On Mon, 09 Jul 2001 20:53:21 -0400, alex@bear.cc.gt.atl.ga.us wrote:

> I'm about to buy my first digital video camcorder (and I'm a total
>newbie
>in this field...). My requirements are pretty simple: to be able to
>shoot
>at a reasonable quality (nothing too fancy), to be able to connect via
>firewire to my laptop, and for the videocamera to be light and small. I
>don't care about capturing still pictures.
> At a local store, the guy suggested the Sony TRV17. Apart from the
>night
>shooting feature, which I don't think I'm gonna be using, it sounded
>like
>a good deal. Nevertheless, I was wondering if it would be worth saving
>some money and get the older TRV11, which looks pretty similar to the
>17,
>or spending some more money and get the TRV20 (TRV30 is over my budget).
>I
>would really appreciate any suggestion or advice from somebody more
>expert
>than me.

Having just bought two close-out TRV-11s (same
imaging as TRV-17 and PC-5) and a used PC100
(same imaging as PC-110
and TRV-20), and having "wrung them out" side-by-side
recently, I can tell you a bit... Sony appears to be
splitting its camcorder line into three parts: 3-chip,
one chip megapixel, and one chip conventional. In the
one chippers, the megapixel versions get you a slightly
sharper-looking video picture, with slightly higher
color saturation (and better, but still pretty useless,
stills - and VFs with higher pixel counts - but in
practice, this last doesn't appear to be as important
as one might think...), but at the expense of shortened
low-light range, higher contrast, and more evident
oversharpening edge effects (Sony tries hard to make
the megapixel picture look "splashier" than the
non-megapixel picture). I found the image quality of
the TRV-11 (though inferior in every way to the TRV900
picture...) more similar to the TRV900 I compared these
with than the picture of the PC100 was... The pictures
of both were excellent for one-chippers, but looked
"harsher" than a good 3-chipper, with more negative
artifacts evident. The PC100 picture looks wonderful
in flat light, but highlights burn out easily in
contrasty light, with dead shadows also evident.
Its picture is also just enough sharper to make
using WA converters not disappointing (the TRV-11
picture looks a bit soft with most WA converters).
In low light, the PC-100 "conks out" with loss of
color saturation before the TRV-11, though it looks
good until +15db gain is past - the TRV-11 color gets
a little weird at the low end, but looks OK into
lower light levels than the PC-100. Both stay
smooth-looking, without excessive "gain-grain", in
low light. As with everything, one is not better
than the other, but just a different set of
compromises...
But with all of this, if one does not need the smaller
size of the one-chippers, the prices of these newer
one-chippers make the noticeably better (but larger
and heavier) TRV900 look like a bargain with its
recently-reduced price. Or, just buy a close-out
TRV-11 and enjoy its decent picture and sound, small
size and weight, and noticeably lower price...;-)