What are the current thoughts on the latest crop of small camcorders in the Pro-sumer area ?

It usually fluctuates between Sony, Canon & Panasonic, although I did see a report on a problem with continuous recording on the Panasonic when the file size reached 2Mb. and created an interruption in the recording. The things I look for, are low light performance and ease of manual settings particularly microphone level.

Any thoughts.

RonC.

Canon hit a home run with the G10 / XA10 a couple years ago and back then it was ahead of what Sony had. I bought the XA10 shortly after Canon came out with it. It's like a HVxx series camcorder with all the features you 'wish' it had. It's been fantastic. Now, they have the XA20 and from what I read, they improved all the shortcomings from everything me and a bunch of users posted about on the web boards. That's the camcorder I'd get. No major compromises. Spend the $$ (even if it's more than you wanted to spend) so you don't have to look back and kick yourself. Sony also has the NX70U and that looks like a nice cam as well. I haven't looked into too much though. I like how the XA.. line breaks down to a normal-looking camcorder in seconds if you want something less 'alarming' to your audience.

If you want a larger format handheld camcorder, I'm partial to Sony camcorders there. The NX5P looks pretty good. I had the Z5 which used the same sensors as the previous NX5U and the Canon XA10 had higher resolution and better color, plus was a lot easier to use. But I really love the feel of the Z5/NX5 series camcorder. There is also the VG series as well if you want to go artsy with DOF. So you have choices, Panasonic and JVC ...and Canon have decent cams as well.

Other than that, DSLR's might be another choice depending on your shooting needs. Canon seems to have an edge there as well.

Wait, I just noticed that post was quite old. Oh well... It's an ageless question anyway.

At least he has got his question answered :)

Better late than never!

I am duty-bound to shout "crap lens!" every time I see the NX70 mentioned. This is from personal experience having owned one for a year. OK at wide angle, but if you zoom in a bit, there's horrendous blurring and Chromatic Aberrations in the edges of the image.

If you want it for anything other than the "rain- and dust-proof" abilities, then look elsewhere.