Having been deliberating over several
months about buying a second video camera and whether or not to go digital,
I recently took the plunge. One important feature that concerned me
was a decent optical zoom, since I travel about taking a lot of shipping
on video, some of which can be quite a distance away. Another very important
feature is the steadyshot facility as I frequently have to hand hold
the camera when afloat on the boat trips (such as my video 'Sail Wind
& Water).
Such a camera recently came to my notice, the Panasonic DS-11
digital camera which has a 20x optical zoom (similar to 21x on my
present Hi8 camera, a Sony 3100). I also chose this camera
as both my S-VHS recorders are Panasonic and so everything uses sync
edit direct from the camera (not so with the Sony!).
Having bought it, the next day both Dad and I took it down to Southampton
and across to the Isle of Wight to try it out against the Sony. Looking
at the results that evening I found the digital picture to be much
better and although there is a lot of movement in both sets of pictures,
the Panasonic 'image stabiliser' is not a patch on the Sony, there
seeming to be a 'vibration' on sharp edges in the picture as it moved.(theory:
is this is due to pixels in the digital system?). Movement on the
Sony is far smoother.
Not being entirely satisfied I returned the camera. It transpired
that the 'image stabiliser' is an electronic system as compared with
an optical system in the Sony. I was then allowed to borrow a Panasonic
DX-110 3CCD camera with optical stabiliser. This was then tried
out on a similar trip to Southampton and the Isle of Wight. The optical
zoom of this camera is 12x, picture quality again very good but still
more shaky than the Sony. Moving into the digital range up to around
l8x the picture quality does deteriorate and the optical stabiliser
is only marginally better than the DS11. This camera to was
duly returned and the sales staff in the shop were interested to hear
about my experiments.
There now was only one thing left to try, compare Sony with Sony.
So knowing that Neil Hodgson had a Sony digital camera (a TRV900E)
he was asked to participate in the trials. These took place one lunch
hour on the roof of the Reading Station car park taking various views
across the river and town to compare the zooms both digital and optical
and perhaps more importantly to me, the steadyshot. Neil was kind
enough to copy his tape for me to use as a comparison.Thanks for your
help, Neil. As expected, the two tapes showed near enough identical
results, the systems in both cameras must be the same.
As you may guess, I have now selected my new digital camera and have
returned to a Sony, and am now the owner of, like Neil, a TRV900E.
What about the syncro-edit I hear you ask?. Well, I have existed without
it for this long so I will keep with what I know.
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