Triple chip at a single chip price

Author's Rating:

Pros: 3-chip, Small, Light, Leica Dicomar Lens, excellent price, controls are well-placed and natural, top-loading tape

Cons: No optical Image Stabilization, lacks manual sound control, may be too small, internal mic

The Bottom Line: 
For its price and feature set, this little wonder can't really be beat. I highly recommend it.

Author's Review
I want to preface this with the fact that I shopped for a camcorder for MONTHS before deciding on this model.

I went back and forth from high-end single-chip to low-end three-chip models. Would three CCDs be worth the extra $500 between say a Canon Optura 200MC ($750) and a Panasonic AG-EZ50U ($1200)? Would I be just as happy with a single-chip and be able to save some dough?

Then I stumbled on this little marvel.

You buy a camcorder for video quality, right? Well, this thing has EXCELLENT video quality. It has three CCDs, which means the light is split into it's component parts (red, green and blue) by a prism and then sent to a sensor for each color. The camera then recombines these three images to determine the actual color of each pixel. This is in direct contrast to how both lower-end camcorders and most digital cameras work...which is using a pattern of red, green and blue-filtered pixels to interpolate the color values for the pixels. The end result is colors that are truer and richer on a 3-CCD camcorder.

In my testing, the video quality is on par with the AG-EZ50, which was Panasonic's lowest-end proline camcorder. It blows the Optura 200MC (the other camera I was looking at) out of the water.

Panasonic uses the excellent Leica Dicomar 10x lens on this model, which I'm sure contributes to it's video quality as well.

Audio quality is lacking with the internal mic, but that's to be expected. I have a shotgun mounted in the shoe that works wonders for audio quality.

Ergonomically, I'm not a big fan of all the VCR controls being hidden under the LCD, but oh well...it seems to be where everyone else puts theirs. While shooting, almost all the controls you may need are outside though and fall right under your fingertips. The zoom control is WONDERFUL. The smoothness allows you to really fine-tune the zoom speed you want. The manual focus ring on the lens barrel is a godsend.

The still quality isn't the best out there, but it's ok. I have a digital still camera though (Olympus E-10), so I'm not going to be using this capability too much.

Image stabilization is electronic-only. One of the few things I'd change about this cam.

Of course, coming from a background where I got to play with VX1000s and XL-1s, I'd love to have zebra pattern, full manual controls and all the other bells and whistles...but for $875, what do you expect?

My other problem with it is this camera is really small...and really light. My shotgun dwarfs it. I suppose this is a mixed blessing...since it will be handy on trips.

Durability...it should hold up well and seems to be made solidly.

The standard battery in mine was the middle-of-the-road one and seems to be good for about 2.5-3 hours.

Honestly, for the amount of money I wanted to spend I don't think I could have made a better choice.