SONY NEX VG10 Review (first peek)

October 4th, 2010
My Sony NEX VG10E arrived on Friday.

YAY!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Sony NEX VG10 Camcorder"][/caption]

I had excitedly pre-ordered this first affordable APS-C interchangeable-lens camcorder from SONY and it's been a long wait till it finally arrived.
What's In The Box?
The VG-10 arrived in a relatively small box. Apart from the camcorder and the included 18-200mm lens, there was:

	a FV-70 Lithium-Ion battery (the larger FV-100 is available separately at additional cost)
	a battery charger
	an AC adapter to power the camera
	forward and rear lens caps
	USB cable
	a dead-cat-style wind-screen for the microphone
	a lens hood
	a cage for the end of the battery compartment
	a quick-start manual
	a CD-ROM with software and the user-manual
	a voucher with location and keys for downloading and activating SONY's Vegas video-editing software and a bunch of nice sounds.

My First Impressions

	The camcorder looks and feels nice
	The 18-200 lens looks nice, however operating the zoom is not buttery smooth like on Nikon's lenses but somewhat stiff and therefore feels cheap. There is NO power zoom on the Sony VG-10, all zooming has to be done manually, more specifically by holding the camcorder's lens-end with the left hand. The camcorder's rear end is held up by the right hand in the conventional camcorder strap. Using the VG10 with just the right hand is tiring and feels imbalanced, because the lens is simply too heavy. This takes some getting used to but works fine thereafter.
	The lens moves out considerably while zooming in. Combined with the lack of a power zoom this means that operating the camcorder on a steadicam (I have Tiffen's Merlin Steadicam which would otherwise be perfect for a machine this size) will be a pain if you need to zoom - you would need to rebalance all the time. NOT convenient.
	Sony forgot to backlight the controls - while operating the camcorder at night, I found it difficult to locate the controls.
	I am a manual freak but this camera is not geared towards manual operation. Ewwwwww! You can adjust exposure compensation, focus, gain, iris (aperture), exposure-time, white balance and shooting mode (P, A, S, M provided) manually, but you first need to hit the corresponding button hidden inside the swivel-out LCD-display, then turn the thumb-wheel to the desired setting, then press the thumb-wheel to confirm. This takes much too long to be really effective in a live shooting situation. It would have been much more effective - even with the supplied controls - to hit the corresponding button repeatedly till the desired setting was reached - e.g. switch from auto to manual focus and back just by hitting the button twice.
	The focus ring, while present, does not allow for manual override, e.g. focusing in auto, then turning the ring for manual focus override. Or being in manual focus and pressing the single photo shot button for a back-button-focus style override is not possible.
	You can swivel the LCD-display only a maximum of 90° upwards and downwards, it's not possible to go 180° to be able to flip it on it's back to show the monitor to the subject being shot.
	Auto-focus is sluggish, especially when light is low. But even in daylight it's not comparable to a conventional modern camcorder.
	There's a "RECORDING" delay of around 4 seconds after pressing the record-button to end a recording, which is somewhat irritating. (I used a class 4 64GB SD-Card, so this delay may - or may not - be shorter with a faster card). Also, commencing a recording has a delay of around 1 second.
	No macro-mode with the kit lens. You'll need the separate 30mm lens for this, for example.

What I Liked

	Video quality is nice
	Handling is generally nice - as long as you don't want to use the camera in manual mode
	The camcorder is light and almost frighteningly small: If you remove the lens and subtract the battery compartment at the rear, the body is less than 7.5 cm deep!
	The large rubber eye-cup is great for viewfinder shooters
	The battery compartment can hold the optional larger FV-100 battery without it jutting out from the rear of the VG10.
	You can directly copy the video files from the SD card to the computer (SDXC cards above 32GB might need the exFAT driver to work)
	You can directly play the AVCHD video files using the free VLC video player and also directly import them into Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.
	You can use the camcorder well for floor level shooting by holding it by it's top handle and using either the viewfinder tilted upwards (nice) or the display to monitor the frame.

Connectors
I found the following connectors on the VG10:

	HDMI
	USB (yes, you can transfer both Video and stills over USB to the computer)
	Microphone
	Headphone
	Power-in

Photo Mode
You can take still photographs with the VG10, with the restriction of no mixed stills and movie shooting: You need to press the mode button at the rear of the camcorder to set to stills or video mode. The camera automatically reverts back to video mode on power-on.

Pressing the dedicated PHOTO button causes the camera to release, pressing it in halfway auto-focuses (with an optional beep). The release is not silent but somewhat reminiscent to a Polaroid release click. In repeat-shooting mode this can sound somewhat intimidating.

You can set the focus-point via menu. However this a far cry from focus-point control on a DSLR.

You can set single-shot, or continuous shooting modes. The continuous mode is overly sensitive, so you'll probably end up shooting several frames when you just wanted one.
To Sum Things Up

	This is not a pro-level camcorder by any means, being mostly unusable in rapidly changing situations like weddings.  Too much menu vs. button operation and slow auto-focus are the main show-stoppers. Build quality similarly does not conform to professional standards.
	It's not a camcorder for manual shooters - the handling over multiple, not easily accessible buttons, menus and the thumb-wheel are much too fidgety.
	The lack of power zoom sucks initially but is fine once you get used to pulling the zoom manually.
	The battery charger is very slow. For serious work you'll need to buy the AC-VQV10 charger.

I have ordered a third-party NEX-to-Nikon lens adapter so I'm curious to see what my crop of Nikon lenses do to the VG10. This and more hands-on experience with raw footage and photos will be the subject of one of my next posts.
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