7 new 1CCD HD camcorders from Sony – any reasons to buy some or to wait for 3CCD cams

In my last post Groovy news from Sony: five new HD-camcorders with hard disk drive! It’s time to die for our old video devices? when I was talking about new Sony’s HD camcorders I spoke in favor of 3 chip cameras. You can ask why. To become a professional cameraman? It’s known that some 1CCD camcorders can have more pixels than 3CCD cams. Why shall we have three sensors? The answer is clear. Sensor in video camera works differently as the one in photo camera. In camera the most important is the size of the chip and then we consider about the pixel gross. Working with moving objects is more complicated. In 3CCD camcorders each color of three RGB color values is captured by one chip. This results in more accurate color information. Plus 3CCD systems is twice more sensitive. But this is only one instance where more is almost always better. And here manufactures come to a problem with camera size. Of course it’s great to have a consumer HD camcorder with three 1/2.9 chips. It’s impossible to get around physics laws. The camera with these parts must be huge and too heavy. Previously using ordinary resolution of Panasonic NV-GS 200 with three small 1/6 chips I successfully made good films. 2 megapixels were enough for 1CCD and 3CCD cams because we used to have a video frame image of 720 x 480 pixels. So the needed pixel gross totaled 720x480 = 346000. For providing color information a camera used 346 x 3 colors = 1040k! More pixels were used for images stabilization, dark frames and still pics. For HD 1980Х1080 resolution a camera needs at least 2000К and taking into account color rendering and image stabilization the sensor size of 1/3 or ½.9 and 5-6 megapixels are not too much for new Sony cams. I doubt 2-3 megapixels Sony cams can cope with 1980x1080 resolutions. They are likely to work with lower HD 1380x768 resolution. As for digital zoom and digital image stabilization I think the first device is absolutely useless for a camcorder. What about image stabilization? It’s very useful provided that it’s not digital. Only optical image stabilization copes with shaking trouble. As any optical and mechanical devices it costs extra money and needs extra place. So if you can afford a couple hundred US$ and can carry half a pound of extra weight a camera with an optical image stabilization is for you! If you don’t mind saving some money you can use a small cheap support. I had an experience of filming shrimp hunting on the island of Chang putting camera on the restaurant table. Apropos I have a lot of photos of this beautiful Island and other fantastic Thai’s places in my other blog The Thai Tramp only thanks to my Panasonic NV-GS 200. Yet I can say that using camcorder for taking pictures is not worthy of notice because the cam lens differ from photo lens. And the quality of finale image is worse than that taken by pocket Compact.
Anyway these new seven Sony HD-camcorders are interesting and are worthy of notice. You decide if one of them is worthy buying. I’m still waiting. I have three reasons. First Sony is the only one in HD cam market. I should wait for the others to compete and win the price battle in the market. Secondly I’d like to look at 3CCD consumer HD camcorder and compare. Thirdly nowadays any Hi-Tech device lives for a couple years. So I usually try to spend not more than US$1000. I don’t feel sorry about such a sum.
What about HD camcorders from other mfrs. you can look at: Puppet Sanyo Xacti HD2 vs clever Canon HV20 or groovy JVC GZ-HD7: it's time to buy a HD-camcorder or wait? or 3 Canon’s HD camcorders: HV10, HV20 and HR10: is only PowerShot TX1 still groovy? and Two new 3CCD High Definition AVCHD Camcorders from Panasonic - have we been waiting for these? posts.