On Tue, 10 Jun 2003 23:56:36 -0500, "Joe Sacher" <news@joesacher.com> wrote:

>"Carl Miller" <cmiller@trellis.net> wrote...

>> I walked into the store to look at something in the price range of the

>> Canon Optura 10 or 20, but while I was there, I just had to go and pick

>> up a GL2. Is it really as nice as it seemed? I mean, it's a LOT more

>> than what I had planned to spend, but damn, it looks practically like a

>> professional camcorder.

>>

>> Anyone who has one want to tell me what you DON'T like about it?

>I went ahead and sprung for it and I love the 20x zoom, the audio, the

>saturation, the... Wait, you wanted things I didn't like. There is only

>one thing I was unhappy with the camera. It can suffer from light fall off

>at it's widest aperture. This falls outside of the TV safe area, so it will

>rarely be an issue. Check out this page for more details:

>http://joesacher.com/video/canon/canon.htm

>

>Like I said, you will not see this on a TV, it would only be an issue if you

>wanted to use the output directly from the camera to the web. I always crop

>my video to the same TV safe region, so text and graphics look the same on

>the web as TV. Also, this only seems to occur at the widest aperture.

This is so slight (and difficult to see with anything but

smooth-toned subjects that extend across the frame) that

I would not worry about it at all (and most TVs do not

illuminate evenly, either...). If you think this is bad,

you should see what the small 3-chip Panasonics look

like! ;-) It also appears the old GL1 "black bars along

the edges" characteristic is also gone...