PHENOMENAL REVIEW!!! Excellent Job! I was very impressed! I love the comparisions between the Panasonic, Canon and Sony. Full of useful information! I look forward to reading more of your reviews! Thanks!

James

Some good color comparison data Tony. I like the manual gain settings comparison.

Take a look at the reviews of digital cameras over at

dpreview.com.

Maybe you can incorporate some of the resolution test targets in your camcorder testing. This would help tease out good lenses, high resolution CCD effects, etc.

Resolution is important, even at the lowish res of NTSC. However, as HD moves in you will want to develop good methods of assessing resolution claims by manufacturers.

At the moment....you make no effort to assess resolution ... which is as, actually, more important when the color rendition is close.

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Sony DCR-TRV950 [Mini-DV Vid](2003)
Canon ES-970 [8mm Video] (1998)
Canon Z135 [35mm] (1995)
Yashica Mat-124G [2/14x2/14] (1994)
Canon Elan [35mm (1994)]
Canon AE-1 [35mm] (1981)

I second colorgamut's post. The reviews here are great and very informative, but the main thing that is lacking IMHO is a more verifiable assessment of the camcorder's capabilities. A first step would be to provide the FULL SIZE captured frames, so that the reades can better appreciate them. Showing only the down-sized frames only provides a general idea, not very useful to check resolution or low-light grain noise. The reviews at www.dpreview.com are an excellent example of how it should be done. Having said that, reviewing a camcorder is more difficult than reviewing a still digicam.

Still, great reviews, thanks and keep up the good work!

Very extensive, professional and informative.

But I did not understand the final chart: Weight/adj/poss, etc. Where can i find the key meanings?

A couple notes;
1.) I thought the Canon had a great advantage with its 16:1 ratio in its optical zoom - vs 12:1 Sony - and 10:1 Panny.
2.) Apparently, the Sony 170 has updated (from my PD150) with a 3rd zoom control with two speeds on the handle - handy; would have liked to see a top view in this report. It seems to me there are many useful button control that exist on the Panny handle that can be thumb controlled, unlike the 150's single index-finger (ugh!) controlling the front power button.

Oh Boy

This is going to fill Sony with all warm and fuzzy feelings. In Auto the advertised lux ratings look like they hold true, but going to manual and this is interesting.

Thanks for listening to all our suggestions during the last camera shootout. I haven't read all this reveiw (nor do I intend to, I'll wait for the HD reveiws), but from what I have seen it seems excelent.

I have had a closeup look at the charts and I see a bar of difference in brightness, to the Pana, equivalent to an extra 3db gain on the Sony. So what has gone wrong? From what I've seen, the reveiw doesn't mention how much niose is in the high gain images compared to each other. Maybe Sony set their Lux so low because of a difference in the way they consider acceptable niose in high gain images. Tony, did it pan out that there was simular, or less, niose in the PD170 images at the same gain? Maybe Panasonic has refined it's CCD since release, like Sony did with the PD-170?

I agree with DRDV's comments, full captured frames would be good, but also a black background around the charts, as it is hard to compare because of the bright white border causing my pupil to contract.


Thanks

Wayne.

Great review of the PD170 by Fonseca, but like all the other reviews I've read on the PD170 it fails to mention how bad the included wide-angle adapter really is. I recently purchased a PD170 and had a horrible time shooting my first wedding reception with the included wide-angle adapter attached. At first I thought I had a bad camera with a back focus problem or something. I just couldn't get the lens to focus when zoomed in all the way. Not manually. Not in auto. A 2-stop light loss at full telephoto pretty much trashed the PD170s otherwise excellent low light capabilities. Image quality also degraded significantly. All these problems disappeared when I shot without the adapter. The problems also disappeared when I tried shooting with my Canon wide adapter then my newly purchased Tokina. After checking with the seller (who acknowledged the Sony adapter was a junk lens even though it retails for $300!), as well as numerous forums, it became obvious that the Sony wide adapter is an inferior piece of glass not worthy of an otherwise fine camcorder. Thanks Sony for stooping to such a low life marketing ploy as to include a junk lens just to get more people to buy your cameras. Some experienced PD170 shooters I know work around this problem by avoiding using the included adapter altogether and when they do they limit its use to the wide angle range. Personally I always use a wide adapter with this camera because don't think the built-in PD170 lens is wide enough. To those of you who feel like I do I strongly recommend the bayonet mount Tokina wide adapter that's made for this camera. It's sharper than the Canon, does not degrade the image, you can zoom all the way with it, and light loss is minimal. And here's the best part, you can get it on eBay for under $150.00. So what did I do with my $300 brand new junk PD170 Sony lens? I sold it on eBay, of course.

We had two Sony 170s and had major problems getting sharp pictures at inf. Sony Europe was unable to fix them so after six months we handed them back to our professional dealer who provided us two Panasonic 100AE DV Cameras. These cameras have now stood up to 2 years of hard professional use and not yet produced an ansharp picture.

Be warned other users of the 170 have also had serious focus problems at inf even under perfect conditions!

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GWP

Tony wrote:
>This camera is great for most applications and presents
>a great value but filmmakers may want to look elsewhere.

Uh-oh! Don't tell David Lynch -- he used the DSR-PD150 exclusively for his first all digital film, 'Inland Empire'. Liked the results so much he said he'd never shoot film again.