thinking of buying PC350 - advice please

[frost 1]

Guys and girls, i have been doing some reseasrch and reading reviews on PC1000, PC330/350, Optura 400 and a few other camcorders. Looks like PC350 is the winner for the price and features

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sony-DCR-PC350-Camcorder-Review.htm

A friend is willing to sell for 800 an almost new PC350 to me. Is that a good deal? Should i go for it? Any opinions? Thanks!!

SoFPiDaRF - School of Fast Progress in Downsizing and Radical Flying. Because nobody knows your skills better than you.

[mattjw916 2]

For about a 100 bucks more you can get a brand new PC1000 with a warranty, etc... I think I paid like $918 for mine.

NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

[skydiveoc 0]

I would go for the 350...cant find em anywhere!

[AndyMan 7]

For a hundred bucks more you can get a 3-chip camera, with waranty.

To me, that's a no-brainer.

_Am

__

You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

[Maxim 0]

go with the PC1000 i got one and loving it.. recording in wide screen is cool also. dont know if the pc350 can do that.

Life is Great. Even Greater what we do with it.

[Paige 0]

I'm super pumped about the widescreen feature for the tunnel footage I hope to capture. I've only played around with our PC1000 on the ground but its a fun little toy
Get it new so you are covered under warranty for a while.

Tunnel Pink Mafia Delegate
www.TunnelPinkMafia.com

[SudsyFist 0]

Quote

I'm super pumped about the widescreen feature for the tunnel footage I hope to capture. I've only played around with our PC1000 on the ground but its a fun little toy

Note that the PC1000's widescreen captures are actually a *crop* of the standard (4:3 ratio) mode, cutting off the top and bottom of the image. You can see this in your viewfinder by simply switching modes back and forth.

I point this out because I've overheard people (DISCLAIMER: no one on this thread; just trying to be informative) talking about shooting exclusively widescreen, even when they're going to manually crop it down (pan-n-scan) to 4:3 later. Their reasoning behind this was that they mistakenly believed they were capturing *more* of an image, on *more* pixels this way; whereas exactly the opposite is true.

My recommendation is to shoot the spec of what you're going to produce -- 4:3 for 4:3 output, widescreen for widescreen output -- so you can frame properly at the time of shooting.

The glaring exception here is freefall footage, or, for that matter, any footage where you're not framing things through the viewfinder/lcd screen. In those cases, I'd go with the 4:3 at all times, and manually crop for widescreen when you're editing later. That way, you have more versatility in fitting exactly what you want in frame.

Sorry for the thread drift.

EDIT: For the original poster, here are my reviews on the two cameras, for whatever they're worth:

• DCR-PC350


• DCR-PC1000

Unless you absolutely need to shoot in the dark (Nightshot) or in low light, my vote is for the PC1000. Hell, even after my rant, I bought one!

[Fast 0]

Yeah if you read on some of the review sites and they talk about affective pixels and what not. You are actually capturing much more data if you leave it in 4:3 and then crop it after the fact in photoshop.

Some people just like how widescreen looks on a 4:3 tv. I have an old 8mm camcorder that I used its wide mode on all the time because the captures just looked more professional.

I just like the letterbox look. That said, these days I would capture that after the fact. There is nothing like shooting a tandem and realizing if you were in 4:3 you would of caught more of the top of the screen. (Not that you should be cutting it that close to begin with but shit happens ya know)


~D

~D
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