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https://www.patreon.com/ulillillia --- Published on Aug 10, 2014

My camcorder, the Sony Handycam HDR-CX110 has served me well for 5 years now. It's great for starting out with, but I've advanced to the point where it no longer meets my needs and it has plenty of shortcomings. This video explains what my camcorder is capable of along with the weak points and issues I have with it. In brief:

The lens is a high quality Carl Zeiss 2.5-62.5 f/1.8 lens. The sensor is a (very small) 1/4-inch sensor (meaning it has a crop factor of about 10.7x, rather strong though the small focal length makes up for that). This tiny sensor size combined with the lack of the ability to choose the shutter speed (1/30 second is the longest allowed, too fast for night stuff) makes it not worthwhile for any nighttime settings hence why I can't reliably get the stars without writing a program that uses 32-bit floating point precision and multiple steps to enhance it. It may seem like I'm in that mirror, but I'm actually off to the side, out of its reach, putting a box to great use.

The low light case that I used was very near the limits, right on the border. Ambient light from the bright outdoors was the only light getting in there. I could clearly see what was going on but even with maxed exposure (including enabling the "low lux" feature, whatever that's for outside boosting the sensitivity), 5x color multiplication (the color multiplication is done in the editing - the RGB color values are simply multiplied by 5 to increase contrast), the camcorder pretty much can't really pick out the details. The only way to get the details is to use a tripod to make for a still scene and using frame stacking (that's how I got the stars - stacking 60 frames for an average, multiplying the brightness by about 8, subtracting out the gray "haze" that comes out of this, then multiplying again by about 5.5). When the camera can pick it up, it's extremely grainy (frame stacking gets rid of this but it also means time lapse effects occur).

In daytime lighting, the level of detail that's possible is really amazing. I showcase many examples using my sister's plants and also an every-day office object where details become visible that you couldn't see before). My camcorder is primarily meant for daytime settings, not dark settings.

The biggest annoyance with my camcorder is that, to change the exposure and focus, you have to spend quite a bit of time going through menus and I've often missed great shots because of this. A great demonstration is provided.

After 20+ hours of searching, I found the camera that meets pretty much all of my needs with only a few fairly minor weak points that aren't an issue to me (or only weakly so). That new camera is the Panasonic DMC-GH3. It's a DSLR type of camera. This means interchangeable lenses are involved and needing to understand a lot more beyond what my camcorder simplifies. Examples of what I need to get used to, as part of my advancement, is seeing how aperture (the f/1.8 my camcorder has), focal length (the 2.5 to 62.5 mm), ISO (my camcorder is rated ISO 1600 - the DMC-GH3 gets that level of graininess at the ISO 6400), and shutter speed. There's also understanding depth of field as well as a few others. The best way I learn is to simply experiment with the camera settings and stuff and see what happens.

At first, I'll only be getting an el cheapo lens, just so I can use the camera in the first place. Once I can save up more, I'll be getting a general purpose lens. Something like either 12-50 mm or 14-42 mm focal length with an aperture around f/2.8 to f/5.6 is kind of in my target area. With this, I can get some zoom capabilities, decent sensitivity, and all around use. Later on, I plan on getting a more dedicated zoom lens like one of those 18-200 mm ones. Another lens would have as low of an aperture as I can get (like f/1.4 at the maximum, probably 12 or 14 mm focal length) for night shots for capturing the stars. Another lens would be one for wide angle shots, like 10 mm focal length, maybe 8 mm. I'd rather not get fisheye lenses though. Yet another lens would be one of those with a 500 mm or even 1000 mm focal length that I've seen on Amazon for very extreme zooms. A side extension would be something for macro shots, for extreme closeups of various things like I've done in many of the short segments of this video.

I plan on getting the Panasonic camera during the holidays, about 4 months from now, when prices are usually very cheap. Once I get this camera, I plan on taking pictures of my rock collection, the stars, and plenty of other things.