Shooting a vlog in the 1990s with the Sony CCD-FX310 8-mm camcorder
Imagine yourself travelling around Europe thirty years ago. You are shooting a video travelog for posterity. Digital transition is afoot, so your camcorder has a digital CCD sensor instead of an old-school vacuum tube, it has digital auto focus and an array of other automatic functions like automatic white balance, automatic audio recording level and automatic exposure, all you need is to point and shoot.
Sony CCD-FX310 camcorder
The Sony CCD-FX310 was the cheapest 8-mm camcorder released by Sony in 1992. It records standard 8-mm video — or Video8 in Sony parlance — in SP mode only, but can play back both SP and LP recordings. On the front, the F1.8 lens with 8x magnification starts at relatively tight by today’s standards 44 mm at the wide end. Attachments with 37mm thread can be used. The light is picked up by a single CCD sensor.
Audio is recorded in AFM format — high quality, but single channel only. The picture is monitored through a tilting black-and-white vacuum tube viewfinder. Sony called it Sports Finder, suggesting that by adjusting focal length, the camcorder can be used away from one’s eyes while moving around or shooting from a low angle.
Connectors
The camcorder has quite a few inputs and outputs. The external microphone input jack is conveniently located beside the shoe. Headphone output can be used for monitoring the audio during recording, and also for listening to the recorded audio during playback. The Local Application Control Bus System jack (LANC) can be used to control the camcorder during editing. There are composite video and audio outputs. RFU jack outputs modulated TV signal for TV sets that lack composite input. During recording, the same jack provides power for a microphone that needs it.
Recording modes
The camcorder does not have full manual mode, but has four presets, which should satisfy a typical user of a budget camcorder.
“The camcorder’s automatic functions offer worry-free operations under most shooting conditions.” — from the user’s manual.
In the fully automatic mode the camcorder controls everything: auto iris, auto white balance, auto focus, auto audio level. It is interesting that the shutter speed in full auto mode is fixed at 1/60 s. It is slow enough to achieve smooth movement with just a touch of motion blur, yet it is fast enough to record every individual field.
In Portrait mode, the camcorder tries to blur the background by opening up the iris. Depending on lightning, shutter speed varies from 1/60 to 1/2000 s.
In Sports mode the camcorder tries to make motion sharper by increasing the shutter speed, which varies between 1/60 and 1/500 s.
In High Speed Shutter mode, the shutter speed is increased to 1/4000 s, so that the video could be analyzed frame by frame without blurring.
White balance
I am surprised that the camcorder has no white balance settings, even basic presets for indoors and outdoors. White balance is always automatic.
Focusing
While the camcorder does not permit to choose focus manually, the Push Focus Hold button allows to hold focus to prevent the camcorder from refocusing on something else. In case you need to lock focus for longer, you can use Focus Hold button on the bottom.
In use
The camcorder has been broken for the last twenty five years or so. If it worked, I would not be able to set the date correctly, as the year in the calendar goes only to 2020. All that’s left are the recordings, and they are still perfectly playable.
