Video quality question

Shield3 wrote:

I'm smoking actually SHOOTING and OWNING the a57 and a99 cameras, and shooting video with them. On paper, the a99 should SMOKE all Sony DSLR's. HDMI out, microphone/headphone jack, XLR accessory, etc.

But..it doesn't. At all. Sony has done something screwy with however the camera takes that gorgeous 24 megapixel sensor down to the 2.07 (1920x1080) video output.

Until someone here tests it being recorded to a Atomos Ninja or other HDMI recorder, the speculation is it's the compression. Who knows. All I know is what I've shot and tested, and I spent a few weeks on every conceivable setting and just couldn't get it to look right. Ran it through editors (Sony Vegas, Adobe after effects, etc.)

The problem is when you want a decent depth of field. It's just not sharp. Period. It seems like low resolution garbage. There is shimmering and other strange pulsing effects when AF is on.

I even ran an HDMI cable to my Sony 60" LED TV and tried adjusting the sharpness -3 to +3. (Also while shooting). I can see a difference when I adjust saturation and contrast, but NOT sharpness. I also don't see a difference adjusting the noise reduction one way or the other.

Does it blur out the background in video mode? Absolutely. But nothing is sharp. Even in the brightest of sunlight stopped down to F/16 in MF mode with IS turned off. I gave up and sold it.

The a57? I set it to P mode with a slower lens and got a far sharper video with a decent blown out background. Same with the a77.