HV30 on the left JVC on the right.

That's what I had assumed, but my assumptions are notorious for being wrong as often as correct . . .

Patrick,
My HV20 shows a lot of "noise" on relative low light input, similar to what I would have expected to see on your shots, but I am not seeing this?
Is that because the compression is not showing this?

Ted

Those are not low light shots as they a lit with a 250w light to the right and the exposure is locked, so you are looking at shots where the camera's gain didn't kick in.

Hello Patryk,
nice to know someone with more knowledge than I has such a high opinion of the HV30... I just purchased one not long ago, and have enjoyed using it on the two opportunities I've had since the purchase. I was a bit disappointed that it didn't have the functions of the GL-2 ... while, in fact, the functions are there, I just didn't know how to find them. . . (the story of my life... lol)

Thanks for taking the time for the comparison... although now labeled, I was able to differentiate which camera was which without a problem... As Yogi Berra once said, "It's amazing what you can see just by observing..."

Thanks again... until that time... Earl J.

I use a Canon XH-A1 as my primary camera, and an HV-20 as the second camera. I am completely at ease using the HV-20, the footage requires very little, if any, adjustment to match the A1. The A1 is very very versatile adjustment wise, but once it is set up and ready, I just set the HV on auto and run it, then on multi-cam editing in Vegas I rarely have to make any changes on the HV line.
To get really creative, yeah, the A1, but for a common two-camera event, the HV hangs right in there.

Yeah, that's been my experience, too, between pro cameras (well, low-end pro) and the better consumer cameras (I have an HV10, for example, which has the same sensor as used in the HV20 and HV30).

Back in the SD days, you had so little color information, that a Bayer pattern interpolation then taken into 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 color subsampling looking significantly worse than full RGB from a 3-chip camera. This was even starting to not be the case with better consumer cameras, largely since they started using much larger than necessary sensors, so the Bayer pattern interpolation could be within a single pixel, for the purposes of SD.

What certainly hasn't changed is the light question.. more pixels on a same-sized sensor means less light, all else being equal. There have been some improvements in light sensitivity (lower noise on CCDs, higher dynamic range, etc), but all tricks available to any sensor design of the same era. So you still find some 3-chip cameras that are using the arrangement to improve low-light, rather than color (which probably doesn't need improving).

At the very least, with 3 chips, you're getting 100% of the light entering the camera contributing to the image (minus a very small loss in the diachroic prism). With a single chip, you're filtering out 2/3 of the light per RAW pixel.

Some HD cameras offer three full-sized sensors, others offer half size with intereave, so they're doing some interpolation, too, but the pixels on each chip are better than twice the size than they'd be on full frame chips.

In short, 3-chip can still make a difference, but it's largely a low light thing. And that's also true of HD vs. SD... a VX-2100 is still going to deliver better low light performance than any 1/3" 3-chip HD camera... at least of those I've seen so far.