Went out and shot a rough version music video for my friend Alex Parker (http://www.myspace.com/alexparkerrules) yesterday as my first shoot with the HD1000. Shot for about an hour, so I wasnt going all-out. This was my "get to know the camera and use the manual controls" test and I liked what it did. I guess I suck at compressing the video out of FCP, because it doesnt look as good as it should on vimeo, but here it is. Shot with the HD1000, using some manual controls, and the colors were cranked up in FCP.

http://www.vimeo.com/1328818

My thoughts on the HVR-HD1000:

I really like the shoulder mount camera, and it looks really professional. The things I were worried about when i bought the camera were the manual controls, and the audio connections. The manual controls are much better than I expected. The single ring on the lens is the easiest way to control manual settings, and using the "manual" button located a little bit down from the ring, you can control manual/auto and adjust all the settings (focus, zoom, exposure, shutter, AE shift, WB shift). The one control that is missing that is very important to me is Gain control. I may be missing something, but I can't find one and I hate having grain in my video. So that is the one issue.
The audio is the thing I am still worried about, but Im sure I can figure it out or buy some adapters. The mic that comes with the camera picks up alot of audio coming from the sides and behind the mic, which is annoying. I mutter to myself when im filming and screw up, and it picks up every word... And the fact that there is only one mini-jack audio input is a pain. I use wireless mic kits for weddings and things, so i'm going to have to pick up a multi-XLR mixer to work with the mini.
All in all I love the camera, and it is going to be a perfect secondary camera to my V1u that is currently in the shop.
-Jeff

I know what you mean about gain/grain. The best way to control this is to lock the cam on manual exposure and crank down until the last six steps on the bar that goes across your screen are not lit up. The HD1000 wants to add gain last, and each virtual click seems to correspond to the amount of gain added at the end.

The full bar would be 18db, with each stop representing 3db. So if you want to limit yourself to 9db of gain (which I do since the picture still looks pretty good at that point) you need to be no less than four clicks from the right.