Has anyone shot either an fx1 or z1 with a 250 in 16:9 or 4:3 mode on the same shoot and if yes how did they match up?

Also does anyone know how many pixels is used on the hd cameras in sd mode or in the z1 case sd dvcam mode as the 250 has 450,000 pixels and uses 400,000 of them?

I believe the lens, chips and electronics on the DSR-250 are basically the same as my VX-2000. I also have a Z1 and can tell you that the VX is no match for it in 16:9 mode.

The CCD pixel count is probably the wrong number to be looking at if shooting 16:9 on your 250. For an NTSC camera the full frame is 720x480 but in 16:9 mode you are only using 720x360 of those pixels. This is because there will be a black bar 60 pixels tall above the 16:9 image and another one the same size below it since that's the only way to get a 16:9 proportion within a 4:3 frame.

On the Z1 in DV mode (or any camera which shoots "real" anamorphic 16:9) the entire 720x480 pixels are used by compressing the widescreen image to fit the 4:3 frame. Then when you view the image it is stretched back into the correct proportion. So the 16:9 image from your DSR-250 will have about 25% less resolution than the standard definition widescreen image from a Z1.

Using the picture profiles on the Z1 I think you could come up with a pretty good match for the look of the DSR-250, but the Z1 footage is going to look sharper. However it depends a lot on the type of material you're shooting. You might not notice as much difference in a closeup shot of a face as you would in a wide shot of a landscape for example.

Thanks Boyd for your reply.

Paul