Great article on DV.com from Adam Wilt on an HD camera shootout they did with all the new sub $10K HD/HDV cameras - and with the big boy Sony Cinealta and Panasonic Varicam.

You have to register to read entire article, but it's a good one for anyone looking at these cameras: www.dv.com

Here's the article's summary per Adam:

All the 1/3" cameras clustered together more tightly than we expected. Each camera excelled at some aspect of image rendering, but all of them were more alike than different; none stood out as being clearly superior all around.

Furthermore, they all came a lot closer to the 2/3" cameras than we thought they would: while we could clearly see that the big cameras made superior images, the contrast between the 1/3" and 2/3" cameras was nowhere near what we expected to see.

DP and CineAlta operator Art Adams once characterized my Z1 pix as "half HD" for their horizontal softness, and that perception holds as I look at the 10-bit uncompressed clips: The 1/3" 1080i camera pictures are only about half as crisp as the CineAlta's. In 720p, the JVC comes close to the Varicam in raw detail, although its noise is quite a bit higher.

When you consider that none of these 1/3" cameras comes anywhere close to half the price of their 2/3" brethren, you'll see that "half HD" isn't bad for the money.

We came away convinced that any of the cameras would do a creditable job in the hands of a skilled user, and that the choice of camera should be made more on features and ergonomics than on image quality. This is not to say that people didn't pick favorites; people did. It's just that no one, not even the most partisan among us, would have claimed that any one of the cameras was unacceptable for doing serious work.

Pretty cool.

-Blake

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