GS70 vs. GS120: Anyone know the difference?
 

I notice the 120 gets mentioned quite a bit,
but you don't hear much about the cheaper
70, even though they appear to have the
same specs.
What's up?

The older GS70 is more like the newer GS200. The GS120 is stripped down. For spec differences go to Vincent's site found on my links page.

Thanks for the link, Frank.
As far as the specs at Vincent's, it said the GS70
and the GS120 were the same at 290,000 effective
video and 1280X960 stills. The GS200 was listed
at 440,000 effective video and 1760X1320 stills.
Need to make a purchase soon to replace the
Panny 53s I wrote about earlier that went out on me
and I'm needing to choose between the GS70
and the GS120. Anyone know what the
difference is between these two?

The GS120 is more stripped down than the GS70, as far as I can recall. So I think the GS70 is better. I didn't know you can still buy the GS70. Why not go with a GS200? That's a beautiful little cam.

Because the 120, having fewer pixels, is better
in low light -- and I've seen the online
shots that demonstrate this fact.

You may want to read this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...ght=GS70+GS120

Regarding "low light," perhaps try and find a used PV-DV852?

I came across a Russian site that had comparison
frame grabs of the 70, 120, and 200. Interestingly,
the 70 is the most light sensitive of the three,
followed by the 120, and then followed by
the 200. The 70 at +12 dB was as bright as
the 120 at +18 dB! (So would that equal
one f-stop?)
Thing I noticed is that the 120 at +18 didn't
look any worse than the 70 at +12 as far as
grain is concerned. And one thing I did
notice in the frame grabs of these cams at
the mentioned settings is that the 120
is noticeably sharper. So, overall, I liked
the 120 better.

Here's that site. It's in Russian but I used babelfish
and was able to understand it okay.

http://www.videomax.ru/tests/index9.html

Really thorough tests: resolution, colors,
low light, even have video showing
image stabilization. I was surprised to see that
the image stabilization worked so well.

The one cam in the comparison, NV-GX7,
is a 1CCD (1/4") cam.