VX2100 pricing - my thoughts...
 

[I posted this similar on another thread, but I wanted to create dialog about this]

People keep saying the price of the VX2100 is going to be expensive when it comes out. We don't know yet, and maybe the price will be high initially, but its hard to imagine Sony will be able to keep the price high for long considering the price of the GL2, PDX10, DVC80 (which some could argue is a better cam) and JVC 300U. More than anything, the updates should give people a faint reason NOT to buy one of the aforementioned cams.

Say Sony raises the price to $2800 ($400 higher than now). That means one would be only a few hundred from buying a DVX100, $400 more than the DVC80, $850 more than the GL2 (with rebate), and about $150 from a PD150 (there will surely be plenty out there for a while). I don't see how they would sell ANY VX2100's. I don't know about you guys, but at that price I'd move up to a DVX100 or get the DVC80 (if I didn't want to spend as much), or find a current PD150 or VX2000. When I bought my cam, I had a really difficult time buying the VX2000 over the GL2, and, at that time, JVC and Panasonic didn't have their cams out, there wasn't a PDX10, and Canon wasn't offering a rebate on the GL2. I guarantee if I were buying a new cam today, I could find lots of reasons to buy any of the other cams. VX2100 doesn't offer enough features to justify a higher cost than the VX2000.

Mark G


__________________

Mark, do you know where I might find VX2100 specs?

Paul

This any good . . .

http://www.abcdv.com/article/articleview/161/1/53/

Grazie

By the time the VX2100 is available in the US, VX2000 will be discontinued like the VX1000 discontinued when VX2000 is out. You can maybe buy one, but that will be an old stock.

Thanks Graham!

VX2100 is the exact same price (...here)
 

FYI
In Canada the price for the VX2100 is the same as the VX2000 (was). Confirmed pricing last week. We can't wait!

Where did you hear that news, Brian? Any mention of an included wide angle lens, as with the PD170? And when you say
same price, are you referring to manufacturers suggested retail
or actual street price?

No pricing changes here for the VX2100. no Mention yet on specifics...only the model number.

Brian

Brian works for a full service dealer in a suberb of Vancouver BC (Canada) Lorne Lapham Sales and Rentals. The store isn't big but it's packed with treasures. They have a large stock of lighting and accessory gear. (Sony, Panny,manfrotto, Lowel , Cavision, etc.) they're aimed at the prosummer/professional market. Nice people! Most or all of the employees are users and not just sales people.

so WHEN can someone buy an ntsc vx2100 or pd170 ? from canada OR the US ? Do you have an approximate date that your store or any others will actually have them in stock ?? is the vx2100 available prior to the pd170, the former being sold in Dec. and the latter sometime in the spring ?

Gerry

will the vx2100 have a manual gain and shutter controls like the pd150? as far as I know, they are combined for the vx2000 (or something like that), just wondering if they made the manual controls a bit more like the pd150, or if they will essentially be the same...

I would love to get a vx2100 as a second camera, but need to be able to manually control gain and shutter speed...

<<<-- Originally posted by Basem Elsokary : will the vx2100 have a manual gain and shutter controls like the pd150? as far as I know, they are combined for the vx2000 (or something like that), just wondering if they made the manual controls a bit more like the pd150, or if they will essentially be the same...

I would love to get a vx2100 as a second camera, but need to be able to manually control gain and shutter speed... -->>>


NO-same exposure like the VX2000. The PD170 will have more iris increments.

The VX-2000 does have separate controls for shutter speed and iris, but there's a caveat. If you set the iris manually, then change the shutter speed, the camera resets the iris where it chooses, even in manual mode. The iris will then remain at this new setting until manually changed.

However if you choose your shutter speed FIRST, then you may set the iris wherever you like. As long as you leave the shutter speed alone you can take full manual control of the iris.

So you can't vary the shutter speed and keep the iris locked at a setting, but you can vary the iris and keep the shutter speed locked. From what I'm told this differs from the PD-150, but I only have a VX-2000 so I can't say for sure. FWIW, the PDX-10 behaves exactly like the VX-2000 in this regard.

Does anyone know if the PD150 acts differently? (In response to Boyd)

Everything in the PD150 can be made to operate independently.

Boyd,
That's the first I've heard about the VX shutter/iris interaction
in manual mode. Is that described in the owners' manual?
One thing that's not in the owners' manual that is also rarely mentioned is that the VX can be brought out of standby mode by pressing on the photo button. No need to power down/power
up. No need to press the record button. Can't take credit for
"discovering" this; I saw a post once about it. But that original
poster mentioned that the photo button must be pressed twice.
My "contribution to science" is that even one press will do the trick.
A. Einstein

Boyd is right. in the beginning I couldn't figure what everyone was complaining about. I always set my shutter speed and then my aperture, that's the way i've always done it.

Me, too, Bryan. Always shutter first. This goes back to some years ago when the first auto exposure SLRs first came around.
You chose your cam manufacturer by picking whether you wanted to work either "aperture priority" or "shutter priority". Most of the manufacturers were offering the aperture priority. Because I was shooting a lot of sporting events at the time I went with shutter priority. And, to this day, I still set shutter first. I have a VX myself and am surprised to hear from Boyd that, even set in manual, the cam will change iris from how you
set it. Wonder why Sony'd even make 'em that way. Doesn't seem right.

<<<-- Originally posted by Basem Elsokary : will the vx2100 have a manual gain and shutter controls like the pd150? as far as I know, they are combined for the vx2000 (or something like that), just wondering if they made the manual controls a bit more like the pd150, or if they will essentially be the same...

I would love to get a vx2100 as a second camera, but need to be able to manually control gain and shutter speed... -->>>

I stand corrected as it relates to exposure. The 170 and the 2100 now have 24 steps instead of 19. However, the gain is not seperate in the 2100.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dave Largent : I have a VX myself and am surprised to hear from Boyd that, even set in manual, the cam will change iris -->>>

Did you try yourself to confirm? This has always baffled me also, and it took awhile for me to figure it out myself. I thought I must be neglecting to push some button or something. In fact I *still* wonder about that. But I have posted this in a number of threads over the past few years, and nobody has suggested a work-around, so I guess that's just the way it is. As a consumer camera, perhaps the Sony "rocket scientists" were trying to "protect" us average Joes? But it bewilders me further to see that the PDX-10, a camera from the pro line, exhibits the same behavior. But as a practical matter I don't really care all that much. There are very few times I can imagine wanting to film and continuously vary the shutter speed while keeping the iris locked. It's just a minor annoyance to have to reset it after changing shutter speed.

However in a somewhat parallel example, on the PDX-10's consumer cousin TRV-950, Sony has deliberately dumbed down the 16:9 mode to use less pixels and a narrower field of view. Same CCD's, same lens. Both of these seem like examples of camera firmware intentionally crippled in order to differentiate the consumer and pro lines of cameras.

But on all these cameras the layout of the various buttons and wheels seems very random and awkward. It's true that you can control everything, but the ergonomics leave a lot to be desired and seem to be driven more by some sort of visual design concept than funtionality. I can't tell you how many times I've hit the white balance button by accident in the dark, creating a glitch on the tape, thinking it was the audio level or shutter speed. Very bad design there! But I guess that's yet another intentional thing which separates the prosumer cams from the ENG units with more dedicated controls.

Boyd,
No, I haven't tried to confirm it myself.
Have you figured out what the VX is doing as far as its choice of aperture. Does it go into some kind of shutter-priority AE?
Random?

Looks like shutter priority AE to me, but I have not compared to see if the settings match. Certainly isn't random, it's setting the iris where it "thinks" it should...