It has got a solid package of features for casual videography. I would consider, for example, taking the GO-HD with me on a family vacation, as an alternative to carrying a small video camera. But there are some features that are either fully automatic and can’t be disabled, or are just missing. In addition, it is what’s not on the camera that really limits its use for filmmaking.
Filmmaking Features
My primary interest is in independent film production. When I look at a camera for filmmaking I’m always considering four aspects of creativity and control: 1) Frame control, 2) Image control, 3) Motion control, and 4) Blur control.
Feature Highlights
For 1) Frame Control, the GO-HD will record in several formats, including 720pHD (1280x720), DV (720x480) and CIF (352x288). The camera provides a 3x optical zoom. That is not a lot of zoom. On the other hand, as it is already difficult to stabilize the camera, additional zoom would probably be impractical.
For 2) Image Control, the GO-HD permits the user to select a preset white balance (including Sunny, Cloudy, Fluorescent, and Tungsten) or to manually set white balance. It also has a +2 to -2 exposure control.
However, it is in 3) Motion control and 4) Blur control that the camera is lacking in features. The combination of features and the high-compression codec really limit the value of the GO-HD for filmmaking.
Size versus Stability
The size of the GO-HD, which excited me so much, has a lot of minuses as well as plusses.
The camera has a tiny sensor, so I did not expect any kind of depth of field control. The lens on it makes it virtually a pinhole camera. Therefore, I expected that everything it shot would be in focus to infinity, which is what I found.
The smaller the image sensor, the more significantly tiny shakes or small movements affect the image quality by creating motion blur in the video.
Motion and Blur Artifacts from Compression
The GO-HD has no image stabilization (let alone an optical image stabilizer), so the tiny movements, of holding the camera, translate into big problems in the resulting image. This problem is exacerbated by the h.264 codec. Because the codec uses “up to” 32 frames of information for image sampling, during compression, and because it uses large blocks, that means movements in the camera can result in smearing in the image that is actually an artifact of the compression method.
The GO-HD may record in 1280x720 resolutions, but it does not do a great job of recording motion. In addition, whether that motion comes from an object, or from the camera itself, the result is often an unnatural smear that does not map back to anything recognizable. It is not motion blur. It’ is a digital artifact that looks like a blur. I actually have a single frame of an actor turning her head that I shot on green screen using the GO-HD, side-by-side with the DVX100 and the HVX200; and in the GO-HD image, she appears with two distinct noses, like some kind of Picasso painting. That shouldn’t happen when recording at 30 frames per second on any camera. That is a compression artifact.
