I'm following the crowd but...
 

Hey everyone, I'm trying to follow you around to the sites with the latest greatest information about the Panasonic MX500, MX5000, PV-DV953 camcorders. I'm trying to be one of the "group." Not that long ago the latest information and discussion was at www.dv.com forums. Now it seems you are getting the lastest information from Robin Liss of www.camcorderinfo.com but you are all coming to www.dvinfo.net for coffee and discussions. I started hanging out in the www.camcorderinfo.com discussion forum but no one is there. It's the same feeling I had in elementary school. Everyone seemed to know what was going on but me. Guess I was busy reading.

Hi Ben!

These days I only visit the forums here, the camera forum at http://www.dv.com and the http://www.nikonians.org forums for Nikons and other cameras. These 3 are great for me for posting and acquiring great information.

The reason why I don't pop into Robin's site/sites, is because the coding is no good. When you go there, the Java bloats you down, and you get blasted with all this pop-up garbage. I don't have the time to be slowed down with that.

I wonder how much money you can save by going from 1/3 or 1/4 to 1/6" CCD's? I think they could save a heck of a lot more by getting rid of USB, Bluetooth, MPEG4 mode, still picture capability (yeah, I know some people like it, but compared to a good 3-5 meg digital camera, the pictures are severely deficient. )

Quite a lot I guess. Notice that the bigger the CCD, the bigger the lens glass is. The lens happens to be the most expensive component of a videocam.

Regards

I guess I should have also said that how much could it cost to add a bigger lens :-). I'd be willing to pay 1 or 2 hundred extra if it made a noticeable difference in performance.

I don't believe that you need a bigger lens if you went from a 1/6 to a 1/4 or 1/3 CCDs. The footprint is just too small to make a difference (ie. compare the footprint of CCD's with a 35mm negative). I just ordered a Canon G3 digital camera that has a 1/1.8" CCD. It has one of the bigger size lenses for non-pro cameras. Canon also has a S45 model for several hundred dollars less that uses the same 1/1.8" CCD but a much smaller lens. Minimum F2.0 for the G3, F2.8 for the S45.

I think the lens size is primarily dependent on marketing and setting price points. You need a big lens on the more expensive cams to justify the price.