$500 a fair price for a used HD7 from B&H?
 

Item Condition: 8+ Shows moderate wear or finish marks

I've been researching cameras and scouring sites for footage, and I really love the image the HD7 can put out. In the right hands, I'd say it is as good, if not better, than the Canon HV20/30 (and I am a die-hard Canon fan). I wasn't thinking of it at first, as it had gotten so many mixed reviews, but the footage speaks for itself. In fact, the negative reviews lead me to believe that the reviewers were either merely using it in auto mode, or didn't have a clue what they were doing. I know it's not the highest-res camera out there in its class, or the "best" in a great many ways, but resolution isn't everything (I still think the DVX100 is an amazing camera), and I am very impressed with HD7 and the fact that it has manual controls, etc., is a huge thing in my book.

Now, I know the next round of camcorders coming out are very impressive. The HF S10 from Canon (which is supposed to compare closely with the XH A1?!), the TM300 from Panasonic which has more manual control than you could shake a stick at, among others...but I have $1500 of credit which I can spend at B&H, and that will get me an HD7 AND a Brevis, which makes more sense to me.

At any rate... just wondering if you thought the price was fair.

Cheers.

Sounds like a bargain to me.
You're absolutely right Trip, getting the settings tight is exactly what it's all about and with the HD7 that's way easier than most consumer cams out there at the moment. All your main controls are on the body of the camera.

I never use auto. Set it, lock it, brilliant.

Like this for instance

Soft Layeth the Land on Vimeo

Cheers Avey

JVC HD7 rules in its manual controls & focusing ring! You have to have manual controls in camera!

Kaushik

Sounds like a great deal.

One of the other gripes people had about this camera was the proprietry format. People didn't understand how easy it was to change the file format. My friend had one of these and he had software that he just selected the files and clicked a button and it renamed the file extensions and that was all it took - no transcoding or rendering, unlike AVCHD at the time. Plus it had a firewire port so it really had the best of both world's: the ability to capture through firewire and maintain a normal miniDV workflow, down-convert (i think?)create backup tapes, etc while also being able to drag and drop files straight from the hard drive.

I considered one of these but needed something with a bit more telephoto reach.

At that price I reckon it's a no brainer.

Yeah, the "Soft Layeth the Land" video was one of the videos that had a part in selling me on the HD7 in the first place. Really wonderful work.