The A1 is a VERY fine camcorder. I'm a bigger fan of the V1, but also am planning on buying an A1 from Canon once they ship. I've had about 24 hours with the Canon, and loved it. Bear in mind that the Sony V1 has double the resolution (1080 vs 540) in progressive, but the Canon is a very fine choice. Canon and Sony are the obvious leaders in the low-cost HD market, with nearly half a million cams out there and expected to nearly double that between now and NAB...Canon has nothing to be ashamed of at all. I LOVE the ergonomics of the A1, the exposure setup, the LCD panel, etc are all very well designed. The LCD panel is better than I'd expected, but Canon doesn't meet the mark of Sony for LCD panel. Form factor of the Canon and Sony are astonishingly similar. If I didn't know better, you'd almost think the same team designed the form factors.

After looking at the press release information on both of these cameras, I'm definitely starting to drool over the new Sony HVR-V1U. I think Canon is going to have a hard time coinvincing people to buy what they offer without a good price difference.

I'm especialy attracted to the idea of the Sony HVR-DR60 hard drive accessory. Man that would be nice to have.

Saw the drive too! How many hours? Was it 4 or 7 hours? AND the wide angle attachment.

SONY have truly listened to its USERS. I wonder if CANON will now organise a more ergonomic, fast lens protector on the front end? What with this SONY offer, I too think Canon's pricing structure is being seen to be wanting.

Spot -
Would you comment on the difference in end product of the 1/3" CCD on the Canon, and the 1/4" CMOS on the Sony, please?

v

Vic, I'm listening too!

Vic, Spot has written a small article about the new 1/4 cmos. But simply put, Ic manufacturing today is vastly superior than just two years ago. Many people think about image sensors with techn knowledge that is over 5/10 years old. Most reviewers do not understand how much the technology has improved, you can not compare sensors of five years ago with today's designs. Trying to compare surface area of pixel of today's design to yesterday is truely meanless. Most of the old theories concerning "surface area" requirements are outdated.

Think of a CCD design as a train yard, full of engines with long numbers of train cars. Think of a CMOS design as a truck shipping depot. Now to get a trrain car out, you have to move the entire train down a shared common track, a lot of energy to move and scheluding to get the desired car in a timely matter.
With CMOS, to get a specific truck, a direct request to the truck, the truck moves to desired location with out moving any other trucks. no extra energy moving another trucks or scheluding overhead.

Apit -
Many thanks - I do get all that - my issues are as follows:
(Understanding that I personally believe that an ounce of experience is worth a ton of theory)...
How much more are we losing in "depth of field control" and overall sharpness ~ 1/4" sensor vs 1/3" sensor?
How is this particular camera in Low Light conditions vs (for instance) PD170?
Which would you grab to shoot something you really care about - the Z1 or the V1 ?

Am I about to fall in love again?

v

How much more are we losing in "depth of field control" and overall sharpness ~ 1/4" sensor vs 1/3" sensor?

Not much. Since we're dealing with a small sensor anyway, shallow DOF is still a challenge. However, the lens zoom workround is fine. Somewhere in my masses of tape shot with the V1, I have some shallow DOF I can share.

How is this particular camera in Low Light conditions vs (for instance) PD170?

Admittedly, it's not a PD 170, but it's very good. By contrast, it's significantly better than say, an HVX 200 in the same light. It's not quite as clean as the HVRZ1U with 6dB worth of gain applied, but remember that the Z1 with 6dB of gain applied is quite clean. The V1U footage is substantially more clean than the HVR A1U.

Which would you grab to shoot something you really care about - the Z1 or the V1 ?
Either/or. Footage shot with the V1U has already aired on ESPN, ESPN2, MSNBC, CNN, and other national broadcasts. I cared about that shoot, and since it was the first footage shot anywhere in the world for broadcast, I did back it up with an HVRZ1U. For a variety of reasons, one of them being instant access to the footage via the HVR DR60 hard drive, I chose to use the V1 footage.

Vic,
I think your question is very difficult one to answer.
The effect on DOF between 1/4" and 1/3" must be pretty trivial, neither excel compared to 1/2", compared to 2/3" or a real 35mm sensor.
Being able to individually address the pixels I don't see making much difference to what you're talking about. One thing no one mentions, both CMOS and CCDs use the same thing to convert photons into electrons, photodiodes! The trick is how to get the charge on the diodes into A->D converter.

When you're dealing with such small areas different technologies can result in more of the silicon being available for the individual sensors. So a 1/4" XYZ sensor may have better performance than a 1/3" ABC sensor if the light well area is larger.

I doubt well see any 1/3" HDV camera come close to the PD170 in low light any time soon. The dark current in the sensors is the killer, some of these device I was staggered to learn are working with numbers of electrons you could almost count on your fingers. In that situation one stray electron is a LOT of noise. Bigger sensor elements convert more photons to electrons, hence better signal to noise.

Bob.

This might be of interest to those comparing cameras----They actually have Lux ratings on all the HDV cameras. Can't vouch for the accuracy.

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sony-HVR-V1U-Sony-HDR-FX7-HVR-Z1U-Canon-XH-A1-JVC-GY-HD110U-Panasonic-AG-HVX200-Compared.htm