there haven’t been any problems in capturing the footage (the camera automatically downsamples to DV in either letterbox or widescreen DV). I don’t have the equipment yet to edit in HDV so i’ve been shooting in HDV but editing in DV and the camera works great. the picture profiles are great ways to make your footage look a ton better than normal DV by making saturation and other adjustments easily accessable and you can set a bunch of presets to make sure you get just the right look! also, the placement of the DV connection is a little hard at times because i worry that the sharp angle of the cable coming down onto my desk when i capture might bend something in the port, but so far it’s been fine. if you want to do a creep zoom, just set the low speed on the handle zoom for the speed you want and that’ll do just great. also the zoom ring is cool, but i never use it because it doesn’t feel as smooth as i thought it would. manual focus can be a little bit of a hassle so it’s best to leave on auto if you have to move around much. Some complaints i have seen are the touchiness of the focus. some of these are: Zebra/peaking switch, easier audio auto/manual selectors, external audio phantom on/off power switches, the hi/low selector switch for the handle zoom and a bunch of others. It’s comfortable to use and they added a lot of extra features to the outside that make it more convenient. I had been using a PD-150 for a long time before and found the Z1U a nice step up. The image quality is great and the features make it very easy to use and customize for your own needs. I’ve been using the Z1U for about 6 months now and I love it. If you plan on editing or even watching your footage on your computer you better have a very fast machine! Let me know if you want more info. Also if you plan on using anything on the accessory shoe (say a light) it is about a 1/2 inch longer, you’ll see why when you see it. The camera is about 14 1/4 with the lens hood on. I use sony premium tapes and have had no problems. The actual tape format is the exact same. You can purchase sony’s HDV tapes when shooting in HD, but the only difference is that the HDV tapes are sony’s best quality tapes available. You might be surprised when you get back to the studio and realize that what you thought was in focus really wasn’t as good as it could have been. One caution though with using manual focus on these cameras is that with the high picture resolution, it is very difficult to tell focus using the viewfinder or lcd. On the image control side, the FX1 has just about everything you would want, basically a few minor differences from the Z1. If you need XLR audio, then the difference is significant enough to purchase the Z1.

Sony hvr z1u