Are Sony's D8 camcorder's supposed to be "noisy"?

[viewaskew]

(Read the following and then read why I agree with Elie's statement and a better explanation of what I meant in my previous message.)

I wrote previously: "My best friend owns a video production studio and couldn't believe the quality I was getting out of my little $1000 camcorder. Compared it to his Canon XL-1 and couldn't discern a difference"

Elie replied: "Here's where I have to disagree with you unfortunately
The XL1 is a 3CCD cam which uses the pixel shift technology to produce superb image quality especially under low light.

There is no way you can compare a single CCD cam to a 3CCD 1/3 cam, also the optics on the Canon are far more superior than that of Sony's.
It's like saying vhs is just as good as SVHS."

I totally agree with Elie. I should have explained better what my friend did to compare the image between his XL-1 and my D8.

He took a finished commercial he had shot with the XL-1 and outputted it from his non-linear editing system to my D8 camcorder and then to his XL-1 via firewire.

When he played back the footage from my D8 camcorder and then from his XL-1 on a monitor, he could barely notice a difference, if any. I agree that it is true that footage *SHOT* with my D8 will never look as good as footage shot with his XL-1.

For me, the D8 was an economical way to go "digital" and I've been extremely pleased with it since.

[Grigory]

The noise, of course, is NOT related with tape speed.

I may be a result of faster head velocity and drum revolution rate.

I think that original message about velocities on one very early reply about D8 was speaking exactly about the drum velocity, but not about tape speed. The author made not very clear statement, which is now used for one year as foundation of D8 "weakness".
However, the one year of testing the new format did not prove this very early speculation, based on several digits, but not on experimental data.

The noise of my D8 is well inside the typical values for camcorders. Nothing special.

Grigory

[JerryH]

Yet another question, this one about tape types/brands.

Has anyone noticed any difference in reliability, longevity, drop-outs, whatever between using Hi-8 or regular 8mm tapes with Digital8? Can Digital8 get by with regular tapes? Are there major differences between brand names (I've always thought that Sony, FUJI, TDK, memorex and others all buy their tape from 3M anyway)?

------------------
K62-300, 96MegRAM, FastTrack IDE RAID (14GIG), Marvel G200


[This message has been edited by JerryH (edited 25 October 1999).]