I, myself, am not a huge fan of shooting with dv. i have shot with most modles -- ii think the xL1 is garbage -- i thought the pd - 150 was the best prosumer camera that was out. last night i shot with panasonic 24p dv camera -- i was very impressed with the quality of the image. as far as prosumer cameras go -- this one takes the cake for now -- does any one know if sony plans on releasing a 24 p model?
The reason I wasn't too excited about this camera is that, despite the 24p feature, it only has one CCD chip. That's just ridiculous. I personally am more concerned with the richness of the DV image than the frame rate, so I'll stick with my XL-1 (which is a great camera, it's just the lens that's garbage) for now, until I can afford to shoot either HD 24p or film again.
The PD-150, I agree, is also a great miniDV camera.
see i am exactly opposite in my views -- the thing i hate about the look of mini dv is the "richness" of the image. its too crisp, too colorful. with 24 p it dulls it down a bit more -- you get a littel more detail in the blacks, but beyond all ese, is the way if captures movement. when speaking about persistence of vision, we have been unconciously trained to watch 24 fps over the past hundred yesars. when we see video there is a subconcious rejection to the movement it creates when capturing 30 fields a second. with 24p emulating or matching the frame rate of film, that graceful sense of movement is acheived. im much more concerened with that, then color saturation or pixels or ccds.
Good point, about how we're trained to see things a certain way, and how the richness of the image makes it look more like video. To be honest, I haven't seen any real footage from the Panasonic camera (I've downloaded some clips, but you really can't tell with that).
I've seen plenty of 24p hi-def footage, which until its blown up to film still has a very video-ish look to it, due (like you said) to that crispness and hyper-detail.
So what's my contention? I'll still take the 3CCDs, I think, because richness really does matter to me (and if your project is destined for the big screen, I think it makes a definite difference). But I would like to give the Panasonic model a try, and in the end, its all still video.
Does anybody know of a site where I can see different examples of the images some of these cameras produce?