Re: XH A1S or AC 90
 

Here you can see the main differences:

HD camcorder reviews/tests and comparison of Panasonic AG-AC90 and Panasonic AG-HMC151 Best values highlighted sorted by score

Re: XH A1S or AC 90
 

Yeah sorry what features is the AC90 lacking

Re: XH A1S or AC 90
 

If you can find a used HMC151 for a good price, you can save some money. Plus, it would make matching up with the other cameras less of a hassle.

Re: XH A1S or AC 90
 

For my money, the AC90 would be the camera to get over the HMC150/151. I say this because save for the three 1/3" image sensor chips that the 150/151 has (and correspondingly better chroma resolution),
the AC90 pretty well beats the other camera in just about every aspect. Plus, the AC90 has much newer technology, and a better image stabilization system.

Re: XH A1S or AC 90
 

The AC-90 does have ND filters ..they are simply built into the camera and deploy automatically when the iris starts closing around the F4/F5.6 mark as small chip sensors tend to break up the image at F8 and smaller.

The only real use of manually controlled ND filters on a small chip camera is to control DOF which would be a non issue with the tiny 1/4.7" chips in the AC-90 ... Although the Panasonics with auto ND's actually show the iris value as F11 it's actually only F5.6 with a switched in ND of say 1/4...it's just more convenient to show the display as a F stop rather than say "F5.6+1/4ND"

Chris