Would our resident experts be kind enough to put together a FAQ, similar to the excellent Canon XH-series Watchdog articles, drawing together what we know about the new Sony 3 CMOS cameras, please? I'd like to see a comparisson of features, prices and expected release dates between FX7 and V1 and also between European, US and Japanese versions.

At the moment, we have several threads all slightly overlapping, the same questions getting asked in slightly different ways and receiving different answers from different people. Now that Sony have gone public properly, maybe this is the moment to pull everything together into one authoritative article?

Many thanks for all your hard work.

Why don't you set the ball rolling Mark by doing a draft version, then passing it to the "experts" for comment/review (as I guess it might be difficult for them to find the time to do this from scratch).

It's a great idea, so why don't we all work together to create it. If somebody doesn't have an answer, maybe they've got a good question (ideally we would have one for every forum here).

Just off the top of my head, a few things the V1 has which are missing on the FX7:

* progressive scan modes (24p and 30p)
* timecode link
* other timecode options (like PD-150 and Z1)
* DVCAM standard def recording
* XLR package with Sony short shotgun mike
* all scan (underscan) viewfinder/LCD mode
* comes from Sony's pro division which means better service

I'm sure there are differences in some of the menu itemss, like the differences between the FX1 and Z1, but I don't know the details there.

The FX7 has a built-in stereo mike and the V1 does not.