No problem. If you have any questions or concerns regarding things that I might not have covered in the reviews, feel free to contact me. Clicking on my name next to 'Review by' should bring up my email address.
Now for a little plug...if anyone would like to join me and a very small group for a resort based dive trip to Anilao, Philippines in late Feb. Let me know. This is the least expensive trip I have ever led and am deliberately keeping the group small. I'm tired of leading 20 people at a time so I am downsizing a bit.
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Take an older model Sony FX-1 or A1-U or Z1, which are all tape based cams, and they will completely outshoot in terms of color resolution, contrast, and overall quality of footage any of these 'latest and greatest' tiny little Canon and Sony cams that shoot in a highly compressed AVCHD inter based format.
Yes, there is a certain convenience to a card based cam, but the process of naming and logging into your editing NLE programs, if done right, is still the same boring process it always was.
Not too long ago I was given a brand new L & M housing for one of these tiny cams. I was sent the Canon cam from a production house and after one use, sent the camcorder back and gave the housing away. The quality of resolution simply wasn't there.
For underwater work, these small cams are convenient in terms of traveling size and weight, but they are notoriously poor in low light situations which is what underwater work is and their iris's have difficulty finding contrast which is all important.
Also, their tiny size and weight make holding a steady shot topside near impossible unless you have a very good tripod.
A good shooter, when making a film, also needs to shoot topside clips for establishing shots and interview work. None of these tiny cams have the audio capture abilities that a good XLR equipped cam has. This is another fact that is very well known in the industry. The audio on them is horrendous so having the ability to use XLR inputs for audio is extremely important to any professional or hobbyist with aspirations to create a quality film. I have been a judge for many film festivals and been to many as well. I have also been lucky and fortunate enough to have won many film competitions. People will put up with less than stellar video but will walk when there is poor audio.
For these reasons, I would have to say that BDSC is all wet (no pun intended) when it comes to his reasoning for getting 'the latest and greatest'.
I have a good friend who moved to Hawaii a couple of years ago. He is still using his tape based Sony FX-1 and just sold a ton of footage to some research group on the big island. At $70.00 per second, he made a small fortune for he and his wife. The FX-1 came out at the exact same time as the A1-U and Z1-U. I myself have sold an awful lot of footage over the years using the A1-U which I could not have done with these tiny little palm camcorders. They are fine for shooting a birthday party or making a 'Look what I did on my vacation' video, but for serious shooting, I'd take a good tape based cam over these tiny things any day of the year. This is not to say that the card based cams like the Sony EX-1 or 3, or the Panasonic cams shooting to P2 cards or the Red One are not fantastic cams that will blow most any system out of the water if you know how to use them properly, but they are frightfully expensive and the housings for them are triple the cost of the cam itself.
I just bought a Zildjian A cymbal for my drum kit. It is 30 years old. Maybe I shouldn't have bought it because it is not brand new....BUT it sounds sooo good. Isn't that what is important? Quality counts.
