I’ve been asked a couple times over the last few weeks about my choice of cameras; why I purchased these particular ones, and the differences.  Well I’ve pretty well beaten to death why I bought them, but I thought it was worth doing a compare on the two and how I’ll use them.  These are based on the true specs of the camera based on how I will use it (related to chasing/weather), so I’ll leave out things that don’t matter to me..

For those interested in either of these models, B&H has the XR500v for $849 until Feb 16.  Its regularly priced at $1199, so you’ll save $350 now.  The warranty is $255 and covers accidental damage and general warranty stuff for 5 years.  The CX100 is being phased out for the newer CX150, but Amazon has them available.  In fact, the price dropped from $399 to its current $331.48 in the last day, so you’ll get a good deal now.  I probably should’ve waited a week and saved $9… ah well.

For those looking at the XR500v, a newer series is coming out with the XR550v.  I went with this model because I have already experienced it, knew it had great low light and steady shot, and wasn’t sure how the newer models would compare.  I also was price-aware and figured the going price would be several hundred dollars higher for what I would guess is about the same thing.  In this current series, you can double your hard drive space with the XR520v, but trust me that the 14.5 hours of record time is more than plenty assuming you do clean it off from time-to-time.  You can lower the quality and still get really good HD results with a ton more space.  But again, the 120GB drive will hold more than enough footage (14 tapes worth) to get you by.  I debated with the idea of buying the XR520v, but opted to take the extra money to purchase the warranty.

While the steady-shot is amazing on this camera, the low-light was the big selling point for me.  I shot hailstorms on this model after dark in headlights and the picture was amazingly clear.  Storm scenes turned out great with or without strong lighting.  I was amazed at the quality, hands down.  That in itself was worth the purchase price, but adding the steady shot into it made it a dead ringer.  I could hand hold this camera and it was close to tripoded.  I was amazed even how steady video from moving cars on dirt roads did.  It was terrific!  The sound quality is good as well, but its not something I’ve really paid enough attention to where it affected my overall purchase.  The only area where this camera, along with most consumer-grade vids, fell short was in its ability to shoot lightning.  It has a CMOS censor as opposed to 3CCD, so you get choppy lightning video.  I shoot photos, so lightning isn’t a big deal for me and didn’t factor in heavily to my decision to buy.

The GPS is a fun feature, but if I could buy this exact same camera without the GPS and save a couple-hundred bucks, I would.  I haven’t used the feature enough to determine its worth and I don’t know for sure whether it logs the GPS when you first start shooting or if it will track your movement on a map as you’re shooting and you can go back and look.  I think if I dive into this and find that out, I may find this feature a must-have, but right now, its not something I felt was important.  It does automatically set the camera’s clock and will adjust for timezones, so that’s about as handy a feature as I’ve used in terms of the GPS.

Editing AVCHD requires newer video editing software packages such as Adobe CS4.  With a very pricey codec from MainConcept, you can work in Premiere CS3, however I experienced a lot of crashes and frustrating lags and don’t recommend this particular codec at the price they were offering at the time.  Since upgrading to CS4, I was able to rid of the codec and crashes, thus haven’t researched additional software or codecs since.  I do know that my editing with CS4 has been crash-free and smooth, rendering out files in Quicktime, MPEG, or various SD widescreen formats.  you can use the supplied Sony software to pull the files onto your computer and edit those from Premiere, or you can copy and paste the raw .mts files from the camera to the computer as if it were a flash drive and drop those in just like that, too.

I haven’t played alot with the Sony software, but assume it will bring the files down for not only the video, but GPS.  With the CX100 I also use, there are no GPS files thus I typically just pull the raw files straight from the camera without using the Sony software.  I think it might edit videos with a limited degree, but again, I do not have a lot of experience with the software itself.  Last season, I would get all the files from the camera with the Sony software and it pulled three different file types from the camera for each video clip.  One being the video file (now .m2ts as opposed to .mts), a .modd file, and occasionally a third file for what I think is the GPS information.  I used the ‘Media File Import’ as opposed to the Easy PC Back-up as it gave me more flexibility with what files I wanted to pull in the event there were clips I didn’t need at a particular time.  From there, I would import the .m2ts files into Premiere and edit them from there.

I did not have any major malfunctions or technical issues in my usage of the XR500v last season.  My biggest complaint is sometimes the focus wheel on the front is a bit unresponsive and you have to turn the knob delicately to aquire the zoom you want.  I would also like to see a button that you can press that will send the camera into manual focus at infinity mode.  Again, every review has to have some gripes, and those are mine.  The hard drive performed flawlessly, never had a failure even with it being used as a dashcam on rough roads or being hit with 1-inch plus hailstones.

Overall, you cannot beat the quality of this camera for the price.  Hands down, this is my favorite camera I’ve taken into the field storm chasing.  Its performance, steadiness, low light abilities, and storage are impossible to beat!  I hope future models have these exact same qualities cause I don’t wanna try and find working versions of these in 5 years when/if I am in the market again.