I purchased a Sony Mini-dv camcorder on the day before the twins were born, and it broke before their second birthday. I know Sony has a good reputation, by my experience with their camcorders is 100% bad, so I decided to get another brand.

After thorough searching on the internet, and decided (again) to stay with mini-dv and to go with Panasonic, and purchased the Panasonic PV-GS65.

Why? Panasonic offers camcorders with three chips (3 ccd) in their consumer line, which in the Sony line will cost you over $1,000 to get a camcorder with 3ccd.

What is 3ccd? from Wikipedia:

Three ccd or 3-ccd is a term used to describe an imaging system employed by some still cameras, video cameras, and camcorders. Three-CCD cameras have three separate charge-coupled devices, each one taking a separate measurement of red, green, and blue light. Light coming into the lens is split by a trichroic prism assembly, which directs the appropriate wavelength ranges of light to their respective CCDs.

Three-CCD cameras are generally superior image quality compared to cameras with only one CCD due to the above reasons. Additionally a one-CCD camera must use a bayer filter and interpolation to 'fill in the gaps' which are two additional sources of image quality loss.

Three-CCD cameras are generally more expensive than single-CCD cameras because they require three times more elements to form the image detector, and because they require a precision color-separation beam-splitter optical assembly.

The concept of cameras using three image pickups, one for each primary color, was first developed for color photography on three glass plates in the late nineteenth century, and in the 1960s through 1980s was the dominant method to record color images in television, as other possibilities to record more than one color on the video camera tube were difficult.

3CCD cameras are also often known "3-chip" or "three-chip" cameras; this term is actually more descriptive and inclusive, since it includes cameras that use CMOS image sensors instead of CCDs.

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Paul S.

2001 E430, Bourdeaux Red, Oyster interior.
79,200 miles.

1973 280SE 4.5, 170,000 miles. 568 Signal Red, Black MB Tex. "The Red Baron".