Watching the signal output from the PD150 to an external monitor, I noticed that the face of the subject appeared somewhat elongated. 16x9 was definitely turned off. We then tried pointing the camera at a perfectly round object - it appeared elongated in the middle of the screen. At the edges of the screen there was another type of distortion: at screen left, the circle looked "squashed", this time horizontally; same happened at the bottom of the screen, as well as the top (not as pronounced); whereas at screen right it looked more elongated again.

Checked the picture on a different monitor - same result.

Checked both at wide and telefoto: pretty much the same distortion, although not as pronounced at the wide end. It gets most noticeable somewhere in between wide and telefoto, it seems.

We also have a VX2000, and immediately checked it as well (although I never noticed this problem with it before), - same results!

I am still hoping that perhaps the monitors are causing this (as these are regular commercial TV sets) - but maybe not? It would be so sad if the optics on these cameras (even on the PD150!) had a problem.

I should note that both of these cameras are PAL. So are the TV monitors.

Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Could anyone test it out, with a round object, to see if you get any distortion?

Thanks very much.

P.S. The LCD screen on the camera doesn't show the distortion - but then again, it's hard to tell on such a small screen.