Which prosumer (ack) HDV camera should we purchase?

January 16, 2008 5:30 PM

My friend and I are looking at HDV cameras and trying to decide right now between Panasonic's HVX200, Canon's XL H1, Sony's V1U, and JVC's HD110U (an upgrade of the HD100U, I believe). We're leaning toward the HD110U because of what we've seen of its picture quality, ability to switch lenses, and reported ease of use. Which one should we buy, what are the pros and cons?

My friend and I are looking at HDV cameras and trying to decide right now between Panasonic's HVX200, Canon's XL H1, Sony's V1U, and JVC's HD110U (an upgrade of the HD100U, I believe). We're leaning toward the HD110U because of what we've seen of its picture quality, ability to switch lenses, and reported ease of use.

We plan to use miniDV first as P2 cards are too expensive right now for us and we'd rather invest more in the equipment than memory, but we'll probably move to P2 in the future.

We'd also like to be able to switch lenses and built-in zoom doesn't matter much to us, but an XLR mic input would be key.

We're going to be shooting feature-length independent (obviously) films at 24f/s and we're looking for something that will produce film-quality shots in 720p.

Considering that right now we don't have existing lens we need to support, what are the pros and cons of each camera? Our price-range goes up to ~$3000 for the camera

thanks everyone!

posted by christopherbdnk to media & arts (3 comments total)

My friend has a Panasonic HVX and it's been fantastic, though he does shoot to P2. We've shot a lot of great stuff with it and I understand it's the leader of that generation, though newer things I don't know about. He paid about $6000 for it, I think, but that was like two years ago. Great camera.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 6:44 PM on January 16

The HVX200 is not a hdv camera, the tape recorder on it is used to record regular SD dv footage, the p2 slots are used to record in DVCpro HD which is different from hdv.
Basically if you choose the HVX you will be stuck with P2 if you plan to shoot in HD.
posted by SageLeVoid at 12:09 AM on January 17

"Basically if you choose the HVX you will be stuck with P2 if you plan to shoot in HD."

This is not technically accurate.

It's almost now the exception, rather than the rule, that people actually shoot on P2 cards with the HVX200. Their ridiculously overinflated cost has caused most HVX shooters to instead use the FocusEnhancements Firestore FS-100, which is basically a portable harddrive unit (either 100GB or 160GB) that allows you to record continuously on the drive, instead of constantly having to swap out and dump P2 card data.

I work in high-end commercial post-production, and *every* DP in town who shoots jobs on the HVX shoots on the Firestore. It's a very economical alternative to the P2 cards. The only advantage the cards have over the Firestore is in thier shock-proof nature. If you're shooting run-and-gun projects out in the wilderness, or on the back of an off-road vehicle, P2 would be preferable. But everything else, Firestore all the way.
posted by melorama at 6:04 AM on January 19