Advice On High End Camcorders Requested

NAB happening in three weeks wait until then in the meantime google those two cameras and start reading

Both are amazing, we have a couple of them in the video production room at my high school. Personally, I'd go with the Canon. It's always been my experience that Canon cameras have been better than Sony. It may just be a personal bias I have, may not be. Either camera will do you good though.

Here's a very nice site that will keep you reading for a long time.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/index.php?s=

I owned the Sony VX2100 and that camera takes wonderful DV especially in Low light. I ended up selling it and getting a Sony FX1 HDV and never looked back. There's allot of good reading on that site on all camera's.

Chet

those are both old tech. I would look at getting the new Sony HDTV camcorder that shoots 1080i. It's called HDR-FX1 or if you want to spend more and have more features the one up above that one that also shoots HDTV quality video.

Im sure you found what you were looking for, but basically there are two things to look for in a high end camcorder.

a) 3 CCD (light sensors) recording ability, with no less than 450 vertical lines. (Sometimes they advertise 3CCD without specifying vertical lines, knowing that noobies dont know the difference). An analog TV screen image is built up of 450-500 alternating vertical lines, depending on whetehr it is pal or ntsc.

Check on google or the fine print that your model has 450 or above vertical lines recording. If so, you have analog television quality. That should be fine for now, and should guide you as a minimum quality threshold. High Definition (HD) video I think is around 720 vertical lines. If you only need to output video to web, then you may ofcourse use a camera with lesser recording quality. But remember you can never upgrade bad quality video, but you can always downgrad good quality.

b) 1 (preferrably 2) XLR microphone outputs. They are the huge inputs you may know from live sound gear. These are very stable, and will not krackle after a few months frequent connecting/disconnecting like the normal headphone plugs tend to do.

That being said, Id reccomend you some of the newer Panasonic 3ccd models. Cameras are relatively cheap, have the minimum recording quality and are very small. They should do fine in the beginning.

I have a Canon GL2, which is the little brother to the XL1. The video is super smooth and lifelike. I have to admit though, it was a purchase I shouldn't have ever made as it's capabilities far outdo mine.

My advice to you would be, as a beginner, to go with the XL 1 or perhaps
the Panasonic DVX100. If you're an inexperienced shooter, HDV cameras
can give you a number of problems and, quite frankly, they have a feature
set that would probably be wasted on you. Most of the new HDV cams also
have abysmal low-light performance, which spells death to most event
shooters. Just my two cents, good luck with the business.

Does this apply to Sony HVR-A1? After all, it has a one 1/3 CCD.

Can't say that I know much about the HVR-A1, I've only used it once. It provides a nice enough image, certainly better/crisper than DV. But the low-light performance is a flaw inherent in all cameras that use HDV (MPEG-2)
compression, though I'm sure some are better than others. My advice would
be to rent or borrow the camera from someone (or find a camera store with
a good return policy) and see for yourself. Don't trust the in-store displays
and demos as they're almost always VERY brightly lit. Check out the following
article if you'd like more info on the camera:

http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/ar...1U/HVR-A1U.htm