On Thu, 20 Jan 2000 00:55:11 -0500, "James Kiricov"
>Now if there is any doubt still lingering on which is a better quality
>camera, let the truth be known.
>
>The Canon GL1 has a superior lens, a REAL rubber focusing ring, sturdy
>attractive body, with ALL of the controls at easy reach, full maunal
>controls, better audio, less motor noise, less dead pixels, less drop outs,
>excellent video quality, and dog gone it, looks, and feels better, and very
>easy to use under any conditions.
>
>The Sony TRV 900 has a smaller lens, terrible design of lens hood, making it
>difficult to use filters, manual focusing is a joke, metal ring, electronic,
>and slow, the body scratches verry easy, and the heads wear out verry
>quickly. Vital controls are awkward to get to, hidden inside the pop out
>monitor, menu control requires scrolling for all vital controls, only 15 fps
>in prog.scan and somewhat fuzzy reds, poor audio control and mike picks up
>motor noise, difficulty in adjusting for proper exposure, known to shut off
>during recording for no appearent reason, battery must be charged on camera,
>LP tapes are useless, oversaturated reds, blue tint in low light, poor
>quality still photo's dispite reviews and claims of many, manual is useless,
>contols and buttons are to tiny. In short, Sony tried to cram as many
>features as possible in a compact camera by sacrificing quality all the way
>around.
>
>As for the arguement concerning the GL1's lack of audio control, which is
>the only negative thing that can be found on the GL1, this can easily be
>over come by adding the Beach Tek DXA-4P XLR audio adapter which connects
>underneith the camera by the tripod mount, still providing another tripod
>mount underneith the adapter. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/ It fits the GL1
>perfectly and more then compansates any audio issues. While the TRV 900 has
>a next to useless on board audio control which is difficult to get to, and
>unreliable.
>
>But don't take my word for this becuase you may think I'm biased, read what
>owners of the Sony TRV 900 are saying about it,
>http://www.best.com/~beale/sdat/bad.html
>
>Ounce for ounce, dollar for dollar, it's obvious that the Canon GL1 beats
>the Sony TRV 900. Canon is committed in producing qaulity camera's and
>lenses, Sony seems to rush a product out to market too soon, and the quality
>just ain't there my friends.
>
>But hey, it's your money : )
Well, now, how can I resist responding to this! ;-)
Before starting, let me say that when I did my
mini-DV camcorder comparison (on my web page, under
"I babble" - with frame-grabs, descriptions of the
motion-video when the stills didn't show things that
appeared with motion, and sound comments [noise type,
level in a quiet room, and the sound "color"]) that
I did not own either camera, but I was interested in
the results of trying them... Let me also say that
anyone can obviously choose to buy any camcorder,
regardless of the results of any comparison, both
for logical or illogical reasons...;-); that no
camcorder, no matter how poor, is utterly useless;
and that no camcorder, no matter how poor in most
important features, still may have uniquely good
and useful features...
So, to plunge in...
I found the GL-1 picture sharp-looking (one of
the best in that respect), but the most laden
with digital artifacts of any 3-chip camcorder
(or just about any camcorder, even the one-chip
PC-1...) - the picture was unacceptably "busy"
for me, with heavy "stair-stepping" not only on
the usual near-horizontal lines in motion, but
also on near-vertical lines! In addition, even
at normal sharpness setting, sharpening artifacts
were unacceptably high - one would need to decrease
sharpening to reduce bright-edge effects on
contrasty edges (but as a result, the picture
would lose its sharp look...). In comparison,
the TRV-900 picture appears about equally sharp,
but it shows little of the vertical-line and
over-sharpening effect so visible in the GL-1.
Both have good auto-white color balance in daylight,
but the GL-1 is somewhat too warm for me with
tungsten auto-white - though the two samples of
the TRV-900 checked in the comparison did show
slightly different auto-white balances. The GL-1
has the advantage of a longer zoom range, but the
larger front makes mounting good, inexpensive
wide-angle converters more problematic. I tend not
to take hype about lenses seriously, so the Canon
"L" and Sony "Zeiss" thingies don't fly for me - I
check the "on-video" image for my reality...;-)
No matter what the quality of body design, the
price, the "hype", etc., the bottom line for a
camcorder choice, for me, is "what does the
picture look like" - and I prefer the picture of
several other camcorders checked in my comparison
to the GL-1 (and I bought a TRV-900 as a result
of the comparison...). The other "bottom-line"
item for me is the sound quality (though one can
add an external mic...). Here, again, the GL-1
failed for me. Besides the lack of level control,
the camcorder mic had an annoying "saddle-back",
"sucked-out" color - somewhat like "sizzle-boom"
speakers from the 70's. The sound is both
bottom and top heavy, whereas more ideal is a
neutral tonal balance, or one somewhat
upper-midrange heavy ("presence-peaked") for
better voice separation from background. The
TRV-900 sound was quite good overall (with some
defects noted in the comparison). Between the two
camcorders, I did like the handle of the GL-1,
and some other things mentioned in the review;
and I preferred the smaller size of the TRV-900
(we do have to pack and carry these things...;-).
Nothing is perfect, but the TRV-900 blends the
most positives (including relative price) with
the fewest negatives of the various camcorders
tried - though choice isn't always based on that
balance, and I still prefer two other camcorders
overall for what I do... (as you also appear to
have done - though many of the "defects"
mentioned for the TRV-900 I would disagree with
[if you poll many owners of GL-1's, you will
probably come up with a similar list of negatives,
most of which you will not experience...]).
So there! ;-)
Visit my camcorder comparison article - see
what you think (I did try to be objective with
subjective issues, and also, to give my opinion
of the results...).
The direct link to my comparison of the GL-1,
XL-1, TRV-900, PC-1, VX-1000, TRV-9, AG-EZ30U,
and Beta SP (with frame-grabs from these, plus
short reviews of these and the VX-700, AG-EZ1U,
and PC-7, and a comparison of two TRV-900's
for color and picture sharpness) is at:
http://www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/camcorder-comparison.htm
Another excellent comparison, of the GL-1,
TRV-900, and VX-1000 (though without frame-grabs),
by Adam Wilt is at:
http://www.2-pop.com/articles020.shtml
And, I would read more critically (rather than
just "skimming" both negative and positive
comments - you may find yourself coming to a
different conclusion as a result, using the
same source material...) the material on John
Beale's web page on the TRV-900 (with GL-1
material), at:
http://www.bealecorner.com/trv900/index.html
We all have our favorite things, but perhaps
looking up the definition of the word "jingoistic"
may put things in perspective....;-)
Have fun shooting!