pretty much any prosumer camera is going to take you the better part of a week, to get some idea of how you can modify the video image by changing a dozen or more image settings.

I haven’t shot with a Sony HDR-CX550V, but if it’s like other Canon/Panasonic/Sony consumer cameras that I’ve worked with, it has severe limitations when it comes to image quality, camera motion, audio quality, CODEC compression. Consumer cameras are a great deal for the price, you do get a lot of functionality for the price, but they are very limiting in the hands of a pro that is looking for manual controls for every feature.

If you are looking to produce higher quality videos, I honestly think that you are going to have to pick one camera, and learn how to produce the best quality image you can with it. This may take months, and require lots of little modifications to master all of the features.

Also, audio is a whole other ball of wax, that will take as much or more effort to master compared to mastering a professional camera.

Sorry to hear that no camera has worked out for you so far, but I do think you are going to have to bite the bullet at some point, pick a camera, and learn how to achieve the best quality result with it.

Good-luck.

– Guy

[Guy Mcloughlin]

…Apparently Juice Designs will be making aluminum base-plates for the AC-130/AC-160/HPX-250 cameras. This is where I bought one for my HMC-150 camera. It’s beautifully made.

Juice Designs Aluminum Base-plates