I have a Z1 and a 170. I'd love my Z1 a million times more if it could do in low light what the 170 does.

It's almost like having night vision!

Here's something I'm curious about though (because I haven't tried it yet). If I crop the 4:3 footage from my 170 down to 16:9 and use it with my 16:9 footage from my Z1... is there a noticable difference?

PD150 versus the rest
 

Just finished a (Std. Def.) DVD in a Cathedral with low light...my usual habitat!... with 3 Sony cameras:

V1 on a Hague K12 Crane operated by my mate
PD150 (his) on a tripod operated by me
HC1 (mine) on a Manfotto Fig Rig for grab shots by me all around during the event.

It was a typical English dull winter's afternoon so light was mostly supplied by the Cathedral lighting.

Finished DVD all edited in Vegas 7 and DVDA4. We're very pleased with it (as indeed was the Bishop!) but....

The V1 has the resolution... but boy oh boy it's shots are dull.
The PD150 has vibriant colours but not the resolution of the above
The HC1 is like a worse version of the V1 and with noise starting to creep in.

Yep, the trusty 150's got some life in her yet!

I'm typically using it set to 16:9 mode but I gather that most people just shoot with it in 4:3 then crop to widescreen (or use a stuck on LCD mask.) Any advantages/disadvantages in either route to widescreen as I am assuming the video outcome is the same resolution (i.e. you've got less horizontal lines to play with in DV with the PD150's native 4:3 CCD's either way, right?)

Hi Andy,
What I would do Is mask the LCD screen on the 150 to a 16.9 frame and then resize the footage in your editor to the widescreen format.
This way you can move the frame around a bit to suite.

Cheers
Simon

sorry guys, i feel like a traitor, i just jumped the boat last week. the xh a1 was on sale and my friend was willing to give me some decent cash for my pd170 and well... i caved and made the switch!
but don't let my actions influence any of you, the pd170 is an awesome cam and despite what some people say, it looks pretty sweet on an HD tv! (though, i saw it on a 720 tv, not 1080).
being my first cam i'll miss it, but i can't say i regret it either, heh.

A1 and color
 

yep, I notice that the A1 is on the "cold" side when using the non-custom settings. However, for all these cameras, when doing theatre work, you don't have time to play with this. I'd love to do some experiments with custom settings but I'm there to record the show and generally spend all the time getting setup etc...

I would be very careful doing this, as you are "enlarging" the image, and that will make for a softer look--a lot softer, if you are not very careful. I'd think that any more than a 5% enlargement would cause clearly visible softening of the image. That may be unavoidable or even desireable in some cases, but be aware of it.
I should qualify this by saying this has been my experience when doing this using footage from a VX2100 and XHA1 (on different jobs) both shot in 4:3 SD mode, and monitored on a 50" HDTV.
A lot depends on what you will watch it on.

Hi Steve,
Yes you are correct, croping in post and enlarging will soften the picture but what else can you do to get a 16.9 frame?

If you use the 16.9 in camera converter it looks even softer, so croping is the only way.

Any other suggestions would be welcomend.

Cheers
Simon

If mixing and matching the HDV and DV cameras, you can gain some wriggle room in the definition dilemma by using the HDV for your mid to wide shots and the DV for close-ups on humans. Softer on close-ups doesn't seem to matter as much as the detail in terms of apparent scale is still there.

In fact, some persons afflicted with the dreaded roadmap associated with age may appreciate a softer view of themselves.

HDV with gain on also seems to fall apart resolutionwise once the light level drops off. Add lots of movement like onstage at a rock gig and the PD150 on the close-ups will start to look a lot better.

You can cheat a little in the edit suite, scale down your PD150 4:3 frames a little in the 16:9 HDV box so that the top edges creep in and pan & scan the smaller frames randomly within the larger area in a little pretend creativeness (picture in picture) intended to cover your attempts to preserve "apparent" sharpness from the DV footage. It does not look too bad if it is not overdone.

Here is a more rough and ready two camera example, Sony Z1 and Sony PD150. The 4:3 frame was simply scaled to the 16:9 frame, not panned and scanned. The DV image was furthur softened by having an AGUS35 (poorman's MINI35) adaptor on front of the PD150. The performers prefer working in the dark. If you are sensitised to the occasional foul word be warned, one of the performers let one go at the beginning :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kn9a3K989g

we use 150's and 170's for broadcast news. My boss worked with betacam for many years, he's videotaped the pope, two presidents and the queen of England, not to mention tons of great rock bands. His excuse now is betacam is too heavy for him to carry at 59 (although he still hits the waves on his surfboard) but he loves the 170. I think his footage off the 170 looks nicer than the 150, he says the exact opposite. oh well.

looking for a used pd150...any suggestions ?

I have a PD150 that does not have a mark on it.

Operation 1X10
Drum Run 1X10
Tape Run 0X10
Threading 4X10

I might be interested in selling it for a fair offer.

JVC GY-DV 5000 - toss my PD100A and get a 170 to match up?
 

I have the JVC 5000 and a great Fuji lens, that I am trying to it match up with my Sony PD100A with all the bells and whistles. Would the 170 be a better option then?

Well when I used the 5000 and 150 it was a difficult match. A lot of playing with both in the menu settings to get anywhere close. IIRC isn't the PD100 1/4" chips? The fact that the PD100 is an older camera with small chips and the 5000 is 1/2" chips with a good lens (which Fuji do you have) can be problematic. I honestly don't remember the settings I had on either one anymore (I sold the 5000 a couple of years ago and changed the 150 to match the 250 and have since sold that as well) but matching a 1/2" chip camera with a real lens and a 1/4" chip both made by different mfgs can be done (at least to get close) but I think you might almost be better off just getting something newer by JVC to match up with the 5000 if that's going to be your primary camera.

Don

IIRC, the 5000 (which I bought for the local college television studio) has 14 bit image processing and is very close to the image richness of my DSR-300. The 150, which is very good, cannot match 1/2" CCDs for picture quality until you get way down in the mud at which time it is about 1/2-1 stop better than the DSR-300 which is no slouch.

Its like looking at a photograph of a scene from a 35mm camera and trying to match a picture of the same scene from a 6x6 cm camera. You can only do it by degrading the 6x6 image.

PD150 vs. the PD100A as a companion to a JVC-5000U
 

Thanks Mike and Don-

I wanted something small like the the PD100A for a behind the scenes POV camera, and the JVC 5000 for the talking heads in a "mocumentary" sort of along the lines of the "Blair Witch" series / three actors - two cameras - two POVs -

So then I take it that I would be better off selling the PD100A and moving on to a PD170? I have an HVX200 - but I wanted something that if it got smashed I would not scream over. (Thats not the HVX!) Low lux would be a plus for the handheld night shots. Any ideas?

By the way the JVC is armed with a Fujinon TV Zoom Lens - f 1.4 / 6.4-128mm