The Sony Action Cam AS10/ AS15 review and users thread

[Rezillo]

The Sony action cams - AS10 and AS15 (wifi) - have been attracting a fair bit of attention and discussion. To prevent those who aren't interested in these particular cams being bored rigid by thread hijack, I've started this dedicated one.

I use cams just to record ride scenery, using up till now a succession of Contour cams on a handlebar mount. I've recently bought an AS10 and have been trying it out, using a home-brewed handlebar mount that looks rather more rigid than the one you have to buy separately from Sony.

These are just some some first impressions of the various video modes. You can set the field of view to 170 or 120 degrees without image stabilisation for either setting. However, if you turn on image stabilisation, it will force the fov to 120.

720p mode offers 60 and 120 fps options but these play back only at 30 fps to give a slow-motion effect and no sound.

1080p at 170 degrees, 30 fps.

This gives a very good picture, certainly better detailed than the Contour+, albeit the colour balance overall seems a little washed out. However, blue skies are over-accentuated, as other users have found.

Turning into the sun, the picture does lose contrast - not surprising, really, except that in 720p mode, this situation is handled much better. With a wide fov at 1080p, I've got no rolling shutter effect and for the first time can use this resolution with a handlebar mount on surface-dressed roads. Overall the picture is good and the camera is worth it for this alone.

1080p at 120 degrees, 30 fps.

Not great - there is a substantial reduction in the definition of the picture and rolling shutter effects become apparent. Less fisheye, of course, and it is still not a bad picture. The bit rate of the files it produces are identical to the 170 degree files so you don't get the benefit of smaller files for a less sharp picture.

1080p with image stabilisation (120 degrees), 30 fps

Same as above. Image stabilisation doesn't seem to offer any benefit for a handlebar mount and the effects of, say, a bumpy road are not reduced at all.

720p at 170 degrees, 30 fps

Initially, taking shots around the garden, I was very impressed. Sharp picture, with contrast and colour balance better than the 1080p mode and streets ahead of the 720p setting on every Contour camera I have owned. Run at full screen, the quality wasn't far from the 1080p 120 degree setting. 720p is a useful mode for long rides when you don't want to keep changing cards (or batteries - I got 2hrs 58 minutes with the AS10 recording at 720p).

However, when it came to use on the bike - oh dear. Massive artefacting on the road surface which dissolves into a sea of squiggles and blocks whenever complex background detail appears. It is not difficult to see why this is - the bit rate is far too low to cope with a complex moving picture, which is a major fail for an action camera. It is barely 6mbps whereas the Contour cams can use anything from 8 to 11mbps for 720p.

Here's a screen grab that is not too bad - the road lacks any real texture but it could be worse. Note I'm approaching a line of small trees on the left.

Heres's a screen grab as I go past the trees - a more complex picture for compression to handle and it can't cope with the change - it all breaks up. It does recover a little after the first change and the screengrab looks worse than the moving image but it still looks awful.

Sound

The camera can only be bar mounted by using a totally enclosed case. Any bar mount will receive road noise transmitted through the bike structure and with the enclosed case, it swamps any external noise. I'm going to be carrying out some case modifications to try and improve this but I'm not optimistic

Used outside the case, sound quality is very good but there is no microphone wind-shielding that I can detect and any breeze or movement causes wind noise. Contour use a pinhole aperture and a thin pad to cover the microphone, which does muffle the sound somewhat but reduces wind noise quite effectively without a large shield being used.

Case

Very good build quality but it fogs up! It was dry and 12C today, so not that cold, but the case interior fogged up in front of the lens in 40 minutes. Sony look to be selling some anti-fogging sheets shortly but this seems a bit of a kludge solution. It would be better if the case had a foam or rubber ring around the lens section to seal it off when used.

Summary.

So, a very mixed bag overall. If you want good quality 1080p recording at a low price, this camera is a very, very good buy. However it has a number of areas that could be improved to make it so much more. Some can be fixed in firmware but I do not think that Sony have a good record of camera firmware fixes.

Improvements needed - fixing over-saturated blue skies, upping the 720p bitrate, having 60fps playback with sound, more mounting options, windshielding, case modifications.

 

[BSRU]

I have managed to record using one battery for 2hrs and 11mins using 1080p 30fps.
Fogging seems to decrease the more the camera is used but not eliminated.
I have managed to ride for 90 minutes at dawn on a cold/damp day without fogging by storing the camera and open case overnight in a sealed container with a couple of silica gel sachets.
I am looking at modifying a case so it can be used without the front cover or drill some holes in it to help with airflow, I do not need a case to be that so waterproof just enough to withstand heavy rain.
Hopefully Sony will release a firmware upgrade but still an amazing low light 1080p camera for the price.

 

[Rezillo]

Update after further use:

Well, I'm rapidly going off this camera. It has started to have an annoying rattle that I can't fix and I've found the 1080p footage can be artefact-prone as well as that at 720p.

First, the good news.

Fogging fixed by drilling a small hole in the base of the rear of the case. I've also improved the bar mount audio from "inaudible over road noise" to "barely audible over road noise" by drilling some case holes in front of the microphones and filling the space with a small plug of acoustic (open cell) foam. Wind noise is not a problem but I'm not sure the result is worth it, though.

Now the bad news.

1080p footage looks very good if half the view is smooth sky or if you are in an urban environment where buildings and other colour blocks are easily compressible. However, going along a leafy lane shows vegetation getting badly smudged.

Here's a shot with lots of uniform sky colour, looking ok, albeit sky too blue:

Here's an urban, well, village, shot, again looking ok:

Here is a leafy lane AND a moving approaching car. Lots of smudged vegetation towards the centre (which is more apparent in the fullscreen original, link below) and the car is a mess of blocks:

Link to original

Just to prove it can handle oncoming vehicles in a different setting, this shot is fine:

For today's footage, anywhere where I was going down tree-lined lanes was showing compression artefacts to a greater or lesser extent, often worse than the example above (which I picked out because of the car breakup). This is very poor, overall. The Contour+ isn't great with the same kind of situations but it is nowhere near as bad as this, and it uses a lower bit rate for 1080p.

 

[cloggsy]

I'd be tempted to use 720P at 60ffs - What's it like on this setting?

 

[Rezillo]

I'd be tempted to use 720P at 60ffs - What's it like on this setting?

60fps recordings only play back at 30fps, with no sound, so all you get is a slow-motion effect. Quality-wise, I haven't tried it in any detail as this kind of function is not much use to me.

60fps would normally be very handy for avoiding rolling shutter effects and for showing smooth fast motion but having only 30fps playback makes it a bit of a gimmick, imho.

 

[cloggsy]

Plays back in slow motion effect? Really? Doesn't sound right...

 

[Rezillo]

Plays back in slow motion effect? Really? Doesn't sound right...

Well - that's what it does. No matter whether it records at 60fps or 120fps - the files play back at 30fps. Loads of discussion about it - just one of many in this link.

As Sony itself says on its US website:

"Extreme sports athletes and enthusiasts will enjoy HD SLOW 2x (1280 x 720, 60p) and HD SLOW 4x (1280 x 720, 120p) that shoot slow motion, which is ideal for studying and refining form and technique. For traditional shooting methods, the camcorder also offers several different resolutions to suit your needs: shoots in Full HD (1920x1080 30p), STD HD (1280x720, 30p), SD VGA (640x480, 30p)".

 

[BSRU]

I'm still using my Contour+ as my helmet camera but the Sony always produces better video, I have even replaced my rear camera, a protuned gopro 2, with an AS10.

 

[Rezillo]

I'm still using my Contour+ as my helmet camera but the Sony always produces better video, I have even replaced my rear camera, a protuned gopro 2, with an AS10.

Yes, I think it would be fine in an urban environment - most of my footage in villages and towns looks ok. It just doesn't like the complex detail of movement by lots of rural roadside vegetation, although rapid pans can throw it as well. Googling 'sony as15 artefacts' throws up some interesting results.

I think there may be more to the artefacts than the degree of compression. Although the Sony's 720p bitrates are lower than Contour's, the 1080p bitrate is higher but still has problems. Hopefully fixable in firmware but if the type of compression is part of the problem, that could be hardware-dependent.

[edit] I think what I'm seeing is 'mud', or loss of detail in low contrast areas. This would explain why a high contrast urban scene is ok but low contrast areas are poor.

 

[BSRU]

Yes, I think it would be fine in an urban environment - most of my footage in villages and towns looks ok. It just doesn't like the complex detail of movement by lots of rural roadside vegetation, although rapid pans can throw it as well. Googling 'sony as15 artefacts' throws up some interesting results.

I think there may be more to the artefacts than the degree of compression. Although the Sony's 720p bitrates are lower than Contour's, the 1080p bitrate is higher but still has problems. Hopefully fixable in firmware but if the type of compression is part of the problem, that could be hardware-dependent.

[edit] I think what I'm seeing is 'mud', or loss of detail in low contrast areas. This would explain why a high contrast urban scene is ok but low contrast areas are poor.

About 50% of my commute is on leafy/wooded country lanes and I think the Sony is better than my Contour.
The complaints about artefacts seem mostly by people using 720p, I only use 1080p without image stabilisation since a 32gb card can sore over 4 hours of video.

 

[Rezillo]

Most of my Sony footage looks very good but it is artefacting in situations where the Contours cope ok. Sometimes, it is just a few seconds of transition to a different background, other times it's for longer. Here's an example from the same ride - stills aren't a great way of illustrating quality but this one does reflect what is seen in the video. I've also tried other players, which look the same. Bear in mind, though, that this is from a 25 mile ride, 24.5 miles of which look fine.

Example here

The good footage, on the other hand, looks impressive but it also looks a bit over-sharpened compared to, say, the Contour+, which might be part of the problem. Then again, the Sony is less than half the price.

[edit] I've just found this discussion here - about halfway down the page, post from Earthling starting "AS10 analyzed", is an analysis of AS10 video.

 

[BSRU]

[edit] I've just found this discussion here - about halfway down the page, post from Earthling starting "AS10 analyzed", is an analysis of AS10 video.

Very interesting review by someone who is obviously very knowledgeable.
It shows Sony are capable of producing an excellent camera, the NEX 5N, but like the Contour and Hero 3 much more expensive than the AS10.
Hopefully Sony will release a new firmware to address issues found by users, fingers crossed.
Owning the Sony, several Contours a protuned Hero 2 I realise none of them are perfect and all have their own drawbacks.
But so far the over 4 hours record on a 32gb card with over 2 hours from one battery(which are cheap to replace) and most importantly this time of year the excellent low light performance means the cheap Sony is my preferred camera. If only it had the video quality of the Sony NEX 5N and the mounting capabilities of the Contour.

 

[Rezillo]

Yes, good but frustratingly close to being so much more.

The B frames issue explains what I am seeing perfectly but it is quite a fundamental issue for Sony to alter. I hope Sony make some changes but they do not seem to have a good record of firmware changes for improvements unless it is to fix faults.

As one illustration, I've got a Sony HX9V which is a very good compact camera that takes great snaps in all kinds of conditions but its picture quality is compromised to some degree by over-compression (sounds familiar). Users have been crying out for a simple user adjustment of jpg quality but to no avail.

 

[Recycle]

@Rezillo, @BSRU, Have you done any recording at night & if so, how does the camera shape up?

 

[Rezillo]

It's very good in low light generally but I haven't done anything darker than dusk - BSRU may have more info on night use. The stuff on Youtube looks good.