Panasonic DV852, Sony TRV38 or Canon Optura 20
 

Hello:

I will really appreciate your help in helping me decide what camera will be best.

-Best Quality
-Durability
-Indoor room shooting (low light)

I think I have narrow my decision to these cams:

Sony TRV38 (540 lines?)
PV-DV852 (520 lines?)
Canon Optura 20 (500 lines?)

For all what i can see they are very similar, but i haven't seen any video footage from neither. I want the best video quality possible.

How many pixels in the 852 CCD, the other two say 690K.

Thank you for your help
Ludvik
ludvikherrera@netscape.net

pass-through?
 

I forgot to mention, does the 852 has pass-through signal?

Yes, it has pass-through. Where did you get those specs for playback resolution? The MX1000/MX8/PV-DV852 plays back 530 horizontal lines.

Sonystyle.com says the TRV38 only has 520 lines of resolution. Canon's website says the Optura 20 has 525 lines of resolution. looks like the DV852 wins and is the least exspensive out of the three.

Forget about Optura 20. Its low light performance would be the worst in this bunch. Between the other two, the DV-852 is a little bigger than TRV38, but it has one big advantage, optical image stabalizer. TRV38 has a bigger LCD, 3.5" vs. 2.5".

If you want to shoot in manual, I think DV-852 is more practical for that purpose. Although it is also perfect for point and shoot.

Another consideration is the lens field of view. The DV-852 has a wider field of view. In small rooms, you can get more into the picture. With TRV 38 you would probably need a wide angle lens.

I agree with what Fred has posted and I will add that the TRV38 does have a quality 16:9 mode if that makes any difference to you.

I would still rather have the DV852!

16:9 not good in dv852?
 

I will consider a 16:9 a plus definately and Fred's and your comment, Tommy, are really good. So do you mean that the DV852 does not have a good 16:9 or not at all?

Any one can tell me the number of pixels in the Panasonic 852?

I am ordering either the TRV38 or the PV-DV852 tomorrow (Wed) so I really appreciate your quick responses.

Ludvik

The Dv-852 is a 1.2 Mega pixel cam. TRV33/38 & 39 have 1.02 Mega pixel CCDs. Not all the pixels are used for the video. They're used for still pictures. The video uses less, usually around 600K. I think camcorders that have digital image stablizers, they use some of the pixels for image stabilization.

Re 16:9 mode, the PV-852 just puts a black bar across the top and bottom. I don't know about the TRV 38, but some camcorders when you put them in 16:9 mode, it actually increases their width of view. They get just a little more from each side in the view. There maybe more to what Tommy said about better 16:9 for TRV38. I never use 16:9 but some people only shoot in 16:9.

There's a MX8 brochure link found here, to answer your 16:9 concerns:

http://members.tripod.com/vincent_ysc/2002.html

The MX8 is the PAL version of the MX1000/PV-DV852.

The DCR-TRV38 uses 690k pixels for video out of its total 1070k pixels and if I remember from my DV852 it uses about the same for its video actual.

The TRV38 has an anamoprhic 16:9 mode that is of high quality and increases the angle of view much the same as Sony PDX10 ($2000 3CCD). In fact the PDX10 has 1070k pixel CCDs (three) and also utitlizes 690k for video. The difference is that the TRV38 lacks optical image stabilization (OIS) like the PDX10 but luckily it employs electronic sensors (EIS) to compensate motion/shake and is still effective in 16:9 mode. The worst stabilization is digital image stabilization (DIS) which uses the same extended pixel range of the CCD that a quality 16:9 mode does. That often cripples or disables DIS while in 16:9 mode.

Here is an illustration of how the PDX10 acquires its enhanced 16:9 image.

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-5/74415/PDX10.jpg

You can get a $300 anamorphic adapter for the DV852 but it has some limitations and adds quite a bit to your initial purchase. Otherwise you have the 25% resolution robbing in-camera 16:9 mode aka as letterboxed.

Here is a great resource for in-camera 16:9 differences with examples.

http://www.maxent.org/video/16x9.html

MX1000/852 CCD

1/3.8", 1.02MP, 710K effective video

Thanks, Allan. I new the video effective pixels were in the 700K range somewhere, but couldn't find the exact number.

And...: HAPPY 28th BIRTHDAY, TOMMY!!! :-)) :-))