12 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
You won't believe quality!!!
Date of Review: Sep 11, 2000
I bought the PD100A (the same as the TRV900 but a different color and only made of the best components). I'm not going to go over the features; you probably know them by reading about the description page. I absolutely love this camcorder and think you're crazy not to get one... but first... my dislikes.
Tendency to favor blue in shady areas. That's what the manual white-balance is for. Not much is stated how easy it is to manually set this, but this is how it's done. Put a white piece of paper/shirt/white house a little distance in front of the lens. Click the white balance manual mode and push the button. That's it! Problem solved.
Automatic focusing is a little awkward. I was recording a bumblebee skipping from flower to flower. I'd focus on it on one flower and when it flew to another the camera kept its focus on the old flower until I filled the frame with the new one, even though the new was centered and taking up most of the visual space. I believe this is to prevent you from say interviewing someone or trying to focus on one person in a play when someone walks in front and the camera focuses on them.
This is definitely not for dark settings like recording your son sleeping with his night-lamp on. You'll notice distinct static. A problem with all digital camcorders because they all list the lowest possible light rating they can record in.
Finally... like everyone else the focus ring & zoom. You just have to keep turning the manual focus ring, and turning it two full loops to get from one extreme to the other. It'd be nice if it was only a half turn. The zoom, it's variable but incredibly difficult to keep a consistent slow zoom. The button should've been stepped instead of pressure sensitive. It takes practice to be able to use it properly.
Good qualities:
I cannot believe the picture. If only movies were the quality it produces. You will be amazed when you plug this into your VCR and swear you were watching DVD!!! The colors just JUMP at you... the detail is astounding. I recorded a bumblebee on a flower 5 feet in front of me, and I could see each hair on the bee's back, each gripper on the leg. And, you'd have thought I was only six inches away from it the zoom is so good! The color of the flowers & bee just jumped at you. I had no idea you could get that much detail! I took it to the local park and shot some ducks with it. I was amazed you could see each individual vein of the feathers on the ducks back. I was astounded when I could see the detail of each and every tiny feather on the breast and head of each duck! Those itty-bitty tiny feathers!!! The 52mm lens really shows the details.
I love the features. You can interval time record. You ever watch those time-lapsed movies of clouds rushing by? Easily done with this camera. You can set it to record 0.5 seconds every 30 seconds on up. If you're into still animation you can record frame by frame. I like the remote, whose zoom is slow so you can use it instead of the manual zoom control.
Dependability. I paid $2,500 for it and dropped it already in the first week! Survived without even a scratch.
Size. If you get another camera currently with the same features it'll be shoulder mounted. You can take this incognito with you on trips, vacations, and take recordings of people more naturally than getting a shoulder mount where people think they're under siege with a bazooka pointed on them. I travel a lot and this is the best portable camera I can possibly take and it's beaten my expectations. You could even take this backpacking it's so small.
Accessories. There's hardly a camcorder with more accessories. You can get underwater cases, rain proof cases, lenses, Infra-Red Lights, microphones, accessories to wazzoo. I also like wildlife, and the zoom on this is so incredible, the telephoto lens attachment makes it phenomenal.
Reasons why I bought it!? I'm going to Antarctica and needed a camera that could stand up to it. It needed manual white balance (trust me, YOU NEED IT), portability, and high fidelity stereo sound. It also needed a slew of accessories. I especially liked this one for the 52mm lens as opposed to the cheaper smaller lenses. It lets in more light to improve quality with the added 3CCD you won't believe it. It is by far WORTH the extra $ for the TRV900 just because of the bigger lens & 3 CCD. The picture quality is what this camcorder is all about. If you want unbelievable quality within a compact, easy to operate, dependable, light unit... look no further.
