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SONY DCR-TRV900 NTSC
I finally got my TRV900 last week, after saving up for four months. What a nice camcorder! One of the first things I did with it was to go out and shoot a college football game, since one of my employees is the offensive captain at Worcester State College. The color on this thing is just wonderful! And it was especially rewarding to have that astro-turf playing field, along with a nice clean sunny day. I ran it steadyshot hand held, and full optical zoom for most of the game. One of the guys I work with used to be a cameraman for NBC, and watched some of this footage. His comments included, "You've got that on a tripod, right?" and "I can't believe the color on this thing!"
I'll post some test results off our VM700 in a few days.
One of the things that really blew me away was the included floppy disk drive attachment. Either live or on tape playback, all I have to do is push one button and I get a JPEG saved to the floppy, which is PC compatible format. No more will I have to monkey around with capture, etc. for a simple still shot.
The presets all worked quite nicely for off the cuff shooting with no preparation. I did need to put a UV filter on for the outdoor work, since the presets simply don't do the job with hot bright out in the sun... pretty much the same story with all camcorders, though. Indoors there is a preset for -3db gain, which makes it much more friendly in those darker indoor shots where many camcorders will auto the gain up to the point where you get noise. With the gain preset at 0db, there was noise I could notice right away, but it all disappeared after presetting to -3db. Real nice!
I chose the TRV900 over the GL-1 because the CCD's in the TRV900 have about 1/3 greater pixel density than the ones in the GL-1, plus the viewscreen on the GL-1 is too small. I didn't want to spend the extra money for an XL-1, nor did I want the extra weight. I would have liked to have the progressive scan speed (30 fps, vs 15 fps for the TRV900) of the XL-1, though, but for that one feature I didn't want to spend the extra money.
Since the price is dropping into the $1800 USD range on mail order for this camcorder, it's really getting more and more attractive. I got mine at a local camera shop and paid a little more, only because they service what they sell, and it's only 5 miles from the house.
I'm a VERY happy camper!
I'll post some test results off our VM700 in a few days.
One of the things that really blew me away was the included floppy disk drive attachment. Either live or on tape playback, all I have to do is push one button and I get a JPEG saved to the floppy, which is PC compatible format. No more will I have to monkey around with capture, etc. for a simple still shot.
The presets all worked quite nicely for off the cuff shooting with no preparation. I did need to put a UV filter on for the outdoor work, since the presets simply don't do the job with hot bright out in the sun... pretty much the same story with all camcorders, though. Indoors there is a preset for -3db gain, which makes it much more friendly in those darker indoor shots where many camcorders will auto the gain up to the point where you get noise. With the gain preset at 0db, there was noise I could notice right away, but it all disappeared after presetting to -3db. Real nice!
I chose the TRV900 over the GL-1 because the CCD's in the TRV900 have about 1/3 greater pixel density than the ones in the GL-1, plus the viewscreen on the GL-1 is too small. I didn't want to spend the extra money for an XL-1, nor did I want the extra weight. I would have liked to have the progressive scan speed (30 fps, vs 15 fps for the TRV900) of the XL-1, though, but for that one feature I didn't want to spend the extra money.
Since the price is dropping into the $1800 USD range on mail order for this camcorder, it's really getting more and more attractive. I got mine at a local camera shop and paid a little more, only because they service what they sell, and it's only 5 miles from the house.
I'm a VERY happy camper!
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