[Peter Steinman]

Not that it has anything to do with original question but, I’ve heard several people suggest getting the brightest colored cases you can rather then dark or stealthy ones.

That way you can see the second anyone grabs your case and it is a lot harder to hide a bright fluorescent orange case then a matte black one.

[Peter Steinman]

The way I understand it Panasonic didn’t include the whole set of Varicam color controls, only three preset ‘filmlike’ type settings, only a few frame rates, and it doesn’t allow you to select shutter in degrees only 1/sec.

Optically it looks to be the same as a Varicam only better low light performance. Probably due to the 14 bit A/D converter rather then anything else. There are rumors going around that the prism assembly isn’t as good as the Varicam but, I bet we’ll find there is no real difference.

There is also the past history of problems in rev A model products from pretty much every manufacturer of anything. You take a bit of chance buying the first of any new model. My Macbook Pro speaks to that. Its not a Panasonic issue. Its a problem with any brand new product line. It doesn’t mean there will be. There just might be.

The new remote is a monster. I’m not sure it will be a good or bad thing since I haven’t used one. It has a lot of blinking light and buttons on it and I like that. It also costs almost twice as much as the old one.

The firewire out is cool. Plug it into a firestore and go direct to disk. One day you may see used 900’s with 0x10h on the drum for sale. I think most people will probably end up doing both at once or tape most of the time if they aren’t going out the hdsdi ports. The Firestore is having some teething problems and I’m not sure anyone is using it in major projects as the ony record format. Most of us have seen enough firewire ‘glitches’ to be scared of it. Firewire cables fall out if a strong wind blows.

In the end it seems to me the Varicam is the way to go for features, people from film backgrounds, and people that need the maximum flexibility in their camera. The 900 is probably the better choice for eng/efp work and people that can’t remember the last time they didn’t use 24,30, or 60 fps.