Sony MHS-FS3 3D Bloggie - Discounted, Discontinued and Disappointing
Monday, June 4, 2012 at 1:44PM When I was researching this camera, deciding whether it was worth buying, I found it impossible to find any raw unconverted sample clips that had been produced by this camera. There were a few videos on youtube, but as we all know, these aren't an accurate representation of the true video quality.
Everything I did manage to view though looked absolutely terrible. Washed out, shakey and blurry. Well it turns out that this was in fact an accurate representation of this camera's capabilities after all. There are a few reasons as to why this is the case. First off, the 3D video is 1080p AVC MP4 Half SBS, which means that each eye gets allocated half of the 1080p frame - this results in softer video than normal 2D 1080p. This would be forgivable, if it wasn't for the camera's achilles heel.
This camera deactivates image stabilisation when it is recording in 3D mode. A camera this small relies heavily upon image stabilisation to prevent the footage degenerating into a shaky mess. This is probably even more important when recording in 3D mode. The final problem with this camera is that its lenses are far too close together to capture a proper sense of depth. I really don't know what Sony was thinking here, but the effects of having the lenses next to each other like this, is that anything more than a few feet in front of the camera ends up on the same visual plane. Untimately it becomes very difficult to spot that the 3D footage is actually 3D. It just ends up looking odd. The 3D effect produced by this camera is to 3D what virtual surround is to Dolby 7.1. You can tell something different is supposed to be happening, but you can't quite put your finger on what it is.
So in effect we have a 3D camera that takes soft, shaky, flat 3D video. I can see why Sony discountinued this one very quicky and liquidated all existing stocks through heavy discounting. I just can't understand why they went ahead and brought it out in the first place. However if you want a pocket camera that records reasonable 1080p video then this isn't a bad camera. Just make sure you keep the 3D mode switched off at all times.
You may have noticed from file dates in the video that a lot of the work on this 'review' was done in March 2012. I sold the camera on ebay and moved on to other things. I've only just managed to return to this and finish it off over this bank holiday weekend. This explains why I didn't go as indepth as normal on this review, and it is why I will find it difficult to answer any questions about this camera.
The main reason I decided to go back and finish this video is so that there is a bit of context to the sample clips that I wanted people to have the opportunity to download and see for themselves. One other reason is that I could finally delete the video files off my laptop to free up some space.
Below is a link to the sample clips. All of these are straight from the camera and uploaded to Mediafire. All video clips are unedited and in AVC MP4 format. The 3D video is SBS 1080p. The 3D pictures are in JPG+MPO format. You will need playback and display equipment capable of showing these file formats.
CLICK HERE to download sample Video & Photos
Reader Comments (5)
Very professional coming back and finishing the review, you are a champ.
can you do a review on cheap lenses made by samyang or tokina? i do believe you own a canon dslr rite?
@jkiyip. I don't own a DSLR, so no lens reviews.
Hi Techmoan,
If you want shoot good quality 3D video use loreo products (http://www.loreo.com/) with a DSLR.
Your site is great.
Bye
George
You are right that the lenses are close together. However, the camera is meant to be used with subjects 3 - 10 feet away, and the stereo effect works very well at that distance. I agree that the camera is virtually unusable, especially if you walk with it. I believe that Steadyshot cannot be used with stereo cameras because there is a possibility that the left and right images will go out of sync. The highly-trained engineers at Sony overlooked putting a tripod mount on the underside of the camera when used in landscape (stereo) mode, so I had to add an "L" bracket to the camera permitting tripod or monopod mounting. I also had to add a length of pipe cleaner to the top of the camera as it was virtually unusable in a breeze due to wind noise. Finally those same engineers who forgot the tripod mount, also put a single button with left and right joystick motion which often starts the 10 second or 2 second self-timer - great for missing action shots.