MX-300 vs. MX-500 vs. Sony PDX-10

[Joseph George]

When I lived in West Hollywood, most guys there would prefer pink.

[Frank Granovski]

Pink's nice, on cheeks---depends on the cheeks, though.

[Steven Khong]

I like black (1st choice) cams. But sometimes I have no choice thanks to the manufacturers - we get silver... don't they know silver reflects a lot of light / glare on to the subject? Especially if we're trying to vidcam past glass panes.

Anyways, going back to the cams at hand...

Thanks for the great review & pix, Ariel!

Noticed that the MX300's pictures are slightly less resolution (some staircase-ing on the shoulder of the customers) & has a bit of white halos on those strange alphabets on the orange wall behind the dealer.

Also noticed that the PDX10 tries hard to overcompensate for the low light by boosting the gain a bit too much. The clue is the big area of light spilling from the lamp towards the top right of the picture, it's bigger than the MX300's.

But this overcompensating also gives a more "cheerful" / bright look to the PDX10 picture - though some people might call this "artificial".
The MX300 looks a bit more subdued (natural, as you call it) and blue-ish.

Guess it's up to personal preference. How's the amount of grain / mosquito noise in low light for the PDX10 compared to the MX300?

[Steven Khong]

Oh, another example of lower resolution / staircase effect for the MX300 is to look at that arc / curve near the light on the top right of the picture.

The arc in the PDX10's picture seems to have less staircase effect.

[Ariel Hershler]

Thanks Steven, now it's getting really interesting!

I noticed the "staircase" effect, as you call it. I referred to it as "jaggies" in my review. There is no doubt that the PDX10's footage doesn't show as much of it as the MX300. But I attributed that to the lower overall sharpness of the PDX10's pictures (which is more apparent when watching the actual footage on a large monitor using S-Video connections). Now you are saying that this effect is due to the LOWER resolution of the MX300? Then I misinterpreted my test results! Please explain.

BTW: I don't know what the default setting for "sharpness" (i.e. edge enhancement) is on the PDX10. On my MX300 I left it in the middle, but it is possible that on the PDX10 it was set differently, which could explain these results.

As you say, the PDX10 goes up much higher in gain than the MX300 under the same circumstances: the MX300 used from 0dB to 8dB, while the PDX10 used 16dB to 18dB, for the same shot in the shop.

In my opinion, the PDX10 adds more grain to the picture than the MX300, at the same gain. I did the following experiment: I took the last two pictures from my review (closeup taken in dark corner), and balanced them with PhotoShop. You can actually repeat my experiment yourself, if you like: by right-clicking on the picture (when you have it open in the browser) you can copy it and then paste it into any image-editing software.
Here are my results:
PDX10 closeup balanced: http://www.papricode.atfreeweb.com/h...0_balanced.jpg
MX300 closeup balanced: http://www.papricode.atfreeweb.com/h...0_balanced.jpg
See the difference?

Ariel

[Vladimir Koifman]

Ariel,

In these balanced pictures MX300 has more "solarized" look. PDX10 looks more natural to me.
Also, PDX10 picture is sharper here. For example, the small-sized text on the red background looks almost readable on PDX10 picture, while MX300 is more blured.

To add to your comparison, PDX10 has slow shutter speed all the way down to 1/3. This way one can improve its low light deficiency for the price of some "jerkiness". 1/25 might be a nice compromise, depending on the scene.

Also, widest angle in PDX10 is not really wide. In terms of 35mm its only 49mm. You'd miss it, if you switch over.

[Boyd Ostroff]

<<<-- Originally posted by Vladimir Koifman : Also, widest angle in PDX10 is not really wide. In terms of 35mm its only 49mm. You'd miss it, if you switch over. -->>>

37mm wide adaptor lenses are really inexpensive, lightweight and give good results. Kenko makes some really cheap ones, or for around $100 you can get better ones. And the PDX-10 comes with two lens hoods; the larger one works fine with my .45x "digital" wide adaptor and doesn't cause any vignetting. The wide adaptor also has 49mm threads which accept inexpensive screw in filters.

I agree, the builtin zoom lens isn't wide enough, but I really like the results with the adaptor, especially in 16:9 mode. And this is a significant point if you shoot 16:9, since the anamorphic adaptor lenses for cameras like the PD-150, GL-2, DVX-100, etc. are fixed focal length and can't be combined with a wide adaptor (for that matter they don't even allow you to use full wide zoom without vignetting).

[Frank Granovski]

Actually, the Tiffen 37mm wide angle is amazingly good. It's better than the 43mm version, though this one's pretty good too---just not as good as the 37mm wide.

[Ariel Hershler]

Just wanted to update all of you: after long weeks of agonizing, I decided to get the Sony PDX10. My dealer was really nice, and allowed me to pay for what amounts to basically just the difference between what I had paid for the Panasonic MX300 and the current price of the Sony PDX10 (even though my MX300 was over a year old!)

I am still trying to get used to the new camera, and will let you all know my findings after I have had some experience with it.

I'd like to thank everybody for their contributions. It really helped in making up my mind.

Ariel

[Frank Granovski]

My dealer was really nice, and allowed me to pay for what amounts to basically just the difference between what I had paid for the Panasonic MX300 and the current price of the Sony PDX10 (even though my MX300 was over a year old!)

This may be because there is a good resale market for the MX300.

I look forward to your findings once you've taken the PDX10 around the block.

[Young Lee]

You're comparing the PDX10 with the now-discontinued MX300?

[Frank Granovski]

I think they were. :)