Does anyone know anything about the Panasonic PV953 cam? I have an opportunity to but this cam and im trying to get some infro on it. Pros and Cons??

I have one. I bought it when they first came out. The first 3 chip camera to cost under 1500 dollars. It's a great little camera that will give you a nice picture if you feed it enough light. It has 1/6th ccds so it's not the best low-light camera out there. It also uses the same batteries and chargers as the DVX100 so you have an upgrade path to a larger camera with compatible power.

It feels nicely balanced in the hand and very solid. I shot video on the floor at NAB last year and the year before with it. I also like the way you can grab video frames and write them to the SD memory card as stills. You can also record lo-res MPEG4 video directly to the memory card. It can also shoot stills and has a built in flash but the image quality isn't that great. Its successor, the GS400, has much nicer still capability.

I keep thinking I should sell mine, but it's hard to let go of it.

Hope that helps,

-gb-

I also bought it when it first came out in 2003. This was the last year that I was in the US Army and I needed a camcorder to replace my 1 chip JVC DV and I had a choice between the DV953 for around 1150 and the JVC HD1 for around 2,100. To me the only difference was that one of them can shoot HD and the manual features were nearly the same and I didn’t think the HD was worth double the money. That’s one of the advantages of being in the military is that you get to save hundredths of dollars on expensive electronics. It’s also easy to have the latest videogame units because you could have easily picked up the PS2 and the XBOX during the first week it came out.

Anyway the camcorder worked like a charm and my footage was always remarkable and in 2004 while I was in college I’ve gotten shots to look better than the Sony PD150.

Sony received heavy competition to their TRV950 and the successor the HC1000 which retailed for 1500 couldn’t compete with the DV953's successor the GS400 until Sony decided to release the HC1 and although Sony finally took the lead again people were still trying to buy the GS400 for full retail. What’s sad is that the JVC HD7 was supposed to be the new GS400/HC1 but it has issues. I really hope Panasonic releases a true replacement for either the GS400 or the DVC30 and if not then at least either Sony or Canon should release a replacement for the HC1/Alu or the GL2.

i still have my mx500... size of a coke can.. much heavier but the image quality for SD stil stands up the larger ccd middleweights.. in good light of course.. like pauloive had many people compare teh footage to sony PD/VX and in many cases, it has surpased the image quality of those cameras.. in good light of course..

i sorely wanted a GS400 (larger ccd) but by the time i thought about it they were off the shelf.. LOL

i still have mine and use it as a family cam, as well as rudimentary still cam.. i also use its a crash cam for some crazy jobs... wonderful little unit...
to give u an idea.. when it was released here in aus, the camera was $3600 AUD... this is how much i paid for mine.. back then i only needed it to cover small and short reshoots for certain shots in commercials, and the native 16:9 sold me. Even though a GL2 was 600 more than this, i needed crisp image and widescreen and in good light this poos on the GL...

Now though.. well.. like i said its a family camera.. lol
bit expensive for a family camera but u get that i guess..

by the way, why is this in the p2 forum? Should be in the DVX/GS forums...