You mentioned you were buying a GS100 (the "pro" black one). What are your thoughts, and how does it compare with your former PV-DV953 and PDX10? Thanks.

I hope to place my order this coming week.

Stay tuned..

And you're gonna sell the Xi?

Definitely will sell the Xi. In fact thats the last hurdle before I purchase the black mamba.

I feel confident about owning a Japanese cam now that two of my female co-workers are both Japanese.

Post your Xi for sale on our Classifieds and it's bound to go quickly.

Ordered the GS100K and hope to have it later this week.

I was hoping to give Allan or Tim a little business but unfortunately (for me) Allan is in Mexico and Tim is here in the states.

I decided to give PriceJapan a try since I need the cam before Dec 24th for the next ultrasound of my wife and our twins.

might possibly be interested in your xi what you looking to get out of it?

Thanks for the interest Jon but it has already gone on the auction block of eBay and as usual I sold it for roughly what I paid (and even more than you can get one now).

Jon, you might want to checkout OneCall as they have the Xi for $1056 (click best price).

Here is a link.

http://ww1.onecall.com/PID_20905.htm?BCPID=479

The black mamba has landed!

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2002-12/74415/GS100profile1(Small).jpg

The one thing that has surprised me the most is the compact size of the GS100. Being larger than a GS70 and smaller than the DV953 makes for an easy cam to hold.

More than likely the cam will be permanently set to wide mode and frame mode but I will try out the ProCinema feature for comparison.

I'll update later this week with some frames and stills.

Congratulations Tommy on your purchase of the GS100. I'm a bit jealous because I really wanted one but as you know was fearful of the Japanese menus.

I hope it is everything you wanted and that it meets your expectations which I'm sure it will.

I'm also sure a lot of us would like to know (in time) how your dealing with the menus and translations. A little help from your colleagues at work is always nice, but you are the one who has to figure it out when they are not there. I'm curious how much difference there really is between this and the DV953 - because at $950.00 (which is what I ended up paying for my 953) it might not be that much of a difference, just size and a little more low light quality.

Congrats once again - enjoy!

Rick.

More congrats from me too!

I had decided on a GS100K until I read all the fuss about the 852 and I was ready to order an 852 today until I saw your post. That 852 at B&H is a killer deal and your old jpegs really show the low light difference.

I think I'll wait for your updates but I don't want to miss the 852 window! That's alot of cam for $569.

Your GS100K is awful purty though!

-Stewart

Congratulations on your new purchase! I hope you use it for at least 2 years. ;)

Tommy, you got the "Black Mamba," right?

Had a chance to get more acquainted with the GS100 over the Holiday weekend and its a great little cam.

Here are some frame grabs (not stills) from the GS100 and they have individual notes on how they were obtained.

Low light is slightly better than the DV953 but you've gotta watch out for the LCD panel as it often looks much better than what goes to tape.

http://www.villagephotos.com/pubbrowse.asp?selected=685258

Tommy, you got the "Black Mamba," right?

Most definitely, but often its a Dirty Black Mamba. Like having a shiny black car its hard to keep it clean!

It's dusty where you live? Black mamba's shedding it's skin? Keep a cleaning cloth handy. :-)) By the way, nice frame grabs.

Tell us more about the GS100. I was also curious how the GS100 has a better widescreen than the MX5/DV953. I thought their CCDs are the same, or have the same about of video effective pixels.

**60i frame grab uprezzed to HD using S-Spline

http://www.dvuser.co.kr/zboard/data/gallery/test3.jpg

The frame grab would've looked better if I had used DVFilmMaker.

It's dusty where you live?

Its mostly fingerprints but yes the cleaning cloth is always close by. If only the Black Mamba had a magnesium alloy body like my Canon 10D.

The widescreen issue is quite puzzling. While both the DV953 and GS100 have 800k CCDs with 640k video effective pixels it appears that the DV953 (and MX5000) in 16:9 do not take full advantage of the entire CCD allotment. This would explain the higher resolution and wider angle of view with the GS100.

I stumbled across a Taiwan website that claims that the GS100 has a full CCD resolution of 998X797 and that the 16:9 mode (not cinema) utilizes only 934x576 of the CCD and then extracts a 720x460 frame which requires a 1.04 vertical zoom to achieve 720x480. Your guess is as good as mine as to why they just don't take a 720x480 frame from the 934x576 original capture.

All along I've sported the photo of the MX500 (PAL) 16:9 mode from the Power Point slide show and related it to the NTSC MX5000 and DV953 but now I believe there are differences other than the obvious format resolutions of NTSC vs. PAL. The Japanese Panasonic site refers to the MX5000 as using 876x540 frame from within the full CCD. Then the MX5000 extracts a 720x360 frame which requires a 1.3x vertical zoom to achieve 720x480.

Panasonic's Japanese website on GS100 Wide Mode

http://panasonic.jp/dvc/gs100k/ki_wide.html

NV-MX500 (PAL) 16:9 Mode Power Point slide extraction

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-4/74415/JVKEZERIPBEXDYIEIYZP-1-1-5.jpg

Translated Taiwan GS100 Info page

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dvworld.com.tw%2Fproduct%2Fgs100k_TEST%2F&lp=zh_en&tt=url

Massive photo of my GS100K

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2002-12/74415/GS100profile2.jpg

Thanks for those links. So the DV953's wide screen is not the same as the MX5000's? I'll have to snoop around in these links.

My buddy bought a EOS D10 (black beauty), along with 3 Canon lenses:

24 - 85 1:3.5 - 4.5 (black)
20 - 40 (black)
EF 70 - 200mm 1:4 (white in color)

I played around with it the other day---Oh..., so..., nice! :-))

You mean 10D? Yes, a very good camera, indeed.

A very sexy name, too "Tandy".

Tandy?

I'm using the Canon 28-135mm IS USM on my 10D but what I really want is the Canon EF17-40mm f4.0L USM.

Maybe "Tendy" or "Tandee". There are also the "Wandee" and "Wandee-Ess" to look forward to!

Certainly sounds better than "Dee-Wan-Hun-Dred" or "Ess-Too-Pro"! (Imagine "Ess-Too-Pro", spelt with an "A" instead of an "E"!)

But I do prefer Fuji's SuperCCD colours and dynamic range.

Sorry for all the crap in the thread, I am also pretty keen on photography.

Sorry for all the crap in the thread, I am also pretty keen on photography.No worries. I've been busy taking pics all day and evening in 3 locations, and I just got back trying to catch up on my e-mails and the posts. I'm was using Konica VX200 with 100mm lens/skylight and strong Nikon flash---boy, my head hurts. :-))

PS: I love VX200 print film---the blacks are deep, browns are now and colors are wow. Nice fine grain too. :-))

Now back to Tommy's GS100 black mamba, hopefully with some beef, or---?

There appears to be no Gain Up mode on the GS100. I remember this feature referenced a lot for the DV953/MX5000/MX500. Can anyone else confirm this?

On a side note! Congratulations to NASA and the successful landing of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER).

Rumor has it that a Black Mamba is perched atop this Matsushita Equipped Rover (MER).

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2002-12/74415/BlackMERMamba.jpg

If you're in manual and press the wheel just behind the mega ois button, shutter speed and gain will show up on your screen or in your viewfinder. You adjust by using the press and rotate features of the wheel. Hope that's what you're looking for.

Tommy, how did they manage that? I thought that the GS100 doesn't have a lanc connection. :-))

Happy New Year everybody!!! It's nice to be back online (from Tokyo).

Tommy, Gain Up mode (digital effect) of the MX5K has been replaced (essentially) by Nameraka (Smooth) Night Mode.

Been looking forward to reading your impressions on the black mamba.

Actually, I'm waiting to see how long you keep the gs100 and which cam you upgrade to next!

It seems Tommy has tried (bought) every available model with decent widescreen function. So at this moment, his options are to either revert back to one of his previous cams, or keep the GS100K for a while until a new model comes out.

Cheers

Well, we are waiting for you to tell us about any new models, Allan, so that the rest of us can experience the throes of camcorder envy when Tommy upgrades once again! It's actually kind of nice: every time a new model comes out, I don't have to search around to find out how it holds up to actual use. Not that I could buy, but window shopping gets taken to a new level with the internet.

Not that I could buy, but window shopping gets taken to a new level with the internet.Ain't that the truth. ;)