>"Neuman - Ruether" wrote in message
>news:3de39dcb.3535894@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu...
>> DARN! Almost had a VX2000 - AG-DVX100 comparison...!
>> An owner of a Panasonic AG-DVX100 (the 24P model...)
>> kindly offered to bring over his camera for a quick
>> preliminary comparison of its picture with my VX2000
>> in daylight, tungsten, and low-light conditions, using
>> familiar subject material (used for my other camcorder
>> comparison articles, listed under "video", at:
>> www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/articles.html). Due to a time
>> limitation of 1/2 hour for the shooting tests, little
>> else would be covered, and I requested that all controls
>> be set "neutral" and "auto" for this first round.
>> While beginning to check the footage from both cameras
>> for editing together for comparisons and frame-grabbing,
>> it was obvious that either the Panasonic picture
>> suffered rather severe artifacting problems, or the
>> sharpness had not been set to something near neutral.
>> A quick call to the owner established that the sharpening
>> had been up 3 "notches", spoiling the comparison footage.
>> Unfortunately the owner was not yet fully familiar with
>> the camera's controls, some of which appear to be
>> potentially problematic... I intended to get together
>> again with the AG-DVX100 owner sometime after
>> Thanksgiving for a more thorough trial of the camera,
>> but wanted to get at least the picture basics covered
>> now - but this did not happen, alas...
>> Fortunately, I noticed the problem, and did not report
>> what I found as "normal" for this camera...! ;-) My
>> impressions-opinions of this camcorder are hereby reset
>> to "0", pending more experience with it, sigh...! ;-)
>> David Ruether

On Thu, 28 Nov 2002 08:22:34 -0500, "Ron Charles" wrote:
>
>Are you perhaps [aware] of any sites or known comparisons of the AG-DVX1000 and both
>the PD150 and GL2?
>
>We need a third camera, and I have to decide between these..Currently we
>have an XL1 and an XL1s.
>
>Ron
>Travelreview@Hotmail.com

No, which is why I was eager to contribute this
basic info - but it was not to be... On www.bealecorner.com
there is a VX2000-DVX100 comparison, but it is spoiled
by "apples and oranges" circumstances (as I recall, the
VX2000 had a WA lens converter on it, the DVX was in
PS-mode, and the viewpoints were different...). As of
now, by evidence and/or by reputation, the top "compact",
"handycam", or "non-shoulder-mount" Mini-DV and DVCam
cameras for picture quality are the VX2000/PD150,
TRV950/PDX10 (good light only), GL2, DVX100, and
JVC-300 - but I have tried only the VX2000/PD150 of
these, and have seen good comparative frame-grabs
(which do not necessarily reveal motion-artifacting)
for only the VX2000, GL2, and TRV950 (the VX2000 appears
to be the best of these, by a bit). Given that the
VX2000/PD150 has a picture that approaches the theoretical
resolution limit of the medium, and does it with minimal
artifacting, excellent color, and very good tonality, and
that it has a known history for reliability and consistency,
that would be my "blind" choice at this time. The Panasonic
offers some interesting additional picture controls, though
(in addition to its 24P ability, interesting only for
rarely-done film-transfers), which makes it an interesting
possibility. I can say from my unfortunately defective
comparison-footage video that at +18db gain, while the
DVX100 picture was quite noisy compared with the VX2000,
it did have excellent color (better than the VX2000 - but
the VX2000 color improves noticeably at +15db...). Both
appeared to have the same sensitivity. The 100 appears
to "fight" the user who favors auto operation, but is
more interesting to the "manual" operator than the
auto-excellent 2000. Other details that bothered me about
the 100: the largest battery is tiny compared with the
VERY long-running one available for the 2000; the VF
is cluttered at the right edge, making framing difficult;
the camera lens controls are smooth plastic; the lens
front thread is 72mm, making it difficult to find
suitable lens accessories; the right frame edge has
a thin black band; the camera tried messed up one
of the several record starts, leaving several bad frames.
Hits, though, are the extra picture controls, the slightly
wider view of the lens (similar to adding a .8X converter
to the 2000 lens), and the slightly better AWB for tungsten
light compared with the 2000 (AWB for daylight was close,
but a bit cooler). This was from a VERY brief and hurried
encounter, so......... (hopefully much more later, but
it will not be for a while).
BTW, I think none of these cameras mentioned above will
match picture very well with the XL1/XL1s - all appear
better in color (depth, bias, and purity), resolution,
and relative freedom from artifacting - and all but the
TRV950 will perform better in low light and will likely
have better manual and auto controls. If you like and
are used to the XL1, it may be that a third XL1 would be
best for you... (accessories will also interchange, a
useful thing).
These sites may be interesting:
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/vid_pict_characts.htm
(use the "key" after the page has loaded...)
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/camcorder-comparison.htm
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/sony_dcr-vx2000.htm