I have a canon XHA1 as well, was comparing low light , saturation, etc.


Thanks to this site and other reviews Im so glad i got the 920. Still captures from vid. are amazing. Just love the unit

(and i hate everything, so thats high praise)



Its obvious that in the $1000 + range, Panasonic has Canon whipped.


Love Canon cammys, but for a 3 chippy and QUALITY, anything CLOSE to the HC-X920 costs a FORTUNE.

Its obvious that in the $1000 + range, Panasonic has Canon whipped.

Lots' of canon fanboys here so you might be carefull with these statements as they can take it very personal :)
This year I have edited footage from the x920, a friend of mine asked if he could join me during a wedding ceremony to test his camera's, he has a sony ex3 and got that small panny as b-cam. He also is very satisfied with the x920, after the wedding he gave me the x920 footage and I was surprised by the amount of detail that camera resolves, I did see some small issues with hot spots on very high contrast scenes where white shirts in the full sun would loose detail eventhough the scene looked properly exposed. The camera also matched fine with my sony camera's (ax100, cx730 and rx10) I used during the ceremony. The colours where also very well balanced (the ceremony was outside)

I have owned a xh-a1 as well which I sold a it over 2 years ago, loved that camera, only not when it got too dark :)

Well, I was not dissing Canon.

Love them obviously, since I have had a few, and still have the XHA1


point being, AT this price point, Canon has squat.


Realistically, without spending $3500 MORE on a Canon, I cannot touch what the X920 does

unless of course I grabbed a nice used Canon on Ebay in the same range.

even then, the only option in the $1000 range is ANOTHER XHA1

I discovered something very important today on this camcorder. Like I said in another topic I found this camcorder too noisy in low light.

Yes, the sharpness is better than the nex-ea50 and hxr-nx5 I have.

In the menu you have "picture control" (translated it from dutch to english)
there you have sharpness, color, exposure and white balance adjustments.

Standard sharpness is set to zero (0). changing this to -5 (lowest) gives a big difference in low light!
No the noise is gone. I found this maybe a bit too soft. I have set it now to -2.

Can post samples if someone is interested. @Noa: now I discoverd this I will keep this camcorder.

Standard sharpness is set to zero (0). changing this to -5 (lowest) gives a big difference in low light! No the noise is gone. I found this maybe a bit too soft. I have set it now to -2. You could always shoot at -5 and add a little sharpening in post Tom.

Many people and I am one of them, find sharpening in post to be better than in-camera sharpening, so shoot with camera sharpening at minimum and sharpen in post by preference.

Dave

Standard sharpness is set to zero (0). changing this to -5 (lowest) gives a big difference in low light!


Changing the sharpness setting improves the lowlight of the camera?? That doesn't sound right :)

Yes Noa, going from -5 to 0 and to +5 you see more noise. Made short test video.

sharpness test HC-X920 panasonic - YouTube

+5 gives too much sharpening and you get some "artifacts".

Ok, I misunderstood you, I thought you meant that the camera had better low light performance with the sharpness turned down, what you are seeing is digital artifacts because of oversharpening.

Does the camera have clean HDMI out while shooting live? That's the make or break issue for me as I shoot live performances and want to stream the shoot live.

i'm trying to find out what the main difference is between the x920 and the pana v770.
The latter being newer, seemingly having similar spec & equally as good, but available at a 20% lower price than the x920.

Maybe i'm missing something the x920 has, that the v770 doesn't...?
not sure.

I really like the videos i see on the net from both cameras..

The V770 does not have a viewfinder. No good for outdoors I think.
It also is not a 3 chip camera.

The X920 is a 3 chip camera which will give better colour definition and dynamic range. It will also give you more pixels as you have 3x2/3 sensors rather than 1. The low light should also be better on the 920, with 3 sensors available. I have been using the Panny 700 3chips for several years and the results are still excellent even in fairly dim conditions. I will be replacing them with 920s later in the year.

There is also a new 4k Panny 970 which is a single sensor, so it will be interesting to see if they bring in a 3 chip version of that. If the price is right I will be straight in!

Roger