Sony Bloggie MHS-FS1: Review and Test Footage [720p60 mode]

[@FatCatTech]

*Sony “Bloggie” MHS-FS1 Review* *SUMMARY...* In the 2000s and early 2010s, Sony camcorders were often regarded as some of the markets finest, involving exciting consumer features, such as Nightshot, an interactive accessory shoe, innovative formats, etc. There was one facet of the consumer camcorder market, however, that Sony had a less-than-stellar presence in: Pocket camcorders. Whether or not Sony’s MiniDV and MicroMV units are considered such is notwithstanding, for the time being anyway. It started with the Net-Sharing Cam, which turned out to be an abysmal camera at best (although it was moderately acceptable for posting to KZbin at the time), and graduated to the “Webbie” line in 2009, which turned out to be capable, but with a few major issues: Awful low light performance and sound quality as the two most prominent of such. Within the onset of the new decade, Sony tried once more, renaming the series to “Bloggie”, in reference to the internet’s growing trend of the “Video Blog”. The 2010 Bloggie retained much of the Webbie’s physical styling (except actual shape) and menu system, but had a few extra options for video quality. These units were also not taken well by consumers. In 2011, Sony gave it another shot with the MHS-FS1, in what appeared to be an effort to buy into the excitement surrounding Cisco/Pure Digital’s Flip series camcorders (moreso than the 2010 series, by opinion) and the rising use of camera phones; the reader may decide their comparability. The second in the Bloggie name’s iterations, the MHS-FS1, in similar disposition to the Flip series (and in-line with the Bloggie’s predecessors), had essentially no manual control ability whatsoever, the only exception being video and picture quality. This could be forgiven, as could the video’s strange compression artifacts and fuzzy edges, had the camcorder not the most infuriating, godawful firmware issue of any camera tested thus far. *CAMCORDER BODY..* The build of the camcorder is nothing too remarkable, it’s a slim nondescript unit constructed out of a decent black plastic, adorned with few chrome plastic trims. The MHS-FS1 is about the thickness of a couple cell phones stacked atop one another. The front of the camcorder is mostly blank, consisting of only the Sony logo and the lens. The top and bottom of the unit are similarly interesting; topside is completely empty, while the bottom simply houses the 1/4 inch tripod mount and sticker for model number information. The camcorder’s left side (that is, if the user were facing the screen-side and holding the camera vertically upright), houses the camcorder’s slot for a wrist strap, a secret door containing a mini-HDMI port, and a swing-out USB arm for transferring pictures and videos. On the right side, the user will find a “Bloggie” logo, the built-in microphone, the built-in speaker, the power button, an indicator light, and a shutter button. Finally, on the rear of the camera, lies a 2.6 inch (6.7 cm) screen, situated next to two buttons for various functions and a record button surrounded by a d-pad. The camcorder’s screen is acceptable in most conditions. Sometimes camera screens are difficult to see in broad daylight (Some of Sony’s MicroMV camcorders have this issue). The Bloggie, however, has a rather… interesting take on this. It is genuinely difficult to see the Bloggie’s screen at night. Whether or not what’s viewable on the screen, at night, from a head-on perspective is properly representative of how the video looks in post-production is notwithstanding, which will be addressed later. The review has found that the screen’s best viewing angle for framing shots is at about 45 degrees below the horizontal. The camcorder does not have a setting to change the screen brightness, so the user may have to employ new and innovative aerobic exercises to frame videos and pictures properly.

[@FatCatTech]

*CAMCORDER UI...* Alright, this is where this review has the most to complain about. However, before any major issues are addressed, the focus will remain on the menu options and screen indicators. Upon powering the camera, the user will be greeted by a “Bloggie” splash screen, and then taken into the camera mode. From left to right, the on-screen indicators displayed are: The video quality mode, the remaining recording time, the remaining pictures available, then the set picture quality, and finally the battery level indication,. There are also on-screen menu and playback decals to indicate the function of the adjacent physical buttons. On the bottom of the screen, an explanation of the d-pad’s functions (up and down for zoom function, and right for a self-timer function) will display as well. Most of this information displays only for a moment before disappearing, this cannot be changed. One of the more neat features of the basic display is that the user can orient the camera in any possible position, and the bloggie will automatically flip the screen and controls to match, in an effort to prevent accidentally recording upside-down… sometimes. Notice the lack of a removable media slot; unlike predecessors, the MHS-FS1 did not have a card slot, the user was only given 4GB of internal memory with which to use. The user can access the camcorder’s menu, via the aforementioned “menu” button. In terms of options, there’s… not many, to say the least, in-line with the theming of most pocket camcorders. The major two options are picture quality (5M at 4:3, 3M at 16:9, and 0.4M at 16:9), and video quality (1080p30, 720p60, 720p30, and 270p30). At the bottom of the main menu, the user will find the submenu to change desired setup settings, such as: Flicker reduction (for fluorescent lighting situations), the option to turn on/off the camcorder’s beeping sounds, the set language, the option to enable/disable the camcorder’s demo mode (for retail purposes), the option to reset the camcorder to factory settings, the LUN setting (which the manual doesn’t explain the purpose of well, the only useful part of it able to discern is that setting this to “single” will stop the bloggie’s software folder from opening when connecting to a PC), the HDMI output setting (for 50 or 60 Hz), the option to format the camcorder’s internal memory, and, finally, the date and time settings. The playback UI is a similarly simple setup. Upon pressing the playback button, the user is greeted by a grid-layout array of the camcorder’s stored pictures and videos. This can be navigated intuitively with the D-pad. The D-pad can also be used to directly operate the scroll bar, for quicker access to earlier pages of footage. The settings menu for playback mode contains few: The option to delete videos (selectable by a check box), the option to protect images from deletion (also by check box), the option to mark an image for sharing online (in the spirit of the “Bloggie’s” name, in conjunction with the camera’s installable software, the user can automatically share images and videos to KZbin, Facebook, Flickr, and a number of contacts, not sure if any of these APIs work anymore), and finally, the same system settings menu as before. Now that the main aspects of the Bloggie’s UI have been brought to the table, it’s time to serve the camcorder’s most irritating and grating flaw: The firmware. It cannot possibly be overstated how much trouble is involved in simply turning this camera on. The list of issues upon powering up includes, but is not limited to: Not turning on at all (with a full battery), freezing during startup, turning on and displaying a bizarre network of horizontal blurry lines (which also shows up on recorded video), a similar to the previous without blurred lines, the video displaying UPSIDE-DOWN, the video randomly displaying darker than what is necessary (not due to environmental conditions), strange discolorations present in the video, etc. Would be more inclined to forgive if these didn’t happen at least 30% of the time this camcorder was powered on, or if these issues didn’t show up in the recorded video. There’s also been a major issue (albeit less common) in which the camcorder would completely freeze if the camera was left recording for too long. These problems have singlehandedly ruined whatever positive image this review could have had on this camcorder, it is genuinely awful. *VIDEO QUALITY...* It should be noted that the test footage was recorded in the 720p60 mode; a separate video for the 1080p30 mode will be made at some point in the far future. The review is admittedly having trouble deciding which way to swing with this one. The video is perfectly adequate; it’s very average, very okay, as long as the lighting conditions are perfect. The MHS-FS1 has a 4x digital zoom, the quality decline of which is definitely problematic; that being said, this camcorder’s digital zoom is one of the smoothest seen thus far, easily rivaling the Flip cameras. There is a rather noticeable amount of compression in the video, however, which is particularly seen in the way trees appear. This camcorder’s biggest drawback in video, though, is its poor focusing in lower light situations. The Bloggie struggles where nearly any other camcorder would perform acceptably (except the Webbie, which isn’t a good bar); this is especially apparent in the city footage, where the camcorder did not focus even under decent low light conditions. Even in situations in which vehicle taillights should provide a point for the focus to grab, the camcorder still failed miserably. The issues mentioned in the previous section, combined with this aspect alone, made shooting anything overnight a considerably horrid experience to endure. This would be an issue that could be ignored if the camera had simply had any semblance to manual controls present, but, since it does not, this ruins anything the user tries to record after the sun goes down. The audio quality is also just moderately acceptable, am not the biggest audiophile of course. There’s a particularly prominent presence of handling noise when using the camcorder handheld, as is typical for a camcorder of this class. Tripod use obviously recommended. Review did also notice that the audio seemed rather muffled on quite a few occasions. One noticeable aspect of the unit is the monaural audio, which, in a camcorder of this category and price, is rather absurd. This is especially infuriating when the user finds that they’ve been fooled into thinking the MHS-FS1 records in stereo, since videos imported to editors have two tracks, they’re just identical. In addition, the video recording cuts off shortly after the audio recording, which happens shortly after the button is pressed, this means that every recorded video has an abrupt click at the end, and then silence, and then the video is stopped (made sure to include this in a few clips, as the tail-end of each are normally cut out in these test footage videos). The camcorder is at least able to handle loud environments rather well, those clips of the train were deafening in person, but the Bloggie took it like a champ. *CONCLUSION...* According to captures obtained via the Wayback machine, the Bloggie MHS-FS1 was priced at or around $150 (At some point before July 06, 2011), before going on discount during the rollout of the newer MHS-TS10 and TS20. It is the *opinion* of this review that the Bloggie just doesn’t meet being worthwhile even for the discounted price, which was $130. Paying any amount of money for a camcorder that barely functions at night, and, by extension, barely functions at all, is somewhat absurd, double so for the monaural microphone. If bought for daytime-use purposes, however, the camcorder (if the user can forgive the software bugs), is, as I’ve said, really, really ok. It gets a solid 5/10 for video, but a 2/10 for function. Hard to recommend a Flip over a camcorder that can record 1080p (although the Flip at least has a stereo microphone, albeit, of questionable audio quality), but perhaps the potential buyer should peruse Kodak’s lineups as well.

[@vwestlife]

The video quality is surprisingly good, although the audio quality is rather lackluster: it's only mono, has a lot of background hiss in quiet scenes, and is very midrange-heavy, making it sound hollow.

[@FatCatTech]

It just baffles me how they could've dropped the ball with this camera, not giving it a stereo microphone or camera firmware that doesn't have so many startup issues, etc. But hey, could at least change the video quality setting, Flip camera can't do that Lol

[@plainiphone0106]

he is back!!!!!

[@nickdiba7512]

Demo? That's how it's done! AAA quality. Thank you!

[@irmm1]

hello there

[@idkanymore3382]

worst camera ive ever used