Well we have looked at the Canon Powershot SX1 IS.

The advantage of this camera is built in 20x optical zoom, raw capture, 1080p at 30fps video... and others.

Concern is noise at over 100 ISO.

The problem with a DSLR is you are out with that big lens... and... you never have the right lens on when you need it... and by the time you change the lens you have missed the shot. Of course in many settings this is not the issue... but in when you are shooting lots of stuff quick... or when you are attempting to be less disruptive... etc.

So, I thought I'd find out if any one here had been suprised by the quality of the consumer 1080p 30fps HD consumer video cams.

Thanks for any more comments and suggestions.

So you're looking for an inconspicuous video camera that is good for bright light and low light and sports and low-action subjects and has a wide-to-long zoom lens and doesn't cost too much?

If you want competent advice on selecting the optimum camera for your needs, you have to tell us what your needs are, in order of priority.

There is no "best for everything" camera in any price range.

I'm doing a lot of travel video - often from places where even a DSLR is too much to point around.

And I do not care about any 1080"p" as long it is not at least 50 Fps - so my cameras today are:

- SONY TX7 which can be carried around in a Marlboro cigarette case but records great 1080i 50 Fps. Btw. it just survived 2 weeks below zero and snowstorms just in the external pocket of my skiing jacket and doing several hundred takes in 2100-3200 mtrs. Astonishing what the little thing can endure.

- SONY HX5V - only a little bigger than the TX7 and does great 1080i 50 Fps too. It even has active steadyshot (kind of "gyro" stabilizer), which is great for handheld.

When recording is not disturbing anybody around I use a
- SONY CX550V - which is a dream-come-true for a hobby videomaker - and doing 1080i 50Fps up to 25 Mbit.

All cameras have downto 25-28 mm wide lenses, which is much needed in my environments.

...And the AVCHD from all three cameras can be thrown directly onto a Vegas 9.0c timeline and edited directly and hassle free.

I have the Canon SX-1 IS and I absolutely love it. It's 30p rather than 29.97 and cRGB instead of sRGB, but Cineform Neo automatically deals with both of those issues when it converts the footage, slowing down the 30p to 29.97 and rescaling the color to the sRGB range.

I use it in conjunction with my larger Sony HVR-Z7 and in the context of a project you really can't tell which is which. The footage from the Canon SX-1 looks equally outstanding.

I've had this camera a few weeks now and I just can't say enough positive about it. Low light has got noise in it but it can be cleaned up pretty easily with the free Mike Crash dynamic noise reduction (which works better than Neat Video on this footage for some reason).

Stills look great as well. There are some nice things about this camera that aren't obvious at first look:

1/ You can use the digital zoom to get extra range without losing resolution.

2/ The optical stabilization kicks butt.

3/ There is a vertical only stabilization mode that is great for hand held pans.

4/ If you click a picture while you are shooting video, on the video you'll hear a shutter noise and see the still frozen after the sound. In addition to the video ending in a frozen still, you also have whatever stills you snapped as separate files. This can be quite artistic in practice as you can be shooting video which stops with a shutter sound and a still, then you can zoom in on the separate still file. Very cool.

5/ Having two buttons, one for stills and one for video is really great.

6/ You can set your exposure and focus by centering your subject and pressing the photo button halfway down, then after the focus and exposure are set, reframing and pushing the video button. This is very fast and effective in practice.

7/ It does facial recognition on both stills and video. I love that.

8/ There's a company called Lensmate that makes an adapter that lets you use standard 58mm filters on this camera. I have two filters that I use on this camera: a UV filter to protect the glass, and a polarizing filter with a little warming color correction. I have each one permanently attached to it's own Lensmate adapter. That way I can go to a polarizing filter with a simple half twist. Way cool.

http://www.lensmateonline.com/store/sx20sx10sx1.php

9/ In practice, when you take out this camera and start shooting video, everyone thinks it is just a still camera and nobody seems to know that video is already rolling. This is way cool in so many ways. You can get away with taking a still camera all sorts of places that look at you funny with a video camera: restaurants, bars etc. Nobody cares about still cameras. No reason to even mention that it does video.

10/ The audio is surprisingly good. Whatever stereo mics they used are actually good sounding ones. Because there is no motor noise, you really get clean sound as well. Level can be set with AGC or manually. Unfortunately there is no audio input, but at least you can set the level manually.

11/ The zoom lens goes quite a bit wider than my Z7. From there it will zoom in 49x (including the lossless digital zoom). The optical stabilization will hold this ultra zoomed image steady.

12/ Picture quality is excellent in decent light. Full 1920x1080 with a decent lens. Absolutely beautiful.

I like this camera so much that it has become my main b-roll camera. Instead of lugging the Z7 around, I have the SX-1 and a tiny Manfrotto tripod. Both of them fit together in the luggage box on the back of my motorcycle. I love this because I can get the bike to all sorts of upclose places that you can't park a car. Instead of parking the car a block away and lugging the big camera, I ride right up on the bike, whip out the small camera and tripod, and get the shot. Really cool.

My girlfriend is looking for at pocket camera with a built in GPS receiver , and of course good video and picture quality. I have found to models that have received good reviews:

* Sony Cybershot DSC-HX5V
* Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 (DMC-TZ10 outside North America)

Ritsmer, how good is the video quality from the Sony Cybershot DSC-HX5V compared to the other cameras you mentioned?

Has any of you tested the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 DMC-TZ10 camera?

Which of the two cameras, Sony DSC-HX5V or Panasonic DMC-ZS7 DMC-TZ10, has the best video quality?

Are there any problems editing the video from the Panasonic camera in Vegas?

Jøran

I am using the Sony HDR Tg1. I love it. I have two of them and use them for my two person interviews. The first Tg1 I paid full price for, but the second was obtained on Ebay for 1/3 the price. Brief specs:
* 10x optical zoom
* 1920x1080 (Pal or NTSC you choose which model)
* 4 mega pixel stills
It is not that good in low light, but the clips it takes in normal light are gorgeous.
Here's a quick review: http://goeurope.about.com/od/travelphotography/fr/sony-hdr-TG1.htm

Here are some threads that may help:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=704215
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=686133
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=12&MessageID=679949

Sanyo Xacti VPC-FH1/HD2000
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=675347

I ended up w/ the Xact VPC-FH1A because it fit my criteria for now. Which are:
SD card (no tapes or Sony memory sticks)
Good low light
1920x1080P (60fps)
1280x720P (60fps) - cam only does 30fps but I can down convert 1080p 60fps.
Manual exposure control
Lock focus on subject.
COMPACT

A nice feature I didn't expect is, it came with an infrared remote.

As mentioned in the post above, limitations of this cam (but not deal breakers for me):
- the image stabilization is near non existent.
- manual focus is in steps so to fine tune focus between steps you'll have to move fwd or backwards about 2ft.
- 10 second gap in video when the video reaches the 4 gig file limit as the camera starts another file.

Granted that a $1K video cam will have better quality and features but I needed something that was really compact, relatively cheap, good low light video segments w/ manual controls and can be banged around.

I'm in the process of researching which 1$ cam to purchase next. (;

3 top contenders in the $1K range for now are:
1. Sony CX550 (despite the blue dot issue)
2. Canon HFS10 (1/2" CCD) (HFS11 includes 32Gig memory = mo' $$$),
3. Panasonic HDC-TM300 (3CCD)

If any of these guys come out w/ a model that can do 1080p 60fps that will bump them up to the top spot.

This is all great info. Thanks everybody for contributing.

If anyone else has a comment or suggestion please jump in.

I'm going to read everybody's comments more carefully and look at each cam suggested.

and Laurence... after almost rejecting it... you just about have me ready to order the Canon SX-1... but I'm going to look at all suggestions.

Thanks again.

More comments anyone? Let's hear 'em.

If you look on Vimeo, there is raw footage from a bunch of these different cameras. In many cases if you are signed into your own Vimeo account, you can download the source footage for the online videos. Some of these are actual footage from the cameras. That is a good way to see what you are really in for before buying into one. I downloaded several SX-1 IS clips (and that from competing cameras) before I settled on the Canon.

A while back I posted a thread about the Canon SX1 IS http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=703190here.[/link]

In http://vimeo.com/10040411this church campus tour video[/link] there are shots from the Canon SX-1 IS at the following times:

:38, :44, :53, :56, 1:08, 1:11, 1:42

Most of the animated stills are from that camera although one or two are from my wife's Nikon D40 (which I was using before I bought the Canon)

For photography, this camera is better than most of the video cameras with still capabilities. Two things that make it so are that you can mount an external flash and bounce it off the ceiling. That makes all the difference in the world when you are trying to photograph anything architectural. Another thing is that you have the standard manual and semi-manual modes. Like many people, I particularly like aperture priority for portraits as that gives you a shallow depth of field without going totally manual.

The SX-1 IS also has a panoramic stitch mode which I used a couple of times in this video. It lets you take a shot, then see the right side of the previous picture on the left side of the viewfinder (or screen) in order to line up the next shot. Software that comes with the camera will automatically stitch these together. I used this on the shots in the video at these times:

:15, :58, 2:26

The shot at :44 looked really noisy because the light was low. Neat Video NR still looked terrible, but the free Mike Crash dynamic noise reduction cleaned it up remarkably well and that's what you see at that point in the video. Now the Mike Crash noise reduction is what I automatically will use in the future as it really works well with noisy low light footage from this camera.

This video is at 24p. All the footage from the SX-1 was slowed down from 30p to 29.97 by Neo Scene as it converted the footage into intermediates.

The SX-1 IS is a CMOS camera. Rolling shutter from it is about the same as what I'm used to on my Z7 and probably very similar to what you are used to on your EX1.

Jøran: I'll be back on your question asap - probably day after tomorrow. (just getting my boat ready for the coming season :-)

Laurence,

Congrats on that video!

It makes its points just right, and with warmth and humanity.

One other thing I wanted to mention about the Canon SX1 IS is that the zoom lens goes very wide at it's widest setting. Quite a bit wider than my HVR Z7 and way wider than my older cams do with their wide angle lenses attached.

"3 top contenders in the $1K range for now are:
1. Sony CX550 (despite the blue dot issue)
2. Canon HFS10 (1/2" CCD) (HFS11 includes 32Gig memory = mo' $$$),
3. Panasonic HDC-TM300 (3CCD)"

Better check out the TM700. Here's what CamcorderInfo says:

"So far, however, the HDC-TM700 has blown everything else out of the water in terms of video performance, and the camcorder showed significant improvement over last year's exceptional HDC-TM300.

There's been a lot of buzz surrounding the TM700's 1080/60p record mode, and rightfully so. The mode records at a very high bitrate and it produced some of the finest video images we've ever seen from a consumer camcorder."

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Panasonic-HDC-TM700-Camcorder-Review-37681/Conclusion.htm

It is almost as small as the HF1 (which I own), gives low-light performance that is almost as good (with its f1.5 lens!), extraordinary dynamic range (fewer blow-outs with white objects in the frame), outstanding autofocus, excellent optical image stabilization, wide-angle lens (35mm equivalent), 12x optical zoom, plus up to 18x digital zoom without loss of image quality if the light is good, 1000 lines of horizontal resolution compared to 650 for the HF1, good manual controls, the expected external mic/headphone jacks, etc.

The cam isn't perfect: In a silent room, the AGC will up the gain and the built-in mic will pick up noise from the fan (a moot point for me - I almost always use an external mic). Also, the still pics aren't that great, and the cold shoe adapter is a nuisance. Nevertheless, I ordered one for $750 directly from Panasonic and it is due to arrive later this week.

Here are a few quotes:

"I've commented often on just how good the TMV700 is in NOT blowing out highlights. It's better than any Canon or Sony consumer camcorder I've owned (I've had many HD units) and in the same league as my $3,500 Sony Z5. So there's absolutely no problem there. You can further reduce highlights with the many manual controls. In fact, there are more manual controls on the 700 than just about any other consumer camcorder. One thing it has that is VERY valuable for someone like you is zebra stripes. This will show you precisely where whites are being blown out. You can than manually reduce the amount of light if that area is important to your video."

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1225613&page=31

"Blasst, the color, clarity and resolution are just stunning. When I tell you it is at least a match (and better in some respects) than my $3,500 Sony Z5, I kid you not."

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1225613&page=28

"Quote:

Verdict
Overall, the HDC-TM700 produces a killer combination of consummate manual control and best-of-breed image quality. And with a price already similar to the outgoing models, you should look no further than this if you’re in the market for a top-end HD camcorder with semi-pro capabilities. Panasonic has cemented the lead it acquired in 2009, and upped the ante still further, making this the camcorder to beat in 2010.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/camcor...c-HDC-TM700/p1

The Panasonic sounds very interesting. I just got an HF S200 in the mail, and I have to say it's bright-light 24p picture is gorgeous -- it just crushes my HF200. Note that this is an actual 24p picture--not an interpolation.

But the big surprise is the quality of Canon's new "Dynamic" image stabilization. I can't put into words how much better it is than the HF200's stabilization. Fully zoomed images hand-held are as good as on a tripod. It's so good I think I'm going to have to keep the camera for that feature alone.

Do you have any info on the quality of the Panasonic's stabilizer? A true 60p cam with lowlight performance sounds very tempting...

The optical image stabilizer of the TM700 is equal to the Sony CX500 according to tests done by owners of both cameras on the AVS forum (in other words, very good). However, the new Sony CX550 claims to have improved the OIS compared to the CX500, so speculation is that the CX550 may be a tad better. So far, no direct comparisons have been posted.

Honestly I was hoping for some improvement, over the HF200, but I.S. wasn't really even on my radar as far as key features.

The HF S200 system is so good I'd probably feel forced to upgrade even if image quality was identical. Maybe even a little worse.

I'm just stunned by how much of an impact it has on handheld shots. I'll never again make the mistake of thinking all IS systems are created equal. :)

The TM700 looks really good. Does it do 30p?

Looks like only 1080p vbr from 5Mbs - 28Mbs
Specs

Thanks LReaves, This cam is definately in the top 3:
3 top contenders in the $1K range for now are:
1. Panasonic TM 700 (dispite the fan noise issue)
1a. Sony CX550 (despite the blue dot issue)
2. Canon HFS10 (1/2" CCD) (HFS11 includes 32Gig memory = mo' $$$)

I. Almost always shoot 30p. I like the progressive image but 24p is too juddery. One of my main complaints eith that church tour video I linked to earlier is that I hate how 24p looks on Vimeo (or Youtube). It looks like a 24p timeline rendered to 30p.

I don't like 60I all that much these days. It looks great on bluray. But more people see it on Vimeo. 30p renders of 60I don't look sharp enough. 60p may be the future but it's too hard to edit. For now at least 30p is the best working framerate for everything but fast sports. When I do use 60I I just put it on the same timeline as my 30p. It renders out just fine.

I really wouldn't want a camera that didn't do 30p even if it was spectacular in every other way.

LReavis,

Where did you find a HDC-TM700 for $750?
When I go to Panasonic's site I see it at $999

http://www2.panasonic.com/consumer-electronics/shop/Cameras-Camcorders/Camcorders/3-MOS-High-Def-Camcorders/model.HDC-TM700K_11002_7000000000000005702

And what is the difference between the HDC-TM700 and the
HDC TM700k?

Thanks.

Here's how to get the $250 discount:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=704543&Replies=4

You'll need a business email address - a gmail or yahoo account won't work (they say "corporate," but someone who had a non-corporate email address was able to get the discount; and I believe that for $30 individuals without a business email address also can get the discount)

I think I accidentally left off the "k" - I believe the one I ordered is indeed "750k." I'll know for sure in a day or two when it arrives.

@ Jøran: sorry for the delay, but if you compare the 3 cameras (CX550, HX5V and TX7) their video qualities are so similiar that you really have to dig deep to notice the difference.

If you record and edit a video with any of the camera the video will be just fine seen on a 50 inch plasma.

If you make clips of the same motifs with all 3 cameras on tripods etc and scrutinize them you will see that the CX550 gives the best and clearest result - closely followed by the HX5V - and then comes the TX7.

IMHO the electronics in the 3 cameras is so good that when you compare you see through to the quality in the lenses - and you ceartainly get a lot of high quality optics in the CX550 - which, naturally also has far the best space for the lenses.

One thing is theory - something else is practice - and I have just edited a 26 mins video recorded with a CX550 and a TX7 (due to weather conditions, as I would rather drown a TX7 than a CX550) - some hundred clips from each - and where the clips are mixed during editing.
When seeing the video it is totally impossible to identify which clips come from which camera on the fly.