Panasonic AG-HMC70U and the Sony HDR-FX1

I’ve been doing some work with the Panasonic AG-HMC70U and the Sony HDR-FX1, the former being an AVCHD and the latter an HDV camcorder. It’s interesting to compare them as they are really so different; different feature set, different video format, different resolution.

I shot some stuff in a video studio the other day. This was done rather hastily between other work, so it wasn’t as great a test as I was hoping. It did reveal that the color is not too bad a match. I had been worried that there might be a notable difference between the two, but I’m not as worried now.


Sony HDR-FX1 (top) Panasonic AG-HMC70U (bottom)
The stills definitely reveal a difference in video image resolution. The Panasonic AG-HMC70U stills seem to show more resolution; this shouldn’t be a surprise since the AG-HMC70U AVCHD video is at a higher resolution than the HDV format (1920 vs. 1440). Unfortunately, these stills didn’t work well for absolute comparison as the shots weren’t done on a tripod and there’s a lot of feathering in the stills I grabbed.

Since I’m mainly authoring to anamorphic DVD, I’m not sure the difference is going to be a problem. One note from some outside shooting, the lack of a neutral density filter on the AG-HMC70U is a bit annoying…at least I don’t think it has one. I better go back and reread the manual!