Frank Granovski
April 19th, 2003, 11:19 PM
A friend of mine just bought a Panasonic MX5000, and I got to try it out tonight! Wow. First of all, I would like to put to rest all the rumors that I've read about on the Web that this camera does not perform well indoors. I have heard so many discussions of people being afraid that the camera's sensitivity falls off in average indoor room lighting. Here it is folks: THE MX500 HAS NO PROBLEM DEALING WITH NORMAL INDOOR LIGHTING!
We met at a tavern that was pretty dark on the inside. It was night so there was no light coming in the windows. There were only a couple of small recessed lights in the ceiling, besides the colored beer decorations on the walls. It was much darker than my living room, or any other typical family room setting. The camera performed fantastically! I couldn't believe it. I double checked to make sure it wasn't in any kind of special effect "slow motion" mode. Color and detail remained true. You could still pick out subtle shadows and detail on people's faces. There was absolutely no noise in the picture at all. I did not get to see the picture on a TV screen, but the large LCD display was razor-sharp. The best LCD I've seen on any camera yet. I couldn't imagine anybody shooting professionally in a situation darker than that without expecting to bring in lights.
I have a late-model Sony D8 camera, and have always been proud of its low light performance. It has a megapixel 1/3" (I think...) chip, compared to the Panasonic's 1/6. Believe it or not, the Panasonic performed even better than my Sony's in a very low light setting, as I said exhibiting no noise or grain at all in the picture. The amazingly razor-sharp detail of the video in the LCD reminded me very much of the video I've seen from the DVX100. It had a very similar "look" to it, without being "videoish" or over-enhanced.
The MX5000, although small enough to sit in the palm of my hand, immediately gave me the impression of being a very solid professional tool. This will definitely not be considered a dated piece of junk in a few years. What a beauty! Everything about it just exuded weight, precision and quality. As my friend had just received it, he hadn't learned his way around the Japanese menus yet, so he really wasn't familiar with any of the controls. I wanted to give it a run through in 16 by 9, and try out the frame mode - but that will have to come at a later time.
All I can say is, my fears about this camera have been relieved. I can't wait to see how it will do in an outdoor daylight situation. I think this is the next purchase on my list. It also came with a very expensive looking wide-angle adapter, that I don't think comes with the PVDV953. I would really like to find out once and for all now if the two cameras have the same video quality. My friend Tim said that he had heard about the MX5000's low light performance, but read somewhere that Panasonic had fixed that with an update. I can't say if that's true or not, but this camera is a stunning performer all around. Sorry if I sound like I'm gushing here, but now I know why this camera has caused such a stir. This little beauty blew me away!
From the thread, "Got my hands on a MX5000," thread at dv.com's camera forum.
We met at a tavern that was pretty dark on the inside. It was night so there was no light coming in the windows. There were only a couple of small recessed lights in the ceiling, besides the colored beer decorations on the walls. It was much darker than my living room, or any other typical family room setting. The camera performed fantastically! I couldn't believe it. I double checked to make sure it wasn't in any kind of special effect "slow motion" mode. Color and detail remained true. You could still pick out subtle shadows and detail on people's faces. There was absolutely no noise in the picture at all. I did not get to see the picture on a TV screen, but the large LCD display was razor-sharp. The best LCD I've seen on any camera yet. I couldn't imagine anybody shooting professionally in a situation darker than that without expecting to bring in lights.
I have a late-model Sony D8 camera, and have always been proud of its low light performance. It has a megapixel 1/3" (I think...) chip, compared to the Panasonic's 1/6. Believe it or not, the Panasonic performed even better than my Sony's in a very low light setting, as I said exhibiting no noise or grain at all in the picture. The amazingly razor-sharp detail of the video in the LCD reminded me very much of the video I've seen from the DVX100. It had a very similar "look" to it, without being "videoish" or over-enhanced.
The MX5000, although small enough to sit in the palm of my hand, immediately gave me the impression of being a very solid professional tool. This will definitely not be considered a dated piece of junk in a few years. What a beauty! Everything about it just exuded weight, precision and quality. As my friend had just received it, he hadn't learned his way around the Japanese menus yet, so he really wasn't familiar with any of the controls. I wanted to give it a run through in 16 by 9, and try out the frame mode - but that will have to come at a later time.
All I can say is, my fears about this camera have been relieved. I can't wait to see how it will do in an outdoor daylight situation. I think this is the next purchase on my list. It also came with a very expensive looking wide-angle adapter, that I don't think comes with the PVDV953. I would really like to find out once and for all now if the two cameras have the same video quality. My friend Tim said that he had heard about the MX5000's low light performance, but read somewhere that Panasonic had fixed that with an update. I can't say if that's true or not, but this camera is a stunning performer all around. Sorry if I sound like I'm gushing here, but now I know why this camera has caused such a stir. This little beauty blew me away!
From the thread, "Got my hands on a MX5000," thread at dv.com's camera forum.