Sony HDR-TG5V

Ease of Use (6.00)

The only buttons on the HDR-TG5V are a shutter button, a record button, and a zoom toggle. That’s it. The camcorder doesn’t even have a power switch! This setup, however, doesn’t actually make the HDR-TG5V any easier to use than its predecessor, the HDR-TG1. In the process of downsizing, Sony got rid of a very important button on the HDR-TG5V—the Easy button. The Easy button is the holy grail of buttons for beginners, as it puts the camcorder into an entirely automated mode, and even locks users out of accessing the menu for fear they’ll adjust something they shouldn’t be fiddling with. Well, the TG5V doesn’t have an Easy mode, which means it doesn’t have any sort of dedicated auto mode.

Still, the HDR-TG5V isn’t that difficult to use. Its sparse body design is comforting for beginners, and the LCD touchscreen, while annoying to use, is quite intuitive. Sony also doesn’t offer many manual controls, which simplifies things for novice users who would have no use for them anyway. Sony’s new menu system, however, isn’t very simple to use or understand. There are too many options, too many funky navigation techniques, and too little space to press the buttons on the LCD. If you don’t know the location of a specific control, it may take you a while to sift through the 24-page menu to find it. Sony’s terrible instruction manual doesn’t help out much either.

The HDR-TG5V features a brand new menu setup that Sony just recently rolled out on its latest camcorders. The redesign has its benefits—and its share of problems—but one thing’s for sure, it definitely looks sleeker and more sophisticated than Sony’s previous menus. Nearly every option on the camcorder is located under one main menu, which is quite a bit different from Sony’s confusing Home Menu vs. Camera Menu setup it had on previous models. The problem with housing every option under one menu, however, is that the menu becomes exceedingly long—24 separate screens long, in fact.

Sony tries to make up for its long menu by providing numerous navigation options. You can scroll through the menu page-by-page, but that takes quite a while to get through all 24 screens. Another option allow you to jump from section to section by pressing the double-arrowed buttons on the LCD. This allows you to move through the menu quickly, but you can easily skip over vital controls this way. Also, the double-arrow section buttons don’t always appear on the LCD and you have to tap the space in between the regular scrolling arrows to bring them up. Even if you go through the menu this way, there are still 14 different sections, which means you still have a lot of tapping to do.

The third way to navigate the menus is hard to explain and may be frustrating the first couple times you try it. You can scroll through the menus as if you’re quickly rolling a scroll-wheel by holding your finger on the LCD and sliding it up or down. The farther you slide up or down, the faster the menu will scroll by. The problem is, you have to place your finger tip on the far left of the LCD while you do the scrolling (the little area that shows 3 horizontal lines). This doesn’t give you much space, especially if you have large fingers, to slide your finger up and down. In fact, the small surface area of the LCD touchscreen is one of the biggest problems of the menu system. The navigation buttons are tiny, close together, and often unresponsive, which makes navigating the menu all the more difficult.

Ah, but Sony has one more trick up its sleeve with its new menu system—customizable menus. You can setup six different options to appear in a quick-access menu called My Menu that appears in both recording and playback mode (with different options available for each). Any option that is found in the camcorder’s regular menu directory can be set to one of the six available spaces on the My Menu list. This is a great idea by Sony and it definitely helps get over the fact that the regular menu has far too many options and is terribly difficult to navigate. My Menu is a bit difficult to access, but once you know where it lives it isn’t too bad. When you’re in the regular menu, you have to press the menu button in the lower left that is flanked by an arrow on each side. This button switches you over to My Menu and it also brings you back to the main menu when you press it again.

The main menu is very long.	My Menu in recording mode

Auto Mode (9.55)

In a very surprising move, Sony didn’t include its popular ‘Easy’ button on the HDR-TG5V. Eliminating this button doesn’t diminish the quality of the camcorder’s automatic controls, but it does make the TG5V more confusing to work with. On other Sony products, beginners can simply seek out the ‘Easy’ button and take comfort in the fact that the camcorder is running entirely on cruise-control.

Even though there is no dedicated auto mode on the TG5V, its auto controls work quite well. Autofocus was fairly quick, very accurate, and can even focus on subjects that are just 3.2mm away (this is the equivalent of holding a piece of paper flat against the lens). In addition to the regular autofocus, there is also a Spot Focus feature on the TG5V that allows you to tap the portion of the screen you want to bring into focus. There’s also Spot Exposure, which does the same thing for exposure, and dual Spot Focus/Spot Exposure that sets both functions at the same time.

Auto exposure and auto white balance both got the job done, although the camcorder did have some trouble with correcting for backlight. There is an auto backlight setting on the TG5V, but even with it turned on the camcorder couldn’t always compensate for backlit subjects very well.

Sony poured a lot of interest into Face and Smile Detection on its new products this year, and the features don’t disappoint on the HDR-TG5V. Face Detection works in both video and still mode and can detect up to 8 faces in one frame. We found the feature to detect faces quickly and accurately, although it had some trouble detecting faces that took up a good chunk of the frame with (i.e. extreme close-ups).

Smile Detection is another nifty feature that enables the camcorder to automatically snap a photo when a subject within the frame smiles. Many traditional videographers probably won’t be too keen on this feature, but it can be a useful tool—particularly if you are holding the camcorder out at arms length trying to photograph yourself. The sensitivity of Smile Detection can be set to High, Medium, or Low, and we definitely noticed the camcorder being fairly liberal with what constitutes a smile when we used the High setting. You can also set smile priority to Child, Adult, or Auto, which is good if you’re shooting a large group of people who may not be able to smile in unison. While we do find these features intriguing, we understand that they are very gimmicky and aren’t all that useful overall. We would have much rather Sony included options for manual shutter speed and aperture control than the TG5V’s extensive set of Face Detection features.

Low Light Modes – The HDR-TG5V doesn’t have any special low light modes like Sony’s NightShot feature. All it has are a few scene modes that are applicable in low light (Twilight and Candle) and an auto slow shutter option. The auto slow shutter, which is a feature found on most consumer camcorders, allows the shutter speed to drop down to 1/30 of a second in low light situations. This improves low light performance, but it also makes moving subjects look choppy and adds motion trails to the video. Without auto slow shutter, the camcorder won’t use below a 1/60 of a second shutter speed. The Candle scene mode allows the camcorder to use even slower shutter speeds (down to 1/2 of a second).

Scene Modes – The HDR-TG5V has a variety of scene modes, including a new Candle setting that was not found on the Sony HDR-XR520V. The scene modes include: Twilight, Twilight Portrait, Candle, Sunrise & Sunset, Fireworks, Landscape, Portrait, Spotlight, Beach, and Snow.

Auto Controls

Focus – The HDR-TG5V has two manual focus options: regular focus adjustment and spot focus. The regular focus adjustment doesn’t work very well with the camcorder’s touchscreen system. Two buttons are located on either side of the LCD screen and you tap them (or hold them down) to manually focus the image. An icon in the center of the screen does display the focal length,but it does so in meters with about 10 different numeric increments. Using this system, it is very difficult to get a precise focus due to the finicky nature of the touchscreen and the fact that the LCD is cluttered with icons, buttons, and information while you are trying to focus.

Spot Focus, on the other hand, works far better. It allows you to simply tap the portion of the screen you want to bring into focus and the camcorder does the rest. This feature makes very good use of the touchscreen system. The camcorder also has options for Spot Exposure and another setting that does Spot Exposure and Focus at the same time.

Exposure – Exposure is one of the few manual controls that you can actually adjust on the Sony HDR-TG5V. The camcorder offers 28 increments of exposure control, although no numeric values are listed. All adjustments are made using the touchscreen by tapping plus and minus buttons located on the left and right of the LCD. You can also hold down the buttons for quicker adjustment.

It should be obvious that this system does not provide very accurate or precise adjustment because of the lack of any numeric exposure values. On a positive note, 28 increments of exposure adjustment is quite a bit more than we normally see on a camcorder. There’s also a useful Spot Exposure feature that is very similar to the Spot Focus option we discussed in the previous section.

Aperture – There is no manual aperture control on the HDR-TG5V. This is quite a big absence for a camcorder, but it isn’t that surprising—Sony doesn’t even offer aperture control on its high-end consumer camcorders. Full aperture control is available on the Sanyo VPC-HD2000 and the JVC GZ-X900 has an aperture-priority setting.

Shutter Speed – There’s also no way to manually set shutter speed on the HDR-TG5V (again, this feature is absent on all consumer camcorders from Sony). By not including aperture or shutter control, Sony does make its camcorders simpler, but it also severely limits their versatility and diminishes interest amongst experienced videographers. You can still alter the shutter speed on the TG5V by turning on the auto slow shutter feature. This doesn’t allow you to control the shutter, however, but instead enables the camcorder to drop to a 1/30 of a second shutter speed in low light situations. Some of the camcorder’s scene modes also change the shutter speed, but none of them allow you to manually control it.

White Balance – Thank goodness the HDR-TG5V has an option for manual white balance because the camcorder’s white balance presets are severely limited. In addition to the manual option, the TG5V has white balance settings for Outdoor, Indoor, and Auto. Sony’s ‘One-push’ manual white balance feature actually works very well with the camcorder’s touchscreen system. You simply point the camcorder to a white or neutral target and press a button on the LCD. This task is easy to perform and it calibrates the camcorder’s color temperature very well.

Gain – Since the HDR-TG5V doesn’t offer aperture or shutter speed control, we’re not surprised to see it doesn’t include gain adjustment either. Having some sort of gain control has become a more common inclusion on consumer camcorders this year. Panasonic is the only manufacturer to offer complete control, although the aperture has to be open all the way in order to use it. Canon has an AGC limiter feature on the HF S11, HF S10, and HF S100, while JVC offers an AGC on/off setting. Sanyo also includes gain control in the form of ISO settings that work in video mode.

Zoom – Zooming is performed using the circular ring located on the back of the HDR-TG5V. The ring feels a bit awkward because you push it up (clockwise) to zoom out and you push it down (counter-clockwise) to zoom in. Since most zoom toggles are horizontal and pushed side-to-side, this unique circular controller takes some getting used to. One benefit of this design is the fact that you can do everything with your thumb; zooming doesn’t require the use of an index finger like on other camcorders.

There are no secondary zoom buttons on the camcorder’s LCD, which is something that has become a common feature on many camcorders. There are also no zoom speed settings, although the circular ring does allow you to control zoom speed variably by applying more or less pressure on the ring.

The HDR-TG5V is equipped with a 10x optical zoom, which is good for a camcorder of its size. The larger Sony HDR-XR520V only has a slightly longer optical zoom at 12x, and the JVC GZ-X900 only packs in a 5x optical zoom. If you want to increase the zoom using digital magnification, there are options for 20x and 120x on the HDR-TG5V. However, using these digital zooms will result in lower image quality. We recommend sticking with the 10x optical unless you desperately need a close-up.