The hottest new video camera has hit the shelves. Sony's VX2000 offers up manual zoom, 530 lines of resolution, and awesome image quality.
Five years ago, Sony officially kick-started the digital video revolution with the release of the DCR-VX1000 MiniDV camera. Filmmakers and videographers snatched up this camera faster than Sony could make them. For five years, Sony's VX1000 dominated the "prosumer" digital video camera market until Canon's comparably priced XM1 came out at the end of last year. The features of the XM1 included a 30 frame-per-second progressive scan mode (ideal for filmmakers who wanted their works to look as though they were shot on film), analog-to-digital conversion (for digitizing analog videos to a miniDV tape), and a higher-quality picture. But just as the XM1 started gaining marketplace acceptance, Sony announced its next generation camera, the VX2000. The VX2000 includes just about everything that the XM1 has, plus it incorporates a servo-controlled manual zoom, real-time analog-to-digital pass-through, and a superior picture. Is the VX2000 a better camera than the XM1? To answer that question, we pit both cameras against each other.
Features
- 3 X CCDs with 340k pixels
- Progressive scan (15 frames per second)
- 530 horizontal lines of resolution
- 2.5-inch swivel LCD
- 180k pixel colour viewfinder
- InfoLithium battery
- IEEE 1394 interface
- Aspherical lens
- 12x optical/48x digital zoom lens
- Super SteadyShot image stabilization
- 16:9 recording
- 1/4 to 1/1000 shutter speed
- 2-position neutral density filter
- 12/16-bit PCM digital audio with digital audio dub
- Interval recording
- Frame recording modes
- LP recording
- 6 picture effects
- 5 digital effects
- Manual controls
- Still-image recording to Memory Stick
- 640x480 still-image resolution
- MSAC-US1 USB reader
- Colour bar generator
- Accessory shoe
- Analog recording inputs
- Video analog-to-digital conversion
- Remote control
- Headphone jack
- Stereo mini-microphone input
- Weight: 1.4 Kg
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