Hi,

I have a Sony DCR-TRV17 camcorder. I've had it for 4 years and it must
be about 5 yrs old. It's a good camcorder, and it has a nice wide LCD
screen that most other cams don't. However, I don't like its low light
performance - I film inside the house 99% of time, and the film is
rather grainy (although it's way better than other camcorders in its
price range I tried at the time).

Anyway, I am thinking of maybe getting a new camcorder in the under
$1000 range. I have quite a few questions:

1) What media format should I be looking for ? Basically, here's what I
think:

- miniDV has a long shelf life, so I can rest assured the tapes will be
there 20 years from now. However, converting them to DVD for daily use
is a PITA.

- DVDs, at least in my experience, are unreliable - prone to
scratching, very picky to the way they were produced, won't play in all
DVD players, and may degrade with time - at least the consumer disks
that are using dye.

- microdrives are a good idea (imho), however expensive, and the amount
of recording time is limited by drive size - unlike tape that could be
swapped rather easily.

So, for now I'd probably stick with miniDVs, but I'm open to
suggestions.

2) What model would you recommend ? In order of importance, here's what
I need:

- good low light shooting ability
- good optics
- good internal microphone
- reliability
- can use tapes from different manufacturers
- would be nice to have a sizable screen, but not that important
- I don't care for still imaging capabilities, unless it can shoot 3MP
or higher

Of course, I am looking for a camera that's better - way better - than
TRV17 in low light shooting.

Any advice is appreciated !

<zeg***@gmail.com> wrote in message
There is nothing in the under $1,000 range that will have better low-light
performance than your TRV-17.

Really?  With all the software tools around, it's a fairly straight-forward
task.

And, all other things being equal, produce inferior video.

See above.

Low light is the bugaboo -- there's nothing around that will do better than
your TRV17.  If you're really interested in quality, you might look for a
used TRV900 or VX2000, but you'll have all the concerns that accompany
buying a used camcorder.  However, these two machines certainly meet your
four criteria.

All miniDV camcorders can.  The concern is not manufacturer, but
lubrication -- you shouldn't mix dry-lube tapes with wet-lube tapes.  As I
recall, the only tape that is really a concern is the blue-and-white-shell
Panasonic.  Avoid that and you can probably use anything.

If you're buying new, the least expensive camcorder that meets this
criterion is a VX2100, which is double your budget.

Show quoteHide quote

I went through three in the past few months, taking each one back to
the store I bought it from because of one deficiency or irritant after
another.  Eventually the clerk there, apparently studying diligently at
a film school straightened me out on a lot of ideas. Eventually she
recommended a Panasonic GS300. Her recommendation was particularly
noteworthy in that the store she worked in did not carry that line.

It has a bigger brother with a bigger lens for a couple hundred more. I
should have gotten that one because I'd like as wide-angle a lens as I
can get, and apparently one has to jump WAY up in price to accomplish
that.

One of her arguments was that 3ccd cameras just produce more vibrant
color.  Having used a total of 4 cameras in short order, I agree.

Well it's a PITA only because you have to download it real-time.  If
you've shot 4 hours it an take a long time to download onto your box
and then convert for usage.  It's not really a pain per se, but is time
consuming.

The worst: if you bump the camera or anything simply "goes wrong"
during the "finishing" of a DVD prior to uploading to a computer you're
out of luck.  Every lick of data is gone gone gone.

As my new guru pointed out to me, disk drives are great for storing
data on your computer in your office.  But the potential problems of
chasing children around the back yard or sking with a hard-drive in
your hand thats is writing data should be obvious.  Also, like the dvd
strage, if you screw up your headers and file location pointers you're
out of data.  With tape, it's writing data all the time and then minute
it writes it's accessible.

news:2006122911215450073-somewhere@sunnycalif...
Show quoteHide quoteAs a general rule, a 3-ccd camcorder will have both better low-light
performance and better color saturation than a single-ccd machine.  However,
Panasonic's 3-ccd camcorders are more a function of marketing hype than
anything, i.e. Panasonic's marketeers know that consumers have heard of the
superiority of 3-ccd.  The GS-300 uses 1/6" sensors, which are hopelessly
tiny. Yes, three 1/6" sensors will give better low-light performance than a
single 1/6" sensors.  However, a single, low-density 1/3" sensor
(particularly if it's a Sony HAD sensor) will give better, though still
inadequate, performance.

It's a shame that camcorder manufacturers have sacrificed video quality in
the interest of gimmicks, assuming that consumers either won't know better,
or won't care, and to protect their prosumer/professional lines.  The
difference between my VX2000 and my TRV20 (which wasn't that bad a camcorder
in its day) is so dramatic (and so unnnecessary).

Show quoteHide quoteI guess we have a different PITA tolerance threshhold.  Transferring video
to the computer is a one-time task.  The benefits in editability and
increased video quality far outweight any PITA factor for me.

I hadn't even thought of that aspect of it.  For me, single-pass on-the-fly
mpeg2 transcoding is the deal-killer.

Show quoteHide quoteAnd with tape, destructive, catostrophic errors are difficul to conceive of.
Heads can crash, platters warp, containment can leak.  However, even if a
portion of magnetic tape is physically destroyed, you can still wind it into
the shell and read from the damaged portion on.


Show quoteHide quote

Well, thanks to all who's answered. I guess I will stick with my
camcorder as long as it keeps working.

When I said that converting tapes to DVD is a PITA I was, indeed,
referring only to the amount of time involved - it's an easy process,
but fairly time-consuming.

Now, the Panasonic camcorder should be fine with Sony tapes as long as
they were the only tapes used in it.. right ?

Right.  If you don't mix tapes, it doesn't matter what you use.  If you do,
don't mix lubricant types.  In either event, when switching brands, it
wouldn't be a bad idea to run a cleaning tape through.

Show quoteHide quote

Show quote Hide quote What you say may well be so; I don't know the size of the ccd's used by
the other consumer cameras I had, but Sony was one of them.  I assume
then, that at the low end (under $600) that most all of them are single
1/6" sensors while the Panasonic is three 1/6" sensors?  That made a
marked difference in the quality in my subjective assessment.

news:2006123117522177923-somewhere@sunnycalif...
Show quoteHide quoteI don't know what Sony uses at the lower end.  Three 1/6" sensors would, all
things being equal, be better than 1, and a 3-ccd machine, all things being
equal, will give better color saturation than a single ccd machine.
However, sensors and sensor size are not the only factors that determine
video quality -- lens quality and electronics are just as important.  Sony
and Canon both make single ccd machines that produce higher quality video
than Panasonic 3-ccd machines.  However, if you're talking about
bottom-of-the-ladder cheapie consumers, I have no recommendations and no
suggestions.


Show quoteHide quote

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