When i first made a decision to buy this camera, i considered two main factors: Shoulder mount and miniDV. Little did i consider other factors that define a good camera like CCDs, active pixels, TV lines, DV in/out capabilities...etc as long as it was within my reach-less than US$1500. An online search yielded Panasonic MD9000 as the only camera available for PAL!

Before i bought this camera i had extensively used two semi-professional cameras namely SONY VX-1E ( a Hi8 camera with 1/4" 3CCD) and SONY DSR-200P ( a DVCAM camera with 1/3" 3CCD). I have also used the old PANASONIC M9000 ( a S-VHS camera with single 1/3" CCD). Some production situations in the past have left me with questions about panasonic cameras in relation to others.

One such situation came when i was trying to do a difficult live chroma -keying production using VX-1E when our main studio camera developed a problem. It couldn't work. I tried DSR-200P and couldn't work effectively under all settings and adjustments !! My assistant at this point suggested we try the m9000 and being a single CCD i thought he was joking. It worked !!

When i bought this camera PANASONIC NV-MD9000 ( a miniDV with 1/4" single CCD) it was intended for the domestic and semi professional work. Believe me when i make recordings using it, nobody in the professional area notices that it has come from a single CCD camera!

In a recent situation, iwanted to capture an image of an object using a camcorder ( i didnt have a digital cam) by first recording on a DV tape then capturing to an editing system using Adobe Prem 6. I recorded the same image on the same tape using DSR-200P and MD9000 and the images captured under the same settings at 200% Zoom were different. The image from MD9000 looked slightly better-that was a surprise!!

During my online search for the camera, i saw glowing reviews for some PANASONIC camcorders and i thought they were biased. Please try it out and prove me wrong. No wonder the few shops stocking it are reporting "out of stock" most of the time.

ROGERS


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 1199
Recommended for: Professional Videographers - Broadcast Quality Videos