I am in Australia, looking to buy a replacement for my Canon MVX330i - a few things are going wrong, e.g. zooming automatically when it likes.
I'm thinking of Sony this time. Recently I did a 2-cam shoot of a stage production with my Canon and a friend's Sony and saw big differences while editing. The Canon sees red as pink, purple as red, and has no real concept of black. The Sony's reds were true red, the image was clear, and the blacks were very true also.
Occasionally the subjects I video are in almost no lighting so I need a camera that can handle this (the Canon is pretty good in these situations but grainy). It also needs to be a good clear outdoor camera.
Ideal price range - AUD500 to AUD1200 but could go higher depending on quality.
Brand - looking at Sony but willing to consider others. Unlikely to consider Canon again unless they've had a radical change in circuitry.
Format - unless someone can come up with a really excellent reason why I should go for HDD or memory stick, I'm happy to stick with MiniDV. But I'm concerned about recording time and quality of MiniDV in HD - I can't stop and change tapes frequently, and I've read on Wikipedia that because HDV recording for MiniDV is in MPEG-2 there can be some artifacts with moving subjects.
Resolution - HD is the way of the future. I wouldn't consider anything at standard resolution now.
Zoom - optical zoom as good as possible. I rarely use digital zoom.
Audio from the built in mic should be high quality with ability to handle high volume, but this is more of a backup or for ambient audio mixing as mostly I'd be synching audio recorded from the mixing desk, though sometimes this isn't possible and backup from the camera is vital.
