Any body help me
What is the difference between them (canon xl2 vs sony HVR Z1)PAL?
i want to selec one of them.

Thanks

Well, the obvious difference is the XL2 is a standard DV resolution, and the Sony is Consumer High Def. (HDV) The XL2 has interchangeable lenses, the Sony does not. Beyond that, a look at their respective specs on the manufacturer's sites will provide all the low down you could want.

The Sony can also do standard DV as well as HDV. But has only interlaced video and has worse low light performance to the XL2. The Sony does both PAL and NTSC in the same model whereas the Canon is sold in either PAL or NTSC models.

The PAL/NTSC dual capability is attractive to me, as I split my time betwixt "old europe" and u.s.a.

Being an ex-pat Canuck this was a factor in favour for the Sony for me as well.

However I figured I wouldn't use the HD often and felt the progressive mode and low light performance of the Canon gave it an advantage for now.

Thanks for all coments
it will be helpfull for me

The big isse for me in choosing the xl2 over the sony hdv camera wasn't the camera per se but rather the fact that because the hdv format is so new there will invariably be all kinds of hassles, difficulties, bugs, gliches, if not outright failures when trying to capture and edit the footage. As a small example, I edit on Final Cut Pro, and Apple doesn't even officially support HDV yet. Lumiere does sell capture software for HDV for Final Cut Pro, but it is reported as buggy.

Mini DV on the other hand is around a decade old and its issues have been well worked out years and years ago.

And then there's the hidden costs of dealing with new technologies that handle higher data rates. That increases your hard drive costs and adds additional strain on your editing system.

So for me it was less about the cameras per se and more about the costs and bugs of dealing with an immature format like HDV. In two years, these editing problems will be worked out and HDV will take off like a rocket. Even I will be on board.

Douglas

As I understand it, there is also a problem with HDV cameras handling glitches or dropouts in tape. A dropout in a single frame will cause a 1/2 second problem in your playback. This is due to the fact that HDV uses a 15 frame Group of Pictures (GOP)standard...one bad frame wipes out 15...