I had that problem earlier. After reading reviews from camcorder reviews, I went on to buy the nv-mx500 panasonic. The main attraction was the 3.0 megapixel 'honey' that kept staring out at me. Boy, do I regret it! I had a sony before. So when I started to use the panasonic, I realised that the panasonic user-friendliness technology is way way way behind sony. My problems with the panasonic are :
a) Auto focus is not very stable ie. you cannot get a consistently sharp picture if the subject is moving eg. a violinist playing and moving at the same time, even if it is slightly.
b) The color balancing can be easily confused eg if you shoot in florescent light, the pictures turned red if you then record subject in incandescent light. Sometimes the pictures becomes a bit greenish if you shoot in a room with different light sources.
c) Shooting outdoors is great but when you go into a room, concert hall setting etc you find that the pictures become rather dull. It is terrible in dull light.
d) although c) can be improved by turning on the gainup digital effect, it is only good if you shoot inanimate or dead objects. If you try to shoot for instance the movements of your fingers you will get a 'blurry' effect. Also you need to manipulate the focus manually if you use this digital effect which is really really a great bother.
e) Sound is not too great sometimes, from time to time you will get a glitch effect.
Overall, comparing with the sony 330 that my friend bought at about the same price, I think the 330 is much better as it does not have the problems I mentioned. With 330, the pictures taken especially indoors are much clearer without any need for adjustments and the pictures are sharper.
This is purely my own view and experience. The moral of the story, stick to a branded name like sony - cant go far wrong.
kingarthur wrote::?:
I wanna buy a digital camerecorder that can take high quality still image with reasonable video recorder performance.
There is 3 choices:
Sony PC330E, 3million, 1/4' ccd
Panasonic NV-MX500,3million, 1/6' 3ccd
Samsung DuoCam SC-D5000, 4.13million, 1/6' ccd for dv, 1/1.8' for dc
From the still image gallary, I find that the performance of Sony is best I think, followed by MX-500, (I dun understand why samsung performance so poor with such a special large 1/1.8' ccd), BTW, sony has a infrared photo function.
As far as the video effect. MX500 has 3ccd plus a optical image stablelizer while the others has only 1ccd and electrical image stablelizer. Does anyone know how much will these weak point of sony and samsung affect the video recorder's performance? Which to choose....
I am really confusing,btw is the Samsung picture normal? It is strange that a dc with 1/1.8 inch ccd performance so poor.
Thu Feb 05, 2004 1:38 pm