<< I know the saying, "the best time to buy is now". - it must have been created by someone selling product. >>

No, it comes from an artistic point of view. If you're waiting, you're not creating.

Friendly disagreement here..."If you're waiting, you're not creating??" I'm sorry, but not buying a video camera doesn't have anything to do with my art! That statement actually seems counter productive to my artistic core. It's not the tool, or if you own it or not. I've done two video projects recently where I had to borrow a camera, and it looks like I'll have to rent a camera Dec. 12th. I'm not creating because I haven't pre-ordered a video camera? I respectfully disagree.

How does waiting to buy a 4 pound hunk of plastic and glass reflect negatively on artists?!

I'm 32 and I've been an artist making a living (least amount I made is like $11,000 in a year and most is $125,000 a year) since 1989. I can't think of one instance where not buying equipment stopped me from creating.

Again, this is a friendly disagreement!

Jeese guys-
I've heard this same "arguement" about computers and pretty much anything having to do with technology.

Seems there's nothing more irritating than shelling out some chunk of change and finding out that there's a faster-better-prettier-sexier-higher resolution-CHEAPER thingy that comes out soon after.

My case in point- bought my G4 dual 1 gig and with the grin still on my face, I read about the new G5 coming out soon from Apple. damnit.

Not being one of the monetarily afffluent type, I tend to watch others test the water and complain, then I'll jump in ( and find there's an entirely new water hole).
Technology is moving and changing. We will all have to "jump in the water" at some point.
Hey- Pixel Pioneering!

Jeff P :>)

Apparently Video Systems has an e-mail newsletter that confirms that the MSRP for the Z1 is supposed to be $5946, and that the earlier $4900 announcement is actually the dealer cost figure.

The post I got this info from quotes the newsletter. The original post is here:
http://www.dvxuser.com/cgi-bin/DVX2/YaBB.pl?board=sony;action=display;num=1102028674;start=0#0

I agree with Murphy. BTW, I hereby christen FX1 the "Vampire" cam.
 

I too find the advice of "well, if you need it now, get it now" a little trite.

I could have filmed my feature this past August - we're ready with the script, etc. and our financing is in place. Financing for a digital indie feature, that is. So, I should have gone ahead and shot with an XL2? I have friends who didn't wait and they shot their feature for $20,000 US using XL2 and wow, they're kicking themselves now.

Well, I'm glad we've pushed back half a year... I'm waiting now for 2 reasons....

a) HDV editing workflow with edited m2t's back to HDV tape has JUST been made "the norm" thanks to Canopus and Edius but the NLE lagging behind was a big concern to me with the HDV thing (guess I'm glad I'm at least now 100% PC - the G5's are gone!)

b) wanna see if the Z1 somehow is worth the extra mullah in terms of what I've been told by Sony Canada in terms of Grade A parts vs. Grade B parts, etc. and wow, do things like black stretch, etc. give you better image control vs. FX1... there's also the slight chance that CF24 might be "fixed" on the Z1 based on Charlie White's endorsement of this footage: the fact that the likes of DSE are waiting it out for the pro Z1 make me figure they probably know something...

When Z1 was first announced and all we knew about were XLR's, it sounded ludicrous and I remember saying, well, that's that: I'm going PAL FX1-E with Beachtek. Then the rest of the features came to light and it was a good deal. Now the new price is making me think PAL FX1-E again. But I will wait.

I will wait till the Z1U has actually come out to see how it actually performs - if the cf25/pal mode is the same as PAL FX1-E, then I will see what's the best price on Z1 possible and decide - but if it's up as high as it is now, all else being equal, I will skip the Z1 and go the pal FX1 route and be happy.

I guess this pricing confusion seems disappointing - I think Sony didn't make a mistake with the price as first announced but they've certainly made a mistake by raising it. The camera is good, but overall I like to think of it as the "Vampire" camera because it really seems to do it's best work in low-light and you run into washout problems quickly on bright sunny days, white objects, etc... Yep, Count Dracula would be proud.

Sony is "stupid" for now ripping us off with the new price.

But hey, I'm glad they've introduced this format. Downsampled FX1-E pal footage intercuts nicely with downsampled Dalsa Origin footage - we are surprised.

I think Canon is "stupid" for not having made the XL2 HDV - well, we do know their history, yes, but again I say - what does it tell you about a company if it fails to learn from their mistakes? Canon's philosophy has cost them their place in DV losing to likes of DVX100... they should have re-grouped to become "innovators." But that's another thread all together.

Panasonic is "stupid" by not having joined HDV consortium. Man, they had the digital indie film world by the cajones with 24p on the DVX and now, all too quickly, their offering is basically an afterthrought...

JVC is really Matsushita/Panasonic - they're "stupid" for spending so much time introducing "HDV" via a 1-chip cam with min. 35 lux that doesn't allow for manual controls.

By the way, I myself am very stupid in many ways - perhaps I will start a thread somewhere - it would take way too much typing to get into that here... I just wanted you all to know....

But I think we are smart to wait and see what exactly the situation will be with Z1 in terms of what it offers and for how much - at the very least our feature will be "projectionable" on a big screen without having to go film-out... and our standard DVDs are gonna look amazing.

Like, who can't wait 2 or 3 months?

My XL2 friends aren't laughing anymore and they are starting to think they were "stupid" too.

It's not the camera, it's the skill of the filmmakers.

heath

Agreed.

I shot a short film with the DVX100a this summer; it just got into Sundance, where it will be digitally projected. I've seen some of it on a not-even-great projector already, and I was satisfied.

One of the best things I've ever shot was on Digi-Beta, which was filmed-out and looked great.

Waiting to make a film based on the technology means something might come up and you don't get around to making the film at all. And it's better to have made it in SD than not make it in HD.

If the folks who made that film with the XL2 were happy with what they did, they should still be happy regardless of the announcement of the Sonys. If the film is solid, a few hundred less lines of resolution won't hurt it.

2300 is a lot more over the basic model price

for that you could get a decent hire on a mini35, or a week or so on a Lustre suite and either will give you a lot more than a Z1 could ever give you

============
OR you could get AJA HD10A High Definition Converter (Encoder) at BHphoto and ski your stuff uncompressed into your computer at 600 gig/hr - (just squash it between the beachtek and the base of the FX1- it would look very horny :)
============

Charles I agree wholeheartedly.

I'm just not sure why people are expecting truly pro features on such a camera anyway. HDV gives a better picture quality but not a story.

From what I am seeing now you might as well just buy an FX1 and live with the limitations if you must get one of these cameras.

In any case, why be disheartened if it's not what you expect? NAB2005 is very soon :-)

Wow, just now did I get to know that the Z1's price was raised, apparently!

But is that info for real?

If it is then Sony is really stupid. What they will get is more people going for the FX1, because one thing is a $1500 difference; but if we are talking $2500 more then things don't get so interesting. There are not that much more in the Z1 to pay that kind of money.

In any case, if my info was right, the original planned price for the Z1 had been $6000. But remember that the market rules: the DVC80 was to be priced just $500 less than the DVX100, but the market forced them to go down $1500. Unfortunately then Panasonic realized the 80 was taking customers from the 100 and took it out of the market. Perhaps Sony does that with the FX1.

The only thing that really interested me in the Z1 is it being 60i and 50i. It would be great if someone got to hack the FX1 on that.




Carlos

The MSRP of the Z1 is indeed $5946. The MSRP of the FX1 is $3700. So, on the surface, that's a $2246 difference. Which is an awful lot.

Street price remains to be seen -- apparently the $4900 that's been tossed around may actually be the "minimum advertised price", and may be a good reflection of street price, depending on demand. If there's incredible demand, the price will be more around MSRP, if there's more supply than demand, the price may move more towards the MAP.

It all remains to be seen when the camera is released. Interestingly the XL2 stayed stuck at full MSRP at B&H for months, whereas the FX1 has already come down from MSRP after only a few weeks, so perhaps the pent-up/overwhelming demand situation won't keep the Z1 price too high for too long. But we shall see.

Don't forget the Z1 has nice audio controls (no two track recording, to boot) and black and cinegama controls. But $2300 more?!

heath

OK, sorry to jump in here as I've been away from the forums for a little while, but how has the demo footage been lately with this new Sony? I have yet to see any fast moving footage from the camera, but I am keen to see some, so see how the MPG2 holds up undermovement at the DV bandwidth.

Also, Panasonic didn't jump into the HDV consortium, but are they going to offer something better?

Ta
Aaron

> I can't see spending that much money on something that
> doesn't even have uncompressed audio

What's all the fuss about compressed audio? From my experience MPEG layer II at 384 Kbps should be virtually indistinguishable from linear 16 bit audio, and depending on the AD converter used, it might be even better. Psychoacoustic band masking based audio representations have the potential of handling a wider dynamic range than 16-bit linear audio.

Also, when recording sound that does not have significant spectral content (i.e.: human voices) this kind of codec does a great job because the unused frequency band's bandwidth is "borrowed" to the significant bands. So compressed audio that at a certain bandwidth gives you certain quality for full spectrum content (i.e. rock music) will give you much better quality with simpler sound.

Stereo DVDs are compressed at 160-192 Kbps and I haven't heard of anyone complaining about that.

Those people who complain about compressed audio on the FX1 are the same people who mysteriously don't complain about the video compression on their DV25 camcorders. And this DV compression is not very efficient verses MPEG2 to boot.