Comments

farss wrote on 11/9/2003, 11:07 PM
Don't have one myself but someone I work with does and he's totally thrilled with it. It's been in fighter planes pulling quite a few Gs without any problems and has withstood some rough handling with only one trip to the repair shop.

I think the stills are OK given the number of pixels in the CCDs although he now uses a 4 M pixel still camera for anything vaguely serious in the stills dept.

It's a much better unit than a lot of the others around the same size, probably about as close to a pro unit as you'll get at that size. Don't really know if the later units take better video or if Sony just squeezed more in the box, if the latters the case it's probably better than the later models.


Only downside, you'll never convince a client you're a 'pro' with a camera that small!
L25 wrote on 11/10/2003, 12:37 AM
I have one, I have had it for a while. It's been a great cam for me, I also have a PD150. It's a bit of a dinosaur :^) I have never had a problem with it in at least 2 years, never serviced. I capture video from it to vegas regularly, but use my GVD900 deck for shuttling. Down side.... horrible audio and it has that nasty verticle line flare when shooting into the sun. I don't use the memory stick, howevre occasionaly I use the photo function for stills.
farss wrote on 11/10/2003, 12:40 AM
i had heard from my mate that the audio wasn't crash hot but he's got a little Sony mic that he plugs into it and that works much better, seems audio or rather mics and thier placement is a big problem on a lot of the smaller and even some of the larger cameras.
busterkeaton wrote on 11/10/2003, 9:08 AM
Thanks.

L25,

How bad is the camera noise problem? I was thinking like farss's friend I would have to get a better mike.

L25 wrote on 11/12/2003, 9:54 PM
The PC100 has auto gain, so at low volumes the cam noise is very bad, any wind and it is very bad. The on board cam is best for constant moderate to high level sound. I have tried it with a sennheiser wireless with fair results. I have used the shoe mount ECM 908, better but still not good, no matter how good your mic it still has bad circuits.

In general all sony consumer cams, including the PD150 have horrible pre amps, a beachtek will not help much. the vx 2000 can be by-passed (BBC retrofit), oddly the PD150 can not. Sony purposely cripples these cams so as not to compete with their pro line. The PD170 is suppose to have slightly better s/n specs.

I have shot hours of tape with the PC100, great cam within its limitations.