tin_the_fatty weblog

I bought a Panasonic DV camcorder soon after Jasper’s birth, and after 5 and a half years of faithful service, it has just died, flashing “GET SERVICE” in red on the screen. I have been looking at a replacement for a year or two now, but never got around to it due to budget and too many conflicting choices. It is usually usability (i.e. small and lightweight) vs performance (battery life, low light performance and image quality). I would have happily grabbed the standard DV workhorse Sony PD170 but its cost remains high at about HK$20K eventhou the model is on its last leg and Sony wants everyone to upgrade to HD video so they could sell more HD plat panel TVs.

So I went windows shopping in Tuen Mun yesterday. Broadway was very helpful, and showed me the Panasonic SD9. It’s 3CCD, HD, tiny, takes cheap SD cards, and not terribly expensive. It takes a new type of battery and the older models do not work anymore. The standard battery only works for about an hour, it’s close to HK$1K according to the Broadway guy and needs to be specially ordered as they don’t have it in stock(!) Some way to sell camcorders.

While I have no complaint on my Pana DV, the Sony offerings are somewhat superior, for their line of accessories, e.g. wicked wireless microphone, BMF battery. I also prefer the Sony nightshot mode: you lose all colour and get a green image but at least you see what you are shooting, unlike on the Pana you get a blurry image when the subject moves, which isn’t exactly usable. The Sony CX7 is Pana’s counterpart. A little bigger, 1 big CMOS sensor (better for low light), and a little more expensive. It is listed as out of stock on Sony’s Hong Kong and US websites but I found one at the local BEST. I suspect it’s about to be replaced by a new model. BEST also has a Pana GS230 (SD DV). It is 3CCD, cheap, got mic input but no OIS image stablizer (only inferior EIS).

These HD camcorders using Flash memory and hard disk as media record in the AVHCD format. Quality is not bad (compared with HDV) for the recent models. One major problem thou. While transferring video from memory card/camcorder to computer is fast, to do editing the video file needs to be converted to a non-compressed format, which takes about 2X real time. DV capturing is real time, but the captured file is immediately editable. One major advantage of the DV is that one get an archive of the original footage. For AVHCD one needs to worry about backing up the video files.

So I was pretty set to go check out the Sony HC9, an HDV camcorder, so I could access my old tapes. Well it’s nowhere to be found in Tuen Mun. The shops say they don’t do tapes anymore. Crap.

I’ll go check some more out in Mongkok.